But help is on its way, he thought, taking out his watch and checking it. In fact, I have just enough time to clean myself up before meeting their train.
Bronstein rode to the station in his second-best suit, his beard trimmed, his eyeglasses wiped clean as laboratory glass. When he reached the city, and the smell of coal and crowds hit him, he suddenly realized how much he missed the big cities of Europe.
I was happy in Vienna. In London.
He would have stayed in either place, writing his stories, running his newspapers. Stayed but for the lure of dragons and the power they brought.
He wondered if there was something to what Borutsch had said. That men who stayed too long around dragons started to think like them.
A man would surely know if he had changed so much.
But he was not so sure he remembered what he’d been like before Siberia. Before leaving his wife and child behind to ride a hay wagon through the snow to freedom. If he hadn’t believed the stories of a lost brood of eggs that old Chinese man had drunkenly spilled, would he even now be living in such a harmonious and pastoral—if a bit frozen—land?
The screech of the steam train braking brought him out of his reverie, the cloud of smoke not unlike that which dribbled out of the young dragons’ noses.
He realized with sudden clarity that it didn’t matter what choices he might or might not have made. Lenin’s lieutenants had arrived, and it was time to be about the work of the people.
Chapter 17
I had been thinking about the plan all day. All week. Weeks now. Fining it down, refining it. And now I admitted what I had not dared before—that it was a masterful plan. Especially since my presence would be necessary for its execution.
Execution! I giggled at the play on words, and Ninotchka glanced at me coldly. Her face was as powdered as her hair, which suddenly made her look surprisingly old. I giggled again. Old and haggard. While I felt young, virile and… well, alive! I wondered how I’d never before noticed how old cosmetics can make some women look.
“Did I say something to amuse you, my husband?” Her voice was disinterested, uncaring, the word husband ashes in her mouth.
Thinking back over the past few weeks, I realized she had grown increasingly distant.
Possibly, I thought, due to my spending long hours pulling together the threads of my plot into a web that Rasputin cannot possibly escape. He can neither refuse the invitation to dinner from a noble nor survive the meal I’ve planned for him.
I suppressed another giggle. And I will be there. Nothing can keep me from seeing the look on his arrogant face as he realizes I am the architect of his destruction. Did he think he could cuckold me without a response?
For a moment, I turned my back on Ninotchka to regain control of my face, my shaking hands.
When I was once again facing her, she looked astonished, eyes wide, as if she had guessed. But of course she could not have guessed. I am the perfect keeper of secrets. I have destroyed better men than Rasputin in the service of the tsar. Occasionally, I have even killed them on the tsar’s orders. Not with my own hands, of course. Never my own hands.
Knowing the right men for such tasks was my job. A word in the right ear, a bit of money passed carefully, a hostage to keep the killer in line. I am very good at what I do. If the monk’s mad eyes seemed to look through me whenever we met in the palace halls—well, that would not last long. Soon I would see them closed forever.
“No,” I said to Ninotchka. “You have not the wit.” Having planned to dispose of Rasputin on her behalf, I now was suddenly tired of her constant sniping. A man does what he must to protect his spouse and thereby his own good name. And—if she was especially unappreciative of his efforts—he may very well find himself a new wife who was.
I looked deeply into her eyes, reminding her who was master here, and emphasized each word. “No, you say nothing that amuses me these days.”
Taking pleasure in a second, even wider look of surprise that she gave me, I spun smartly on my heels and quick-marched from the sitting room, boots tip-tapping a message to her with every step.
“After all,” I whispered to the empty hall, “I have a group of aristos to shore up. Just in case… just in case the poisoned borscht doesn’t kill the monk on the first go-round. Unlikely, but one never knows.”
To survive in this world, one must always make backup plans to one’s backup plans.
That thought was followed immediately by an even pleasanter one.
I must look to the ladies at court. It would be good to have someone in waiting when it is time for Ninotchka to go.
Chapter 18
The tsarina had sent a note to Rasputin in French. She’d never quite mastered the Cyrillic. Her elegant handwriting hid the meanness of the message. He assumed she meant it to. He got the gist of the beginning but the rest was too difficult for him.
The tsarevitch Alexei will not be able to see you this week.
The tsarina had even left off her signature, which made it unclear if she had written it herself or had someone else do it for her. Possibly something the tsar had dictated. He could not believe the tsarina—who was so devoted to him and so thankful for his tender care of her son—he could not believe she would ever cut him off like this. But the tsar, perhaps. He had been cold to the monk since his return from the front.
Of course he can treat me any way he wishes. He is the tsar. And the monk would never deign to suggest how God’s ruler on Earth should comport himself. But God may judge him harshly if he mistreats such a valuable messenger of His Word as myself.
He needed a much better read of the letter to determine who was behind his exile from the tsarina’s good graces. Since his French was—at best—simple phrases, he would need to find someone else to read the message for him so that he understood it completely. He settled at last on the beautiful Ninotchka, the wife of that silly bureaucrat whose name always escaped him.
She read it eagerly, her small breasts heaving up and down as she translated, which he took for a sign that she might be willing for a tumble in her capacious bed.
Her voice was light, a bit silly, but silliness had never put him off.
“The tsarevitch Alexei…,” she read, “will not be able to see you this week. The doctors have agreed he needs full rest from his latest bad turn…. A nursing staff is in charge. You excite his blood too much, dear Father Grigori. Those trips—that started with the visit to the dragons—must be ended. All other visitations with him will be chaperoned. It is the tsar’s wish, and mine as well.”
Ninotchka finished, bit her lower lip prettily.
“This is just between us, my child,” Rasputin said and took the paper back from her, careful not to touch her hand. He suddenly dared not let a spark travel between them. There were too many other women about, and it was too dangerous. Besides, he was stunned by the coldness in the tsarina’s letter, which the “dear Father Grigori” did nothing to disguise. He had to think about what it meant. And who had written it.
So he gave Ninotchka one of his well-practiced smoldering looks and departed with the note crumpled in his hand.