I waited for him to settle down, then I asked him, “So what is to be done?”
He fixed me with a surprisingly chilling glare and took in a deep breath, then, almost under his breath, he said, “Only the complete destruction of Rasputin will save Mother Russia. It is the only way to release the tsar from his vile spell and allow him to lead us to a decisive victory against the Germans.”
He then told me what they had planned for Rasputin.
They had chosen the date, December 16, because of something I had forgotten. “It is,” he said coldly, “the fifth anniversary of that failed attempt on the depraved scoundrel’s life. You remember it, yes? The day that prostitute with no nose stabbed him in Tobolsk.”
I remembered it well. It had been the catalyst to darker times, although I suspect they would have happened with or without the syphilitic whore and her dagger.
I made sure the setting was strong enough so that Felix wouldn’t remember our chat, and left him.
I didn’t tell Rasputin any of it.
THAT NIGHT, I HUDDLED in the shadows outside the Moika Palace, as Rasputin had asked, awaiting his arrival. But I had no plans to use the machine. I didn’t even bring it with me.
It was a mildly cold evening, a few degrees above freezing, and a light, wet snow was falling. At around half past midnight, the canvas-topped motorcar I’d seen earlier returned and pulled into the yard outside the palace. The driver, whom I knew to be Lazovert, the military doctor who was acting as the prince’s chauffeur, came out first, dressed in a long coat and an Astrakhan cap with ear flaps on it. He opened the rear door. Prince Felix stepped out first. Then I saw Rasputin emerge, looking regal in his fur coat and his beaver hat.
Rasputin stepped up to the house as if it were his own. What a journey, I thought. What a long way we’ve come since our days in the austere cells of the monastery at Verkhoturye.
They disappeared into a doorway. I kept watch.
For about an hour, nothing visible happened, not from my vantage point from behind a large hedge. But in my mind’s eye, I tried to picture what was happening in that basement. The prince had described their plans to me in great detail. Years later, it would be hard to glean what exactly did take place. Several of the participants have described the event in their published memoirs, but they were all contradictory and, knowing Rasputin as I did, seemed rather fanciful.
What I did know was that Felix would be entertaining Rasputin in the basement dining room. The servants had been told they wouldn’t be needed for the night. The other plotters would be waiting upstairs in the prince’s study: his friend and lover Grand Duke Dmitry Pavlovich, who had been raised in the tsar’s household and loathed Rasputin for all the calamities that had befallen his family; Vladimir Purishkevich, a monarchist member of the Duma who had repeatedly denounced Rasputin; Lieutenant Sukhotin, a soldier who had been wounded in the war and believed Rasputin to be a German spy; Dr. Lazavert, a friend of Purishkevich; and two women: Vera Karalli, a ballerina who was also a lover of the grand duke; and Marianna Pistolkors, Dimitry’s stepsister. Felix had not wanted his wife to be there.
I pictured Felix and Rasputin sitting around the table or on the settee, by the bear skin, a log fire crackling in the hearth. Rasputin would have on one of his prized silk shirts, the ones embroidered by the tsarina. It would only inflame the young prince even more. I imagined Felix offering Rasputin the pastries that they had laced with chippings of potassium cyanide, and offering him a glass of wine that they had spiked with a vial of the same poison. They had opted to use poison to avoid the noise from gunshots. A police station stood directly opposite the palace, across the Moika Canal, not fifty meters away. Gunshots in the dead of the night, even inside the palace, would be heard.
I knew Rasputin wouldn’t eat the pastries. He still didn’t eat sweets. The wine, though, he would happily drink.
And drink he did. But nothing happened. They had prepared four glasses, two of which were laced with the poison. Rasputin downed them, and kept on talking, unaffected. He downed the third glass. Then he smiled at the young prince before his brow darkened around his ice-blue eyes and his face took on a look of terrifying hatred.
“You see,” Rasputin told Felix. “Whatever you have planned for me, it won’t work. You can’t hurt me, no matter how hard you try. Now pour me another cup, I’m thirsty. And come sit close to me. We have a lot to discuss.”
Felix was perturbed. Rasputin had drunk all the poison and although he seemed a bit drowsy, he was still as fit as he was when he came in. His fellow plotters upstairs were also getting impatient and rowdy. Rasputin heard the noise and remembered he was also there to treat Irina.
“What’s all that noise?” he asked.
“It’s Irina and her guests. They’re probably leaving. I’ll go take a look.”
Felix left Rasputin and hurried up the stairs to his study. He told the others what had happened.
“What should we do?” he asked in a panic, but before anyone could answer, he saw Dimitry’s Browning lying on the table and grabbed it.
He went back down to the basement, where he found Rasputin standing by the fireplace and studying the richly inlaid cabinet next to it.
“I like this cabinet,” Rasputin told him.
“I think you’d do better to study the crucifix and pray to it,” the prince told him. Then he raised his gun.
AT ABOUT HALF PAST two, still standing outside, feeling heavy-headed and shivering from the cold, I heard a single gunshot. The detonation roused me like a slap to the face, and I felt my pulse quicken.
Was he dead? Could that possibly be the end of Rasputin? It seemed such an unfitting finish for him. I never imagined he would leave this world in such a prosaic way.
True to form, he wasn’t going to disappoint me.
He had fallen heavily onto the bear skin, with Yusupov standing over him, the gun in his hand. The men all rushed downstairs. They moved him off the rug and onto the tiled floor, then left him there, switched off the lights, and went back upstairs to toast their success.
Less than half an hour later, a detachment of police officers walked past my position and knocked at the palace’s main entrance. I saw some light spill out onto them as the front door was opened. I couldn’t see or hear what was said, but they didn’t go inside and left shortly after. Moments later, I saw another car arrive. It stopped near the small footbridge that faced the palace, and four men climbed out of it before it sped away. As they trudged past me in the snow toward the side entrance, I recognized two of them. They were Fyodor and Andrew, the brothers of Felix’s wife, Irina. They disappeared inside the house.
Seeing them, I felt a sense of finality. Rasputin had to be dead, surely. Felix must have summoned the young princes to gloat over his achievement and give them a chance to savor the pathetic sight of their dead nemesis before his body was disposed of. I knew Felix would find it hard to keep his mouth shut about what he had done; he would use it to stifle any questions about his manhood and gain some of the respect he desperately sought from his brothers-in-arms in the Corps des Pages.
When Felix led them back down to the basement to show off his prize, they were all stunned to find that Rasputin was still breathing. Not just breathing-he was trying to sit up. The men then all attacked him and beat him mercilessly. I know this, for I heard the commotion and decided to risk a look for myself. I crept up to one of the windows that sat low, just off the ground level of the courtyard, and peered in. It was steamed up from the inside, partly obscuring my view, but I could still see the men-I couldn’t count how many-taking turns punching him, kicking him, stabbing him with a candelabra and hitting him with truncheons and bats. I wanted to tear my gaze away, but I couldn’t. I managed to catch a glimpse of Rasputin’s face when one of them turned him over. One eye had come out of its cavity, and his ear was hanging awkwardly, partly detached from his head. I also saw a large, dark stain on the side of his white shirt, and it confirmed what I’d suspected, that he’d been shot.