“Thanks,” I told him in English. “Thanks a lot for saving my life.”
He muttered something in Russian and then strode over to Karl’s body. He pointed the gun at it and fired several times in rapid succession. Finally he stopped shooting and looked up at me. “Debshakref!” he said again, smiling contemptuously.
“Sorry. I don’t speak Russian,” I told him.
“But you do speak German.” Somehow he’d gotten my meaning and now he spoke to me in German.
“Ja.”
“Debshakref is the supreme Russian insult,” he explained. “It means ‘your mother gave you blood of a dog.’ “
“Very picturesque profanity,” I granted. “But a little indirect, don’t you think?”
“Not to a Russian, it isn’t. But then you’re not a Russian, are you?”
“Nein,” I admitted.
“Neither am I,” he confided. “I am a Serbian. My name is Grigori Efimovich.” He held out his hand.
“I’m Steve Victor.” I shook hands with him. “I’m an American.”
“I am glad to know you, Steve Victor.” His piercing eyes went right through me. “Particularly since you have saved my life.
“It was you who saved mine,” I reminded him.
“You saved mine first.” He pointed to the dynamite plunger under the tree. A few feet away from it, but not connected to it, a wire led oil into the snow-covered underbrush. “That was meant for me,” he said. “German Intelligence must have done their work well. Only the khlysts knew I would be here tonight. This place has always been one of the best kept secrets in Russia.”
“The khlysts?”
“My followers.” He didn’t bother explaining any more than that. “Come, you will meet them. You have saved my life and that makes you my friend. I will see that they aecept you as one of us now.”
His followers? As I accompanied him through the frozen glade, I wondered at his authoritativeness. He must be very important m the Russian scheme of things if German Intelligence would go to all this trouble to assassinate him. But who was he?
Grigori Efimovich. That’s what he’d said his name was. But the name meant nothing to me. He certainly didn’t dress as if he was anybody special. He wore the rough peasant garb typical of the Russian serf in the last days of the Czars. Except for the intensity of his eyes and the authoritativeness of his demeanor, he might have been just another Russian peasant.
“Uh, you must be pretty important,” I fished.
He stopped in his tracks and stared through me again. Then he burst out laughing. “But you don’t know who I am! ’ He roared heartily. “How charming! You don’t know the importance of the life you have saved. You don’t know that my gratitude towards you has raised you to the estate of the mighty. Ahh, boychik! Your naïveté is the most refreshing thing I have known in many a year.”
“Call me unsophisticated. So who are you?”
“I am Rasputin!” He bowed with a grand flourish.
“Oh.” That about summed it up. If he was Rasputin then he really was every bit as important as he said he was and then some. Rasputin, the Mad Monk, was the most powerful man of his time in Russia. Czar Nicholas and Czarina Alexandra were completely under his hypnotic spell and the word was that when he snapped his fingers both of them jumped to do his bidding.
Rasputin’s niche in history also had some intriguingly dark corners. His sexual excesses were more than a legend; they were fact. The history books are full of the evidence of his licentiousness. To date, he still qualifies as the top libertine of the twentieth century.
I was about to see an example of his right to the title. We emerged from the path we’d been following into a snow-covered clearing in the woods. Several troikas and other types of horse-drawn sleds had been drawn up around the sides of the clearing. They stood behind a series of small bonfires which ringed the clearing and supplied both heat and light against the cold, darkening night. Standing around the fires were about twenty men and girls.
They were the khlysts, a secret group of outlawed religious fanatics who looked to Rasputin as their leader. This sect practiced frenzied rites which have been likened to the Black Mass. The rites were aimed at unleashing the wildest and most abandoned sexual passions.
When Rasputin appeared, the cry of “Holy Father” was sounded and the khlysts fell to the ground, arms outstretched, noses digging into the snow, looking for all the world like a herd of kneeling camels. The black-bearded Rasputin strode among them with an imperious air, patting the bent head of a man here, a girl there, murmuring a blessing to some favorites among them. Finally he stood in the center of the clearing, stretched out his arms and slowly raised them. Humbly, the penitents got to their feet.
One of them approached Rasputin with a bottle of vodka. He drank deeply and passed it to me. I took a swig and almost split a lung. The stuff was evidently home brew and tasted like pure wood alcohol. It burned out the lining of my gullet going down.
While I was brushing the tears out of my eyes, other khlysts approached Rasputin and presented him with gifts. A plump chicken—recently slaughtered—a side of beef, a jar of caviar, more jugs of vodka, a jeweled crucifix, a hammered silver ring, these and many more offerings were accepted by him and then deposited on a pile at the edge of the clearing. The only one he held onto was the first bottle of vodka. He kept sucking at it while the gift-giving continued. When the last khlyst had presented his offering, Rasputin drained the bottle with one last, mighty gulp and flung it into the woods.
It was the signal for the ceremonies to begin. A flute sounded and the melody was picked up by first one balalaika and then another. Rasputin clapped his hands over his head and began dancing. He circled the clearing once, slowly, and then selected a partner.
She was a well-proportioned girl with a pretty peasant face and long, flowing black hair. She whirled wildly to the rhythm of Rasputin’s clapping hands. Then he seized her and they danced together more slowly and intimately. Now other men selected women and started to dance.
Abruptly, the music ceased. The dancers stopped, freezing in position. Rasputin walked the girl to the center of the rough circle the dancers had formed. The girl fell to her knees before him. Rasputin raised his head to the sky and seemed almost to bay a chant in Russian. Evidently it was meant to be some sort of prayer.
When it was over, he snapped his fingers. Immediately, one of the male dancers ran up to him with another jug of vodka. Rasputin grasped the long hair of the girl kneeling before him and pulled her head back. Her mouth was wide open and he poured the vodka down her throat until she started to cough. The other dancers broke from their stationary positions now and also started drinking. The music began again.
Rasputin threw off the greatcoat he was wearing. In rough peasant shirt and trousers, his black beard flying like some devil’s banner, he performed a ceremonial dance around the kneeling figure of the girl. Snakelike, she writhed in front of him, wriggling free of her own coat and tossing it to one side. Her hair blew wildly in the cold night wind and her body jerked spasmodically as if in response to the spell of Rasputin’s movements.
The sight of them without outer garments in the icy night air chilled me. I accepted a drink from one of the revelers and forced myself to let the vodka flood my throat until I felt the warmth in my belly. Again my eyes clouded, and when they cleared, I focused on a small, plump girl dancing provocatively right in front of me.
Her hips bounced and jiggled under her thin dress and her hands squeezed her breasts as if to draw forth some inner fire to warm them—and me as well. Behind her, Rasputin was tearing off his shirt and emitting eerie howls towards the starless sky. The tall girl was on her back in front of him, her legs stretched up in the air, knees bent as she pulled off her boots. The plump girl who’d attached herself to me followed her example and also kicked off her boots. The other khlysts were dancing uninhibitedly and ridding themselves of various articles of attire.