Sam Eastland - Red Icon

No one had been able to scientifically explain this phenomenon. In their search for answers, the Tsar and the Tsarina chose to see it as a divine miracle, a conclusion with which Rasputin, wisely choosing not to claim the credit for himself, was happy to agree.

Rasputin became, for the Tsar and the Tsarina, their son’s only assurance of survival. Their faith in him, and in his abilities, was absolute. He had become, in the minds of these terrified parents, the most valuable person in the world, more important than the country over which they ruled, more important than the fortunes of the Russian people, more important even than their own lives.

The Russian people knew nothing of this, and they quickly drew their own conclusions about the Tsarina’s seeming appetite for the dirty, coarse and ill-mannered Siberian. In their ignorance, they came to loathe Rasputin as completely as he was adored by the Tsar and the Tsarina.

In Pekkala’s opinion, Rasputin was a man who understood his limitations. It was the Tsar, and even more so the Tsarina, who had increasingly demanded from Rasputin a wisdom he never claimed to possess. He had been called upon to judge matters of state, as well as the conduct of the war. The best he could do, in such situations, was to offer vague words of comfort. But the Romanovs had fastened on those words, stripping them of vagueness and turning them to prophesy. It was no wonder Rasputin had become so despised by those who sought the favour of the Tsar.

But the Romanovs could not shelter Rasputin forever. Sooner or later, the hatred of the Russian people, peasants and nobles alike, was bound to turn deadly. The child and the man who was able to cure him had become as horribly fragile as each other. The only difference between them was that Rasputin had long since come to understand the meaning of this terminal equation.

‘If word gets out,’ continued the Tsar, ‘that Grigori has taken possession of The Shepherd , those whose faith has already been shaken by recent setbacks on the battlefield will fasten on it as the reason for every misfortune we have suffered in this war. That is why I chose this meeting place, where my absence from headquarters would only be hours, not the days it would take if I had come to you.’

‘I could have come to Mogilev.’

‘Not without raising suspicions. No, Pekkala, it was too risky. No one can know that the subject has even been raised, or the results would be disastrous!’

‘Have you explained this to the Tsarina?’

‘Of course!’ exclaimed the Tsar. ‘But you know how she is. She has become fixated on the idea that only in the hands of this holy man can the true power of the icon be unleashed.’

‘And you expect me to convince her otherwise?’ asked Pekkala.

The Tsar laughed. ‘I have given you many difficult tasks before, Pekkala, but none as impossible as that! No, I do not expect you to persuade her. It’s Rasputin I need you to convince!’

Now the Tsar’s plan was becoming clear. Pekkala had met with Rasputin many times in the past, often at the special annexe of a club known as the Villa Roda, which had been built on the orders of the Tsarina for Rasputin’s private use. The reason for this structure’s existence was that Rasputin had been banned from almost every other club in the city.

‘He will listen to you,’ said the Tsar.

‘He might,’ agreed Pekkala, ‘but you he will obey, if you only command him to do so.’

‘Impossible!’ The Tsar waved a hand in front of his face, as if shooing away an insect. ‘If the Tsarina finds out that I have had a hand in this, she will dig in her heels even further.’

‘But even if I can talk Rasputin into this, it is the Tsarina who must be convinced.’

‘Exactly,’ the Tsar wagged a finger at Pekkala, ‘and the only one who can do that is Rasputin! She will follow his advice as if God himself had whispered in her ear.’

Pekkala could not deny the Tsar’s reasoning. ‘I will do my best, Majesty.’

The Tsar nodded, satisfied. He reached in to the pocket of his waistcoat. He removed his pocket watch, which was an 18-carat gold Patek Philippe, commissioned by his wife from Tiffany and finished with diamonds by the Tsar’s own jeweller, Carl Faberge. Glancing at the time, he sighed. ‘I must get back to running the war.’

A few minutes later, Pekkala stepped down from the carriage.

With a jolt like the slamming of a huge door, the engine’s wheels began to move.

Pekkala watched the train pull out, his gaze fixed upon a guard who stood on the platform at the back of the caboose. The long, cruciform bayonet glinted at the end of his Mosin-Nagant rifle. The guard stared down along the empty tracks. Like the steward who had brought him tea, the man seemed oblivious to Pekkala’s presence. It was as if the Inspector had been a ghost, visible only to the Tsar. And then Pekkala realised that the Tsar had wanted it that way all along. He had never been here. This meeting had never taken place.

Pekkala turned and walked back down the road, his boots swishing through fragile globes of dandelions which had sprouted from cracks in the earth.

He found the car just where he had left it, Ostrogorsky leaning on the bonnet, puffing away on a long-stemmed pipe and humming an old Cossack tune. His deep, sad voice drifted on the still air as the smoke smoothed out the ragged edges of his mind. As they travelled back towards Tsarskoye Selo, Pekkala looked out at the dense ranks of pine and white birch trees which crowded down to the road, separated on either side of them by ditches overgrown with daisies, their white petals almost hidden under a coating of the grey road dust. The sun was already low in the sky, and beams of tannic-tinted light flickered down through the branches. He thought of his childhood in Finland and, in spite of the good fortune which the Tsar had bestowed upon him here in Russia, there were times when he longed to disappear back into the wilderness of his native country, where the brutal simplicity of life and death was not obscured by the lies men told to make themselves believe that they were masters of their fate.

*

Meanwhile, as the Imperial train headed south towards Mogilev, the Tsar opened the letter from his wife.

Unfolding the neatly creased page, he breathed in the dry sweet smell of his wife’s White Rose perfume, a tiny drop of which she always dabbed on to the paper.

Alexandra wrote to him almost every day, often interspersing her Russian with English or French, although seldom with the language of her birth. The Tsar always read the letters, sometimes more than once, but it had lately begun to seem as if the letters weren’t really written to him. He could not escape the feeling that his wife was pouring out her heart to another man – someone who looked like him, who sounded like him, who behaved like him – but who was not him. It was as if she had created an illusion more in keeping with the man she wanted for a husband, in whom the failings of reality had all been scrubbed away. As the Tsar read his wife’s most recent tirade against the members of the Russian parliament, who had begun to loudly criticise the handling of the war, he knew she was appealing to a mirage of his true self, a man who might sweep aside all opposition to his will in a wave of rage and ruthlessness. ‘Be Peter the Great!’ she pleaded. ‘Be Ivan the Terrible. Crush them all!’ In Alexandra’s mind, nothing less would restore the love and confidence of ordinary Russians. Rage equals love. Ruthlessness demands respect. The man she had invented would understand these things, and the world she had invented for him to live in would obey such contradictions. But here he was, the ruler of an Empire, knowing in his heart that all the raging in the world would not bring back the millions who had been killed in the fighting, or the millions more who would die before this war was over.