“If you change your mind,” said Kropotkin, “look for me at the cafe where we ate our lunch.”
“I will,” said Pekkala. “And thank you.”
Kropotkin hooked his thumb under the watch chain attached to his waistcoat button. He lifted the watch from his pocket, glanced at it, and let it slip back into the pocket. “Time to hit the road,” he said.
“I hope we will meet again soon.”
“We will. And in the meantime, Inspector, God protect us both.”
At those words, Pekkala tumbled into the past, like a man falling backwards off a cliff.
“God protect us!” wept the Tsarina. “God protect us. God protect us.”
Early one morning in January of 1917, in the crypt of the private Fyodorov chapel, the body of Rasputin was laid to rest.
The only people present were the Tsar, the Tsarina, their children, a priest, and Pekkala, who was there for security, since the service was being held in secret.
After the discovery of Rasputin’s corpse in the Neva River, the Tsarina had ordered that Rasputin should be buried in his home village of Pokrovskoye, in Siberia. The minister of the interior, Alexander Protopopov, persuaded her that the current hostility towards Rasputin, even in death, would guarantee that his body would not make the journey successfully, so she decided to bury him in secret on the grounds of the Tsarskoye Selo estate.
It was an open-coffin service, but Rasputin’s face had been covered with a white cloth. This was to hide the bullet hole in the middle of his forehead, which no amount of undertaker’s skill could obscure.
This bullet hole had been made by a different weapon than the other three found in his body. It was Chief Inspector Vassileyev who had alerted Pekkala to the discrepancy. “We have a big problem,” he said.
“That Rasputin was shot by more than one gun?” asked Pekkala. They already had two men in temporary custody. Prince Felix Yusupov had immediately confessed to the crime, along with the army doctor named Lazovert. There were other suspects, including the Grand Duke Dimitri Pavlovitch, but it was the Tsar himself who made clear to the Okhrana investigators, Pekkala included, that none of these men would ever be brought to trial. Given this fact, the number of bullet holes in Rasputin’s body hardly seemed to matter.
“It’s not simply that two weapons were used,” Vassileyev told Pekkala. “It is the type of gun which caused this.” He pressed a finger to his forehead, where the bullet had entered Rasputin’s skull. “Our chief medical examiner has determined that the head wound was made by a soft-sided bullet. Every type of gun firing that caliber of bullet uses a hard copper casing. Every type except one.” Now Vassileyev pointed at Pekkala’s chest, where his revolver rested in its shoulder holster. “Take that out.”
Confused, Pekkala did as he was told.
Vassileyev took the gun, opened the chamber, and emptied the large .455-caliber bullets out onto the table.
“Do you mean somebody thinks I played a part in this?” asked Pekkala.
“No!” growled Vassileyev. “Look at the bullets! Soft-sided. The only weapon commonly available in this size and with this kind of ammunition is the British Webley revolver, the same kind the Tsar gave to you as a present, and which he received from his cousin King George of England.”
“The British murdered Rasputin?”
Vassileyev shrugged. “They had a hand in it, Pekkala. That much is almost certain.”
“But why?”
“They were not fond of Rasputin. It was on that lunatic’s insistence that several British advisors were sent home in disgrace.”
“Is that why the investigation has been halted?”
“Halted?” Vassileyev laughed. “The investigation was never begun. What I’ve just told you will never be written in the history books. In the future, Inspector, they will not squabble over who killed Rasputin. Instead, they will be asking, ‘Who didn’t?’ ”
Throughout the brief service, Pekkala stood by the half-open door of the church, looking out across the grounds of Tsarskoye Selo. The smell of sandalwood incense blew past him and out into the freezing air.
It was cold in the chapel. No fires had been lit. The Romanovs stood in fur coats while the priest read the eulogy. Throughout this, the Tsarina wept, a lace handkerchief clenched in her fist and pressed against her mouth to hide her sobbing.
Glancing back from the door, Pekkala watched the daughters lay a painted icon on Rasputin’s chest. The Tsar and Alexei stood off to one side, grim-faced but detached.
“Where is the justice in this?” shrieked the Tsarina, as the lid of the coffin was closed.
The priest stepped back in alarm.
The Tsar took hold of his wife’s arm. “It’s over,” he told her. “There is nothing more we can do.”
She collapsed into his arms and sobbed against his chest. She began her chant again. “God protect us. God protect us.”
Pekkala wondered what that meant for the man in the box, whose brains had been blown through his skull.
As the Romanovs left the church, Pekkala stood outside the door to let them pass.
The Tsarina swept past him, then stopped and turned. “I’ve been meaning to thank you,” she whispered, “for keeping us safe here on earth. Now I have two guardians. One here and one who’s up above.”
Looking into the Tsarina’s bloodshot eyes, Pekkala remembered what Rasputin had told him, that night he came in from the cold.
“You see, Pekkala,” he had said, “the reason I am loved by the Tsarina is that I am exactly what she wants me to be. Just as she needs me now to be beside her, the time will come when she will need me to be gone.”
Once more, the Tsar took hold of his wife’s arm. “Our friend is gone now,” he murmured in her ear. “We should be going too.”
There was an expression on his face which Pekkala had never seen before—some blur of fear and resignation—as if the Tsar had glimpsed, through some tear in the fabric of time, the specter of his own fast- approaching doom.
PEKKALA WATCHED AS KROPOTKIN CROSSED THE ROAD, DISAPPEARING in the misty veils of rain.
Then he went back to his office.
An hour later, when Kirov had still not returned, he began to grow nervous. There had been so many arrests this past year that no one could feel safe, no matter what rank they held or how innocent they were. The way Pekkala saw it, the same idealism that made Kirov a good upholder of the law also made the young man vulnerable to how randomly enforced that law could be. Pekkala had seen it before—the stronger the convictions, the greater the distance between the world as these people envisioned it and the world as it really was.
At the same time, Pekkala knew that Kirov might take it as a lack of confidence if he went searching for him now.
So Pekkala continued to wait in the office, as evening shadows crept about the room. Before long, he found himself in total darkness. By now, there was no point in heading home for the night, so he propped his feet up on the desk, folded his hands across his stomach, and tried to fall asleep.
But he couldn’t.
Instead, he paced around the room studying Kirov’s potted plants. Now and then, he paused to pick a cherry
