Rasputin knows that one day he will also die in water. The knowledge terrifies him-unhinges him. He becomes erratic and violent. His parents banish him to a monastery deep in the Ural Mountains, unaware that the establishment has been overrun by the banned Khlysty sect; flagellants, whose orgiastic rituals end in physical exhaustion, and, for Rasputin, in ecstatic mediumistic hallucinations.
Two years later, now a lanky, straggle-haired youth, he emerges from the mountains, intoxicated with a sense of his own importance and in no doubt that he will gain control of his country and make of it a great power. He has seen it. It has been prophesied. It is the future.
Before his twentieth birthday, he marries and comes to hate his wife, has children and is repelled by them, and indulges in affairs-many affairs-before walking out of his home, never to return. He travels back and forth across Russia, and, after three years, makes his way to Saint Petersburg.
Soon the whole city knows him. They call him the “Mad Monk.” He is the holy man who heals the sick, who sees the future, and who gets drunk and seduces married women and their daughters.
The tsaritsa comes to him, drawn by his reputation as a miracle worker. Her son is dying. Rasputin eases the boy's suffering. He gains the royal family's trust. By now he is an alcoholic and a sexual deviant, but he has the tsar's ear.
A new century dawns.
For years, Britain and Prussia-now United Germany-have been engaging in skirmishes in Central Africa. The tensions deepen, and Britain's Technologists begin an arms race with Germany's Eugenicists. The British government is nervous. It has come to regard eugenics as an insidious evil, a menace to civilisation, an antithesis to freedom and the rights of man.
The prime minister seeks to publicly downplay the growing threat from the foreign power. After all, the British Empire is massive. It counts North America, India, the Caribbean, Australia, and huge chunks of Africa among its many territories. What can a comparatively small nation like Germany do against such a global power?
Then Britain's reclusive monarch, King Albert, dies, aged ninety. Lord Palmerston's masterful manipulation of the constitution had given Albert the throne after the assassination of Queen Victoria, but has now left it with no obvious successor.
The republican movement gains popular support. The country is thrown into crisis. The government is distracted.
Germany invades France.
Germany invades Belgium.
Germany invades Denmark.
Germany invades Austria-Hungary.
Germany invades Serbia.
They all fall.
The Greater German Empire is born.
Britain declares war.
Emperor Herbert von Bismarck sends his chancellor, Friedrich Nietzsche, to Russia to win the backing of the tsar.
Secretly, Nietzsche also meets with Grigori Rasputin. It's the first time they've encountered each other in the flesh, but for many months they've been in mediumistic contact, for Nietzsche, like Rasputin, is profoundly clairvoyant. He is also a profligate, drug-addict, and sadomasochist.
They have a plan.
Rasputin will manipulate the tsar into allying Russia with Germany. When the British are defeated and their Empire is carved up, assassinations will be arranged. The Bismarck and Romanov dynasties will be destroyed. Together, Nietzsche and Rasputin will become the supreme rulers of the entire Western world. They convince themselves that they will be strict but benign.
It begins.
Tsar Nicholas has no resistance to Rasputin's mesmeric influence. Russia declares war against Britain.
For three appalling years, the conflict rages, spreading across the whole world, with the British Technologists’ steam machines on one side and the German Eugenicists’ adapted flora and fauna on the other.
An entire generation of men is slaughtered.
Europe is battered until it is little more than one gigantic, muddy, blood-soaked field.
Britain falters, but fights on, and when the British American States join the conflict, Germany is bruised and, for the first time, retreats.
Russian troops arrive in the nick of time. There is another great push forward. For two more years, the battles seethe back and forth over Europe's devastated territories, until finally, the biggest empire the world has ever seen topples and falls.
The war ends. The spoils are divided. The treachery follows.
Tsar Nicholas and his entire family are rounded up and shot in the head. Bismarck is garrotted. His family and supporters are executed.
Friedrich Nietzsche rises to power, receives life-prolongation treatments, and begins a near-century-long reign of terror that will earn him the sobriquet The Devil's Dictator.
Britain, from its deathbed, makes one final gesture of defiance. Two days before Rasputin is to be named president of Russia, three members of the palace staff surround him. They are British spies. They produce pistols and, at point-blank range, pull the triggers. All three guns jam. Rasputin has long feared assassination, and projects around himself a permanent mediumistic energy field that alters the structure of springs, robbing them of their power. No trigger mechanism will function anywhere near him.
He laughs in the faces of the would-be killers, and, with a careless gesture, causes their brains to boil in their skulls.
The following day, he is poisoned with cyanide. Realising that he's the subject of a second assassination attempt, he slows down his metabolism and begins to consciously secrete the poison out through his pores. Four men corner him and hack at him with an axe. They bludgeon him into submission, bind him hand and foot, and wrap him in a carpet. Rasputin is carried to the ice-bound Neva River and thrown in.
Despite his terrible wounds, it is-as he's known it would be all his life-the water that kills him.
He dies believing the British have had their revenge.
He is wrong.
The assassins are German.
The year is 1916, and Nietzsche, now the most powerful man in the world, considers himself well rid of the Mad Monk. Russia, without a visionary in control, will never pose a threat. It is left isolated, friendless, ungoverned, and poverty-stricken.
With millions of its sons killed in the war, the sprawling country's agricultural infrastructure collapses. Famine decimates the population. A harsh winter does the rest.
Russia's death is lonely, lingering, and catastrophic.
“There!”
The woman's voice hissed through Burton's skull.
He gulped in air and a tremor shook his body as consciousness returned.
“There!” she repeated. “That is why I do what I do! I have seen Mother Russia die, and I will not allow it! No! I shall change history! I shall ensure that Britain is in no condition to oppose Germany! I shall see to it that the World War is over in months rather than years! I shall cause your workers to bring this country to its knees! And when the terrible war comes-for there is no stopping it-Germany will wipe your weakened, filthy Empire from the Earth without need of Russia's aid. And while it is doing so, Rasputin will be making the homeland strong, and when the war is done and Germany is weakened, he will strike! There will be a new Empire-not Britain's, not Germany's, but Russia's! ”
You're insane.
“No. I am a prophet. I am the saviour of my country. I am the protector of Rasputin, the death of Britain, and the destroyer of Germany. I am Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, and Destiny is mine to manipulate!”
She pushed deeper into his mind. Burton opened his mouth to scream but could make no sound. It felt as if his cranium was filling with maggots.
