Rasputin's Revenge (2 page)

T
he box arrived in late June. It gave evidence of having once been carefully wrapped—in brown paper and secured with twine. But the customs people evidently sensed something suspicious about the parcel—perhaps some scent of the Kremlin—and it had been rewrapped at least twice, rather less expertly each time.

Nevertheless, by the time it arrived in California, shipped from my publishers to whom it had been addressed for forwarding, its contents still appeared to be intact. The cover letter read thusly:

Dear Mr. Lescroart:

My name is Mikhail Vayev. I hold the position of Chief Historical Research Analyst in the United Soviet Archive Library, Politburo Special Section (PSS)32.1. I am 56 years old and have held my position for sixteen years. (I was given the job because of my skill with languages—besides most of the dialects of Russian, I am fluent, or reasonably so, in Mandarin, English, French, German, Dansk, and Urdi, as well as Yiddish and Hebrew.)

When I was a young graduate historian in Khrushchev’s administration, my first assignment was to change the names “St. Petersburg” or “Petrograd” to “Leningrad” in every document filed for the years between the onset of World War I and the October Revolution. I must have performed well, though all I remember from that year is sitting in airless and musty misery, staring at the bureaucratic detritus of a long-dead age. In any event, I was
promoted and spent the next few years changing Stalingrad to Volgograd and otherwise excising Stalin’s name from our history books. (Eventually, I purged Khrushchev’s name as well, only to go back and reinsert them both under Andropov.)

In 1970, under Brezhnev, I was appointed chief of my section—(PSS)32.1. That promotion gave me access to Western publications—newspapers and magazines as well as books of fiction and nonfiction. Recently, your novel
Son of Holmes
arrived at the Archives. Of course, even here in Russia, Sherlock Holmes is commonly known and widely admired. I myself have harbored a lifelong interest in the great detective.

I picked up the book immediately. The argument presented in its introduction—that Sherlock Holmes actually existed and operated in England at the turn of the century—I took to be an amusing conceit. Like most people, I believed that Holmes was a fictional character and nothing more.

It wasn’t until I turned to Jules Giraud’s manuscript itself that I became conscious of a disturbing sense of déjà vu. I was certain I’d seen the names Giraud and Lupa and encountered that writing style before.

Over the course of the next few weeks, I figuratively rifled the files of my brain, trying to determine where and when I’d seen similar material. Then one evening I remembered. In my first assignment, changing St. Petersburg to Leningrad thirty-four years ago, I was sure that I had “sterilized” a file that contained those names.

Excitement kept me awake that entire night. The next morning found me in the bowels of the Kremlin, six floors below the street. I first checked the catalogues for “L” and “G” to no avail, then unsuccessfully tried “A” for Auguste Lupa. Under “J,” I came upon something that looked hopeful. I walked to the shelf, and with trembling hands pulled down the dusty folder (Kremlin File No. JG 0665) and began examining the documents it contained.

A hasty perusal confirmed my initial feeling, but a more careful study would be needed if I were to be sure, so I packed the folder into my briefcase and brought it home that night.

As I read, I realized that I had stumbled on the most important discovery of my career—a wealth of material, including Giraud’s diaries and prison memoirs, of the events leading up to the abdication of Czar Nicholas II in 1917. Just as important—perhaps ultimately more so—the file utterly convinced me of the actual
historical existence of Sherlock Holmes. After I’d read the material, his role in those events—and that of his son Lupa—could no longer be seriously denied.

Alas, there are certain restrictions in my country that would keep even a find of this importance from being published. The file itself—JG 0665—is still classified. Nevertheless, as an historian, I feel strongly that this story should be told.

Accordingly, I am sending you the enclosed in the hopes that it will at least see publication in the West. It will need editing and translating, but those efforts seem minimal indeed compared with the importance of this find.

Good luck, and thank you.

Sincerely,
Mikhail Vayev
^*

At first I suspected a hoax. Since I’d translated and researched the background of Giraud’s earlier manuscript, I’d run into my share of skeptics and charlatans to whom the entire Holmes issue was an elaborate myth or, more gallingly, a joke.

I had grown tired of the debate, other issues had become more prominent in my life, and I was loath to start the process again by essaying the translation of any purportedly genuine manuscript, regardless of its historical importance.

Nevertheless, I was intrigued, and couldn’t resist glancing at the documents. One look at Giraud’s diaries and prison journal confirmed their authenticity. I still had the originals of his other manuscript, and the handwriting alone was enough to convince me—it was identical.

I struggled with the language and faded ink, reading far into the night. But the French manuscripts ended at a crucial moment—with Giraud in jail about to be executed for espionage. Following that was a startling manuscript in English. The further documents contained a variety of Continental hands that I found incomprehensible. They might have presented no problem to Vayev with his flair for language, but they left me in a state of almost unbearable suspense.

Early the next morning, I had the package copied and brought the original to my friend Dr. Don Matosian, a Russian scholar at the University of California at Los Angeles. Guardedly enthusiastic, he told me he would review the Russian documents for authenticity and would
assemble a team of graduate students to take on the task of translating Giraud’s manuscripts and the other documents. He expected to have his report to me within a month.

It took all of that—thirty of the longest days of my life. But finally the validation came. Dr. Matosian even asked me to donate the original file to the UCLA Library for Russian studies, which is where it now resides; in another library but unlike the catacombs where the file lay hidden for seventy years, this one remains accessible.

The events recounted in the documents constitute an essential record of the last months of the Romanov dynasty. Beyond that, this story brings down the curtain on one of history’s most incredible vendettas, one whose shadow threatens to hide the sun even up to the present time.

  PART  
ONE

1

[
KREMLIN FILE NO. JG
0665–4600–4668;
PSS
ACCESS
,
CLASSIFIED
]
OCTOBER
7, 1916

I
t is a mystery to me.

Not that Freddy Foch and I hadn’t been friends since he had been my instructor in the War College, but his regular army training and my espionage work were not always in perfect accord. And now, at his bidding, I am in St. Petersburg, or Petrograd as it has recently been renamed, my retirement having lasted a little over one year.

My role here is straightforward—I am to present a renewed French offer of arms and money to Czar Nicholas II in an effort to keep him fighting on the Eastern Front. So long as the Great Bear of Russia can keep two or three German divisions occupied in the East, the Allies stand a chance of holding off the Huns until we can mount our new offensive in the Spring, perhaps even with American help. If, as seems likely now, the Czar sues for a separate peace with Germany, the stalemate will likely be broken in the Kaiser’s favor, with tragic results for France and for civilization.

The three-week trip here by ship was nerve-racking but proved uneventful. We embarked from Bordeaux in mid-September and steamed up La Manche
^*
into the North Sea, constantly on guard against the regular German fleet patrolling those waters, at the same time hoping to avoid the submarines lurking beneath us. As we entered the Baltic, a fog enshrouded us and by the time it lifted we were in Russian-dominated waters with
Helsinki behind us. A couple of days in the Gulf of Finland finally brought us to port.

And what a port! What a city! St. Petersburg, the Venice of Russia! Nothing in my briefings had prepared me for the grandeur of this place. In my mind, Russia has always been gray and stolid, its architecture vaguely Eastern, its people a race of unrefined, good-natured peasants. That may be the Russia of Moscow and Kiev, but here in St. Petersburg, I am in Europe.

Marble buildings in pastel tones front either wide tree-lined streets or canals that are cleaner and wider than those of Venice. The city’s main streets—the Nevsky Prospekt, for example—are as smart and as modern as the Boulevard Haussmann in Paris. French is the main language I have heard spoken, though I have yet to venture from the Winter Palace.

After three weeks aboard ship, the food I had for dinner last night tasted wonderful even if by French standards it was little more than fodder—borscht, some sort of cold fish in sour cream, rubbery crepes they call blinis, and a poor bottle of Bordeaux.

Now it is midday and I have determined to keep a daily record of my mission here—however it comes out, Foch will need a report, and I believe a diary will be useful in preserving my impressions, ordering my thoughts and testing my ideas before presenting them in the heady air of the Royal Court.

(I must say at the outset that I have always found it incongruous that France, the most republican country in Europe, has chosen as an ally the most politically reactionary, autocratic monarchy on the face of the earth. But then I will be the first to admit that
Weltpolitik
has never been my specialty.)

Which brings me back to my mystery. Since being awarded the Legion d’Honneur for a really trivial part in another affair, I may have attained some local stature, but a mission of this significance has never before been appropriate to my portfolio. When I’d been summoned by Foch in September, I naturally assumed he would ask me to oversee some espionage activity more in line with my background—and I was also prepared to decline.