Chapter 20: The Miracle Healer

Among socialist activists, the name M was like a rising sun.

It was safe to say that, among Russian revolutionaries at least, there was not a soul who didn’t know of M.

He possessed insight colder and deeper than any other revolutionary’s, along with the foresight to see into the future.

And yet no one knew who he was; no one could even guess.

Some revolutionaries even said that M didn’t actually exist, that he was a fictional hero invented by the leadership.

But the top leadership, and their trusted confidants, knew.

M was a real person.

And the only thread leading to that M was a priest named Gapon.

It was a cold November morning when Lev Borisovich Kamenev arrived in Petersburg’s Vyborg District.

A close associate of Lenin’s, married to Trotsky’s younger sister Olga, this 20-year-old was a rare man trusted by both sides.

He didn’t have much experience yet, but for that very reason, his passion to meet M burned hotter than anyone’s.

In front of the Vyborg soup kitchen, Lev paused to catch his breath, then stepped inside.

Within, a young priest in a cassock was handing out bread to the slum children.

“…Georgy Gapon.”

Every one of M’s contributed articles had passed through this man’s hands on its way to London.

Which naturally raised one question.

What if this man was M himself?

Couldn’t he have used the excuse of polishing the prose to disguise writing that was actually his own?

Lev’s heart pounded at the thought of meeting the man who might be M.

“Father Gapon, I presume?”

“Yes. Forgive me, where might you be….”

“An acquaintance sent me. I’m a friend of a man named Dmitri.”

At the pre-arranged code phrase, Gapon’s expression shifted almost imperceptibly, and he gave a slight nod.

“Come inside, please.”

In the small storeroom behind the soup kitchen, Lev got straight to the point the moment the door closed.

“I want to meet Comrade M.”

“…I believe I already told you by letter that that’s impossible.”

“Comrade Lenin and Comrade Trotsky sent me together. Both of them wish to meet Comrade M and borrow his wisdom.”

Gapon’s eyebrows rose slightly.

His face said he’d heard the rumors of their split at the Party Congress, and found it unexpected that they would join hands again just to see this one man, M.

“Father… you, ah, you wouldn’t happen to be M yourself, would you?”

Gapon’s eyes went round for a moment, then he snorted a laugh.

“Me? I’m just the man who delivers the letters.”

“But I heard you polished the prose. If you touched the originals, then the content, too….”

“All I did was tidy the spelling and the phrasing. I didn’t change a single letter of the content.”

Still unable to shake his suspicion, Lev subtly probed with a few more exchanges, but the truth became obvious soon enough.

This man was not M.

Between the theoretical depth of M’s articles and the understanding this priest displayed lay a chasm no performance could fake.

Gapon was a good man who loved the poor.

His skill at polishing sentences was excellent, too.

But when it came to reading the currents of world affairs, he was hopelessly lacking.

If this was an act, Gapon should have been an actor, not a priest.

“…Then what sort of person is M, exactly?”

“There isn’t much I can tell you. But one thing is certain. He is very, very different from anything you’re imagining.”

The face of a man who knew something but could never say it.

So the rumor that he’d come to know M through confession must be true after all.

Lev decided not to press further.

Because right now, there was something more important than M’s identity.

“Father. Then is there anything Comrade M asked you to pass along to us?”

“Ah, there is. Take this.”

Gapon drew a thick envelope from inside his cassock.

When Lev opened it, he found it packed full of expenditure records for the Russian naval budget, a copy of the order for the forcible suppression of the strike at the Nikolayev Naval Shipyard, and documents tracing the flow of funds wired to Paris.

“Th-this is….”

“The records of Grand Duke Alexei Alexandrovich, General Admiral of the Russian Navy.”

Lev’s fingertips trembled.

“Half of this year’s naval budget vanished into that man’s luxury and debauchery.”

“How… how on earth did you get this?”

“The Okhrana has been approaching me lately, trying to recruit me. When I asked M for advice, he told me to pretend to cooperate and smuggle information out from the inside. So I followed his word.”

Lev’s eyes flashed with elation.

So that was it. That was how M knew so much about the inner workings of the Tsar’s government.

Planting Gapon inside the Okhrana as a double agent… skill like that could only draw admiration.

“And this, you absolutely must see.”

“An order… for forcible suppression?”

“Yes. You recall the mass strike that broke out at the Nikolayev Naval Shipyard during the southern strikes? The Grand Duke personally ordered it forcibly suppressed. Because it was disrupting his schedule for siphoning off the naval budget.”

“Ha… haha, he trampled the workers to keep his own embezzlement on schedule?”

“Astonishingly, yes. And the bloody tears of those trampled workers, I’m told, were turned into diamond necklaces.”

Lev bit his lip as he turned the documents page by page.

Garbage who lived in luxury on workers’ blood and tears while eating away at the state.

Wasn’t it the duty of revolutionaries to sweep such men away?

‘M truly is the man to be the guiding lamp of the revolutionaries.’

Lev left the place certain that coming all this way had not been in vain.

* * *

“Young Master, a young man named Lev Kamenev came to see me.”

The day after this Lev fellow’s visit, I dropped by under the pretext of Sunday volunteer work, and Gapon reported the news at once.

“That saves us the time of sending the materials, with them coming to us themselves.”

“Yes. He says they want to meet M.”

“Of course they do.”

I’d already scattered bait everywhere, so a fish taking the hook wasn’t much of a surprise.

Though Trotsky signing on alongside Lenin was a little unexpected.

Looks like they’re genuinely burning up inside, desperate for even one look at me.

Still, if those people started seriously asking around everywhere to find M, sooner or later the sparks might land on Gapon; time to start keeping that in mind.

“Father. If it ever looks like they might turn violent trying to dig up my identity, just tell them.”

“…Pardon? But then….”

“They wouldn’t believe it anyway.”

Frankly, if someone claimed an 8-year-old kid was M, who on earth would believe it?

They’d conclude Gapon had gone mad, or was lying to protect himself.

“And even if they truly did believe it, I have other ways to make use of that, so don’t worry.”

“…Understood, Young Master.”

Not once had things gone wrong when he’d followed my word, so he nodded as a matter of course.

“Father. In exchange, please report this matter to Section Chief Yakov, suitably dressed up.”

The Okhrana currently considered Gapon one of their own.

Popular among the poor workers, Gapon was a man the Okhrana had once tried its utmost to recruit, and it had kept at the same work even after the organization’s overhaul.

“Just say it’s information obtained from an informant planted among the revolutionaries. That you’ve received an intelligence report that the revolutionaries are targeting His Imperial Highness the Grand Duke.”

“But then… that means giving information to the Okhrana. Is that all right?”

“Yes. That way, you’ll be living up to the Okhrana’s expectations, so they’ll reward you in turn. You know, the things you want. Expanding the poor relief programs, a new employment plan for the jobless, things like that.”

A bright smile spread across Gapon’s face.

After all, the reason he moved on my advice in the first place was that he’d been won over by my argument that this was the best path for Russia’s poor.

“Truly? Then the workers’ assembly I’ve been working to establish….”

“Of course. Approving one little project for a priest who helps the Okhrana is nothing at all. I’ll put in a good word with Section Chief Yakov.”

“Thank you, Young Master!”

Gapon tucked the papers into his cassock and left, beaming.

A few days later, a report came up from Section Chief Yakov.

“Young Master. I delivered the intelligence Father Gapon brought directly to His Imperial Highness the Grand Duke.”

“How did he react?”

“He said to come and speak with him first, so it seems I must go in person. He instructed me to bring you as well, Young Master, so let us go together.”

Yakov’s subtle expression seemed to give the answer away, but I pretended to know nothing and headed with him to the Grand Duke’s mansion.

Set in the most glittering quarter of central Petersburg, Grand Duke Alexei Alexandrovich’s drawing room was beyond anything the word “staggering” could express.

From the gilt ornaments embroidering the walls to the marble floor supposedly imported from Italy, even a single chandelier hanging from the ceiling looked pricier than a whole slum block’s living expenses for a year.

-Doesn’t it just swell your heart, knowing all of this was built on the Russian navy’s budget?

The place looks grander than the imperial palace the Tsar lives in; seriously, how much money has this man been gorging himself on?

And apparently this isn’t even the only one; he has a mansion in Paris too?

-Word is the wine cellar in this mansion holds 3,000 bottles of French wine alone. While the navy’s sailors go hungry.

My gut twisted until I was on the verge of retching.

“Oho, so you’re the child His Majesty dotes on?”

When I opened the drawing room door and stepped inside, he waved at me, perched on a sofa, looking down at me.

His mouth was smiling, but there wasn’t a trace of laughter in his eyes.

“It is an honor to meet you, Your Imperial Highness.”

“Haha, such fine manners for a little fellow. Just what I’d expect of a child our Niki treasures.”

He was playing at warmth, but it was surface manner and nothing more; his true feelings, that he had no wish to spare a thought for some collateral Odoyevsky, showed through with perfect transparency.

But unlike with me, who at least rated a show of warmth, the look he turned on Yakov was on another level entirely.

“Yakov. I’m told you’re the one who asked to see me? A Petersburg Okhrana section chief, insolent beyond all measure just because he enjoys the Tsar’s favor.”

I’d never seen contempt thrown as such a dead-center fastball before; it was almost fascinating.

Naked hostility, without so much as an attempt to hide it.

No doubt because he’d concluded the Okhrana, with the Tsar’s trust at its back, was cutting down his people one by one.

“Your Imperial Highness. I apologize for the discourtesy. But urgent information has come in from a spy planted inside the revolutionary movement.”

“What?”

“An intelligence report that the Socialist Revolutionary Party’s assassination organization is targeting Your Imperial Highness. A concrete assassination plot appears to be underway, and the Okhrana wishes to assign additional security personnel to….”

Before he could even finish, the corner of the Grand Duke’s mouth twisted.

“Yakov.”

“Yes?”

“Did you think I wouldn’t notice you people cutting down every appointee I recommend? And now that I’ve applied the brakes, this is how you mean to frighten me, is it?”

“Y-Your Imperial Highness, that was never our….”

“Enough. I don’t want to hear it. I see no reason to listen any further to base intelligence dogs daring to make threats against a member of the imperial family.”

The Okhrana might be called a secret police organization, but to men of power like the Grand Duke, it had always been treated as something beneath even an errand boy.

In the original history, after all, his own younger brother Grand Duke Sergei had refused the Okhrana’s proposal to expand his security detail, and been assassinated for it.

Realizing that saying anything more here would be no different from talking to a wall, Yakov shut his mouth.

The Grand Duke glared at him, drunk on his sense of victory, then let his gaze drift naturally back to me.

“Misha, was it? The same goes for you.”

“…Huh?”

“Dip your feet into base work like intelligence at a tender age, and you become base yourself. A child His Majesty treasures ought to be learning with dignity somewhere more proper, not doing menial work like this.”

He apparently believed, in his own mind, that he was offering genuinely useful life advice; his voice was soaked in sincerity.

It was just that what came out of his throat wasn’t worth hearing, which left me simply dumbfounded.

“I will keep it in mind, Your Imperial Highness. Thank you for your instruction.”

The Grand Duke snorted and rose from his seat.

While the chamber attendants rushed out with his coat and draped it over his shoulders, Yakov’s face stayed frozen and pale.

“Safe travels home, Your Imperial Highness.”

What more could a mere illegitimate son doing vulgar intelligence work say, when the noble Grand Duke had announced his departure?

Nothing to do but fold my hands politely and see him off.

* * *

Exactly one week had passed since he’d given that base Okhrana section chief who didn’t know his place a proper schooling.

Today, as ever, Grand Duke Alexei Alexandrovich had productively siphoned off the naval budget.

Three diamond rings and two necklaces bought with that money lay neatly arranged in a velvet box inside his carriage.

“Heh heh heh… as if base curs like that could interfere with my romantic ventures. Not a chance.”

The road across central Petersburg toward his country villa in the suburbs was, as always, clear.

Yakov’s so-called warning had long since gone in one ear and out the other.

He was on his way to deliver gifts to his mistress, for heaven’s sake; dragging a string of guards along would be absurd.

That piece of trash had obviously meant to saddle him with a mob of bodyguards to interfere with his earnings.

For the General Admiral, spending a bit of the naval budget on himself was his obvious right; laughable wretches.

As he sat sneering at the Okhrana, a figure came into view, standing on the road ahead of a small bridge over a tributary of the Neva River.

A man who looked like a worker with an injured leg was limping slowly along, groaning.

The carriage stopped.

The Grand Duke opened the window and stuck his head out.

“You cur, out of the way this ins….”

KABOOOOM!

And then, just as the world before his eyes flushed white, his vision drowned in black.

He could think of nothing.

He could see nothing.

Not wealth, not power, not honor.

The man who had clutched everything and let go of nothing left this world in futility, without so much as a coin in his grasp.

“Grand Duke Alexei has been assassinated by the Socialist Revolutionary Party!”

How on earth had a man of the Grand Duke’s rank come to grief traveling about without so much as a proper escort?

An investigation was launched at once, and the answer came in less than a day.

The box found in the carriage General Admiral Grand Duke Alexei had been riding in, and the lustrous diamond rings and necklaces inside it, told the whole story.

The fact that all of it had been bought with embezzled naval funds leaked to the public exactly two days after the incident.

About 2 months before the Russo-Japanese War broke out.

The most deeply rooted malignant tumor in the Russian navy was excised, along with a burning carriage.

~~~

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