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apartment and secret meetings between the Tsarina and Rasputin at the house of her best friend, Anna Vyrubova
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    The Tsarina was not well liked among the Russian people. They called her Nemka, the German Woman, and now that the country was at war with Germany, they wondered where her own loyalties lay
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    After reading the report, the Tsar ordered Stolypin never to speak to him again about Rasputin. When Stolypin was shot by an assassin named Dimitri Bogrov at an opera house in Kiev, dying five days later, the lack of concern shown by the Tsar and Alexandra caused a scandal in the Russian court
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    When the assassin Bogrov was arrested, he turned out to be a paid informant of the Okhrana. Lawyers at Bogrov’s trial were not permitted to ask whether there had been any connection between the assassin Bogrov and the Romanov family. Less than a week after Stolypin’s death, Bogrov himself was executed
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    From then on, Rasputin’s meetings with the Tsarina continued unopposed. Rumors of infidelity spread. Although Pekkala himself did not believe that they were true, he knew many who did
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    What Pekkala did believe was that the Tsarina’s anxiety over her son’s precarious health had pushed her to the brink of her own sanity. In spite of all the riches of the Romanovs, there was no cure their money could have bought. So the Tsarina had turned to superstitions, which now so governed her life that she existed in a world seen only through a lens of fear. And somehow, through that lens, Rasputin had taken on the presence of a god
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    The Tsar himself was not so easily convinced, and Rasputin’s influence might have faded if not for one event which secured for him the loyalty of the entire royal family, and also sealed his fate
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    At the Romanovs’ dreary hunting lodge of Spala, the young Tsarevich slipped when getting out of the bath and suffered a hemorrhage so severe that the doctors told his parents to make preparations for a funeral
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    Then a telegram arrived from Rasputin, assuring the Tsarina that her son would not die
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    What happened next, even Rasputin’s harshest critics were unable to deny
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    After the arrival of the telegram, Alexei began, quite suddenly, to recover
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    From that point on, no matter what Rasputin did, he became almost untouchable
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    Almost
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    Rasputin’s excesses continued, and Pekkala had quietly dreaded the day when he might be summoned by the Tsar to investigate the Siberian. One way or the other, it would have been the end of Pekkala’s career, or even of his life, just as it was for Stolypin. Perhaps for that very reason, or because he preferred not to know the truth, the Tsar had never placed upon Pekkala the burden of handling such a case
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    “Our friend,” Pekkala heard the Tsar snap, “would do well to keep in mind that I myself appointed Pekkala.”
    “Now, my darling,” said the Tsarina, and there was the rustle of a dress as she moved across the floor, “no one is suggesting that you were wrong to have appointed him. Your loyalty to Pekkala is beyond reproach. It is Pekkala’s loyalty to you that has come into question.”
    Hearing this, Pekkala felt a burning in his chest. He had never done anything remotely disloyal. He knew this and the Tsar knew this. But in that moment, Pekkala felt the bile rise in his throat, because he knew that the Tsar was vulnerable. He could be persuaded. The Tsar liked to think of himself as a decisive man, and in some things he was, but he could be made to believe almost anything if his wife had decided to convince him
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    “Sunny, don’t you understand?” protested the Tsar. “Pekkala’s loyalty is not to me.”
    “Well, don’t you think it should be?”
    “Pekkala’s duty is to the task I gave him,” replied the Tsar, “and that is where his loyalty belongs.”
    “His duty—” began the Tsarina
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    The Tsar cut her off. “Is to find out the truth of whatever matter I place before him, however unpleasant it might be to hear it. Such a man