By the time they reached the garden, Beria was standing on the veranda. He wore the clothes of a country gentleman, which always looked incongruous on his huge, sloping-shouldered frame, and the sun was reflecting from his pince-nez. “Sonia!” he called. “You are looking well.”
“Thank you, Comrade Commissar,” she said, as she laid down her basket and took off her hat. “And so are you.”
“And are you feeling well? Strong?”
Sonia caught her breath. “I am perfectly strong, Lavrenty Pavlovich.”
“Good. I have a present for you. A surprise.”
He gestured at the door into the house, and Sonia went through it, frowning. Her frown deepened as she gazed at the woman who stood at the back of the room. The woman was considerably younger than herself, she estimated, although her hair was entirely white — where once it had been golden? Her figure too, was emaciated; her clothes, poor and ill-fitting in any event, hung from her shoulders as if she were a scarecrow. But she was still tall, and once that figure would have been as voluptuous as any of her relations. But… Sonia looked at Beria.
Who was grinning, his great moon-face split in half by the two rows of big teeth. “Aren’t you pleased? After all of these years?”
Sonia took a deep breath, and stepped forward. “Anna?” she asked. It was more than thirty years since she had last seen her daughter — Anna had then been not quite ten years old. They had been separated by the exigencies of the Revolution, and she had supposed Anna dead, murdered by Tatiana Gosykinya’s father, Lenin’s hit man, when he had also murdered Anna’s brother — and her son — in Paris in 1923. Beria had told her Anna had actually survived that, and become a fervent Nazi, married to a German officer and even a friend of Hitler, her origins hidden beneath her golden hair and the Aryan features she had inherited from her princely, and mainly English, father; the fact that she was the daughter of the erstwhile Prince of Bolugayen had apparently precluded any investigation into her background.
“Oh, they found her out in the end,” Beria said. “And put her in one of those camps of theirs. But we got to her before they got around to eliminating her. Then she went to a displaced persons camp in Russia. It was there I tracked her down. Are you not pleased?”
Sonia’s head was spinning. Could this creature really be her daughter? Yet she knew she was. But after so long, and so much, could they ever be mother and daughter again? Did they have the time, while she was under sentence of death. “Can she not speak?” she asked.
Anna Bolugayevska glanced at Beria, and received a quick nod. She licked her lips. “I can speak, Mother.”
Sonia held out her arms, and Anna again looked at Beria who nodded, and the woman came forward to be embraced.
Sonia could feel the bones on her back beneath her fingers.
“Mother and daughter. What a happy sight,” Beria said. “She needs care, and resuscitation. Ask for anything you wish for her, and you shall have it.”
Anna would have stepped back, but Sonia continued to hold her close, while looking at Beria over her shoulder. Her mouth framed the word, why?
Beria continued to smile. “I knew you would be pleased,” he said again.
*
“They’re here.” Joseph had been standing at the window, looking through the drapes. He was nervous. He knew Priscilla was a law unto herself, but in her determination to pursue her own agenda he sometimes felt that she defied logic.
“Then come and sit down,” Priscilla said. “Not here…” She was on the settee. “Over there.” The chair she indicated was on the other side of the room.
Joseph obeyed, sat down, adjusted his jacket; his revolver was in his side pocket. “I feel a complete fool,” he said.
Priscilla gave him one of her bright smiles. “Hopefully we will all have been wrong about him,” she said. But she slipped her hand beneath the cushion beside her, just to make sure her own small automatic pistol was ready for use; Joseph knew that she was having the time of her life.
Rollo the butler appeared at the door. Rollo had been in Priscilla’s employ for more than ten years, and allowed nothing to disturb the even tenor of either his face or his voice. “Prince Alexei and Mrs Bolugayevska are here, your highness,” he said. He always addressed Priscilla by her Russian title. “With a…” he hesitated. “Gentleman.” Rollo would need only a glance to have established that Gregory Asimov was not a gentleman.
“Show them in, please, Rollo,” Priscilla said. “And you may pour the champagne.”
Rollo gave his usual stiff bow, and opened wide the double doors to the drawing room. Elaine came in first, followed by Gregory, with Alexei bringing up the rear. Priscilla and Joseph both stood up, and moved forward. Elaine held her mother-in-law’s hands. “Mother,” she said formally. “How good to see you.” They had actually seen each other yesterday.
“My dear.” Priscilla drew her forward for an embrace.
“Mother!” Alexei was also embraced, while Gregory waited behind them, looking embarrassed. “This is Gregory Asimov,” Alexei said.
“Your old comrade-in-arms from the Pripet,” Priscilla said. “It is very good to see you, Mr Asimov. I have heard so much about you.”
She extended her hand, and Gregory clicked his heels as he bowed and brushed her knuckles with his lips. Elaine and Alexei exchanged glances. The last thing they would have expected of the Gregory they had known in the Marshes was that he would kiss a woman’s hand. “As I have heard so much about you, your excellency,” Gregory said.
Priscilla smiled at him. “This is my husband, Joseph Cromb.”
Gregory bowed again. “It is my great privilege, sir.”
Joseph shook hands. Rollo appeared with the tray of champagne glasses. “What shall we drink to?” Priscilla asked.
“Ah…why not old comrades?” Gregory asked, smiling at Elaine.
“Oh, indeed, old comrades,” Priscilla said. They drank.
“The memories we share,” Gregory said.
“We are doing our best to forget them,” Alexei said.
“I do not blame you, Alexei. And here in America you are privileged to do so. In Russia, things are very bad.”
“Tell us about them,” Priscilla invited, gesturing him to sit beside her on the settee.
“Is that why you wished to leave?” Joseph asked.
“A man must hope to make a better life for himself, your excellency. And when one looks around oneself, at the splendour in which it is possible to live, here in America…that man who served the drinks…?”
“He is our butler,” Priscilla explained.
“And he looks after all of this for you?”
“Oh, good lord, no. We have six other servants.” Priscilla looked embarrassed. “But you do not have servants, in Russia?”
“Would that we had, your excellency. Seven servants! Here, all the time, serving you!”
Elaine frowned. His adulation was going over the top. But Priscilla, needless to say, was basking in it. “They are not here all the time,” she said. “Two are on their afternoon off. This is a very democratic country. But do you know how many servants I employed, in Bolugayen?”
“Hundreds, I am sure,” Gregory said. “So, seven servants.” He grinned. “But no gardener.”
“I’m afraid we do have a gardener,” Priscilla said.
“Ah. Then you mean there is no job.” He did not look particularly upset.
“I’m afraid not, at this moment. With us,” Priscilla said. “However…” she paused, at the sound of fresh tyres on the gravel drive.
“Are you expecting other guests, Mother?” Alexei asked.
“No, I am not.”
Elaine stood at the window. “It’s that car I saw following us on the way here,” she said. “I think they’re FBI agents.”
“Oh, dear,” Priscilla said. “I hope there isn’t going to be any unpleasantness.” She looked at Gregory from beneath arched eyebrows.
Gregory grinned. “No unpleasantness, Pri
ncess,” he promised. And moved with startling speed, hurling his champagne glass at Alexei, and in the same movement drawing a pistol from inside his coat.
Chapter Four: The Wound
The flying glass struck Alexei on the side of his head; he had turned away to look at the window. He staggered and sat down. In the same instant Gregory had drawn a pistol from inside his jacket. This he now levelled as Joseph reached for his own gun, only to go tumbling over a chair and hit the floor with a crash as Gregory’s bullet slammed into him.
Elaine screamed, and instinctively reacted to her years of warfare in the Pripet by dropping to the floor. Priscilla gasped and sat down, thrusting her hand beneath the pillow in search of her pistol, and Gregory hit her on the side of the head with his free hand. She gave a little shriek and fell right out of the settee to sprawl on the floor. Gregory reached down, twined his fingers in her bodice, and jerked her to her feet: she gaped at him in consternation, like everyone else utterly taken aback by the power and ruthlessness of his sudden action.
From the front hall there came a crash, followed by a shout from Rollo, and then another sharp crack. “Help me!” Priscilla shouted at her son, as Gregory dragged her towards the door.
Alexei shook his head uncertainly as he sat up. His cheek was cut where the glass had shattered, and his collar was soaked with a mixture of champagne and blood. He reached for his hip pocket, and Gregory shot him. Alexei half turned and slumped over the chair again. “Alex!” Elaine shrieked, rising to her knees and throwing both arms round her husband.
“Bastard!” Priscilla shouted, trying to pull herself free, and failing, scraping her nails down Gregory’s face, drawing blood. Gregory threw her away from him with tremendous violence. She staggered across the room and crashed into an ornamental table, falling with it to the floor.
The drawing-room doors opened to admit three men. “Hurry,” Gregory said, in Russian. “There are servants.”
Two of the men grasped Priscilla’s arms and lifted her from the floor. Another held a wet cloth to her face, and the room became filled with the odour of chloroform. Priscilla subsided into their arms.
Alexei moaned, and tried to move, and then slumped again.
“You’ve killed him!” Elaine screamed. “You filthy bastard!” Her eyes widened as Gregory levelled his gun. For a moment they stared at each other, as his finger tightened on the trigger. Then he suddenly stepped forward and struck her across the head. Instantly unconscious, she collapsed in a heap on the floor. One of the other men levelled his pistol at her inert body. “No,” Gregory said. The Russian raised his eyebrows. “She was a good comrade,” Gregory said.
“Who will be able to identify you.”
“Who will never see me again,” Gregory said. “Let us get out of here.”
Rollo’s dead body lay in the doorway. There was no sign of any of the other servants, who remained totally unaware that anything untoward had happened in the front of the house. It was simply a matter of carrying Priscilla’s body to the car. Priscilla was a slender, light woman; Gregory lifted her with one arm round her waist, her head resting on her shoulder. The other men got into the car, which had waited with its engine running. They pulled out of the drive and onto the freeway, drove for a quarter of a mile, and pulled off again. Down a quiet lane another car was waiting for them, a man behind the wheel. They left the original car and got into the new one, Priscilla bundled between them, her clothes dishevelled, her hair drifting down in golden wisps over her face; even beneath the hair the bruise on the side of her head where Gregory had struck her was clearly visible. Gregory sat at one end of the seat; the woman was stretched across the laps of the three men in the back. “She is very beautiful,” one of the men said. Priscilla’s back rested on his knee.
“Once she was the most beautiful woman in Russia,” the other man pointed out. Priscilla’s legs were on his lap. One of her shoes had come off and been left at the house. Now he took off the other to stroke her stockinged instep.
“I would say she is still the most beautiful woman in Russia,” said the man in the middle.
Gregory said nothing, but he gently brushed some of the hair from Priscilla’s face. Her breathing was less heavy now; soon she would be waking up. “What is to happen to her?” asked the man at her legs.
“I think she is to be executed,” Gregory said.
“But we were told not to kill her, to deliver her alive and unharmed. That must mean she is to be interrogated, first.”
“Yes,” Gregory said, watching Priscilla’s eyebrows flutter.
“She needs some more chloroform,” the man in the middle said. Gregory soaked the cloth again, and held it over Priscilla’s face. She sighed, and went back into a deep sleep.
“If she is going to be interrogated,” the man with her legs said, “then she will soon cease to be beautiful. And as we have her here, comrades…” he pushed Priscilla’s skirt up to her knees, and then slipped his hand beneath it.
“Yes,” said the man in the middle, resting his hand on Priscilla’s breast.
“No,” Gregory snapped. They both looked at him in surprise. “She is not to be assaulted,” Gregory said.
“You have orders about this?” asked the man in the middle, still holding Priscilla’s breast.
“I have orders that she is to be delivered to Comrade Beria, unharmed,” Gregory said.
“Playing with her a little will not harm her,” the man with Priscilla’s legs pointed out. He grinned. “Especially as she is unconscious. I have never seen a naked princess.”
“Comrade Beria will know if she has been molested,” Gregory insisted. The other two men exchanged glances. But neither was prepared to get on the wrong side of Comrade Beria.
The car was slowing, where yet another car waited for them on a quiet street. This was a limousine. They stopped alongside it, and transferred Priscilla, laying her on the middle seat. Another man waited, sitting in the very back of the limo. “Did it go well?” he asked. He was short and squat and heavily built. His name was Shatrav, and like Gregory, he had served under Tatiana Gosykinya in the Pripet. But he was much older than either Gregory or his erstwhile commander, a professional soldier who had been one of many who had fled the Germans at the beginning of the War and been brought back to their duty by the commissars. He was not a man who had ever loved, or even liked, anyone. His only emotion was hate. Even of his comrades.
The Russians had all got into the limo, and it was moving away, leaving the getaway car parked beside the road.
“All went well,” Gregory said.
“The others are all dead?”
“Ah…so far as we know.”
“He is lying,” said the man who had held Priscilla’s legs. “He did not kill the young woman.”
“Why did you not do that, Comrade Asimov?” asked Shatrav.
“He said because she was an old comrade, from the Pripet,” said the man who had held Priscilla’s breast.
“That was foolish of you,” Shatrav said. “She will be able to identify you. Did she see any of you others?”
“Only for a few seconds.”
“You must remember Dr Mitchell, Shatrav,” Gregory said. “She was a good comrade. Did she not take that bullet out of your body, in the Pripet. I did not like having to kill her husband. But she…she has never harmed anybody. She is a doctor. She cared for us, in the Pripet.”
“And you have become soft, since the Pripet,” Shatrav said. “Softness can lead to serious consequences.” He drew an automatic pistol from inside his jacket.
Gregory sat up straight. “Are you mad, comrade? I was given this mission by Comrade Kagan himself.”
Shatrav gave a thin smile. “So was I, comrade.” He squeezed the trigger, twice.
*
Memory was a haze of pain and confusion. Elaine couldn’t be sure what was real and what was her tortured imagination. She sat up, violently, and screamed as there was hasty movement all around her. But then she was being gen
tly eased back to lie down. On a bed. She blinked at the faces and the white uniforms. A hospital bed! She was wearing a hospital bedgown. “You’re going to be all right, Mrs Bolugayevski,” the sister said. “But you need to rest.”
“Am I hurt?” Elaine asked.
“There’s a nasty bruise. But you’re all shaken up.”
“How…” Elaine turned her head to and fro. “I need the police.”
“They’re waiting to speak with you, whenever you feel up to it.”
“Now,” Elaine said. “I want to speak with them, now.”
The sister considered. Then nodded. “Okay. If you really feel all right.” She nodded to one of the nurses.
Elaine caught her arm, as memory started to flood back. “My husband!”
“He’s in surgery, Mrs Bolugayevski.”
“But…surgery! You mean he’s not dead?” Her last memory of Alexei was of him slumped across the chair, totally inert.
“He’s badly hurt.”
“Will he be all right?”
“We think so, Mrs Bolugayevski.”
Elaine clutched her stomach as she thought she felt movement. “Am I going to lose my baby?”
“Your baby’s fine, Mrs Bolugayevski. Here’s Lieutenant di Salvo.”
The detective was short and slight and dark. “How do you feel, Mrs Bolugayevski?”
“How do I look?”
He grinned. “Like a woman who’s taken a beating.” He pulled up a chair, sat beside the bed.
“What happened?”
“Some thugs broke into your mother-in-law’s house, shot the place up, and snatched Mrs Cromb.”
“Joseph…my father-in-law…”
Di Salvo sighed. “I’m afraid he’s badly wounded, Mrs Bolugayevski. It’s touch and go.”
“Oh, my God!” Joseph had always seemed indestructible.
“And your husband is having a bullet taken from his gut now. They say he’ll be all right. Your butler is dead. Now you…they only whacked you across the head. You came to long enough to call for help, get the rest of your mother-in-law’s servants in from the back of the house. Then you passed out again. So here we are.”
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