“You are the youngest sister,” he had once confided to her, “but it is you to whom a special destiny is granted. Even your name—Anastasia—means ‘the breaker of chains.’ Did you know that, my child?”
So she had heard; in her honor, her father had freed some youthful political prisoners on the day of her birth.
But as for what chains she herself would ever break, the monk had never said, and she had never had the courage to ask.
Her mother was drawing the starets toward the bed, and Dr. Botkin diplomatically stepped away. Ana knew that there was no love lost between the doctor and Rasputin, but she also knew that her mother had placed her ultimate faith in the holy man and not the physician. Everyone else knew it, too.
Most of all, Rasputin.
The monk stood at the foot of the bed, towering over the ailing Tsarevitch, and with his eyes raised to heaven, began to murmur a prayer. In one hand, he clutched a heavy pectoral cross—emerald-encrusted and hanging from his neck on a silver chain. Ana had once seen it in the cabinets of her mother’s mauve boudoir, along with the rest of the renowned Romanov jewels.
His beard jutted out like a stiff black beehive, and his words rumbled like the echo of a distant train. Low, and constant, and though Ana could barely make out what he was saying, the sound alone was strangely comforting. She could see her brother’s tortured eyes turning toward Rasputin, and after a minute or two, his moaning ceased, and his breathing appeared to become more regular. It was a transformation she had seen before though neither she, nor anyone else, seemed to know what caused it. Her mother ascribed it to the power of God—“the Lord speaks through Father Grigori”—but the court physicians remained baffled.
Rasputin came around to the side of the bed and clasped the boy’s hands between his own rough paws. “The bleeding will stop,” he said, “the pain will go away.” He stroked the Tsarevitch’s hands, as the Tsaritsa looked on through a flood of her own tears. He repeated these words, again and again, before saying, “You will rest, Alexei. You will rest. And when you wake, you will be better. Your leg will not be so swollen, you will not feel the pain.” He leaned forward, his beard covering the boy’s face and the emerald cross dangling into the bedclothes, to kiss him lightly on his forehead. “And you will sing out for your oatmeal with honey and jam.” He smiled, a smile as crooked as the part that ran down the center of his matted hair, and uttered another prayer under his breath. As he stepped back from the bed, his muddy boots left a puddle on the carpet.
But Alexei wasn’t writhing in pain. He was, miraculously, asleep, and with a silent wave of his arms, Rasputin—as if he were the Tsar himself—ushered them all into the next room.
“You, too, little Ana,” he whispered, draping a hand on the shoulder of her blue silk robe, before closing the doors to the bedchamber behind him. The emerald cross, swinging against his cassock, winked in the glow from the hearth, and on a sudden impulse, she kissed it.
Rasputin said, “Ah, Christ speaks to you, doesn’t he, little one?”
Ana did not know the answer to that, any more than she knew why she had just done what she just did.
But Father Grigori smiled through his broken teeth as if he knew full well.
Chapter 7
Although Dr. Levinson had spoken with a touch of hyperbole, Slater soon discovered that she’d meant what she said. He was instructed to draw up a game plan and risk assessment, a preliminary budget (though Dr. Levinson had made it clear on his way out that cost was to be no object), put together a team of whatever specialists he would require, and have it all on her desk in seventy-two hours. Normally, it was the kind of thing that would have taken weeks, if not months—not only to be put together but to be vetted by everyone else in the chain of command. But again, Dr. Levinson had made it plain that this project would have the highest-priority clearance not only from AFIP, but from the Army, the Air Force, and the Coast Guard, all of which would have to be involved at one stage or another. The Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta had also offered their full cooperation and support. “But I don’t want them meddling,” Levinson had said. “They take a month to make a cup of coffee.”