Rasputin's Revenge Read Online Free Page B

Efimovich Rasputin.
    * The English Channel

2
    ( OCTOBER 10, 1916.)
    I am exhausted, but I must try to get some of this down.
    It is perhaps fortunate that the days here are so short. By five o’clock, full night had arrived, and I took a rest for nearly three hours before the party. Without that sleep, I would not have lasted through the night.
    Tsarkoye Selo after dark is, if possible, even more a fairyland than it appears during the day. Two sets of trees, now leafless, line the main boulevard and bracket the road like supplicating hands, their thin fingers splayed to the night sky. As it happens, tonight there was a full moon, and its reflection on the lake and the structures surrounding it—the Turkish bathhouse, gazebos, monuments and arches—imbued the scene with magical overtones.
    Unescorted, dressed against the chill, I walked to the Old Palace—an enormous blue and white building that I preferred to the royal residence. Dinner would be served there, and afterwards a private group would retire to Anna Vyroubova’s.
    The ostensible reason for the dinner was the Czar’s return from military headquarters at Spala some eight hundred kilometers away. I will do well to remember that he is in fact the active leader of the Russian army. Though he seems the least warlike of men, Commander-in-Chief may be the title he is proudest of.
    Because of the diplomatic nature of the dinner, it was extremely well-attended. Even as I approached the Palace, a long line of carriages and limousines were depositing guests at the door. Most of the male guests were in the uniforms of Russian officers—medal bedecked and colorful inbright blues and reds. The women might have come from Paris, and in fact their dresses in all likelihood had. Décolletage is quite the fashion, and since many of the women tend to be Rubenesque, the effect is striking and daring,
très haute monde
.
    And jewelry!
    The incredible jeweler Fabergé has his headquarters here in St. Petersburg, and his work is everywhere—tiaras, necklaces, bracelets, clasps and pins of every description glittered out of hairdos, between breasts, off throats and wrists. On every table were gem-encrusted ashtrays, cigarette cases, and knick-knacks, each of which could supply a regiment with food for a week.
    As it happened, I had just removed my overcoat, feeling undepressed in evening clothes, when I heard a familiar voice behind me. Vladimir Sukhomlinov had entered the room, escorting a lovely woman whom I took to be his daughter.
    “Ah, Monsieur Giraud,” he boomed on recognizing me, “you have made the party lists already. A good sign, a very good sign.” He crossed over to me, kissing me on both cheeks. He seemed already to have been drinking. “May I present to you my wife, Katrina.”
    As much to keep from staring as out of politeness, I bowed over her hand and kissed it. Madame Sukhomlinov was stunning. Moreover, she could not yet be thirty!
    But before we could get involved in any discussion, a short portly man, dressed simply as I was, smoking a long cigar, came through the door into the receiving room. Again Sukhomlinov boomed. “Ah, Maurice!
Vien ici
. Come and greet your fellow countryman.”
    With some show of reluctance to which the General seemed oblivious, the man came over. “But surely you know one another?” Sukhomlinov asked. Upon seeing that we didn’t, he continued. “Your latest minister to court, Maurice. Jules Giraud, the French Ambassador, Maurice Paleologue.”
    I was delighted to make Paleologue’s acquaintance under these circumstances. It was far better than the sometimes stilted etiquette that determined behavior in so many of the world’s embassies. Still, he seemed to be on his guard—his dark eyes revealing nothing of the man within. “I believe my staff extended an invitation for you to come to the Embassy just today,” he said. “They told me you had left the Winter Palace.”
    “I’ll be staying here in Tsarkoye Selo from