“I don’t know. Write books or something. My thoughts weren’t well-formed at that age.”
“Maybe you’ll become a philosopher yourself and introduce a new theory to the world.”
He smiled. “I’d need a lot more education for that. I suspect my prospects have been thoroughly quashed, along with many in my generation. It will be up to our children to reeducate and move us forward. My generation of Russians is going to have to work hard to put food in our bellies and keep roofs over our heads.”
She touched his hand. A hard truth, but he could be right, for now at least, with all the unemployment issues. It was hard to keep a job, and immigrants had other barriers too. Maybe someday they would be comfortable enough for him to acquire more education. “Miss Plash was telling me about her past. It’s quite posh, really. She’s come down in the world, but the most interesting things I learned were about Peter Eyre. Miss Plash has known him all her life.”
“You don’t say.” Ivan rearranged shortbread on a plate. “Did she agree to take you on?”
Alecia smiled. “She did. I return to Bagshot tonight to pick up my things. Since it’s Emmeline, she couldn’t help but insult my wardrobe, of course, but she’s hired me. Mr. Eyre will pay.”
“It seems you won’t really be leaving the world of the Grand Russe after all.”
“No, I suppose not. It’s very sad. He has an older brother who she neglected to marry when she should have.”
Ivan lifted his eyebrows. “He died in the war?”
“I had the impression that he didn’t. What a mysterious family.”
“You don’t have to be a Russian to have tragedy, not in our generation.”
“You sound so fatalistic.”
He smiled at her. “I’m not. We’ve found each other despite this crazy world. As long as we can work, we can marry and be together.”
“Work is the thing we must do,” she agreed.
He leaned forward and captured her mouth. His lips slid against hers. She could feel a tiny crumb of shortbread on his lip. He must have sneaked a piece in the kitchen. As his kiss intensified, she forgot she was cold. He shuddered when she wrapped her arms around him, touching his neck with her cold hands, then swept his tongue along the seams of her lips. He brought fire with him. She melted until they had both sunk to the floor of the sitting room, between the sofa and the tea table. His warm hands lifted her skirt, trailing flame up her inner thighs with each brush of his fingers. She spread her thighs apart and he cupped her through her worn undergarments.
“Oh, Ivan,” she whispered. “Please don’t stop.”
He didn’t. Half an hour later they were dozing in front of the fire, wrapped in the wrinkled garments they had both been wearing. He had her dress draped across his back and she had his shirt around her shoulders.
“When do you think we should marry?” he asked, lazily tracing a circle on her shoulders.
“I don’t know how long this Plash job will last,” she admitted. “It sounds like Mrs. Plash is starting to sleep a great deal. If she isn’t eating either, she may not need my care for long.”
“Meanwhile, Mr. Eyre said we should speak about my future once this crisis is over.”
“Encouraging. If you can be promoted to a better position and your sister doesn’t need you to support her, then we can speak about marriage.”
He nodded. “I’m going to have to go to Scotland Yard. How it bothers me to involve the police. We wouldn’t do that in Russia. They are the enemy.”
“You aren’t in Russia.”
“No. But what are the police going to think of me?”
She shrugged. “Can you leave your sister out of it? Just tell the police about the bomber?”
“Yes, I like that idea. Without a bomb they are toothless. When Ovolensky goes, the problem should be over. Unless her friends have become men of action all of a sudden.”
“You might not know until Ovolensky is gone.”
He sat up. “Thank you for understanding. I must not seem like such a bargain.”
“I love you, Ivan. You’re a good man.” But she did wonder if she was enough for such a complicated soul. Philosophy? His upper-class background? He was a toff, really, and she was so provincial. Could she make him happy as a wife? Could he be happy at all, in circumstances so different from his childhood?
And yet, he’d been living like this for eight years, more than a third of his life. He might be better off finding a woman who could bring him money and position. Certainly he had the looks to attract anyone, and his work put him in a place to meet wealthy women. Why had he chosen her?
Why did love choose any two people? She simply had to have faith in their future, in him.
She slid her arms around his neck. “Do we have time for more?”
His eyebrows lifted. “A second time?”
“I’ve heard it’s possible.” She nuzzled his neck.
He glanced down. “Oh, it is, myshka. It definitely is.”
* * *
Ivan walked through the doors at New Scotland Yard on the Victoria Embankment the next morning, shortly after his shift had ended, feeling a little like he was walking into a prison. The striped building reminded him of a prison garment. He was surprised the building hadn’t been designed with “broad arrows,” which had been the sign of prison clothing until a few years ago. That was the sight that had been drilled into him as a recent immigrant to England, by Boris. The fate of a man who didn’t work hard in this country was heavy, hobnailed boots that pressed an arrow into the dirt with every step. As Boris said, that was not the footprint a man wanted to leave on this Earth.
Could he escape that fate? Could Vera and Sergei? He didn’t know how.
He went to the front desk and stood in line behind a frightened-looking woman. After she was passed on to a uniformed constable to help her locate her missing husband, he faced the grizzled sergeant who was screening public inquiries.
“May I help you?” said the man. He offered a kindly smile, which seemed out of place in a government institution, though Ivan was sure frightened people appreciated his pleasant demeanor.
“I work at the Grand Russe Hotel on Park Lane,” Ivan said. All of a sudden, he didn’t know what to do with his hands. He put them behind his back and clasped them.
“Yes?”
An angry-looking man, who looked like a banker, moved into position behind Ivan. He lowered his voice. “I believe a terrible crime will be committed there today.”
“You don’t say.” The sergeant’s bushy gray mustache swung from side to side as the man’s mouth twitched.
“There is a Russian diplomat in residence, and this evening British government ministers will be at the hotel.” Ivan folded his arms across his chest.
“Go on, son.”
“There is a man who wants to bomb the hotel while everyone is watching a command performance of Macbeth.” Did he sound as foolish to the sergeant as he did to himself?
The policeman’s eyes narrowed. “Where’d you hear that, then? Have you spoken to the hotel’s management?”
“I’ve met the bomber,” Ivan said. “I’ve told the hotel manager that trouble is coming.”
“Why didn’t he come to us?”
“Maybe he has? I don’t know. I tried to talk someone out of this but it was no good.”
“Are you part of the conspiracy to commit this crime?”
“No, sir. I am not.”
The man’s gaze raked his. He no longer looked like a man past his prime. “You’d better come with me, son. Smith, take the desk.”
A tall, skinny constable moved to the front of the desk and began helping the next person in line, the angry businessman.
The sergeant gestured him around the corner. “Take a seat here. I’ll take you directly to an inspector when one is available.”
Ivan sat down as instructed, staring at a sea of desks and file cabinets. Everyone moved quickly, with a sense of purpose. The smoke from a hundred cigaret
tes made the air almost as bad as the pea-souper fog outside. He coughed hard when a man in street clothes with a particularly heavy cigar walked by, trailing smoke, and was grateful he worked in a place with better ventilation.
Five minutes later, the sergeant reappeared. “Detective Inspector Dent will see you now.”
Ivan stood and followed the sergeant into a small office, dominated by a desk. An ashtray held one thin, burning cigarette, and file cabinets took up most of the space along the walls.
The inspector, a man of about forty with slick black hair, stood and shook Ivan’s hand when he walked in. A young uniformed officer leaned against a free spot along the wall, almost like a piece of furniture. He blocked a fair amount of a map of London that was pinned there.
“Detective Inspector Dent,” he said. “What can I do for you today?” He had gray eyes and thick slashes of black brow, making for a slightly menacing air.
“I am a night watchman at the Grand Russe Hotel.”
“You’re Russian?” Dent asked as he gestured Ivan to a chair in front of his tidy desk.
“Yes, sir. I grew up around Moscow. Fled by way of Finland in 1918 after my oldest sister and parents were killed by the government.”
“How long have you been in London?” Dent sat down and picked up a pen. Notepaper was centered in front of him.
“A few years. My sister Vera and I.”
He kept firing rapid questions. “Why do you think there is going to be an attack at the hotel tonight?”
“My sister is engaged to a man named Sergei Bakunin. He is a White, if you understand what that means.” He would sacrifice Sergei, but he couldn’t help attempting to keep Vera sounding like an innocent.
“Not in favor of the present Russian government,” the inspector said laconically, taking up his cigarette with his free hand.
“Yes, and he has friends who are more active than dreamers, if you know what I mean. One of them, Anatoly Smirnov, just took work at the hotel. I know he’s not doing his job because he’s not staying on his patch, but wandering the entire hotel.”
“So you think he wants to cause trouble during this”—Dent checked his notebook—“performance of Macbeth?”
“I know Richard Marvin, the director of the play, has ties to this little group of Whites. But what really disturbs me is a man named Konstantin.”
Dent made a note. “Who is that?”
“He’s a Bolshevik. He wants the government here to fall.”
“Bolshies and Whites together? That’s not usual.”
“No, sir.”
“Is he working at the hotel, too?”
“No, but I met him, and he said he was going to bomb the hotel. He was going to prepare a bomb that Anatoly will bring in. The performance is planned to take place in a series of meeting rooms on the first floor, which can be expanded to a large open area with a stage. That’s where the bomb is going to be brought.”
“Why do you know all this?”
“Because they attempted to recruit me to place the bomb, before Anatoly had his position.”
Dent set down his pen. “And you said no? Or perhaps you said yes?”
“Never,” Ivan said with intensity. “I have a future here. I want my friends to have a future too. Good work, marriage, children. I don’t chase dreams of overturning governments, righting past wrongs. I just want to get by.”
“Have you informed your management?”
“Yes, and we discussed how to outwit the plot. But I don’t think the manager understands that this has grown from a simple attempt to murder Georgy Ovolensky, a Russian diplomat, into the desire to kill a roomful of British people. For all I know, the bomb could bring down the hotel and everyone in it.”
Dent ground out his cigarette. “How did the plot grow?”
“When it was about White sensibilities, the only concern was Ovolensky, a tool of the Stalinist government of Russia. When a Bolshevik became involved, it meant the British government became the true target.”
Dent frowned. “The Whites and the Bolsheviks are enemies.”
“In this they have a common cause. The Whites want Ovolensky and presumably the Bolsheviks want the British ministers. Detective Inspector Dent, I implore you to stop this. Konstantin is a very bad man. I’m not sure I should have even left the hotel today. What if he brings the bomb to Anatoly? I can identify him. I saw him once.”
The inspector made hasty notes. “When does this Anatoly come on duty?”
“Eight P.M.”
Dent rubbed his right ear. “We have time to find him then. Where did you first see Konstantin?”
Chapter Nineteen
“Has this chap come in yet tonight?” Detective Inspector Dent of the Metropolitan Police’s Special Branch asked Peter Eyre. He had declined to sit down in one of the chairs in front of Peter’s desk, no doubt to reinforce his authority.
“No, I don’t imagine so. It’s only six thirty, and his shift begins at eight. Night watchmen check in downstairs in the staff lounge. Mr. Dew, the night manager, has more of a pulse on evening activities than I do. I am in our Coffee Room at this time of night.”
The inspector cocked his head. “Why haven’t you taken this bomb threat more seriously?”
Peter stiffened. Bomb? He’d thought of guns, knives, intimate assassination attempts, nothing like this. “It may surprise you to know, but I’ve heard nothing about the weapon. I thought there might be an attack on the Russian, but not something that might affect the entire hotel.”
The inspector rolled his eyes. “It didn’t occur to you that whatever desperate act might occur, more than one life could be at risk? I can understand hating Bolshies as much as the next man, but you can’t risk innocent British lives.”
“I’m not planning to. We were going to move the performance at the last moment, make sure Smirnov, the night watchman, couldn’t access the location. I’ve had a space cleared on the fifth floor and our head chambermaid, Olga, has been there all day watching the rooms. Even Ivan doesn’t know this plan.”
The inspector’s mouth twisted. “Olga? Another Russian?”
“In Russia, this woman was a princess.” He responded to the inspector’s lifted brows. “Yes, you heard me, a real princess. She’s not going to throw in with a bunch of Bolshies.”
The inspector sighed. “I doubt this Smirnov was going to come to work, on time, with a bomb in a valise.”
“How else would he do it?”
He leaned forward and spread his fingertips on the desk. “This is how bombers operate these days. They carry in small packages of explosives over a period of time, and attach them to a fixed structure in a building. In this case, perhaps in a cabinet by a load-bearing wall, or in the ceiling. Even a fireplace.”
Peter’s stomach rumbled queasily. “Go on.”
“Then they detonate the bomb with a long cord, hoping it will give them time to escape. This could be hidden if necessary under a carpet or along a wall.”
He kept his voice steady. “I see.”
“Another fun trick is the forged invitation.”
“What do you mean?”
“These groups want to kill as many of their enemies as possible, of course, so they might invite everyone they want dead to the same occasion.”
Spots danced in front of Peter’s eyes as he breathed in slowly through his nose. “We have our own invitations, and they will be checked.”
“Yes, but who is going to be doing the checking? Is there a curated guest list? Is this someone who can distinguish between similar foreign names?”
“I’ll do it myself. I have the guest list.”
“You look exhausted,” Detective Inspector Dent said, not unkindly. “Not on your game. I’ve no doubt these worries have had you up at night, but you should have come to us for help. This problem is bigger than you, sir.”
Clearly. Even his father might have been daunted. “Now what?”
“We need to bring a team in to find the explosives. We als
o will want a pair of men in the staff lounge, to quietly remove this Smirnov as soon as he arrives.”
“Of course.”
“May I use your telephone?”
Peter nodded. He’d never had a moment yet, since the hotel had reopened, when he wished for the counsel of another. He and his older brother had been raised like prodigies by their parents and had always felt secure. Now though, he wished his parents were here, instead of in Leeds with his sister. And Noel? Oh, how he wished his brother was anywhere but in the location he was. But this was no time to consider family.
He listened as the inspector fired orders at someone on the other end of the line. He ordered three teams after he was connected to Special Branch. One to pick up Smirnov when he entered the staff lounge, one to go through the meeting rooms on the first floor, and one to monitor the actual performance on the fifth floor. Then he had a lengthy conversation with his superior.
“Another thing,” Dent said to Peter when he’d hung up the telephone.
“Of course.”
“Richard Marvin?”
That blasted actor again. “Yes.”
“Ivan Salter claims the man is part of the conspiracy, and in fact assaulted his fiancée in the hopes of discrediting Salter.”
“Lovely,” Peter muttered.
“Any thoughts?”
“Marvin is a heavy drinker with an eye for the ladies and a desperate need for money,” Peter said.
“Fair enough.” Dent pulled a cigarette case out of his pocket. “Last minute I’m going to have for one of these tonight.”
“I’ll join you.” Peter pulled out his own case. “Where is Ivan?”
“At New Scotland Yard. We’ve been picking up those members of the conspiracy that we can find, and we’ve needed him to identify them.”
“Is he coming into work tonight?”
“He is the Metropolitan Police’s guest at this point,” Dent said, holding out a match for Peter.
Peter bent to accept the light. “You don’t think he is involved?”
“Do you?”
The thought had never crossed his mind. Salter was secretive but honest. Peter would bet the hotel on that. “No. I absolutely do not.”
Dent squinted as he quickly lit his own cigarette and waved the match out just before it burned him. “I’m not so sure. He’s hiding something.”
If I Had You Page 26