by Steve Berry
He couldn't believe a man with Stalin's reputation was trying to convince him that a scoundrel peasant from the early part of the twentieth century had somehow predicted the reemergence of the Romanov dynasty. And, even more, an African American from South Carolina was somehow a part of all that. "I may not understand your sensitivity to fate, but I fully understand common sense. This is crap."
"Semyon Pashenko doesn't think so," Brezhnev was quick to say. "He stationed men at the circus for a reason, and he was right. Lord showed up. Our men reported that a circus performer was on the train last night. A woman. Akilina Petrovna. They even talked with her and thought nothing of it at the time, but she was led from the theater with Lord and driven off by Pashenko's men. Why, if there is nothing to this but fiction?"
A good question, Hayes silently admitted.
Stalin's face was severe. "Akilina means 'eagle' in old Russian. You speak our language. Did you know that?"
He shook his head.
"This is serious," Stalin said. "There are things at work we really do not fully understand. Until a few months ago, when the referendum passed, no one seriously thought a tsarist return possible, much less one that could be used for political advantage. But now both are possible. We must stop whatever is happening immediately, before it can gestate into something more. Use the telephone number we provided, assemble the men, and find your Mr. Lord."
"It's already being done."
"Do more."
"Why not do it yourself?"
"Because you have freedom of movement none of us enjoys. This task is yours to handle. It might even move beyond our borders."
"Orleg is looking for Lord right now."
"Perhaps a police bulletin regarding the Red Square shooting could multiply the number of eyes," Brezhnev said. "A policeman was killed. The militsya would be anxious to find the gunman. They might even solve our problem with a well-placed shot."
TWENTY-THREE
Lord said, "I'm sorry about what happened to your parents."
Akilina had been sitting still, eyes down, since Pashenko had left the room.
"My father wanted to be with his son. He intended on marrying the mother, but to emigrate you must secure permission of your parents--an absurd Soviet rule that stopped anyone from leaving. My grandmother, of course, gave her consent, but my grandfather had been missing since World War Two."
"Yet your father still had to have his okay?"
She nodded. "He was never declared dead. None of the missing ever were. No father, no permission, no visa. The repercussions came fast. My father was dropped from the circus and not allowed to perform anywhere. It was all he knew how to do."
"Why didn't you see them the last few years?"
"Neither could be tolerated. All my mother could see was another woman who'd birthed her ex-husband's baby. All he could see was somebody who'd left him for another man. Their duty was to endure the situation for the collective good." The resentment was clear now. "They sent me to my grandmother. I hated them at first for doing it, but as I got older I simply could not stand to be around either of them, so I stayed away. They died within a few months of each other. Simple flu that became pneumonia. I often wonder if my fate will be the same. When I can no longer please the crowds, where will I end up?"
He didn't know what to say.
"It is hard for Americans to understand how things were. How they still are, to some extent. You could not live where you wanted, do what you wanted. Our choices were made for us early in life."
He knew what she was referring to, the raspredeleniye. Distribution. A decision made at age sixteen as to what a person was to do with the rest of his or her life. Those with clout possessed a choice. Those without took what was available. Those in disfavor did what they were told.
"Party members' children were always looked after," she said. "They got the best assignments in Moscow. That was where everyone wanted to be."
"Except you?"
"I hated it. There was nothing but misery here for me. But I was compelled to return. My talents were needed by the state."
"You didn't want to perform?"
"Did you know what you wanted to do for the rest of your life at age sixteen?"
He silently conceded her point.
"Several of my friends chose suicide. Far preferable to spending the rest of your life at the Arctic Circle or in some remote Siberian village doing something you despise. I had a friend from school who wanted to be a doctor. She was an excellent student, but lacked the requisite party affiliation to be selected for university. Others of far less ability were allowed to attend over her. She ended up working in a toy factory." She stared at him hard. "You are lucky, Miles Lord. When you get old or disabled, there are government benefits to help. We have no such thing. The communists spoke of the tsar and his extravagance. They were no better."
He was beginning to understand even more the Russian preference for the distant past.
"I told you on the train about my grandmother. It was all true. She was taken off one night and never seen again. She worked in a state store and watched while managers pilfered the shelves, blaming the thefts on others. She finally wrote a letter to Moscow, complaining. She was fired, her pension canceled, her work papers stamped with the badge of an informant. No one would hire her. So she took up verse. Her crime was poetry."
He tilted his head to one side. "What do you mean?"
"She liked to write about the Russian winter, hunger, and the cries of children. How the government was indifferent to common people. The local party soviet considered that a threat to national order. She became noticed--an individual rising above the community. That was her crime. She might become a rallying point for opposition. Someone who could galvanize support. So she was made to disappear. We are perhaps the only country in the world that executed its poets."
"Akilina, I can understand the hatred all of you have for the communists. But there needs to be an element of reality here. Before 1917 the tsar was a fairly inept leader who didn't necessarily care if his police killed civilians. Hundreds died on Bloody Sunday in 1905 merely for protesting his policies. It was a brutal regime that used force to survive, just like the communists."
"The tsar represents a link with our heritage. One that stretches back hundreds of years. He is the embodiment of Russia."
He sat back in the chair and took a few deep breaths. He studied the fire in the hearth and listened as the wood crackled into flames. "Akilina, he wants us to go after this supposed heir, who may or may not be alive. And all because some faith-healing idiot, nearly a century ago, predicted we would."
"I want to go."
He stared at her. "Why?"
"Since we met, I have felt strange. As if it was meant that you and I would connect. There was no fear when you entered my compartment, and I never once questioned my decision to let you spend the night. Something inside told me to do it. I also knew I would see you again."
He wasn't as mystical as this attractive Russian seemed to be. "My father was a preacher. He traveled from town to town lying to people. He loved to scream the word of God, but all he did was take advantage of people's poverty and play off their fears. He was the most unholy man I ever knew. Cheated on his wife, his kids, and his God."
"But he fathered you."
"He was there when my mother conceived, but he didn't father me. I raised myself."
She motioned to her chest. "He is still inside. Whether you want to admit it or not."
No, he didn't want to admit that. At one point, years ago, he'd seriously considered changing his last name. Only his mother's pleas had stopped him. "You realize, Akilina, this could all be made up."
"For what purpose? You have wondered for days why men are trying to kill you. This professor has provided an answer."
"Let them go find this Romanov survivor themselves. They have my information."
"Rasputin said only you and I could succeed."
He shook his head. "You don't re
ally believe that?"
"I don't know what to believe. My grandmother told me, when I was a child, that she saw good things for me in life. Maybe she was right."
Not necessarily the answer he wanted, but there was something inside nudging him forward, too. If nothing else, this so-called quest would get him out of Moscow, away from Droopy and Cro-Magnon. And he couldn't deny being fascinated by the whole thing. Pashenko was right. There were an awful lot of coincidences that had come together over the past few days. He didn't for one minute believe Gregorii Rasputin had been able to predict the future, but he was intrigued by Felix Yussoupov's involvement. The Originator, Pashenko had called him, almost with reverence.
He recalled the man's history. Yussoupov was a bisexual transvestite who had murdered Rasputin out of a false belief that the fate of a nation rested on what he did. He took an almost perverse pride in his accomplishment and basked in the limelight of that foolish act for fifty years thereafter. He was another hypocritical showboat, a dangerous and malevolent fraud, like Rasputin and like Lord's own father. Yet Yussoupov was apparently involved in something that bespoke unselfishness.
"All right, Akilina. We'll do it. Why not? What else have I to do?" He glanced over at the kitchen door as Semyon Pashenko stepped back into the den.
"I just received some disturbing news," the older man said. "One of our associates, the one who carted away the man at the circus, did not show up at the assigned location with his prisoner. He's been found dead."
Droopy had escaped. Not a comforting prospect.
"I'm sorry," Akilina said. "He saved our lives."
Pashenko looked listless. "He knew the risks when he joined our Holy Band. He is not the first to die for this cause." The older man sat down in a chair, a tired look in his eyes. "And will probably not be the last."
"We've decided," Lord said, "to do it."
"I thought you might. But do not forget what Rasputin said. Twelve must die before the search is complete."
Lord wasn't necessarily concerned about any hundred-year-old prophecy. Mystics had been wrong before. Droopy and Cro-Magnon, though, were real, their threat immediate.
"You realize, Mr. Lord," Pashenko said, "that you were the object of the killing on Nikolskaya Prospekt four days ago, not Artemy Bely. Men are after you. Men whom I suspect already know some of what we know. These men will want to stop you."
"I assume," Lord said, "no one will know where we're going except you?"
"That's right. And it will stay that way. Only you, I, and Miss Petrovna know the details of the starting point."
"That's not entirely true. The man I work for knows of Alexandra's writing. But I don't see how he would connect any of this. And if he did, he would tell no one."
"Do you have any reason not to trust your employer?"
"I showed him that stuff two weeks ago and he never said a word about it. I don't think he even gave it much thought." He shifted in his seat. "Okay, since we've agreed to do it, how about explaining the more you alluded to earlier."
Pashenko sat up, emotion returning to his face. "The Originator set the search up in steps, each independent of the other. If the right person, with the right words, appeared at each step, information for the next would be provided. Only Yussoupov knew the entire plan and, if he is to be believed, he told no one.
"We now know that somewhere in the village of Starodug is the first leg. I checked after our talk a few days ago. Kolya Maks was one of Nicholas's palace guards who turned, after the revolution, to the Bolsheviks. By the time of the Romanov murders he was a member of the Ural Soviet. In the revolution's infancy, before Moscow asserted dominant control, local soviets ruled their respective geographic areas. So the Ural Soviet controlled the tsar's fate far more than the Kremlin. The Ural region was staunchly anti-tsarist. They wanted Nicholas dead from the first day he set foot in Yekaterinburg."
"I recall all that," Lord said, thinking about the peace treaty Lenin had signed in March 1918 that removed Russia from World War I. "Lenin thought he was rid of the Germans. Hell, he practically begged for peace. The terms were so humiliating one of the Russian generals shot himself after the signing ceremony. Then the German ambassador was assassinated in Moscow on July 6, 1918. Lenin now faced the possibility of another German invasion. So he planned to use the Romanovs as a bargaining chip, thinking the kaiser cared enough to actually want them, especially Alexandra, who was born a German-born princess."
"But the Germans did not want any Romanovs," Pashenko said. "That's when the family became a liability. So the Ural Soviet was ordered to kill them. Kolya Maks may have been part of that. He may even have been present at the execution."
"Professor, that man is surely dead," Akilina said. "Too many years have passed."
"But it was his duty to make sure the information survived. We must assume Maks stayed faithful to his oath."
Lord was perplexed. "Why don't you just go yourself and find Maks? I understand you didn't have the name until now, but why do we have to do it?"
"The Originator made sure that only the raven and the eagle could be given the information. Even if I went, or sent someone else, the information would not be passed on. We must respect Rasputin's prophecy. The starets said only you could succeed where all others fail. I, too, must stay faithful to my oath, and respect what the Originator designed."
Lord searched his mind for more details about Felix Yussoupov. The family was one of the wealthiest in Russia, and Felix had only inherited the family reins when his older brother was killed in a duel. He'd been a disappointment from birth. His mother had wanted a girl and to console herself she kept him in long hair and dresses until he was five.
"Wasn't Yussoupov fascinated by Rasputin?" he asked.
Pashenko nodded. "Some biographers even suggest a homosexual link, one Rasputin may have rejected, which might have led to Yussoupov's resentment. His wife was Nicholas II's favorite niece, regarded as perhaps the most eligible young woman in Russia. He possessed a deep loyalty to Nicholas, and thought it his duty to rid the tsar of the threatening influence of Rasputin. It was a misguided belief, encouraged by other nobles who resented the starets's position at court."
"I never regarded Yussoupov as particularly intelligent. Much more a follower than a leader."
"That may have been intentional. In fact, it is our belief that is precisely the case." Pashenko paused. "Now that you have agreed, I can tell you more of the information passed down to me. My great-uncle and uncle both harbored their portion of the secret until death. It is the words that must be uttered to the next person in the chain, which I now believe is Kolya Maks, or his successor. He that endureth to the end shall be saved."
Lord thought immediately of his father. "From the gospel of Matthew."
Pashenko nodded. "Those words should gain access to the second part of the journey."
"You realize that this all could be a wild goose chase," Lord declared.
"I no longer think so. Both Alexandra and Lenin mentioned the same information. Alexandra penned her letter in 1916, describing the incident with Rasputin that the Originator independently passed to us. Lenin, six years later, wrote what was learned from a tortured White Guardsman. He specifically noted Maks's name. No. There is something in Starodug. Something Lenin could not discover. After his stroke in 1922, Lenin more or less retired and lost his zeal. By 1924 he was dead. Four years later Stalin sealed everything, and it stayed sealed until 1991. The Romanov business, Stalin called it. He forbade anyone to even speak of the imperial family. So no one ever followed Yussoupov's trail, if anyone even realized there was a trail to follow."
"As I recall," Lord said, "Lenin didn't necessarily consider the tsar a rallying point for opposition. By 1918 the Romanovs were discredited. 'Nicholas the Bloody' and all that. The disinformation campaign the communists waged against the imperials was quite successful."
Pashenko nodded. "Some of the tsar and tsarina's writings were first published then. All Lenin's idea. Tha
t way the people could read firsthand how indifferent their royal family had become. Of course, the published material was selective and heavily edited. It was also designed to send a message abroad. Lenin hoped the kaiser might want Alexandra back. He thought perhaps dangling her fate might ensure German compliance with the peace treaty, or perhaps a way to bargain a return of Russian prisoners of war. But the Germans possessed an extensive spy network throughout Russia, particularly in the Ural region, so I imagine they knew that the entire imperial family was murdered in July 1918. Lenin was, in essence, bargaining with corpses."
"What of all the stories about the tsarina and her daughters surviving?"
"More disinformation put out by the Soviets. Lenin was unsure how the world would view the murdering of women and children. Moscow tried hard to paint what happened as a valid execution carried out in heroic fashion. So the communists invented a story that the female Romanovs were taken off and died later in a White Army battle. Lenin thought disinformation would keep the Germans guessing. Once he saw that no one cared for any Romanov, regardless of sex or age, the pretense was dropped."
"Yet the disinformation remained."
Pashenko grinned. "Some of that our Holy Band must take credit for. My predecessors did an excellent job of misdirection. Part of the Originator's plan was to keep the Soviets guessing and the world wondering. Though I am not certain, I believe the entire Anna Anderson affair was a Yussoupov creation. He sent her to perpetuate a hoax, which the world readily accepted."
"Until DNA testing came along and proved her a fraud."
"But that was only recently. My guess is, Yussoupov taught her all the details she would need. The rest was her own magnificent performance."
"That was all part of this?"
"And much more, Mr. Lord. Yussoupov lived until 1967 and personally assured that his plan worked. The misinformation was not only to keep the Soviets off guard, but also to keep the surviving Romanovs in line. They could never be sure if a direct heir survived, so no one faction ever had complete control over the family. Anna Anderson played her role so well that even a lot of the Romanovs swore under oath she was Anastasia. Yussoupov was brilliant in what he conceived. After a while, pretenders emerged everywhere. There were books, movies, court fights. The deception took on a life of its own."