that you saw a man, who very much looked and seemed to carry himself like that of Rasputin, then not only does our church have bigger problems to worry about, but so do you and your friends!”
That statement made Wayne’s heart skip a beat! Wayne said nothing. He didn’t even move. It wasn’t bravado. It was his way of waiting for the next shoe to drop.
“Rasputin’s body was never found. Did you ever read that in any of the websites you went to?”
Wayne silently and slowly shook his head.
“Yes…we are told that he was tied up by Yusupov, Pavlovich, and Purishkevich and then thrown into the Neva River, but we are never told if anyone had ever found his body! Now, I cannot say you will ever read this in any of the history books, but as is told among some, Rasputin had survived the assassination attempt. Some Christians in a small village down the river from St. Petersburg had stumbled across a tall, dark-haired man in a black robe…he had wounds about him and was taking off some ropes that were around him. Now, the village was so isolated and small that they had never heard of Rasputin, so they had no idea whom he was. Otherwise, they would have never accepted him into their village, where, as it is told, he took advantage of the villagers’ hospitality and slaughtered all of them for their food, one of their horse-drawn carriages, and some of their small treasures…”
Privately, Wayne wondered if the bishop was making some point about he and Edward and Julius being thieves and stealing from a church when he said ‘small treasures’ and that bit about a Christian village. But he, wisely, kept his tongue.
“One of the treasures that Rasputin had pilfered,” Bishop Gurnov went on, “was a key. Rasputin, as he was riding away from the tiny village that he destroyed, stopped to rest and decided to look at his newly acquired small fortune. That was when he discovered this key…it had a floral design on the handle with foreign words written on both sides. Rasputin had limited formal education so he did not realize that it was in English—and this is where our Church, in Lincoln, comes into this story,” Bishop Gurnov said with gusto as he pointed at Wayne.
“The key had belonged to a relative of one of the families he killed in that tiny town outside of St. Petersburg....”
“Let me guess,” Wayne said, finally getting the nerves to speak, especially after seeing that the Bishop was not going to turn him over to the cops, “this relative of that Russian town was of your family; the Gurnovs.”
Bishop Gurnov laughed hardily. It was the most informal Wayne had seen him up to that point. “You are very smart, Wayne! How do young people call it? You are geek?” Wayne half-way laughed, half-way sighed for slight annoyance, but he let the Bishop continue; more somber now. “The key, as Rasputin had thought, belonged to something very important. Otherwise, why would a simple key be found among treasures, no? So, as is told in my family for years, Rasputin went back to that same village months later after he recovered from his wounds, so he could find whatever treasure box the key went to.
“Only, the village outside of St. Petersburg was then occupied by soldiers of a new power that had replaced his old friend, Tzar Nicholas...”
“The Soviet Union,” Wayne helped out.
“The Soviet Union,” Bishop Gurnov said approvingly with a nod. “We are not sure of details at this point, but my family speculated that Rasputin must have figured out the change in power of Russia and remained in hiding, because the atheist, anti-bourgeois Soviets would not tolerate the once-friend and close adviser to the Romanovs!”
“So, is that part of the reason why we don't read about his body being found, or anything else about him...he was in hiding for years after his reported death? From the Soviets and some of the Romanovs who didn't like his influence over Nicholas II?” Wayne was incredulous at the point.
“Remember, my American friend, his body was never found!”
Wayne winced at that point. “No offense, but not finding something is not the same thing as proving that something is in existence...so, what about this key, if I may, Bishop Gurnov? Does it go to that little door on the basement's floor?”
“Not quite...the key is for what is inside the door.”
Wayne waited patiently, but the elderly man merely sat quietly. “Bishop, may I ask, what is inside that door that this Rasputin wants so badly?”
Bishop Gurnov assessed Wayne. “So, Wayne, you said you have seen the door in the basement floor. And I'm assuming you and your friends left the door exposed where Rasputin could see it?”
Wayne shifted in his chair; guilt shooting through him. “Yes, Bishop...I was going to tell you about that—“
Surprisingly, the Bishop stopped Wayne with a gentle touch on the young man's shoulder. “It's ok, Wayne. I probably should not tell you this much, but it was a—how do you Anglophones say it...reddish herring.”
“Red herring.”
“Red herring,” he corrected himself; smiling as he leaned back in his chair. Wayne noticed how he looked at his wrist watch.
“Bishop, I don't understand...” Wayne had a sudden thought. “Did your church set the fire yourselves?”
He gave the slightest of shrugs. “Fires happen all the time, my young friend; especially in buildings that are over a hundred years old.”
Wayne was not amused. “Bishop, if you're saying what I think you are saying, at best that's considered fraud! Look, I understand that you wanted to throw that Rasputin-creep off, but firefighters and other people put their lives on the line to rescue your church!”
“Says one of the thieves who broke into my family's church.”
Checkmate. Wayne and the Bishop both understood this. Wayne leaned back in his chair; humbled.
“You realize that Rasputin has probably already figured out you tricked him,” Wayne finally said to Bishop Gurnov.
He was already nodding his head, pensively. “Again!” Wayne did a double take. Apparently, there was some kind of cat and mouse game that's been going on for decades between Bishop Gurnov's church and this Rasputin! “That's why I said that we all have bigger problems than to worry about anything that you and your friends have stolen from the church.”
“So, if the fire and the small door in the basement was just to throw Rasputin off, what was causing the radiation that my Geiger counter was reading?”
“Bits of nuclear waste,” the Bishop stated very matter of fact. “What else would make a Geiger read such levels?”
Wayne looked at the elder man; utterly shocked! “Bishop Gurnov, you can't just go around sticking nuclear waste in a church just so you keep people away! Where did you get it from, if I may ask?”
“When I went on a trip to Chernobyl years ago,” he said with a shrug. “One of our church members is a scientist and he helped me smuggle it into the US...we knew it would be one of the few things to keep other people away. It was this scientist's idea to insert a machine within the nuclear cask that made Geiger counters and other readers to read weird registrations when they got too close.” He smiled at Wayne, figuring he would have tried something like that.
Just then, two muscular young men—Russian, from what Wayne gathered—opened the door to the Bishop's room and stood by the door. They were in casual clothes, but their
size was intimidating! They must have been the call that the Bishop did some time ago and why he glanced at his watch.
“Don't worry,” the Bishop said with a slight laughter upon seeing Wayne's reaction, “they're for you.”
“Me?”
Bishop Gurnov nodded as his eyes stayed on some corner of the room. “You and your friends have stumbled upon a strange war that's been going on for about a hundred years now...even though you all did it during a crime against my family church, you still don't deserve to have Rasputin in your lives because of it.” He then turned his eyes squarely on Wayne. “Especially you, Wayne...we knew about you and your friends already! Without giving away too much details of our operation, we had gotten word that Rasputin was on to us and was closing in. So, we needed something to keep him at bay.”
“The fire and the dirty nuke in the media,” Wayne said with a nod of being impressed. “That way you could ensure tv cameras and the public hanging around church grounds, making it uncomfortable for Rasputin to show up at your church!”
The Bishop looked at the two guards, beaming. “As I said earlier; you are geek!”
Once again, the diplomatic laugh from Wayne. But the Bishop got serious before speaking a bit more.
“Wayne, I'm afraid you are going to have to make a choice that you and your friends have now found yourselves in. Rasputin has been chasing my family since he massacred my relatives back in that small village outside of St. Petersburg in 1916. He's never stopped searching for us since then,” the Bishop warned Wayne with the most serious disposition he could. “I'm afraid that when he saw inside that safe was nothing but discarded nuclear waste, he will have counted