Siberian Red

hat. His thin-soled shoes were narrow in the toe and highly polished. The man did not glance up at Pekkala, but only stared at the floor with a grim expression on his face.
    Pekkala had seen that look before, from people who had been caught red-handed at some illegal activity but were too dignified, or too afraid, to run away.
    Opposite the man, slumped on a couch with legs spread and bare feet resting on the table, was Rasputin. He wore a silk robe with a Japanese kimono pattern and a belt like a bell-ringer’s rope. ‘Pekkala,’ he said, and the name seemed to crack from his lips like a tiny spark of electricity. Haphazardly, Rasputin began to rearrange his clothes. ‘Has Chief Inspector Vassileyev finally sent you to arrest me or else,’ he gestured vaguely at the man huddled across the table, ‘is it this gentleman you’ve come to put in chains?’
    The man still refused to look up, as if by remaining motionless, he might escape detection.
    ‘I am not here to arrest either of you.’
    ‘Thank God for that,’ sighed the man in the black coat.
    Rasputin lifted one finger and wagged it at the man. ‘You can go now and be sure to thank God for that, as well.’
    Obediently, the man stood. From the inside pocket of his coat, he removed an envelope and placed it on the table between Rasputin’s large and hairy feet. ‘So we have an understanding?’
    Rasputin laughed. ‘I understand you, but that does not mean we understand each other. Come back tomorrow. Bring another envelope.’
    ‘Not without some kind of guarantee,’ protested the man. ‘I wouldn’t dream of it.’
    ‘You will,’ Rasputin told him, ‘and that is all you’ll dream about.’
    Too indignant to reply, the man stormed out of the room.
    The candle flame shuddered as he passed by and the face of the little Buddha appeared to be laughing at him.
    ‘What was that about?’ Pekkala asked Rasputin.
    ‘He is a representative for a jeweller in Petersburg. He is hoping to have a royal warrant bestowed upon his company.’
    ‘And why is he asking you for that?’
    ‘Because he can’t ask anyone else! Least of all the Romanovs.’
    ‘I don’t understand.’
    ‘And that is why I love you, Pekkala.’ Rasputin sat forward, lifting his bare feet from the table and planting them firmly on the floor. He picked up the bribe, index finger shuffling through the bills as he counted them. Then he tossed the money back on to the table. ‘You see, Pekkala, you can’t just ask for the royal warrant. You have to be given it. If you do ask for it, there’s no chance at all of receiving one. Instead, you must give the impression that you would accept it if offered, but that, in the meantime, you do not expect anything. That’s the way things work.’
    Pekkala did not know much about royal warrants, but the strange logic of wanting but not daring to show the want, or not asking in the hopes of receiving was familiar to him from other aspects of the royal family. It was the way that they maintained their grip upon those levels of Russian society which fanned out around the Romanovs like ripples from a stone thrown in a pond.
    ‘He wants me to convince the Tsarina,’ continued Rasputin.
    ‘And you think you could?’
    Rasputin breathed out sharply through his nose. ‘Please, Pekkala. Of course I could! The question is, will I?’
    ‘And what is the answer?’
    ‘I don’t know yet, and that is what infuriates him.’
    ‘He would be even more infuriated if he knew you will be giving away his money to the next sad face that walks into the room.’
    Rasputin laughed. ‘I give away my money because it buys me something far more valuable than cash.’
    ‘And what is that?’
    ‘Loyalty. Affection. Information. Everything I would have spent it on, except this way I also earn friends. That’s something he will never figure out.’
    ‘Did you really think I had come to arrest you?’
    ‘Of course not! I can’t be arrested. Not in here. And probably not anywhere. Not even by you.’
    ‘I would not put that to the test.’  Pekkala went over to the table, found another candle, this one jammed into a wicker-covered Chianti bottle, and lit it.
    With enough light now to see around the room, he looked at the flimsy sheets of silk which had been draped across the walls, the mud-caked Berber carpet on the floor and what he at first thought was broken glass but which, he realised, was actually money. There were shiny coins everywhere, tossed like