“In the meantime, Grodek had also made a mistake. He had fallen in love with one of the women he recruited. Her name was Maria Balka. She was fifteen years older than Grodek and, in many ways, more dangerous than Grodek himself. She had already carried out several killings in the name of various anarchist groups. Grodek kept their relationship a secret from Zubatov, and when Zubatov mentioned to Grodek that Maria Balka would certainly receive the death penalty after she was arrested along with the other members of Grodek’s organization, it made what happened next almost inevitable.”

“What did happen?” asked Kirov.

“Zubatov decided that the trap could only be sprung after an attempt on the life of the Tsar. This would provide justification for the arrests which would follow. Of course, it was arranged that Grodek would carry out the attempt. It would be made to appear that the Tsar had actually been assassinated. Other members of the terrorist cell would be stationed nearby, in order to witness the staged killing. The assassins would then rendezvous at their safe house, where they would be arrested by agents of the Okhrana.

“The attack was to take place as the Tsar took an evening walk around the grounds of the Summer Palace. Zubatov made sure that the Tsar stuck to a regular route on these walks, in order to make the terrorists confident of success. The Tsar would be shot as he passed between the gates which surrounded the palace and the Lamski Pond. This was a relatively narrow area, which offered the Tsar no protection. Firing through the gates, Grodek would only be a few paces from the Tsar.”

“But wouldn’t it seem suspicious that the Tsar would be out walking by himself?”

“Not at all,” replied Pekkala. “He set aside a portion of each day to exercise. Sometimes it was riding, sometimes swimming, but often he would walk the grounds of the palace, whatever the weather, and at those times he insisted on being alone.”

“But what about the other assassins? Wouldn’t they be armed as well?”

“They were instructed to fire only if Grodek missed his target. The Tsar would be seen to fall, struck by several rounds, but of course only blank ammunition would be used.

“At this point, no one had any doubts about Grodek’s loyalty to the Okhrana. After all, he had delivered the names of every member of the organization he had helped to create. He had betrayed them all, as he had promised to do from the beginning.

“What nobody in the Okhrana knew was that Grodek had switched out the blanks for real bullets.

“The night of the shooting, everything went like clockwork. The terrorists were allowed to approach the palace grounds. They hid. The Tsar set out on his walk. Meanwhile, dozens of Okhrana agents waited to swoop down on the safe house. The Tsar reached the narrow walkway between the gates and the Lamski Pond. The sun had set. A cool wind blew across the pond. Grodek stepped out of the shadows. The Tsar paused. He had heard the sound of branches rustling. Grodek stepped up to the gate, reached between the bars, the gun in his hand. The Tsar never moved. He stood there, as if he didn’t understand what was happening.”

“And he missed?” stammered Kirov. “Grodek missed at a range of three paces?”

Pekkala shook his head. “Grodek did not miss. He emptied the cylinder. All six shots found their mark.”

Now Kirov jumped to his feet. “Do you mean to tell me that he shot the Tsar six times and did not kill him?”

“The man Grodek killed was not the Tsar.”

“Then who…” Kirov narrowed his eyes as the truth dawned on him. “You mean a double? Grodek shot a double?”

“Zubatov made many mistakes, but he would not go so far as to actually endanger the life of the Tsar. That was the one part of the plan Zubatov never discussed with Grodek. When Grodek pulled the trigger, he did not know he was killing a double.”

“But still a man died,” Kirov insisted.

“Somebody usually does,” replied Pekkala.

Pekkala and the Tsar stood in the darkness on the balcony of the Palace, looking out over the grounds. They could see the Chinese Bridge and Parnassus Hill. In the Gribok gardens, straight ahead of them, leaves rustled in the night breeze.

At that moment, they knew, the Tsar’s double would be walking just inside the gates of the Palace grounds, between the Great Pond and the Parkovaya Road.

Neither man had spoken for a while.

The air was tense as they waited for the shooting to begin.

“Can you imagine how it is,” asked the Tsar, “that I cannot venture out beyond the gates of this palace without knowing I would probably be killed? I am the ruler of a country along whose streets I cannot walk alone.” He waved his hand back and forth out over the grounds, in a way which reminded Pekkala of a priest swinging an incense holder. “Is it worth all this? Is it worth anything at all?”

“It will be over soon, Excellency,” said Pekkala. “By tomorrow, the terrorists will have been arrested.”

“This is about more than just one group of terrorists,” replied the Tsar. “It’s the war which has brought us to this. I think back to the day it was declared, when I stood on the veranda of the Winter Palace, looking out across that sea of people who had come to show their support. I felt that we were indestructible. The notion of surrender had not even crossed my mind. I could never have imagined the defeats we would suffer. Tannenburg. The Masurian Lakes. The names of those places still echo in my mind. I should have listened to Rasputin.”

“What has this to do with him?” Pekkala had met the Siberian mystic, who supposedly possessed the magical ability to cure the hemophilia that afflicted the Tsar’s only son, Alexei. In Pekkala’s judgment, Rasputin was a man who understood his limitations. It was the Tsar, and even more so the Tsarina, who had demanded from Rasputin a wisdom he did not possess. He had been called upon to judge matters of state about which he had little knowledge. The best he could do, most of the time, was to offer vague words of comfort. But the Romanovs had fastened on those words, stripping them of vagueness, turning them to prophecy. It was no wonder Rasputin had become so hated by those who sought the favor of the Tsar.

Pekkala had been there, on a bitterly cold morning in December of 1916, when the Petrograd police fished Rasputin’s body from the Neva River. Rasputin had been invited to a private party at the house of Prince Yusupov. There he was fed cakes which, with the help of a doctor named Lazoviert, had been laced with enough potassium cyanide to have killed an elephant. When the poison appeared to have no effect, Yusupov’s accomplice, a government minister named Purishkyevich, shot Rasputin several times and stabbed him in the throat. Then they both rolled him in a heavy carpet and dumped him in the water where, in spite of everything which had been done to him, Rasputin died by drowning.

“Grief without end,” said the Tsar. “That is what Rasputin said the war would bring us. And look how right he was.”

“All wars bring grief, Excellency.”

The Tsar turned to him, trembling. “God spoke through that man, Pekkala! Who speaks through you, I’d like to know.”

“You do, Excellency.”

For a moment, the Tsar looked stunned. “Forgive me, Pekkala,” he said. “I did not have the right to speak to you that way.”

“Nothing to forgive,” replied Pekkala. It was the only lie he ever told the Tsar.