“Remove the gag,” ordered Blok.
One of the guards, a broad-shouldered man with a bushy mustache, reached down and all but yanked the cloth away. The prisoner, his face covered with a shaggy beard, coughed sharply and gulped in a large breath of air.
He did indeed look horrible, thought Blok, staring down upon the young man, who’d been captured and imprisoned the very day after Rasputin’s murder. True, mused Blok, the months of deprivation and interrogation, even torture, had left the young man as pale as a winter field and as thin as a shaft of wheat. Even worse, a deep red rash was crawling up his neck, he was having trouble breathing, and, by the perspiration beaded on his forehead, it was obvious he was running a high fever.
“Prince O’ksandr?”
“Y-yes?” came the dazed reply.
“To be honest, Prince, the Provisional Government doesn’t quite know what to do, whether to treat you as a national hero or a common murderer.”
“Please…just let her go.”
“Don’t worry. I can see she’s harmless. She’s already left, and I’ll make sure she’s bothered no more. The commission will be interested in her observations, of course, particularly of the last night, but I’ll keep certain things confidential.”
While Blok didn’t know whether or not Maria had suspected anyone was lingering in this room, he was sure she had never guessed it was her Sasha.
“So will you release what she told you about her father, or-as Maria said-will it be buried? Will the people ever be allowed to know the real Rasputin?”
“That’s a complicated question with a simple answer: No.” Blok slipped his hands into his pockets and turned and gazed out a window. “Before the revolution the stories of Rasputin served the anti-tsarist movement very well, just as they now serve the revolution, the more exaggerated the better. Rasputin soiled the image of Tsar Nikolai as no one else could, and once liodi stopped seeing the Tsar as a demigod, the revolution was both easy and inevitable. Otherwise, Rasputin, not to mention the Empress, are guilty of only one thing: exceedingly well-intentioned but horrible judgment. In other words, Maria was absolutely correct. To allow any of what we really know about Rasputin and the former imperial family to become public knowledge would be political suicide, even today. The man himself continues to serve the revolution best in myth.”
“But that myth is so dangerous-rather like a stick of dynamite. Even behind the prison walls there’s talk of civil war.”
“Of course. Russia is a very big bear-a wild one, at that-and we have many difficulties ahead. Perhaps we’re doomed to a second revolution, as so many suspect.” Blok folded his hands behind his back and gazed down at his feet. “You heard what she said, that she’s pregnant with your child?”
Staring into his lap, he nodded ever so slightly.
“So maybe instead we should charge you with treason. After all, rather than extinguish the Rasputins, you’ve ensured that they will live on.”
“She’s not…not like her father. She has a very pure soul-and a real gift with words.” His hands still tied tightly behind the back of the chair, Sasha did not look up. “Prince Felix sent me to infiltrate the Khlysty and his family-to find his religion, charm his daughter, enter his home-all in the hopes not of simply getting information but of unearthing scandal. Scandal that we could plant like dangerous propaganda. After all, don’t you think fear and rumor and innuendo are-”
“More powerful than the mightiest cannon? Yes, absolutely.”
Sasha looked up, his brown eyes pleading. “It’s better that she move on with her life, so please…please don’t tell her I’m alive.”
With a shrug, Blok turned on his heel and started out. “Don’t worry, I won’t.” Reaching the door that led back into the throne room, he took hold of the lever…and then turned and stared back at the pathetic young man. “After all, it’s obvious you haven’t got much longer.”
As Blok left the room, he heard the young man begin to weep gently, perhaps as much out of relief as anything else. But there was no need, thought Blok as he returned to his desk, to tell Maria that the father of her unborn child was alive. There was no need because Prince O’ksandr would soon be dead, for it was obvious the typhus was well along. What did he have-a week, two at the most?
Yes, he thought as he sat down at his desk, one more death. In the greater scheme of things, this young man, no matter how highly born, was insignificant, just another soul. But how was this to end and when would the cleansing of the country be complete? How many more millions would have to die before the war against the Germans would be over and the revolution within Russia would stop roiling?
And when would the River Neva stop flowing red?
Blok glanced at the extensive notes he’d taken of Maria’s story. He’d fill out the report tonight and have it typed up tomorrow. But what were they, really? Just more words, more paragraphs? Pushing aside those papers, he came to yet more words-Prince O’ksandr’s testimony taken yesterday-and reread the opening lines:
Believe me, I’d tell you if I knew. But I really have no idea how Rasputin was introduced to the former imperial family, and I will swear to my death that I took no part in it. I’ve heard rumors that he was eager to penetrate the palace, that he did so via dubious means, and that he was assisted by one of the former grand duchesses-I think the one from Montenegro. It seems quite possible, but of all that I have no firsthand knowledge.
No, I didn’t become involved in the plot to murder Rasputin until much, much later.
As he scanned the remaining pages, Blok realized that while the prince’s words all seemed truthful, the Thirteenth really had no choice. No matter how long or short Prince O’ksandr had to live, if he got out, the truth of Rasputin might get out too, and then-well, no, no need to risk anything. Turning back to the front page of the prince’s confession, Blok wrote in large letters, PRISONER TO REMAIN AT SHPALERNAYA INDEFINITELY.
What happened to the characters based on real people?
Rasputin had long predicted that, in the event of his own death, the royal family would soon perish. Indeed, not even three months after Rasputin’s murder, Nicholas and Alexandra were pulled from the throne by the February Revolution. Exiled to Siberia, the imperial couple and their five beloved children were secretly executed in July 1918. Their hidden grave was not found until after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991.
The highborn aristocrats involved in Rasputin’s death were sent into exile before the Revolution and, because of this, escaped those tumultuous days unharmed. For the duration of his life, Grand Duke Dmitri never commented on the murder of Rasputin. Having fled to Europe with no fortune, only a title, he married an American heiress and died in 1942; his son, Paul Ilyinsky, was for many years the popular mayor of Palm Beach, Florida, and died in 2004. Prince Felix perpetuated his own version of what happened that night and wrote several memoirs; he and his wife, Princess Irina, lived in relative comfort in Paris until his death in 1967. The monarchist Vladimir Purishkevich died of typhoid fever as civil war raged around him.
Anna Vyrubova, Alexandra’s closest friend, was arrested and interrogated at length by the Thirteenth Section. When questioned about a possible sexual relationship with Rasputin, she swore under oath that these rumors were nothing but lies and she was in fact a virgin. A small cadre of physicians examined her and, much to the surprise of the Thirteenth Section, immediately confirmed her claim. Eventually freed, Madame Vyrubova was later rearrested by the Bolsheviks, only to escape and disappear into hiding. Several years after Lenin seized power, she managed to flee across the ice floes to Finland, where she took her vows. She lived in seclusion until her death in Helsinki in 1964.