the Romanov Prophecy (2004)

by Steve Berry

  "What did you go to St. Petersburg for? I told you to stay low."

  He explained about Semyon Pashenko and what the older man had told him. "And he was right, Taylor. There was stuff there."

  "Does it affect Baklanov's claim to throne?"

  "It might."

  "You're telling me Lenin thought some of the tsar's family survived the massacre at Yekaterinburg?"

  "He was sure interested in the subject. There are enough written references to make you wonder."

  "Jesus. Just what we need."

  "Look, it's probably nothing at all. Come on, it's been almost a hundred years since Nicholas II was murdered. Surely somebody would have surfaced by now." At the mention of the tsar's name, the store clerk perked up. He lowered his voice. "But that's not my real worry at the moment. Getting out of here alive is."

  "Where are the papers?"

  "On me."

  "Okay. Find the subway and take a train to Red Square. Lenin's tomb--"

  "Why not the hotel?"

  "Could be watched. Let's stay public. The tomb will be opening shortly. There are army guards all over the place. You'll be safe there. They can't all be on the take."

  Paranoia was taking over. But Hayes was right. Listen to him.

  "Wait outside the tomb. I'll be there with the cavalry shortly. Understand?"

  "Just hurry."

  SIXTEEN

  8:30 AM

  Lord's entrance to the Metro was a station in the northern part of town. The subway train was packed in a suffocating closeness with stinking commuters. He clung to a steel pole and felt the clatter of wheels to rail. At least no one seemed threatening. All of them appeared wary. Like himself.

  He left the Metro at the Historical Museum and crossed a busy street, passing through Resurrection Gate. Red Square opened beyond. He marveled at the recently rebuilt gate, the original seventeenth-century white towers and redbrick archways having fallen victim to Stalin.

  The compactness of Red Square had always struck him as odd. Communist television spectaculars had made the cobbled space look endless. In reality, it was only a third longer than a football field and less than half as wide. The imposing redbrick walls of the Kremlin stood to the southwest side. On the northeast rose the GUM department store, the massive baroque building resembling more a nineteenth-century train station than a bastion of capitalism. The north end was dominated by the Historical Museum and its white-tiled roof. A double-headed Romanov eagle now decorated the top of the building, the Red Star gone the way of the communists. At the south end stood St. Basil's Cathedral, an explosion of pinnacles, onion domes, and spade-shaped gables. Its collage of colors, flooded in arc light and splashed onto the blackness of a Moscow night, was the city's most recognizable symbol.

  Steel barricades at either end prevented pedestrians from entering the square. Lord knew the area remained cordoned off every day until one PM, when Lenin's tomb closed.

  And he saw that Hayes was right.

  There were at least two dozen uniformed militsya in and around the boxlike tomb. A small queue of visitors had already formed in front of the granite mausoleum. The building sat on the highest point of the square, nestled close to the Kremlin wall, a row of towering silver firs standing guard on either side, flanking the walls beyond.

  He rounded the barricade and followed a tour group toward the tomb. He buttoned his jacket against the chill and wished he'd brought his wool coat, but it was back in the compartment of the Red Arrow he and Ilya Zenov had briefly shared. Bells chimed in the clock tower above the walls. Tourists wearing oversized down jackets and cameras milled about. Garish colors clearly tagged them. Most Russians seemed to favor black, gray, brown, and navy blue. Gloves were a giveaway, too. True Russians shunned them, even in the dead of winter.

  He followed the tour group to the front of the mausoleum. One of the militsya ambled toward him, a young, pale-faced man dressed in an olive-green greatcoat and blue fur shlapa. He noticed the lack of a weapon, the guard's function purely ceremonial. Too bad.

  "Are you here to tour the shrine?" the guard asked in Russian.

  Though he understood him perfectly, he decided to feign ignorance. He shook his head. "No Russian. English?"

  The guard's face stayed frozen. "Passport," the man said in English.

  The last thing Lord wanted was to attract attention. He quickly glanced around, searching for Taylor Hayes or anybody coming his way.

  "Passport," the guard said again.

  Another guard moved in his direction.

  He reached into his back pocket and found his passport. The blue cover would immediately identify him as American. He handed it to the guard, but nerves caused his grip to slip and the booklet dropped to the cobbles. He bent down to retrieve it and felt a swoosh as something whipped past his right ear and sank into the guard's chest. He looked up to see a ribbon of red pouring from a hole in the man's green coat. The guard gasped for breath, his eyes rolled skyward, then his body folded to the pavement.

  Lord spun around and spied a gunman a hundred yards away atop the GUM department store.

  The gunman leveled his rifle and re-aimed.

  Pocketing the passport, Lord rushed past the crowd and leapt up the granite steps, shoving people to the ground and screaming in English and Russian, "Gunman. Run."

  Tourists scattered.

  He dived forward just as another bullet ricocheted off the glazed stone beside him. He landed hard on the black labradorite of the tomb's foyer and rolled inside just as another bullet obliterated more red granite at the doorway.

  Two more guards rushed up from inside the tomb.

  "There's a gunman outside," he screamed in Russian. "On top of GUM."

  Neither guard was armed, but one darted into a small cubicle and dialed a phone. Lord inched toward the doorway. People were racing in every direction. But none was in danger. He was the target. The gunman was still on the roof, wedged between a row of arc lights. Suddenly a dark Volvo station wagon zoomed out of a side street south of GUM, directly in front of St. Basil's. The car screeched to a stop and two doors popped open.

  Droopy and Cro-Magnon stepped out, then sprinted toward the tomb.

  He had only one way to go, so he bolted down the staircase into the bowels of the mausoleum. People were crowded at the base of the stairs, fear in their eyes. He shouldered past them, turned twice, and entered the main vault. He raced around the walkway that encircled Lenin's glass coffin, giving the waxy corpse only a momentary glance. Two more guards were on the other side. Neither voiced a word. He bounded up a slick marble staircase and popped out a side exit. Instead of turning right, back toward Red Square, he darted left.

  A quick glance confirmed that the rifleman had spotted him. But the angle wasn't right. The shooter needed to move, and Lord saw the man do just that.

  He was now in the green space behind the mausoleum's receding tiers. A stairway, chained shut, rose to his left. He knew it led up to the rooftop reviewing platform. No point going there. He needed to stay low.

  He ran forward toward the Kremlin wall. When he glanced back he saw the gunman take up a new position toward the end of the arc lights. Lord was now in the area behind the tomb. Stone busts commemorated the graves of such men as Sverdlov, Brezhnev, Kalinin, and Stalin.

  Two shots rang out.

  He dived to the concrete path, using the trunk of one of the silver firs for cover. A bullet raked the tree's boughs, careering off the Kremlin wall behind him, while another ricocheted off one of the stone monuments. He couldn't go right, toward the Historical Museum. Too open. Left allowed the mausoleum to work as a shield. But then the gunman wasn't as immediate a problem as the men he'd seen climb out of the Volvo.

  He turned left and ran straight ahead, down a narrow path among the graves of party leaders. He stayed in a crouch and moved as fast as he could, using the tree trunks for protection.

  Emerging on the other side of the tomb, shots started again from the GUM roof. Bullets ch
ipped away at the Kremlin wall. The gunman couldn't be that bad a shot, so Lord reasoned that he was being herded in a predetermined direction, one where Droopy and Cro-Magnon would surely be waiting.

  He glanced left beyond the granite reviewing stands toward Red Square. Droopy and Cro-Magnon spotted him and raced his way.

  Three police cars roared into the square from the south, their lights flashing, sirens blaring. Their appearance halted Droopy and Cro-Magnon's rapid approach. He stopped, too, huddling close to a stone monolith for protection.

  Droopy and Cro-Magnon looked back toward GUM's roof. The gunman high above signaled, then disappeared. They apparently took his cue and beat a retreat to the Volvo.

  Police cars roared into the square, one obliterating a freestanding barricade. Uniformed militsya poured out, weapons in hand. Lord looked left, back from where he had come. More militsya were running toward him down the narrow path parallel to the wall, their greatcoats unbuttoned, breath condensing in the cool, dry air.

  And they were armed.

  There was nowhere for him to go.

  He raised his hands above his head and stood.

  The first policeman to approach slammed him to the ground and burrowed the barrel of a gun into the nape of his neck.

  SEVENTEEN

  11:00 AM

  Lord was handcuffed and transported from Red Square in a police cruiser. The militsya were anything but courteous, and he reminded himself that he wasn't in the United States. So he kept silent and spoke English when acknowledging his name and American citizenship. There was no sign of Taylor Hayes anywhere.

  From the little bit of conversation he overheard, the guard had been shot dead. Two other guards were wounded, one seriously. The gunman had fled the rooftop. No trace of him had been found. Apparently, none of the guards or militsya noticed the dark Volvo station wagon and its two occupants. He decided to offer nothing until he was able to talk face-to-face with Hayes. There seemed little doubt now that the phones at the Volkhov were being monitored. How else would anyone have known where he was? That would imply, perhaps, some faction of the government was involved with whatever was occurring.

  Yet Droopy and Cro-Magnon had fled at the approach of the police.

  He needed to get to Hayes. His employer would know what to do. Perhaps some element of the police could help? But he doubted it. He had little trust left for any Russian.

  He was whisked through the streets in a wailing squad car directly to central headquarters. The modern, multistory building faced the Moskva River, the former Russian White House on the opposite bank. He was taken to the third floor and led down a dismal corridor lined with rows of empty chairs to an office where Inspector Feliks Orleg greeted him. The pudgy Russian was dressed in the same dark suit from three days before, when they had first met on Nikolskaya Prospekt before the bleeding body of Artemy Bely.

  "Mr. Lord. Come in. Sit," Orleg said in English.

  The office was a claustrophobic cubicle with grimy plaster walls. There was a black metal desk, file cabinet, and two chairs. The floor was a gritty tile, the ceiling nicotine-stained, and Lord could see why--Orleg puffed hard on a black Turkish cigarette. The blue fog was intense, but at least it tempered the body odor blossoming from the inspector.

  Orleg ordered the handcuffs removed. The door was closed and they were left alone.

  "No need for restraints. Correct, Mr. Lord?"

  "Why am I being treated like a criminal?"

  Orleg sat behind the desk in a rickety oak chair that squealed. The inspector's tie hung loose, a yellowed collar unbuttoned. "Twice you were where somebody died. This time, policeman."

  "I didn't shoot anyone."

  "But violence follows you. Why?"

  He liked the obstinate inspector less today than at their first meeting. The Russian had liquid eyes that screwed up when he spoke. Disdain filled his face, and Lord wondered what was actually moving through the bastard's mind while the face maintained an icy facade. He didn't like the odd flutter in his chest. Was that fear? Or apprehension?

  "I want to make a phone call," he said.

  Orleg puffed on his cigarette. "To?"

  "That's not your concern."

  A thin smile accompanied a vacuous stare. "We are not America, Mr. Lord. No rights for people in custody."

  "I want to call the American embassy."

  "You diplomat?"

  "I work for the Tsarist Commission. You know that."

  Another irritating smile. "That confer privilege?"

  "I didn't say that it did. But I am here in this country on a pass from the government."

  Orleg laughed. "Government, Mr. Lord? No government. We wait for tsar to return." No effort was made to conceal the sarcasm.

  "I assume you voted no?"

  Orleg's face turned serious. "Assume nothing. Much safer that way."

  He didn't like the implications. But before he could respond, the phone on the desk rang. The shrill startled him. Orleg lifted the handset while still fingering the cigarette with his other hand. He answered in Russian and instructed the person on the other end to put the call through.

  "What may I do for you?" Orleg said into the mouthpiece, still in Russian.

  There was a pause while Orleg listened.

  "I have the chornye here," the inspector said.

  Lord's interest perked, but he did nothing that revealed he understood what Orleg was saying. The policeman apparently felt safe behind the language barrier.

  "A guard is dead. The men you sent were not successful. No contact was made. I told you the situation could have been handled better. I agree. Yes. He does have great luck."

  The caller was apparently the source of all his problems. And he'd been right about Orleg. The sonovabitch was not to be trusted.

  "I will keep him here until your people arrive. This time it will be done correctly. No more gangsters. I will kill him myself."

  Chilly fingers danced down Lord's spine.

  "Do not worry. I have him under personal watch. He is here, sitting right before me." A smile formed on the Russian's face. "He doesn't understand a word I'm saying."

  There was a pause, then Orleg bolted upright in the chair. The inspector's gaze met Lord's.

  "What?" Orleg said. "He speaks--"

  Lord brought both legs up and slammed the heavy desk across the tile floor into Orleg. The inspector's chair rolled back and kissed the wall, pinning him tight. Lord then yanked the phone cord from the wall and leapt from the room. He slammed the door, then followed the empty hall, bounding down the staircase three steps at a time, retracing his route to the ground floor and the street.

  Once out in the chilly midmorning air, he plunged into the sidewalk crowd.

  EIGHTEEN

  12:30 PM

  Hayes exited the cab at Sparrow Hills and paid the driver. The midday sky was a burnished platinum, the sun straining hard, as if through frosted glass, to compensate for a frigid breeze. The Moskva River looped sharply below him, forming a peninsula that supported the Luzhniki sports stadium. In the distance, toward the northeast, the bulbous gold and silver cupolas of the Kremlin cathedrals peaked through a cold haze like tombstones in a fog. It was from the hills around him that both Napoleon and Hitler had been thwarted. In 1917 revolutionary groups had held clandestine meetings among its trees, safe from the secret police, plotting an eventual downfall of the tsar. Now a new generation seemed intent on reversing their efforts.

  To his right, Moscow State University rose above the trees in an overpowering array of capricious spires, ornate wings, and elaborate curlicues. It was another of Stalin's grandiose wedding-cake skyscrapers erected to impress the world. This one was the largest, built by German prisoners of war. He recalled a story about one prisoner who supposedly fashioned a pair of wings from scrap lumber and tried to fly home from the top. Like his nation and fuhrer, he failed.

  Feliks Orleg waited on a bench under a canopy of beech trees. Hayes was still fuming from what had happe
ned two hours before, but cautioned himself to watch his words. This wasn't Atlanta. Or even America. He was just one part of an extensive team. Unfortunately, at the moment, the point man.

  He sat on the bench and asked in Russian, "Have you found Lord?"

  "Not yet. Has he called?"

  "Would you? Obviously he doesn't trust me anymore, either. I tell him I'll be there to help and two killers show up. Now, thanks to you, he's not going to trust anybody. The idea was to eliminate the problem. Now the problem is wandering around Moscow."

  "What is so important about killing this one man? We are wasting energy."

  "That's not for you or me to question, Orleg. The only saving grace is he eluded their killers, not yours or mine."

  A breeze moved past and leaves trickled from the trees. Hayes had worn his heavy wool coat and gloves, but a chill still crept through to him.

  "Did you report what happened?" Orleg asked.

  He caught the edge in the inspector's voice. "Not yet. I'll do what I can. But they will not be pleased. That was stupid talking to me on the phone in front of him."

  "How would I know he speaks Russian?"

  Hayes was trying hard to keep control, but this arrogant policeman had placed him in a difficult situation. He faced Orleg. "Listen to me. Find him. Do you understand? Find him and kill him. And do it fast. No mistakes. No excuses. Just do it."

  Orleg's face was tight. "I've taken enough orders from you."

  He stood. "You can take that up with the people we both work for. I'll be glad to send a representative so you can lodge a complaint."

  The Russian got the message. Though an American was his immediate supervisor, Russians were running the operation. Dangerous Russians. Men who murdered businessmen, government ministers, military officers, foreigners. Anybody who became a problem.

  Like incompetent police inspectors.

  Orleg stood. "I'll find the damn chornye and I'll kill him. Then I might just kill you."