the Romanov Prophecy (2004)

by Steve Berry

  "And how would I handle any situation that might arise?"

  Stalin reached into his jacket pocket and withdrew a card. On it was written a telephone number. "There are men waiting at that number. If you were to instruct that they plunge themselves into the Moskva River and never surface, they would. We suggest you use that loyalty wisely."

  EIGHT

  WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 13

  Lord stared through the Mercedes's tinted window at the Kremlin's crimson walls. Bells in the clock tower high above pealed loud for eight AM. He and Taylor Hayes were being driven across Red Square. The driver was a bushy-headed Russian whom Lord might otherwise have found frightening, had Hayes not arranged the transportation himself.

  Red Square was devoid of people. Out of respect to the communists, a few of whom still lingered in the Duma, the cobbled expanse remained cordoned off until one PM each day, when Lenin's tomb closed to visitors. He thought the gesture ridiculous, but it seemed enough to satisfy the egos of those who once dominated this nation of 150 million.

  A uniformed guard reacted to a bright orange sticker on the car's windshield and waved the vehicle through Savior's Gate. He felt excitement at entering the Kremlin through this portal. The Spasskaya Tower above him had been erected in 1491 by Ivan III, part of his massive reconstruction of the Kremlin, and the gate had admitted every new tsar and tsarina to the ancestral seat of power. Today it was designated the official entrance for the Tsarist Commission and its staff.

  He was still shaky. Thoughts of his chase yesterday not far from this site kept racing through his mind. Hayes had assured him over breakfast that no chances would be taken, his safety would be guaranteed, and he was relying on his boss to make good on that assurance. He trusted Hayes. Respected him. He desperately wanted to be a part of what was happening, but he wondered if perhaps he was being foolish.

  What would his father say if he could see him now?

  The Reverend Grover Lord didn't much care for lawyers. He liked to describe them as locusts on the landscape of society. His father once visited the White House, part of a contingent of southern ministers invited for a photo op when the president signed off on a vain attempt at restoring prayer to the public schools. Less than a year later the Supreme Court struck down the law as unconstitutional. Godless locusts, his father had raved from the pulpit.

  Grover Lord didn't approve of his son becoming a lawyer and demonstrated his disgust by not providing one dime for law school, though he could have easily paid the entire bill. That had forced Lord to finance his own way with student loans and night jobs. He'd earned good grades and graduated with honors. He'd secured an excellent job and risen through the ranks. Now he was about to witness history.

  So screw Grover Lord, he thought.

  The car motored into the Kremlin yard.

  He admired what was once the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, a compact neoclassical rectangle. The red banner of the Bolsheviks no longer flew overhead. Instead, an imperial double-headed eagle flapped in the morning breeze. He also noticed the absence of Lenin's monument that had once sat off to the right, and remembered the uproar that had accompanied its removal. For once Yeltsin had ignored popular dissent and ordered the iron image melted for scrap.

  He marveled at the construction that surrounded him. The Kremlin epitomized the Russian penchant for big things. They'd always been impressed with city squares that could accommodate missile launchers, bells so large they could never be hoisted into their towers, and rockets so powerful as to be uncontrollable. Bigger was not only better, it was glorious.

  The car slowed and veered right.

  The Cathedrals of the Archangel Michael and Annunciation rose to the left, those of the Dormition and Twelve Apostles to the right. More unnecessarily obese buildings. Ivan III had commissioned them all, an extravagance that earned him the label "Great." Lord knew that many chapters in Russian history had opened and closed within those ancient edifices, each topped with gilded onion domes and elaborate Byzantine crosses. He'd visited them, but never dreamed that he'd be chauffeured into Cathedral Square in an official limousine, part of a national effort to restore the Russian monarchy. Not bad for a South Carolina preacher's son.

  "Some shit," Hayes said.

  Lord smiled. "You got that right."

  The car rolled to a stop.

  They stepped out into a frosty morning, the sky bright blue and cloud-free, unusual for a Russian autumn. Perhaps an omen of good things, Lord hoped.

  He'd never been inside the Palace of Facets. Tourists weren't allowed. It was one of the few structures within the Kremlin that endured in its original form. Ivan the Great had erected it in 1491, naming his masterpiece for the diamond-patterned limestone blocks that covered its exterior.

  He buttoned his overcoat and followed Hayes up the ceremonial Red Staircase. The original stairs had been destroyed by Stalin, this reincarnation fashioned a few years back from ancient paintings. From here, tsars had once made their way to the adjacent Cathedral of the Dormition to be crowned. And it was from this exact spot Napoleon had watched the fires that destroyed Moscow in 1812.

  They headed for the Great Hall.

  He'd only seen pictures of that ancient room and, as he followed Hayes inside, he quickly concluded none of those images did the space justice. He knew its size was fifty-four hundred square feet, the largest room in fifteenth-century Moscow, designed solely to impress foreign dignitaries. Today iron chandeliers burned bright and cast the massive center pillar and rich murals in sparkling gold, the scenes illustrating biblical subjects and the wisdom of the tsars.

  Lord imagined the scene before him as it would have been in 1613.

  The House of Ruirik, which for seven hundred years had ruled--Ivan the Great and Ivan the Terrible its most notable rulers--had died out. Subsequently, three men had tried to be tsar, but none succeeded. The Time of Troubles then ensued, twelve years of anguish while many sought to establish a new dynasty. Finally, the boyars, tired of chaos, came to Moscow--within the walls that surrounded him now--and selected a new ruling family. The Romanovs. But Mikhail, the first Romanov tsar, found a nation in utter turmoil. Brigands and thieves roamed the forests. Widespread hunger and disease wreaked havoc. Trade and commerce had nearly ceased. Taxes remained uncollected, the treasury nearly empty.

  Not all that dissimilar to now, Lord concluded.

  Seventy years of communism leaving the same stain as twelve years with no tsar.

  For a moment he visualized himself as a boyar who'd participated in that selection, clad in fine garments of velvet and brocade, wearing a sable hat, perched at one of the oak benches that lined the gilded walls.

  What a moment that must have been.

  "Amazing," Hayes whispered. "Through the centuries these fools couldn't get a wheat field to harvest more than one season, but they could build this."

  He agreed.

  A U-shaped row of tables draped in red velvet dominated one end of the room. He counted seventeen high-backed chairs and watched as each was filled with a male delegate. No women had made the top seventeen. There'd been no regional elections. Just a thirty-day qualifying period, then one nationwide vote, the seventeen people garnering a plurality becoming the commissioners. In essence, a gigantic popularity contest, but perhaps the simplest means to ensure that no one faction dominated the voting.

  He followed Hayes to a row of chairs and sat with the rest of the staff and reporters. Television cameras had been installed to broadcast the sessions live.

  The meeting was called to order by a delegate selected yesterday to act as chair. The man cleared his throat and started reading from a prepared statement.

  "On July 16, 1918, our most noble tsar, Nicholas II, and all the heirs of his body were taken from this life. Our mandate is to rectify the ensuing years and restore to this nation its tsar. The people have selected this commission to choose the person who will rule this country. That decision is not without precedent. Another group of men met her
e, in this same room, in 1613 and chose the first Romanov ruler, Mikhail. His issue ruled this nation until the second decade of the twentieth century. We have gathered here to right the wrong that was done at that time.

  "Last evening we took prayer with Adrian, Patriarch of All Russia. He called upon God to guide us in this endeavor. I state to all listening that this commission will be conducted in a fair, open, and courteous manner. Debate will be encouraged, as only with discussion can truth be determined. Now let all who may have business before us draw near and be heard."

  Lord patiently watched the entire morning session. The time was consumed with introductory remarks, parliamentary matters, and agenda setting. The delegates agreed that an initial list of candidates would be presented the next day, with a representative personally offering a candidate for consideration. A period of three days was approved for further nominations and debate. On the fourth day a vote would be taken to narrow the list down to three. Another round of intense debate would occur, and then a final selection would be made two days later. Unanimity would only be required on the last vote, as the national referendum mandated. All other votes would be by simple majority. If no candidate was selected after this six-day process, then the whole procedure would start again. But there seemed a general consensus that, for the sake of national confidence, every effort would be made to select an acceptable person on the first attempt.

  Shortly before the noon break, Lord and Hayes retreated from the Great Hall into the Sacred Vestibule. Hayes led him into one of the far portals, where the bushy-headed driver from that morning waited.

  "Miles, this is Ilya Zivon. He'll be your bodyguard when you leave the Kremlin."

  He studied the sphinxlike Russian, an icy glint radiating back from a vacant face. The man's neck was as broad as his jaw, and Lord was comforted by an apparent hard, athletic physique.

  "Ilya will look after you. He comes highly recommended. He's ex-military and knows his way around this town."

  "I appreciate this, Taylor. I really do."

  Hayes smiled and glanced at his watch. "It's nearly twelve and you need to get to the briefing. I'll handle things here. But I'll be at the hotel before you start." Hayes turned to Zivon. "You keep an eye on this fellow, just like we discussed."

  NINE

  12:30 PM

  Lord entered the Volkhov's conference room. The windowless rectangle was filled with three dozen men and women, all dressed in conservative attire. Waiters were just finishing serving drinks. The warm air, like the rest of the hotel, carried the scent of an ashtray. Ilya Zivon waited outside, just beyond the double doors leading to the hotel lobby. Lord felt better knowing the burly Russian was nearby.

  The faces before him were etched with concern. He knew their predicament. They'd been encouraged to invest in the reemerging Russia by an anxious Washington, and the lure of fresh markets had been too tempting to resist. But nearly constant political instability, a daily threat from the mafiya, and protection payments that were sapping away profits had turned a rosy investment opportunity into a nightmare. The ones here were the major American players in the new Russia: transportation, construction, soft drinks, mining, oil, communications, computers, fast food, heavy equipment, and banking. Pridgen & Woodworth had been hired to look after their collective interests, each relying on Taylor Hayes's reputation as a hard-nosed negotiator with the right contacts within the emerging Russia. This was Lord's first meeting with the group as a whole, though he knew many on an individual basis.

  Hayes followed him inside and lightly patted him on the shoulder. "Okay, Miles, do your thing."

  He stepped to the front of the brightly lit room. "Good afternoon. I'm Miles Lord." A quiet came over the gathering. "Some of you I've already met. To those I haven't, nice to have you here. Taylor Hayes thought a briefing might help answer your questions. Things are going to start happening fast and we might not have time to talk during the days ahead--"

  "You're goddamn right we have questions," a stout blond woman yelled with a New England twang. Lord knew her to be the head of Pepsico's Eastern European operations. "I want to know what's going on. My board is nervous as shit about all this."

  As they should be, Lord thought. But he kept his face tight. "You don't give me a chance to even get started, do you?"

  "We don't need speeches. We need information."

  "I can give you the raw data. Current national industrial output is down forty percent. The inflation rate is approaching one hundred fifty percent. Unemployment is low, about two percent, but underemployment is the real problem--"

  "We've heard all that," another CEO said. Lord didn't know the man. "Chemists are baking bread, engineers manning assembly lines. The Moscow newspapers are full of that crap."

  "But things aren't so bad that they can't get worse," Lord said. "There's a popular joke. Yeltsin and the governments that followed him managed in two decades to do what the Soviets failed to accomplish in seventy-five years: make the people long for communism." A few snickers came. "The communists still have a solid grassroots organization. Revolution Day every November is marked by impressive demonstrations. They preach nostalgia. No crime, minimal poverty, social guarantees. That message has a certain appeal to a nation deep in despair." He paused. "But the emergence of a fascist fanatical leader--neither a communist nor a democrat, but a demagogue--is the most dangerous scenario. That's particularly true given Russia's considerable nuclear capability."

  A few heads nodded. At least they were listening.

  "How did all this happen?" a wiry little man asked. Lord vaguely recalled that he was in computers. "I've never been able to understand how we got to this point."

  Lord stepped back toward the front wall. "Russians have always been big on the concept of a national idea. The Russian national character has never been based on individuality or market activity. It's much more spiritual, much deeper."

  "Be a whole lot easier if we could Westernize the whole place," one of the men said.

  He always bristled at the notion of Westernizing Russia. The nation would never be fully associated with the West, nor exclusively with the East. Instead it was, and always had been, a unique mixture. He believed the smart investor would be the one who understood Russian pride. He explained what he thought, then returned to answering the question.

  "The Russian government finally realized it needed something that stood above politics. Something that could be a rallying point for the people. Maybe even a concept they could use to govern. Eighteen months ago, when the Duma put out a call for a national idea along that line, it was surprised with what the Institute of Public Opinion and Market Research brought back. God, Tsar, and Country. In other words, bring back the monarchy. Radical? Certainly. But when the issue was put to a national vote, the people overwhelmingly said yes."

  "Why do you think?" one of the men asked.

  "I can only give you my opinion. First, there's a real fear of a resurgence of communism. We saw it years ago when Zyuganov challenged Yeltsin and nearly won. But a majority of Russians do not want a return to totalitarianism, and every poll says that. Still, that wouldn't stop a populist from preying on difficult times and sweeping into office with false promises.

  "The second reason is more deeply set. The people simply believe the current form of government is incapable of solving the country's problems. And quite frankly, I think they're right. Look at crime. Each one of you, I'm sure, pays protection money to one or more mafiya. You have no choice. Either that or end up going home in a body bag."

  He thought again of what happened yesterday, but he said nothing. Hayes had advised him to keep that to himself. The people in this room, he'd warned, were nervous enough without wondering whether their lawyers were now a target.

  "There is a pervasive belief that if you're not stealing, you're cheating yourself. Less than twenty percent of the population even bothers to pay taxes. There's almost a total internal breakdown. It's easy to see why people would believe anything
is better than the current situation. But there's also a certain nostalgia with regard to the tsar."

  "It's nuts," one of the men voiced. "A damn king."

  He understood how Americans viewed autocracy. But the combination of Tatar and Slav that melded into a modern Russian seemed to yearn for autocratic leadership, and it was that battle for supremacy that had kept Russian society sharp through the centuries.

  "The nostalgia is easy to understand," he said. "Only in the past decade has the real story about Nicholas II and his family been told. All across Russia there's a sentiment that what happened in July 1918 was wrong. Russians feel cheated by Soviet ideology, which passed the tsar off as the embodiment of evil."

  "Okay, the tsar's coming back--," one of the men started.

  "Not exactly," Lord said. "That's a misconception the press doesn't fully understand. That's why Taylor thought this session would be beneficial." He could see he had their full attention. "The concept of the tsar is coming back, but there are two questions that need to be answered. Who is to be tsar? And what is the extent of his power?"

  "Or her," one of the women said.

  He shook his head. "No. Only he. Of that we're sure. Since 1797 Russian law has decreed lineage would pass only through the male line. We assume that law will be maintained."

  "Okay," said another man, "answer the two questions."

  "The first one is easy. The tsar will be whomever the seventeen representatives of the commission choose. Russians are keen on commissions. Most in the past have been nothing more than rubber stamps for the Soviet Central Committee, but this one will work entirely outside of the government, which isn't all that hard at the moment since there's barely any government left.

  "Candidates will be presented and their claims evaluated. The strongest contender at the moment is our candidate, Stefan Baklanov. He has a distinct Western philosophy, but his Romanov bloodline is direct. You're paying us to make sure his claim is the one the commission eventually recognizes. Taylor is lobbying hard to make that happen. I've spent the past weeks in the Russian archives making sure there's nothing that could affect that claim."