The Final Fabergé Read online

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Praise

  BOOKS BY THOMAS SWAN

  Dedication

  Author’s Note

  Epigraph

  Chapter 1 - PETROGRAD, DECEMBER 16, 1916

  Chapter 2 - LENINGRAD, DECEMBER 16, 1941

  Chapter 3 - TALLINN, ESTONIA, NOVEMBER 23, 1963

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Glossary

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Copyright Page

  Praise for the acclaimed art crime mysteries by Tom Swan featuring Inspector Jack Oxby

  The Final Fabergé

  “Swan continues his art-crime series featuring Scotland Yard’s Detective Inspector Jack Oxby…now hot on the trail of the last Fabergé egg created before the Russian Revolution...The pacing is quick and the action plentiful… Swan’s series strikes a comfortable balance between the more hard-boiled Lovejoy antique mysteries and Iain Pears’ more literary art-historical crime novels.”

  —Booklist

  “Oxby is charming and disarmingly intelligent.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “The excitement of the story is bound to send first-time readers of Thomas Swan in search of his previous books.”

  —Sunday Star-Ledger

  “Swan spins a taut tale.”

  —San Antonio Express-News

  “Plenty of facts about Fabergé [and] Russian architecture, and New Jersey auto export lots…Scotland Yard’s art-crimes specialist Jack Oxby’s globe-trotting quest for a legendary Fabergé egg leads to a pack of homicidal Russians.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “Thomas Swan’s research is meticulous.”

  —Cleveland Plain Dealer

  “Thomas Swan…is as knowledgeable as he is inventive.”

  —Dallas Morning News

  The Da Vinci Deception

  “Fans of Iain Pears’s art mysteries will enjoy the lavish detail Swan provides on the minutiae of forgery. The captivating premise of The Da Vinci Deception will win over those who like their thrillers well decorated with objets d’art.”

  —Booklist

  The Cézanne Chase

  “A surprisingly sexy and dirty world where nothing is sacred—least of all, art….The beauty is in the technical details about fine art—great tips on conserving it, packing and shipping it, buying and selling it, and destroying it forever.”

  —The New York Times Book Review

  BOOKS BY THOMAS SWAN

  The Da Vinci Deception

  The Cézanne Chase

  The Final Fabergé

  Dedication

  With all my love to Barbara, the best and most patient research assistant in the world!

  Author’s Note

  The events and characters in this book are fictional, except for those persons who were or are genuinely real and who inspired much of the story. Peter Carl Fabergé was a brilliant goldsmith and jeweler. Grigori Rasputin is the stuff of legends; his true role in the government of Nicholas II and relationship with Alexandra will be endlessly studied.

  Epigraph

  . . . O God, how many thorny paths there are in life !

  —Grigori Rasputin

  Chapter 1

  PETROGRAD, DECEMBER 16, 1916

  On the table was a box. Not one made of ordinary pine, but of a fine-grained wood that had been cut and pieced perfectly together. The wood was holly and had been stained a pale brown, brushed with several coats of shellac, then rubbed to a rich luster with a powder made from pumice and cigarette ashes. The box was eight inches high, the same as the cut glass and silver pitcher that was next to it. Beside the pitcher were figurines made of semiprecious stones, jeweled mantel clocks, cigarette cases, snuff boxes, necklaces, jewelry, carved stone sculptures, and other samples of the work produced by a hundred craftsmen in the house of G. Fabergé, 16 Bolshaya Morskaya Street.

  Seated at the table was a balding man with a dense white beard, blanched skin, and steel-rimmed glasses that had slipped low on his nose. Dignity showed in an intelligent face lined with the wrinkles of seventy years, and in eyes that held the glint of youthful good humor. In all, there was the appearance of a wise and immensely creative man. He opened the box and took out an object shaped like a large egg. The man was Peter Carl Fabergé, the jeweled object was an Imperial Easter egg for which Fabergé had become world-famous, and which was intended as a gift for Czarina Alexandra Feodorovna.

  Fabergé placed the egg on a swatch of deep blue velvet and nudged it toward the man who sat across from him. “In spite of the war, we found nearly all the materials we had planned to use. Except for gold. That we used sparingly.”

  The Imperial egg stood upright and was held by a pair of delicately sculptured hands which seemed to reach up from a round, white onyx base. On top of the egg was a little basket made of delicately woven gold strips. Inside were flowers made from either a diamond or sapphire, their petals individually enameled in pinks and white. The egg had been covered with a thin layer of pure silver that had been hammered, engraved, polished, and finally overlayed with a fusion of glass and metal oxides to produce a translucent enamel surface. The blue color was as intense as a pure summer sky, testimony to the fact that nowhere was the technique of guilloche ground so well executed as in the shops of Peter Fabergé. Two half-inch bands of silver circled the egg and on each were clusters of rubies and emeralds. The onyx base was encircled with a stripe of blue enamel over which gold leaf tips and rosettes had been applied.

  Fabergé placed a finger against the largest of the rubies in the silver band. The pressure released a spring lock and the upper third of the egg opened to reveal a pocket lined in silk the color of cream. In the pocket was the “surprise.” The surprises found in Fabergé’s other Imperial eggs ranged from a precise model of the royal yacht to a chirping rubyencrusted cockerel. The surprise that rested on the silk was an enameled portrait of the Czar and Czarina, and a tiny easel on which to show it off.

  The design of this Imperial egg was especially different from the previous Easter gifts commissioned by Czar Alexander III and his son Nicholas II. Instead of just one surprise compartment, there were two. The second compartment in the egg held by Fabergé was so cleverly concealed it was likely to be discovered only by cutting apart the egg.

  And this Imperial egg was also different in that it had not been commissioned by Czar Nicholas as an Easter gift to his wife, but by a man of dark intrigue and power, a man who many conjectured was as powerful as the Czar himself, and who now sat across from Fabergé. The hands that held the egg, turning it over slowly with long, bony fingers, b
elonged to the peasant monk Grigori Efimovich Rasputin, forty-five years old, heavily bearded, with long, curling black hair and eyes set deep under thick brows. His voice was thin, nearly inaudible.

  He glanced up at Fabergé, his head tilted. “You have made a very beautiful gift for my friends.” Rasputin closed the egg and ran his finger over the silver and stones, searching for a way to open the second surprise compartment.

  “How do you open it?”

  Fabergé took the egg. “Here, on the inside, is a circle of twelve pearls. All, that is, except for one.” He pointed to a perfectly round sapphire. “If you think of it as the face of a clock, then the sapphire would be twelve o’clock. When I push three of the pearls, in a specific order, the second compartment will open. Just so—”

  Fabergé carefully pressed against three of the pearls, he knew the ones. Each was minutely different from the others. He twisted the lower half of the egg at the silver band, separating the egg. With his fingernail he pried up a tiny door revealing a hollowed-out compartment the size of a walnut.

  Fabergé smiled. “Good enough?”

  “It’s like a toy,” Rasputin said with a grin. “And I have a name for it. I will call it The Egg of Eternal Blessing.” From a pocket in his voluminous pants he took out a leather pouch. He opened it and took two stones and placed them in Fabergé’s outstretched hand. One was blue, the other a pale yellow. “These will make it a true surprise.”

  Fabergé put a loupe to his eye and studied the stones. First the blue stone, a cut cabochon star sapphire. He pronounced that it had excellent color and that the star was nearly perfectly formed. He set it aside and put the diamond under the glass and studied it for several minutes, murmuring his fascination aloud.

  “Most strange color . . . rare cut . . . over fifteen carats. Where did you—”

  Rasputin had come around and stood behind the jeweler, beyond the bright light in a pool of his own darkness. “It was a gift from Madame Alikina,” he said. “She was the grand-niece of Count Orlov and it had been handed down from her father, who had been given a box of precious stones when his father died. I helped the old lady over her sickness, but she was eighty-five and before she died, she gave me the diamond. Is it valuable?”

  It seemed incredible to Fabergé that the wily and reputedly clever Rasputin could not know how valuable the diamond actually was. He weighed it: 18.7 carats. “It has the yellow of pure sunlight,” he said slowly, with reverence. “Never have I seen one like it.” He peered at the monk’s dark face, into the black sockets where thin rims of fire glowed.

  “Valuable?” he finally answered. “In normal times it would easily sell for a hundred thousand rubles.”

  The two stones were put into the second surprise compartment, but only after Rasputin asked Fabergé to show him the pearls and the order they must be pressed to open it.

  Rasputin said, “I must write down the numbers in the correct sequence.”

  Fabergé gave him pen and paper. Carefully, Rasputin wrote the numbers and folded the paper, slipping it into the leather pouch. At Rasputin’s urging, Fabergé returned the egg to its box and wrapped it with brown paper.

  “I am going directly to Prince Yusupov’s home and there’s no need to raise suspicions.”

  “To a soiree?” Fabergé asked, knowing of the monk’s proclivity for carousing and his notoriously insatiable appetite for women. “The prince will show you a good time.”

  Rasputin shook his head as he all but disappeared beneath a huge coat of beaver and fox. “Felix has insisted on this evening. I’m very tired, brother Fabergé, but I’ve been promised that Irina will be there with her friends.” Irina was Yusupov’s recently acquired wife, a distant cousin of Czar Nicholas and a beauty who had confided privately that she was anxious to meet the infamous monk.

  It was after ten o’clock when Rasputin reached Yusupov’s palatial home on the Moika River, where music blared from a distant room, a gramophone playing “Yankee Doodle.” A house steward, a young, bearded man, gathered in Rasputin’s heavy coat and reached for the box he carried under his arm.

  “I should keep it with me,” Rasputin said.

  “Nonsense,” a small man said, approaching. “It will be safe with Nikolai. You don’t want to spend the evening clutching some bit of shopping you brought along.”

  Felix Yusupov was short and slight with a high-pitched sibilant voice, but assertive nonetheless. He took the box, instructing Nikolai to take it and fold the great coat over it and take both to the master’s bedroom.

  “There now, we will go downstairs for a while, then I will take you to meet Irina.”

  Downstairs was a room the size of the ballroom above it, furnished with heavy pieces from Paris and rugs from Ankara. One wall was covered with big and small icons and in direct contrast, the adjoining wall held the strange works of a young painter named Picasso. It was a room befitting every ruble of the Yusupov fortune. Even though young and small, Prince Felix Yusupov Sumarokoff was someone to reckon with. His family represented prominence, prestige, and power. He seemed to be studying Rasputin, eyeing his velvet pantaloons, silk blouse, and thick yellow cross that hung from a heavy chain. Rasputin had shown his friendship on recent occasions, aware perhaps that Yusupov had made complaints about the monk’s continuing influence over Czarina Alexandra Feodorovna.

  “The wine has a fruity flavor,” Yusupov said, offering a glass to his guest. “It’s from my cousin’s vineyard near Yalta. Or would you prefer vodka? Or brandy?”

  Rasputin took the glass and it seemed he quickly crossed himself before he drank nearly all of it. He sighed heavily, finished the wine and sat in an upholstered chair overflowing with fat cushions. Yusupov refilled Rasputin’s glass, then took his own to a chair next to his guest. “Have you had news of the war?” he asked.

  Rasputin shook his head and answered slowly, “There should be no war.”

  Rasputin had long been rumored as sympathetic to the Germans, and had been accused of persuading Nicholas to wait dangerously long before moving into action. Yusupov also knew that Rasputin had a deep influence over Alexandra. Now the “little man” had invited Rasputin into his home for a soiree, a late evening entertainment with Irina and her friends.

  “Chocolate or cream?” Yusupov asked, proffering a tray filled with sweet cakes.

  Rasputin stared blankly at the desserts, then put up a hand and declined.

  “But you must,” Yusupov said, popping a chocolate cake into his mouth, watching Rasputin carefully, waiting patiently and moving the tray closer. Rasputin drank the second glass of wine, then accepted one of the cakes, eating it immediately. Yusupov smiled. The music from the floor above grew louder; another American song.

  Rasputin said, “They are dancing.” It was half a question, half a statement, as if he knew that Irina’s guests were drinking and enjoying a party. He added, “We should join them.” Then, almost absently, he took another cake and held out his glass. “I like your brother’s wine.”

  Yusupov went for the wine bottle and stood by the table while Rasputin ate the sweet. He poured a fresh glass and returned with it, handed it to Rasputin, and stared closely at the monk’s eyes and hands. After eating two of the cakes Rasputin showed little change from when he first appeared, and in fact seemed to be in an even lighter, happier mood.

  Yusupov knew that should not be.

  Little more than an hour before, the room in which Rasputin was now sitting had been a scene of frantic activity. Yusupov and four associates, Vladimir M. Purishkevich, Grand Duke Dimitri Pavlovich, Anton Sukhotin, and Dr. Feodor Lazovert, had been gathered for the single purpose of planning the assassination of Rasputin. Purishkevich was a flamboyant politician known for his public disavowal of the Czar and open hostility toward Rasputin. Pavlovich was his obsequious protégé and held similar views. Sukhotin was a military officer and would be a link to high-ranking and sympathetic members of the army. Because Yusupov retained the right to determine how Rasputin would be
killed in his own home, Dr. Lazovert, a neo-revolutionist, had been recruited to secure and implant potassium cyanide crystals in the dessert cakes. Lazovert had declared that he had brought sufficient poison to kill Rasputin several times over. “A single cake should do it,” he had said confidently. “However, if you encourage him to have two cakes, there will be no question the cyanide will do him in.”

  When Yusupov offered the tray of dessert cakes again, Rasputin all but pushed it out of his hand. He drank the wine, then got unsteadily onto his feet and went to the door leading to the stairs and up to the music.

  “It’s getting late, little one,” Rasputin said. “Let’s go to the party with the music and women. There is no party here. Only those sweet cakes and the wine that tastes like berry juice.”

  Having said this, Rasputin doubled over, nearly falling to the floor. Yusupov started toward him, certain that the poison was taking hold, afraid it would be a painful death, one he hadn’t the stomach to watch. It was also distressing that he would soon see the most famous monk in Russia writhing in pain, staring up with his black eyes, damning him, and threatening a terrible revenge.

  But as quickly as it seemed he had collapsed, Rasputin straightened, took a guitar from a shelf next to the door, and suggested that Yusupov play a tune. Yusupov took the instrument and ran for the stairs, taking the steps two at a time, shouting back to Rasputin, “Stay there! I’ll find Irina.”

  Purishkevich met him at the top of the stairs and they were immediately joined by Dr. Lazovert, who stared expectantly at Yusupov, waiting for the proclamation that Rasputin was dead. Instead, Yusupov screeched the words that he had escaped from a fiend: “He’s not human! Two cakes with the cyanide and he thinks only of when he can join Irina’s party. He asked me to play this damned thing!” Yusupov dropped the guitar and began breathing so rapidly that Lazovert feared he would hyperventilate.