The Final Fabergé Read online

  Purishkevich said, “We’ll go with you. I have a revolver.”

  “This is my responsibility,” Yusupov said, and went to his study, returning with a pocket Browning. He continued noiselessly down the stairs and slowly went into the room where he found Rasputin standing at the table on which were the cakes and wine. The monk had filled his glass again. He turned and faced Yusupov.

  “You’re back, little one,” he said cheerfully. “That is very good. Let me fill your glass, and after we’ve had the wine, we will join Irina.” He filled a glass and offered it to the little man.

  Yusupov now stood less than ten feet from Rasputin. In his left hand was a bronze crucifix, his arm extended and rigid. “Say a prayer, Grigori Efimovich. You must do that.”

  Rasputin stared wonderingly at the cross, then at the barrel of the gun Yusupov had brought from behind his back and pointed directly at the monk’s chest. A word formed in his mouth, then the gun exploded, a loud snapping noise that echoed with rapid reverberations off the walls. Rasputin crumpled, then fell. Yusupov took several tentative steps toward him, looked down at the body, then ran like a frightened schoolboy back up the stairs to the waiting conspirators. This time they were all gathered, all talking at once, asking if Rasputin was dead and where he had been shot, demanding to know how many bullets Yusupov had fired.

  “I killed him!” Yusupov said. “For the good of Russia.” He clutched the gun with both hands, his body shaking, his face white and wet from sweat. He said, his voice high and shrill, “I never killed anyone before.”

  The others, led by Purishkevich, pushed past him and went below and into the room where they found Rasputin had fallen onto his back and lay sprawled on a bearskin rug. Dr. Lazovert bent over him and put his hand beside the growing splotch of blood high up on Rasputin’s chest. He pressed fingers against the monk’s neck, searching for a pulse, and apparently not finding one, looked up to the others and nodded.

  Purishkevich took control, ordering Sukhotin to personally report Rasputin’s death to the military command, and for Pavlovich to go forward with the plan previously agreed to for the disposal of Rasputin’s body. To Lazovert he said without a shred of conviction, “You’ve done your work, go home,” making it plain that the good doctor had botched his assignment. Purishkevich edged closer to the prone body, lit a cigar, and spat out shreds of tobacco on Rasputin. He turned and said, “I must use the telephone.”

  Alone, Yusupov sat in a straight-back chair, facing the body, eyes fixed blankly on Rasputin’s face, lips forming words to a childhood prayer. Then he saw an almost imperceptible movement in the dead man’s face. Not possible, his nerves playing tricks, he thought. It had been like a twitch, and then it happened again. One eye opened. Yusupov scrambled to his feet, searching for his Browning, sick with the fright that Rasputin was not dead. Now both eyes were open and the monk rolled half a turn and struggled to his feet and was coming at Yusupov, roaring in anger, blood trickling from his mouth.

  “Felix! Felix!” he screamed with a mad voice, saying only the name over and over. “Felix! Felix! Felix . . .” He locked an arm around Yusupov’s head, but the smaller man wriggled free and ran upstairs, finding Purishkevich in his study.

  “He’s alive, God save us!”

  Purishkevich ran quickly, making his fat short legs move with unaccustomed speed, tugging his own revolver from his coat pocket. The basement room was empty, and he hustled back to the main floor, and out to the courtyard, where he found Rasputin stumbling over the banks of snow, shouting, “Felix, I’ll tell the Czarina!”

  Purishkevich fired twice, missing, then moved closer and put a bullet in Rasputin’s back. He moved closer and aimed more carefully. The last bullet tore through the monk’s neck and once again he lay sprawled. Purishkevich went to him and kicked him fiercely in the head.

  Yusupov came into the courtyard, his steward, Nikolai, next to him. The steward bent down over the body. “I think this time he is dead.”

  “Get his coat,” Yusupov ordered. “We’ll wrap his body with it, then put him in my car. Later, when the streets are empty, you will take it to Petrovsky Bridge and drop it in the water.”

  Nikolai Karsalov did as he was commanded. It was proper for him to obey orders given by every member of the powerful Yusupov family. He retrieved the coat and as he draped it over his arm, the package that had so concerned Rasputin fell to the floor. Nikolai hesitated, then tore away the wrapping and opened the box. He held the Egg of Eternal Blessing in his hand, dazzled by the jewels and shining blue enamel. He could not guess its value, nor in that brief moment did it occur to him that the infamous monk may have put a curse on the egg. But he was aware that in all the excitement, Felix Yusupov would not remember that Rasputin had appeared with a package under his arm. He put the egg back into the box, wrapped it, then ran to his room and took a high boot from the bottom of his armoire and crammed the box inside it.

  Chapter 2

  LENINGRAD, DECEMBER 16, 1941

  Someone had fixed the first day of the siege by the German North Army, which included the 56th Motorized Corps of the 4th Panzer Group, as August 10. After 128 days, Petersburg, as the stalwarts called it, had all but run out of food, fuel, and most other basic necessities, and was encountering one of the cruelest winters in memory. Cold and death; no conversation went without mention of either word, no radio broadcast—erratic as they were—failed to pile horrifying statistic upon chilling detail, and no one escaped the miserable piles of bodies that could not be buried in the frozen, concrete-hard earth. Rations were officially posted but meant nothing when there was no power to heat the ovens to bake a bread made from rye, flax, wood cellulose, and skimpy portions of wheat flour. Many citizens would argue over when the siege actually began, but the hard fact was the city was strangling and upward of ten thousand men, women, and children died every day from the appalling conditions, an unalterable fact no matter how much quibbling over when the siege began.

  Nikolai Karsalov hugged his son tightly and inched forward in the line before the bread shop, his mittened hand cradling the small head, pressing his cheek against the boy’s cheek to keep him warm. Two weeks earlier Marie Karsalov had stood in the same line with her nine-year-old daughter, Nina, who had been giddy with delight that on the very next day she would become ten. It had been a rare, sunny day before the dreaded cold had come when mother and daughter had gone happily to collect bread and a meat ration and a birthday gift Nina would select from one of the few shops that somehow had remained open and sold recycled household items and a paltry selection of books. Darkness had come as it would in winter—in mid-afternoon—and as they returned home, a roving pair of young thugs waited, demanding food, and when they were denied, surrounded Marie and drove a knife deep into her chest. She was stabbed again and thrown to the snow, the bag of food and the ration cards in her pocket taken. Nina had tried to help her mother but had been severely beaten and left lying limp across her mother’s body, a pink-covered package beside her. An hour later Karsalov had gone to find them and it was he who discovered his dead wife and desperately injured daughter. That Nina was alive was a miracle; she was one of the fortunate who had received hospital treatment and though she had lost toes on both feet from the cold, she was making a determined recovery.

  Finally, Karsalov jostled his way into the bread shop, gave two coupons, then grasped whatever it was that was pushed out of a dark opening in the wall onto the grimy counter. Each piece was the size of a fist and no longer resembled bread, but was nearly black, without aroma, and hard like dried wood. He dropped the black lumps into a sack, looked about for someone to complain to, but a voice said, “Keep moving . . . move ahead . . . keep moving.” A woman standing between two uniformed militia repeated the instructions in a bored, dull voice. Clearly, complaints would be ignored.

  It was shortly after eight in the morning, the time when Karsalov took his son, Vasily, to fetch bread and go on to the edges of Gorodskoy Park, where he was usually a
ble to buy several logs and kindling. On this day he was followed and when he had collected the wood and had put it into a sling to carry home, he was greeted by a gruff, yet pleasant voice: “You are comrade Karsalov?”

  Karsalov was a reluctant comrade, and played the part grudgingly. “Yes, and you?”

  “Pavlenko. I have done plaster work in the galleries. Remember?”

  Karsalov studied the man, seeing an unusually healthy specimen, ruddy and full-faced, with particularly uncommonly clear, wide-open eyes. He shook his head. “No. When would this have been?”

  “Before all this. Two years, a little less perhaps. In a gallery of Chinese art—there was water damage. You were there, I saw you.”

  “I apologize,” Karsalov said. “I don’t remember.”

  “It’s no matter,” Pavlenko said. “I am in a new business, no more plastering.”

  Karsalov nodded. “I’m happy for you. No call for plasterers in these times.” He pulled on the ropes to his son’s sled and started to walk. “My son is cold.”

  “My new business may be of interest to you, comrade Karsalov. Where can we talk?”

  Karsalov stopped and looked again at Pavlenko, computing he was younger by ten years, dressed in a handsome beaver-lined heavy coat, well fed. Then he asked himself why he had been chosen.

  Karsalov said, “I prefer not. My daughter is still in the hospital and when I am not at my work or on errands, I have no time for my son, or for myself.” He spoke temperately, as he had been trained to treat people with respect, whether friend or stranger. “But, thank you.”

  “Let me come tonight to your home. I promise I will not take too much of your time. And after your son is in bed.” He stared hard at Karsalov. “It is important.”

  Karsalov hesitated, then curiosity drove away his reluctance. “All right,” he sighed. “Come before nine o’clock. I live at—”

  “I know,” Pavlenko interrupted. “You are at 68 Petra Lavrova, off Liteyny Prospekt.” He put both hands on his black wool hat and pulled it down over his ears and walked quickly out of the park.

  The apartment was on the third floor in a turn-of-the-century building, large for a nonprofessional, but Karsalov lived only in the kitchen, the other rooms sealed off to conserve the small amount of heat generated by the every other day’s fire built in an ancient cast iron stove. Little Vasily had not been able to keep down his tiny meal and by early evening the three-year-old was having severe chills and crying without a pause. Karsalov prepared a mixture of sour-tasting vodka and warm tea, put him to bed, then crawled beside him to help keep him warm. Finally, at a few minutes before nine, the youngster fell into a troubled sleep.

  Punctually at nine, Pavlenko arrived and was let into a tiny hallway that led past closed doors to the kitchen. He emitted what seemed to be the warmth of a July sun, and had also brought with him a heavy paper sack and from it he took a bottle and package and offered both to Karsalov. “A small gift,” he said cheerfully.

  In the bottle was a pepper-flavored vodka and in the package a portion of sausage, more meat than Karsalov had seen in four months. “I don’t want your food,” Karsalov protested. “We don’t know each other, and I . . . I can’t repay you.”

  “There’s no obligation.” Pavlenko grinned widely, brushed past Karsalov into the kitchen where he found glasses, and poured the yellowish liquid. He handed a glass to his baffled host. “Let’s toast a new friendship.”

  Hesitantly, Karsalov raised his glass, then took a deep sip, then more. It was superior vodka, with flavor, and strong.

  Pavlenko went to the bed where Vasily lay in a small lump under blankets, a gentle wheeze rising up from the little one.

  “Do you have enough food?” Pavlenko asked, his hand about where the little boy’s shoulder would be, patting it.

  “No one has enough,” Karsalov answered bitterly.

  “I am sorry about your wife,” Pavlenko said kindly but without any deep feeling. “They took her ration card—and your daughter’s. I know.”

  “Is that your business? To know who died and who lost a ration card?”

  “Not precisely.” He turned back to Karsalov and nodded. “Yet, you might say that food is part of my new business.”

  “To look at you it must be,” Karsalov said. “Our rations were cut again, no butter today, no fish, no meat.”

  “This comes at the right time,” Pavlenko said, pointing to the package of sausage.

  Karsalov said somewhat irritably, “Explain why you’re here. Why me?”

  Pavlenko unbuttoned his coat, reached inside for a cigarette case, opened it, and held it out to Karsalov, who looked first at the broad smile on Pavlenko’s face before he took one and lit it by the match Pavlenko was holding in his other hand. Pavlenko sat in a straight wooden chair next to the table and crossed his legs comfortably. He also lit one of the cigarettes, inhaling the aromatic smoke and blowing it out in a steady stream. He held out the cigarette case to Karasalov. “Do you know what this is?”

  “A cigarette case, of course,” Karsalov said sharply, and lowered himself into the chair across from his guest.

  “No doubt about that,” Pavlenko said. “But do you know who made it?”

  Karsalov took the case and looked at it carefully. He had seen cigarette cases like it before, when he had been in the service of Prince Yusupov, when all the gentry and high government moguls had carried a snuff or cigarette case as grand as the case he was holding, its heavy silver skillfully chased with a military scene. He turned it over. On the back was imprinted G. FABERGÉ. Karsalov said, “Expensive . . . when it was new,” and gave it back to Pavlenko.

  “It’s still worth a good deal, not because it’s a Fabergé, but for the silver and gold. Not now, not in this city. Nothing has any value except food.”

  Karsalov savored the cigarette, tasting the smoke and allowing the sting of it in his throat and lungs to grow more intense as the tobacco burned hotter. It made him dizzy but it was so different a feeling from the boring discomfort of cold and hunger that he didn’t want it to stop. He consumed nearly all of it, until the hot ash burned his finger. Then, reluctantly, he put the remains in a tin and let it smolder. When the last bit of smoke was gone, he looked up and said, “You haven’t answered my question. Why have you chosen to come here?”

  Pavlenko sat back, his right arm resting on the table, his hand holding the cigarette case, which, very gently, even tantalizingly, he tapped on the table every several seconds with the insistent precision of a metronome.

  “I’ll explain,” he began. “Petersburg is under siege and if Hitler has his way, the Panzers will crush every one of us. There are no means to bring large quantities of food or fuel into the city, no trains, the highways are blocked, and only when Lake Ladoga freezes over can our truck convoys deliver supplies. Even then the German air force may destroy that hope. So the trick is to survive, and to survive we must have food, good food. The bread you got today was made from substitutes . . . wood dust and tree bark.” Pavlenko reached for the bottle of vodka and poured a generous helping into each glass. He raised his for a toast. “To your son.” He waved his glass in the direction of Vasily. “May he be warm and have a full stomach.”

  Karsalov sipped from his glass, then he drank it all in a gulp. He was immediately warmed by the strong drink, and looked enviously at the cigarette case. Pavlenko snapped it open and offered it to Karsalov, who took a cigarette and immediately struck a match.

  Pavlenko turned over the case and pointed to the name. “Does G. Fabergé mean anything to you?”

  “It was one of the best shops in Petersburg. Expensive, I couldn’t afford to go there.”

  “But you do have something that was made by Fabergé. Isn’t that so?”

  Karsalov inhaled again. “No,” he said softly.

  Pavlenko poured more vodka into the glasses. He smiled and said, “Let us drink to an improvement in your memory.” They both drank and Pavlenko continued. “Near the end, the ma
n who employed you—Felix Yusupov—invited the crazy monk to his house. You saw him, Rasputin. Remember?”

  Karsalov looked away and said softly, “I knew nothing of what went on. Not until they took him away.”

  “Rasputin came that night with a package. Correct?”

  “A gift for Yusupov, perhaps.”

  “No. It was something Rasputin had picked up earlier from Fabergé, something he planned to take home with him, but—” Pavlenko drank the rest of his vodka. “—he never left the house alive.”

  “That part is true, but it was twenty-five years ago, I have no memory of the rest.” He stood, “Thank you for the vodka, but take what is left, and take the sausage, too. I must ask that you leave now.”

  “Please comrade, I think you will want to hear what I have to say.”

  Karsalov stood with his back to the stove, arms crossed with hands high, the cigarette in one. “Quickly, then.”

  “In the package was an Imperial egg that Rasputin had ordered from Fabergé himself, a gift for the Czarina. You took the package to your room. A house cleaner saw you do it, she had come down from her bed after she heard the shooting.”

  The cigarette again. Karsalov drew heavily on it. “Who tells such wild stories?”

  Pavlenko smiled. “I was told all of this ten days ago. That was when I learned of your wife’s death and that sad news helped me find you. After all, there are others with the name of Karsalov in Petersburg, but only one Nikolai Karsalov.”

  “Who said all these lies?”

  “Someone who knows, someone with a long memory.”

  “Even if this was true, how is it your business?”

  “Your Fabergé egg has no value, comrade Karsalov. Go on the street and offer it for a loaf of bread and they will laugh. Yet in spite of that, I will buy it.”

  Karsalov put the vodka and sausage in the paper sack and pushed it in front of Pavlenko. “Take it and go.”