Philippe and Grigory Rasputin, were heavily immersed in the sexual and mystical properties of the alchemist tradition. Their Book of Flowers is much more than a recipe book for the medicine of Noah. In language, symbol, and aesthetic, it is a paean to the chemical wedding—the apotheosis of alchemy, the height of human spiritual aspiration. To understand Angela’s interest in the Russian artifact, you must consider its symbols and Enochian jargon on a metaphoric plane, a moral plane—even an anagogical plane.”
Something clicked in Vera’s mind. Just twenty-four hours earlier she herself had lectured Verlaine and Bruno on Angela’s Jungian approach to the society’s most revered texts. “This Book of Flowers was her Jacob’s Ladder,” Vera said, reaching for the journal.
“I could not have chosen a more apt analogy myself,” Valko said, releasing the book into her hands and walking to an oak armoire from which he removed a thick collection of folders. “This extraordinary collection of firsthand accounts of Rasputin’s life was smuggled out of the USSR. It was my daughter who first found the files more than twenty years before I bought it, during her search for documentation about Rasputin. She read through it and then buried it in a Soviet paper graveyard when she was done. Angela had hoped to find some mention of the flower book. There was nothing at all, but she did find allusions to Rasputin’s friendship with an herbalist. This man practiced medicine, Tibetan medicine in particular. Badmaieff, as he was called, had the honor of making tinctures for the tsar, mostly teas mixed with cannabis to restore his calm—the tsar was a mess psychologically during the First World War. Angela found this rather commonplace—herbal medicines were popular among Russian peasants, who believed that they were ‘God’s cures.’ Rasputin was, above all else, a peasant from Pokrovskoye, and there could be no importance whatsoever placed on giving the tsar tea. Badmaieff may have been just another quack.”
“Or,” Vera said, feeling a sense of satisfaction at the direction Valko was taking them, “he may have held information Angela needed.”
“Precisely,” Valko said. “It was at this point that my daughter came to me for help. Communicating through her friend and colleague Vladimir’s contacts, I learned that Badmaieff’s daughter, Katya, was alive and living in Leningrad. This was over thirty years ago, when there were still people alive who remembered Rasputin. Katya agreed to speak with me and invited me to her apartment near the Anichkov Palace.”
“Risky business, that would have been,” Vera said under her breath.
“As it turned out, Katya was relieved that I had found her. She had long wanted to tell her father’s story to someone, but she hadn’t known whom to trust. The burden of such a history had taken a great toll on her. She was haggard and twisted, her bones weak from osteoporosis. I listened to her story—which even I, who believed I’d heard everything under the sun, found utterly incredible—and then I made her write everything down and sign it, so that I could deliver her account directly to Angela in Paris.”
“I bet that was one amazing testament,” Sveti said, giving a low whistle.
“Quite,” Valko said, pulling a thin folio bound in red leather from the stack of papers. Vera recognized the society colophon on the spine and knew it must be an angelologist’s field notes.
Vera reached for the folio. “This was written by Angela?”
“Her mother,” Valko said, his voice grim. “Collected in this folio are things that my daughter was never meant to read. Officially, they are the reports of her mother, Gabriella Lévi-Franche, about her resistance work in Paris during the Nazi occupation. But between the lines lies the truth of Angela’s true paternity.”
“Forgive me for saying so, Raphael,” Azov said, a hint of apology in his manner. “But Angela’s connection to Percival Grigori is common knowledge.”
“Common knowledge now, perhaps,” Valko said, “but very closely guarded information during Angela’s lifetime. After her murder, Gabriella and I both were devastated to find this red book among Angela’s belongings. Not only did she die knowing I was not her biological father, she died knowing that her mother and I deliberately deceived her. It must have hurt her deeply to realize that she was descended from our enemy.”
Valko sighed deeply, and Vera felt a stab of guilt that they were forcing him to recall such painful memories.
“Finding Katya’s deposition inside the red book was like being slapped in the face,” Valko continued. “Clearly Angela wanted to send her mother and me