“Rasputin,” growled Pekkala.
The man stepped forward and fell into Pekkala’s arms.
Pekkala caught the stench of onions and salmon caviar on Rasputin’s breath. A few of the tiny fish eggs, like beads of amber, were lodged in the man’s frozen beard. The sour reek of alcohol oozed from his pores. “You must save me!” moaned Rasputin.
“Save you from what?”
Rasputin mumbled incoherently, his nose buried in Pekkala’s shirt.
“From what?” repeated Pekkala.
Rasputin stood back and spread his arms, “From myself!”
“Tell me what you are doing out here,” Pekkala demanded.
“I was at the church of Kazan,” said Rasputin, unbuttoning his coat to reveal a blood-red tunic and baggy black breeches tucked into a pair of knee-length boots. “At least I was until they threw me out.”
“What did you do this time?” asked Pekkala.
“Nothing!” shouted Rasputin. “For once, all I did was sit there. And then that damned politician Rodzianko told me to leave. He called me a vile heathen!” He clenched his fist and waved it in the air. “I’ll have his job for that!” Then he slumped into Pekkala’s chair.
“What did you do after they threw you out?”
“I went straight to the Villa Rode!”
“Oh, no,” muttered Pekkala. “Not that place.”
The Villa Rode was a drinking club in Petrograd. Rasputin went there almost every night, because he did not have to pay his bills there. They were covered by an anonymous numbered account which, Pekkala knew, had actually been set up by the Tsarina. In addition, the owner of the Villa Rode had been paid to build an addition onto the back of the club, a room which was available only to Rasputin. It was, in effect, his own private club. The Tsarina had been persuaded to arrange this by members of the Secret Service, who were tasked with following Rasputin wherever he went and making sure he stayed out of trouble. This had proved to be impossible, so a safe house, in which he could drink as much as he wanted for free, meant that at least the Secret Service could protect him from those who had sworn to kill him if they could. There had already been two attempts on his life: in Pokrovsky in 1914 and again in Tsaritsyn the following year. Instead of frightening him into seclusion, these events had only served to convince Rasputin that he was indestructible. Even if the Secret Service could protect him from these would-be killers, the one person they could not protect him from was himself.
“When I was at the Villa,” continued Rasputin, “I decided I should file a complaint about Rodzianko. And then I thought—no! I’ll go straight to the Tsarina and tell her about it myself.”
“The Villa Rode is in Petrograd,” said Pekkala. “That’s nowhere near this place.”
“I drove here in my car.”
Pekkala remembered now that the Tsarina had given Rasputin a car, a beautiful Hispano-Suiza, although she had forgotten to give him any lessons on how to drive it.
“And you think she would allow you in at this time of night?”
“Of course,” replied Rasputin. “Why not?”
“Well, what happened? Did you speak to her?”
“I never got the chance. That damned automobile went wrong.”
“Went wrong?”
“It drove into a wall.” He gestured vaguely at the world outside. “Somewhere out there.”
“You crashed your car,” said Pekkala, shaking his head at the thought of that beautiful machine smashed to pieces.
“I set out on foot for the Palace, but I got lost. Then I saw your place and here I am, Pekkala. At your mercy. A poor man begging for a drink.”
“Someone else has already granted your request. Several times.”
Rasputin was no longer listening. He had discovered one of the salmon eggs in his beard. He plucked it out and popped it in his mouth. His lips puckered as he chased the egg around the inside of his cheek. Then suddenly his face brightened. “Ah! I see you already have company. Good evening, teacher lady.”
Pekkala turned to see Ilya standing at the doorway to the bedroom. She was wearing one of his dark gray shirts, the kind he wore when he was on duty. Her arms were folded across her chest. The sleeves, without their cuff links, trailed down over her hands.
“Such a beauty!” sighed Rasputin. “If your students could only see you now.”
“My students are six years old,” Ilya replied.
He waggled his fingers, then let them subside onto the arms of the chair, like the tentacles of some pale ocean creature. “They are never too young to learn the ways of the world.”
“Every time I feel like defending you in public,” said Ilya, “you go and say something like that.”
Rasputin sighed again. “Let the rumors fly.”
“Have you really crashed your car, Grigori?” she asked.
“My car crashed by itself,” replied Rasputin.
“How,” asked Ilya, “do you manage to stay drunk so much of the time?”
“It helps me to understand the world. It helps the world to understand me as well. Some people make sense when they’re sober. Some people make sense when they’re not.”
“Always speaking in riddles.” Ilya smiled at him.
“Not riddles, beautiful lady. Merely the unfortunate truth.” His eyelids fluttered. He was falling asleep.
“Oh, no, you don’t,” said Pekkala. He grasped the chair and jerked it around so the two men were facing each other.
Rasputin gasped, his eyes shut tight.
“What’s this I hear,” asked Pekkala, “about you advising the Tsarina to get rid of me?”
“What?” Rasputin opened one eye.
“You heard me.”
“Who told you that?”
“Never mind who told me.”
“It is the Tsarina who wants you dismissed,” said Rasputin, and suddenly the drunkenness had peeled away from him. “I like you, Pekkala, but there is nothing I can do.”
“And why not?”
“Here is how it works,” explained Rasputin. “The Tsarina asks me a question. And I can tell from the way she asks it whether she wants me to say yes or no. And when I tell her what she wants to hear, it makes her happy. And then this idea of hers becomes my idea, and she runs off to the Tsar, or to her friend Vyrubova, or to whomever she pleases, and she tells them I have said this thing. But what she never says, Pekkala, is that it was her idea to begin with. You see, Pekkala, the reason I am loved by the Tsarina is that I am exactly what she needs me to be, in the same way that you are needed by the Tsar. She needs me to make her feel she is right, and he needs you to make him feel safe. Sadly, both of those things are illusions. And there are many others like us, each one entrusted to a different task—investigators, lovers, assassins, each one a stranger to the other. Only the Tsar knows us all. So if you have been told that I wish you to be sent away, then yes. It is true.” He climbed unsteadily out of the chair and stood weaving in front of Pekkala. “But it is only true because the Tsarina desired it first.”