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  Praise for the novels

  of John Lescroart

  The Oath

  A People Page-Turner

  “A particularly strong plot.”—Los Angeles Times

  “Topical and full of intrigue.”—Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

  “Gripping, timely, and extremely satisfying.”—Booklist

  “Lescroat skillfully balances his story, blending the action of the plot with the satisfying details of Hardy’s and Glitsky’s personal lives. The minutiae of marriages, children, and domestic routines not only round out the characters but provide a smart counterpoint to the cops-and-lawyer stuff. And unlike so many other authors, Lescroart handles social commentary with a deft touch.”—The Cleveland Plain Dealer

  The Hearing

  “A spine-tingling legal thriller.”—Larry King, USA Today

  “Highly entertaining.”—Chicago Tribune

  “Excellent stuff.”—San Jose Mercury News

  Nothing But the Truth

  “The novel’s pacing is reminiscent of classic Ross MacDonald, where a week’s worth of events is condensed into a few hours … a winning thriller.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

  “Riveting … one of Lescroat’s best tales yet.”—Chicago Tribune

  “A rousing courtroom showdown.”

  —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

  The Mercy Rule

  “A thought-provoking and important novel … well written, well plotted, well done.”—Nelson DeMille

  “Readers of The 13th Juror will already be off reading this book, not this review. Join them.”—The Philadelphia Inquirer

  Guilt

  “Begin Guilt over a weekend…. If you start during the workweek, you will be up very, very late, and your pleasure will be tainted with, well, guilt.”—The Philadelphia Inquirer

  “A well-paced legal thriller … one of the best in this flourishing genre to come along in a while.”—The Washington Post Book World

  A Certain Justice

  “Lescroart swings for the fences with a West Coast take on The Bonfire of the Vanities … a richly satisfying thriller.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  The 13th Juror

  “Fast-paced … sustains interest to the very end.”

  —The Wall Street Journal

  Hard Evidence

  “A hefty, engrossing legal thriller … compulsively readable, a dense and involving saga of big-city crime and punishment.”

  —San Francisco Chronicle

  ALSO BY JOHN LESCROART

  The Oath

  The Hearing

  Nothing But the Truth

  The Mercy Rule

  Guilt

  A Certain Justice

  The 13th Juror

  Hard Evidence

  The Vig

  Dead Irish

  Son of Holmes

  Sunburn

  JOHN

  LESCROART

  RASPUTIN’S REVENGE

  NEW AMERICAN LIBRARY

  NEW AMERICAN LIBRARY

  Published by New American Library, a division of

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street,

  New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.

  Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand,

  London WC2R ORL, England

  Penguin Books Australia Ltd, 250 Camberwell Road,

  Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia

  Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 10 Alcorn Avenue,

  Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4V 3B2

  Penguin Books (N.Z.) Ltd, Cnr Rosedale and Airborne Roads,

  Albany, Auckland 1310, New Zealand

  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices:

  80 Strand, London WC2R ORL, England

  Published by New American Library, an imprint of New American Library, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. Previously published in hardcover and trade paperback editions by Donald I. Fine, Inc. For information address Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  First New American Library Printing, November 2003

  3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4

  Copyright © John T. Lescroart, 1987

  All rights reserved

  REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA

  Set in Bembo and Trajan

  Printed in the United States of America

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  BOOKS ARE AVAILABLE AT QUANTITY DISCOUNTS WHEN USED TO PROMOTE PRODUCTS OR SERVICES. FOR INFORMATION PLEASE WRITE TO PREMIUM MARKETING DIVISION, PENGUIN GROUP (USA) INC., 375 HUDSON STREET, NEWYORK, NEW YORK 10014.

  The scanning, uploading and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  To Maurice E. “Les” Lescroart,

  father extraordinaire,

  1920–86

  “It is hard to know whether

  war or peace makes the greater

  changes in our vocabularies,

  both of the tongue and of the spirit.”

  —M.F.K. FISHER

  How to Cook a Wolf

  (revised edition)

  Table of Contents

  Preface

  Prologue

  Part One

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  Part Two

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  Part Three

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  PREFACE

  Someone once defined a Russian novel as a book in which people with unpronounceable names do nothing for 362 pages, at which point someone’s aunt dies.

  I trust the present work will not fall into that category, although Russian names do present certain difficulties which the reader can overcome by keeping the following in mind:

  —the suffix “vich” means “son of.” Thus, the czarevich is the son of the czar. Likewise, the suffix “ovna” means “daughter of.”

  —almost all names have a formal and a diminutive form, often characterized by the suffix “sha” or “shka.” Thus, Rasputin’s first name is Gregory or Grishka, the Empress is Matushka, or “little mother,” and so on.

  The titles “czar” and “emperor” are both correct and interchangeable, as are “czarina” and “empress.”

  In 1918, Russia discontinued use of the old Julian calendar and began using our own Gregorian one. Because the events in this book took place in 1916 and 1917 and the documents are often dated, I have retained the Julian dates, which are thirteen days behind our own. This is especially important in regard to Rasputin. It is often asserted that his death o
n New Year’s Day, 1917, cursed the year to tragedy. If it did, the lesson escaped most Russians, since to them he did not die on January 1, 1917, but on the night of December 16, 1916.

  Rasputin had several nicknames—the starets, Grishka, the black monk, tyemniy, or “the dark one,” and many more. Interestingly, the name Rasputin itself is a nickname for the man born Gregori Efimovich—it means “dissolute” or “depraved.”

  I used many sources in researching this novel, but three works stand out: Nicholas and Alexandra by Robert K. Massie; The Guns of August by Barbara Tuchman; and The Life and Times of Gregory Rasputin by Alex de Jonge. Any liberties I may have taken with historical facts and characters—and there are many since this is a work of the imagination—are strictly my own and cannot be traced to these excellent historians.

  I would like to thank Frank Seidl for sharing with me both his expertise regarding fine wines and his superb company in sampling so many of them.

  Lastly, I tip my hat to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes, without whom this book, or its predecessor, would not exist.

  PROLOGUE

  The 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.

  * At his request, Vayev’s name and title, as well as the original file name, have been changed to preserve his privacy.

  PART

  ONE

  1

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

  It is a mystery to me.

  Not that Freddy Foch and I hadn’t been frien
ds 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.