The Romanov Cross: A Novel (20 page)

Yussoupov was at his wit’s end. As a last resort, he had hidden a Browning revolver in an ebony box behind the bar, and with shaking hands he retrieved it now, and stepped behind the monk.

“Feel free to take the crucifix out of the case,” he said, but Rasputin seemed content to leave it where it was. Instead, his hands went to his gut and began to massage his belly.

“You might be wise to hold it,” the prince said, his tone more determined than before, “and say a prayer.” Yussoupov could see Rasputin’s face reflected in the glass, just as the monk could see his own.

Rasputin suddenly gagged, and putting out a hand toward the cabinet, said, “You have poisoned me.”

Yussoupov did not reply. Instead, he raised the gun, his hand trembling, aimed it squarely at Rasputin’s back, and fired once.

For several seconds, Rasputin did not move or even flinch. The prince tried to fire again, but his finger was so slick with sweat it slid off the trigger. Slowly, the monk turned around, his blue eyes now blazing with rage, before he toppled over, falling flat on the bearskin rug.

Yussoupov heard footsteps on the stairs, and when he turned he saw Grand Duke Dmitri, Dr. Lazovert, and another conspirator, Purishkevich, all staring at the gun hanging from his hand, and then at the
body lying prostrate on the floor. The monk lay still, his eyes closed, but there was no sign of any blood. Dr. Lazovert cautiously approached, took Rasputin’s pulse, and declared him dead.

“Good, then let’s wrap him up in something and get him out of here,” Purishkevich, the oldest and most levelheaded among them, said, looking all around the vaulted cellars.

How had they not thought through this part of the plan, Yussoupov berated himself.

“Upstairs,” Purishkevich declared. “We’ll use the blue curtains from the drawing room.”

As the others all too eagerly raced back up the stairs, Yussoupov was left alone again with the corpse. He slumped into an armchair, dropping the revolver on the carpet. He had expected to be overcome with emotion, to be brimming with a sense of triumph. But there was none of that. His hands were still shaking, and his ears were ringing from the clamor of the shot.

A spark flew from the hearth, landing only inches from the monk’s outstretched boot.

Which twitched.

The prince’s breath stopped in his throat, and as he studied the monk’s face, he saw first one eye open, then the other. And before he could even jump up from his chair, Rasputin was back on his feet, spittle flying from his snarling lips, his hands tearing at Yussoupov’s clothing.

“You murderer!” the monk said, as his fingers clenched around the prince’s neck. They were both being dragged to the floor, but the prince was able to break free and run for the stairs, screaming for help.

“Murderer!”

Rasputin was close behind him, scrambling up the winding steps like an animal on all fours. Yussoupov could hear him panting and felt his hands grasping at the hem of his trousers.

“He’s alive! He’s alive!” he shouted running into the drawing room and slamming the doors closed behind him. Purishkevich and the others, gathering up the torn curtains, looked slack-jawed with disbelief. “He’s still alive!” Yussoupov repeated, barring the doors with his back.

“It can’t be,” Dr. Lazovert said. “He had no pulse.”

“You shot him,” Dmitri said. “You shot him in the back.”

“He’s been poisoned ten times over,” Lazovert added.

“But he’s escaping!” the prince screamed. “Even now!”

“This is impossible,” Purishkevich said, dismissively, but at the same time drawing a pistol from beneath his waistcoat. “Get out of the way.”

Pushing the prince aside, he strode out into the hallway with the gun drawn. A trail of blood led toward the marble vestibule, and a cold wind was blowing into the palace through the open doors. Yussoupov, cowering behind him, pointed outside and said, “You see? You see?”

Slipping and sliding in the falling snow, the monk was making his way inexorably across the courtyard and toward the main gates, which fronted onto the canal.

“Murderers!” Rasputin was shouting. “The Tsaritsa shall hear of this! You are murderers!”

“Kill him!” Yussoupov was screaming. “Before he gets away!”

But even as Purishkevich stepped forward and fired, Yussoupov jostled his arm and the bullet clanged off the iron gates.

“Shoot him!” Yussoupov cried, and Purishkevich, pushing him away, took aim again.

The shot went wide, as did the next. Rasputin was fiddling with the lock on the gates. To concentrate, Purishkevich bit his own left hand, then fired again, and this time the bullet hit Rasputin in the shoulder. He slumped to one side, and the next shot struck the back of his head.

By the time the conspirators huddled around the fallen body, his blood was seeping out onto the snow, but his eyes were still staring up at the sky and he was grinding his teeth in pain and fury. Was there no killing this man, Yussoupov thought in horror? Would it never end?

Purishkevich, too, swore under his breath, then kicked the monk in the temple, hard. Yussoupov, for want of a better weapon, removed his heavy, hand-tooled leather belt with the silver buckle and lashed at the body until, at last, there was no further sign of life. Dr. Lazovert raised a hand to stop them. “Enough,” he said, “it’s done.”

The Grand Duke Dmitri emerged from the house, dragging the blue curtains, but before they could roll the body up in them, Yussoupov said, “Stop,” and kneeling down, he tore open Rasputin’s bloody shirt and searched his neck and chest for any sign of the cross.

“What are you doing?” Dmitri asked.

“The emerald cross—I’m looking for it!”

“Good Christ, Felix, aren’t you rich enough already?” Dmitri said, shoving him aside. “Have you lost your mind?”

A fair question, Yussoupov thought, as he sat back in the snow, watching as the others finished wrapping the corpse and tying a rope around the whole bundle. It was late on a cold and snowy night, so to Yussoupov’s relief, they saw no one, and no one saw them, as they carried the body down an alleyway, under a bridge, and out onto the frozen Neva River; there, they shoved it through a hole in the ice. In the moonlight, it appeared as nothing more than a dark shadow under the water, drifting slowly, silently, downstream. With it went Yussoupov’s dreams of glory. Suddenly it had dawned on him—and how could he have been so blind?—that far from being hailed as a savior, he might just as easily be labeled an assassin. It was hard work killing a man—he’d never done it before—and though the Tsar might secretly rejoice at being rid of the madman, the Tsaritsa would be enraged. Why hadn’t he thought these things through more clearly?

All he wanted now, with every freezing fiber of his being, was for the body to remain undiscovered beneath the ice until spring … or, better yet, doomsday.

During the funeral service, Slater had received a running commentary, under her breath, from Nika. As one mourner after another took the podium, she told him who it was, how he or she was connected to the
Neptune
tragedy, how long the family had been working in these Alaskan waters. They were a hardy lot, and Slater felt the anguish of their loss. In a place like this, there wasn’t much to hold on to, and they had all just suffered a devastating blow.

But of all the people present, he had to admit that the most riveting bunch were the Vanes—Charlie wheeling in like a dignitary waiting for his ovation, attended to by the two whey-faced women in the long dresses. Harley scuffling along behind, like a kid about to perform at a recital for which he hadn’t practiced. Even seated in the pews, they seemed to create an air of turbulence around them, and he noticed that after Harley had made his remarks, and the service had concluded, none of the other congregants seemed all that anxious to hang out with them.

“Not the most popular kids at school, are they?” Slater said, as he and Nika made their way next door to the rec center and the refreshments. There was a wide, empty circle around the two women. Slater had never seen a pair of sisters who gave off a more witchy vibe.

“Most folks in Port Orlov know enough not to get mixed up with them.”

Already loaded down with donuts and coffee, Eddie and Russell made their way back outside again.

“With some exceptions,” she added.

Slater himself was an object of some interest, he could tell. Everyone in town had seen the Sikorsky by now, and although the mayor herself had backed up his story—“it’s a routine training mission for the Coast Guard,” he had heard her tell three people already—he was sure that there were other rumors circulating, too. It wouldn’t be a small town if there weren’t.

But as long as the rumors didn’t involve the Spanish flu, he was okay with it.

On the way out, he saw a blue van with what looked like a confab going on inside, among the Vane boys and Eddie and Russell. He wondered if he should post a sentry on the chopper that night or risk having its hubcaps stolen. He’d already been stuck in Port Orlov longer than he’d intended, but bad weather in the Midwest had grounded Eva Lantos’s plane, and military red tape had tied up some of the equipment scheduled for arrival on the second chopper. Murphy’s Law in action. Slater knew that every mission encountered problems like these—especially one like this, organized virtually on the fly—but it didn’t make it any easier to take. Patience had never been among his virtues.

When he got back to the community center, where he’d been bunking with Professor Kozak and the two Coast Guard pilots, he went straight to Nika’s office, where he’d set up his own little command post on a corner of her desk and the top of her file cabinet. It was the most secure office on the premises, and she’d been very accommodating, but he still felt a bit guilty about usurping so much of her space. She’d even given him the spare key.

“Don’t lose it,” she said. “The town locksmith is drunk most of the time, and it’s not easy to get another one made.”

With Nika off making official condolence calls, and Kozak exploring the local terrain, he sat down in Nika’s chair—instead of the stool
he’d brought in for himself—and got to work, checking logistics, firing off email queries, figuring out how this assignment could be completed in the shortest amount of time and with the minimum amount of public scrutiny. The weather reports weren’t good—a storm was brewing—and he wanted to beat it to St. Peter’s Island, at least in time to get a few of the necessary structures set up. He didn’t much relish the idea of erecting lighting poles in the teeth of gale-force winds.

For a couple of hours, he managed to lose himself in his work, even phoning Sergeant Groves—and plainly waking him up—to go over the latest alterations to the plan.

“So what’s your ETA now?” he asked, and Groves, audibly yawning, said, “We should be able to load everything onto the second Sikorsky—including the good Dr. Lantos—by Thursday morning.”

It was only Tuesday night now, and Slater had to bite his lip in frustration.

“What time do you want to rendezvous on the island?” Groves asked.

“We’re not going to,” Slater said, having given it much thought since his aerial reconnaissance. “The colony’s on top of the plateau, but it’s hemmed in by trees and the remaining wooden structures. The graveyard is in an even trickier spot. There’s no room for two helicopters to off-load at the same time.”

“How’s the beach? We could use that, right?”

Again, Slater had to nix the idea. “The beach can handle no more than a Zodiac. It’s too narrow and sloped, and the only way up to the plateau, a considerable distance, is a staircase cut into the stone. I wouldn’t try to carry a kitten up those steps, much less a centrifuge.”

“So you’ll go first?”

“Yes, and you can follow. We’ll leave a two-hour window for the initial cargo deployment, and start at eleven
A.M.
on Thursday. It won’t be light enough earlier.”

They were discussing a myriad of other details—the order in which the hazard tents would be erected, the grid of the ground ramps and location of the generator shacks—when Slater picked up the aroma of stew and heard a furtive knock on the door.

“Come in,” he said, holding the phone to his shoulder, and looked up to see Nika holding a Crock-Pot between two pot holders.

“The Yardarm is doing their version of chicken Kiev tonight,” she said. “Trust me, you’re better off with my home cooking.”

Slater was embarrassed to be caught so much in possession of her office and started to rise from her chair.

“Finish your call,” she said, “and meet me in the gym.”

“Sounds like you’ve made a friend,” Sergeant Groves said with a laugh before they hung up. “Now don’t blow it.”

Slater straightened up his papers and tried to leave her desk the way he’d found it, then went down the hall to the community center’s gymnasium, where Nika had set up a card table underneath the scoreboard with a bottle of wine, the pot of stew, and a couple of place settings. It was about the least picturesque spot Slater could ever have imagined, which was why he found it puzzling that it felt so cozy and romantic. He instinctively tucked his shirt into his pants to straighten it out and ran a hand over his hair. Maybe he did need to get out more, as Sergeant Groves had often kidded him. “You’re divorced,” Groves had told him the last time they’d had a drink in a D.C. bar. “You’re not dead.”

“You really didn’t have to do this,” Slater said, taking a seat on the folding chair across from Nika.

“Inuit hospitality,” she said, dishing out the stew. “We’d be disgraced if we didn’t do something for a guest who had come so far.”

Slater opened the wine bottle and filled their glasses. He raised his glass in a toast to his host, then found himself tongue-tied. “To … a successful mission,” he said, and Nika smiled. Clinking her glass against his, she said, “To a successful mission.”

“And a terrific meal,” Slater said, trying to recover. “Smells great.” He draped his napkin in his lap. “Thanks so much.”

The conversation went in stops and starts. Slater, who could talk about disease vectors until the cows came home, had never been good at this small talk; his wife Martha had always been the one to carry the day. Between bites of the reindeer stew, he asked Nika about her life and her background, and she was happy to oblige. It even turned out that they had some friends in common on the faculty of Berkeley,
where she’d received her master’s in anthropology before coming back to serve the people of Port Orlov.