Wayne had gotten off the bus at a fairly busy corner on East Lincoln. It was in an area of town where fancy churches peppered large swaths of land and where upper-income Lincolnites attended their institutions of beliefs. It was here that Wayne found where The Russian Orthodox Church of Lincoln held their services temporarily. The temporary church site was very modern and quite minimalistic, in comparison to the original church’s ancient Gothic, Baroque style. It was also quite small—a mere meeting hall, virtually. But that was all that the Russian Orthodox members needed until they had a new church edifice rebuilt, thanks to the money coming from their insurance company’s fire compensation policy. And with a relatively sizable Russian population in Lincoln, Wayne guessed it would not be too much longer for a new Orthodox church to be built to replace the old one.
Wayne opened the door to the hall and found a middle-aged secretary at the circulation desk. She had a bit of a hard look about her, but she clearly made an effort not to show it in her demeanor as she smiled at him.
“Welcome to the Russian Orthodox Church,” she said with a heavy flavor of Russian. “Can I help you, young man?”
Wayne gathered his thoughts before answering. He had decided to do a little investigation on his own into the whole Rasputin episode…if, in fact, that was whom they were dealing with. It was clear that Julius and, especially, Edward were not going to help him on this.
“Hi, my name is Wayne Paul. I’m a student at Lincoln High. I’m doing a report for my social studies class. I ran across something that relates to your church and I was wondering if there was someone I can talk to about it?”
“Oh…okay.” Her English was a lot better than Bishop Vilkin’s. “Are you talking about the religious aspect of our church? Historical in nature…?”
“Mmm, a bit of both.”
“Well, you came at a good time, Wayne. Bishop Nicolas Gurnov is here today and he has a light load this morning. I believe he may have some time for you!”
The secretary had picked up the phone and was about to dial for the bishop when she noticed Wayne’s countenance.
“Is everything all right, young man?”
“Yeah…” Bishop Gurnov. Now that was interesting.
About two minutes later, a man around sixty, clean-shaven, came from behind the circulation desk and walked over to Wayne and shook his hand. He was amiable, rather plump and short, and quite nimble…the complete opposite of the man who claimed to be the Bishop of the Russian Orthodox Church of Lincoln, Nebraska he and Edward and Julius met a few weeks ago!
Gurnov walked Wayne over to his temporary office, located just a few yards from the circulation desk. The bishop closed the door and gestured for Wayne to take a seat on a chair that was in front of his desk. Wayne noted how instead of seating himself behind his desk, Bishop Gurnov sat on the chair next to his. Usually a good sign that someone wanted a more informal conversation and was more likely to listen.
“So, Wayne,” the bishop said, his Russian accent a bit softer than the secretary’s, “you’re doing some research for social studies on the Orthodoxy in Russia?”
“No, not quite. It was on the Soviet Union. But, you know how it goes when you’re doing research on the Web…your eyes run across other links that look interesting to you and the next thing you know you’re at another web site totally outside of what you’re supposed to be reading!”
The bishop laughed easily. “Yes, that happens to me nearly every day! So, what was the link that grabbed your attention? Ours?”
Here we go!, Wayne thought. “Uh, no…” Wayne produced the hard-copies from the web site he had printed on Rasputin and shared with Edward and Julius. Julius had given them back to Wayne a couple of days ago, after the trio’s meeting in the boys’ locker room. Instead of embarrassing himself any further, Wayne simply handed the pages over to Bishop Gurnov without saying a word.
Wayne expected the man to scold him about bringing up such a foolish subject since he’s such a busy man. But, to Wayne’s totally surprise, Bishop Gurnov’s face turned to stone! That, in turn, caused Wayne to freeze, wondering if he offended him instead of angering him.
“And, how did you say this had to do with our church,” Gurnov inquired softly, the bright eyes on his countenance long gone by now.
Wayne paused. It almost felt like an interrogation now. He remembered Edward’s warning about telling other people about this Bishop Vilkin, since it would implicate them with the larceny they committed at the church. But Wayne knew that what they were dealing with was far larger than a few stolen items.
“I—a couple of friends and I—saw someone that looked exactly like Rasputin!”
The bishop looked upon Wayne with questioning eyes. “Where did you see this individual?”
“At your church, Bishop.”
Another moment of uncomfortable silence.
“Was this before or after the fire burnt our church down?”
“It was after.”
Gurnov leaned back in his chair and breathed out the slightest of a sigh. He leafed through the printouts silently. He then, suddenly, got up from his chair and went to his office phone. He, presumably, called the secretary, said something in Russian to her, and hung up the phone.
Oh, no; he called the cops!, was all that Wayne could think. Worse yet, may be the organization that replaced the KGB…may be Julius, Edward, and I all created an international rift!
“Wayne,” said Bishop Gurnov, his voice nearly back to its previous jovial level, but his eyes a bit more subdued, “are you finished with school today?”
Wayne considered the man very carefully before responding. “Yeah…I only had five periods today. Why?”
“Because, my young friend, you are about to take a little history lesson.”
Bishop Gurnov gave an outline on the life of Grigori Rasputin. That he was born around 1864 in Pokrovskoe, near the Ural Mountains and near the Siberia vicinity. Later, as a young man, Rasputin had been a student at a monastery in the town of Verkhoture, though he did not follow through with becoming a monk.
To Wayne’s surprise, Rasputin had married and had three children. Indeed, later, after entering the circle of the upper class in Russia of the early 1900s, it was purported that Rasputin had mistresses and was accused by some of using his high-class connection for those trysts. He also eventually had a following, a kind of discipleship. He claimed, and was believed by others, that he could heal those with infirmities and was able to foresee the future.
His move to St. Petersburg was his apex of fame, power, and, ultimately, his downfall. By the time the last of the Russian tzars, Nicholas Romanov, was desperate to stop his son’s bout of hemophilia, Rasputin had become famous throughout Russia. Other medical measures the Romanovs took apparently didn’t work. So, by 1907, Rasputin was invited to try his magic on the Russian monarch’s son. For some unknown reason, little Aleksei’s hemophiliac attack stopped and, predictably, it was credited toward the healing powers of Rasputin.
Bishop Gurnov said that, depending on whom you talk to, it’s believed that Rasputin took advantage of this apparent miracle with Aleksei Romanov. Rasputin warned Tzar Nicholas that if he wanted his son to stay alive and for his monarchy to reign succe
ssfully, Rasputin would have to have a seat in the Romanovs’ house of power!
Well, that was a little too much for some in the Romanov regime. Indeed, Tzar Nicholas and his wife, Alexandra, found out about Rasputin’s mistresses and they began to share the Russian officials’ concerns about his impact on the Russian government.
In December of 1916 there was a plot to kill Rasputin. Interestingly enough, two of the three men who ended up murdering Rasputin were relatives of the tzar. Prince Feliks Yusupov was married to Tzar Nicholas’ niece and Grand Duke Dimitry Pavlovich was cousin to the tzar. The third man was a member of the Russian parliament, the Duma…
“…yet Rasputin lived, even after eating the poisoned food,” Bishop Nicolas Gurnov was saying to young Wayne Paul, who had remained seated at the same chair through the Russian’s brief historical account of Rasputin. “So one of the three men shot Rasputin, and even that did not work!”
“Yeah,” Wayne confirmed, “I remember reading that at one of the other websites I went to! Poor guy probably would have lived to be an old man if it weren’t for the fact that they ended ganging up on Rasputin and dumping him in that river.”
“Yes, the Neva.” The bishop had been standing the whole time as he told the legend, gesticulating with his chubby hands. But now his body language had settled, and he reclaimed his seat next to Wayne’s. The bishop’s old eyes were unblinking as he addressed the young criminal. “Wayne, I don’t know what you and your friends were doing at our church when you saw this man. Honestly, I do not care…under normal circumstances, yes, right now you would be talking to police for trespassing on our property. But if it is true 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 th
e 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 you and your friends as accomplices to my family. You can join me as an ally, where I can offer you protection, but I would also expect some help from you.”
“Of course,” Wayne simply said as he nodded.
“Or you could simply move your family from Lincoln; may be even the Midwest in general...it is us he is really after.”
“And whatever it is that your family has had in possession for over a hundred years that he wants so badly, and you are still not willing to tell me what it is...”
The Bishop merely smiled while the two guards stoically looked on; waiting to see which way Wayne would choose to go. Indeed, Wayne thought hard on it while the three Russians kept their eyes on him.
“How do I know he won't come after me if I decide to move my family?”
“Honestly, you won't ever know that for certain. I was hoping that the nuclear waste would eventually kill him from the radiation after he would open up the box in the safe, but I have gotten word today that he was seen around Lincoln.” Another shrug from the Bishop.
But that also meant that Wayne knew he could never live his life as carefree anymore. And, ultimately, he knew he could not do it himself...not against Rasputin!
Wayne stood up from his chair and reached across the table and shook Bishop Gurnov's hand. “So, how do I put my talents to work for the Orthodox Church of Lincoln?”
~~fin~~
EBOOK FIVE:
“The Caregiver”
Tate Morgan is a professional caregiver in the health care field. She gets a new client, who moves in with her financially well-off daughter and son-in-law after her husband died.
During a date-night for the Barnetts, Tate is left at the house, alone, to protect her new client, Cynthia, from what appears to be a Shadow person in the house!