Winter Palace

by T. Davis Bunn

  Jeffrey clattered down the stairs, looking both relaxed and happy. He patted Sergei on the back, said something that made them both smile, giving the young Russian a gentle push up the stairs and pointing toward his room, as though urging him to go lie down. Then he turned and greeted them both.

  As soon as they were reseated, knowing he needed to do this while his resolve still held, Yussef took a breath. “I wish to speak with you about your Christian faith.”

  ****

  “Nothing could bring me greater joy,” Jeffrey replied.

  “I wish to know God. Yet I find no comfort in ritual,” Ivona translated, her voice a dull monotone. “I find no hope in tradition. Only chains.”

  Jeffrey winged an instant of prayer upward and spoke from his heart. “Since beginning my travels in Eastern Europe, I’ve seen a lot of church rituals that are totally different from what I was brought up with. I suppose a lot of the people I’ve met here would find the rituals in my own Baptist church pretty strange, too. What I think it comes down to, though, is that everyone needs to make an honest examination of his own heart. If the ritual itself is their way of earning salvation, then the Bible says this is wrong. Ritual empty of living faith is dead religion.”

  He waited as Ivona concluded her shaky, hesitant translation and marveled at the intensity with which Yussef listened.

  “But every church I’ve ever been to has ritual,” Jeffrey continued. “We come at a certain time. We stand. We sit. We greet others. We sing from a book. We hear the minister pray for us. We listen to our preacher give a sermon. And so on.

  “When we follow this pattern,” Jeffrey went on, “I think we are trying to give definition to the Invisible. We are setting a form to the formless. We are giving an earthly structure to our worship of the Almighty Lord. So long as the ritual remains just that, nothing more than a means of guiding us and focusing our attention on Him, then what we do in the form of rituals is probably okay. Maybe necessary. It is part of being human. But I like to think that when we reach heaven, we will find that all ritual vanishes, because we won’t need it then. We will be part of God’s eternal home.”

  Yussef continued to nod slowly as Ivona reluctantly completed her translation. “Then what is the purpose of your worship?”

  “The central purpose for all Christian worship,” Jeffrey replied, “is salvation.”

  “And how is this mine?”

  “By accepting Jesus Christ as your Savior,” Jeffrey replied. “By accepting that you are a sinner who has fallen short of God’s glory, and then by recognizing Jesus as the Son who came to die in your place, so that you might have eternal life.”

  “That is all?”

  “It is the bridge of salvation. It is the first step of a walk leading toward the Father, a walk that will continue all your life.” Jeffrey searched his face, asked, “Do you want to pray with me now?”

  Yussef thought a moment, then decided, “No. This first time I would like to do so alone. It is not required for me to do this with another, yes?”

  “Just you and God,” Jeffrey replied. “Nobody else is necessary.”

  “Then I shall do it,” he said, his voice as determined as his expression. “I shall speak with God as you say. Perhaps later we can pray together, yes?”

  “I would like that,” Jeffrey said, “more than I know how to put into words.”

  Yussef released an explosive breath. “I thank you, Jeffrey Sinclair.”

  “It is my honor,” Jeffrey replied, “and my greatest pleasure.”

  “It would be good if we could now speak about other things.”

  “To business,” Jeffrey agreed.

  Their discussion took the better part of an hour as they compared notes and revealed their discoveries. Ivona never returned to her habitual singsong, however. She remained locked within some internal struggle that left her with barely the strength to translate, much less join in the conversation with her own ideas.

  Yussef checked his watch and rose to his feet. “I have to check with someone before he begins his lunchtime work. There is only a very slim chance that I shall learn what I need to know, but it is the only other possibility I can think of just now.”

  “Perhaps the anti-crime squad will come up with the missing link.”

  “Perhaps,” Yussef agreed doubtfully, “but it would be far better to bring them in once we have the answer ourselves, rather than wait at the door and beg for crumbs. If they find the treasure first, we have no guarantee that what was taken from us will be restored to us.”

  “Good luck, then.”

  Yussef extended his hand. “You are a good friend.”

  Jeffrey saw him through the door, then felt an invisible hand drawing him back toward where Ivona sat downcast and silent. He lowered himself into the seat and asked, “Is something wrong?”

  “I do not understand you,” she said, exasperated almost beyond words. “The church is a sacred place. Yet you never even mention it. But this is where we have a relationship with God.”

  “I really believe our relationship with Jesus should be contained in every hour of every day,” Jeffrey said quietly, “not restricted to a certain time and place.”

  “Christ established the church to be the center of worship,” Ivona replied heatedly. “Over the centuries it has been the church that has drawn men to God.”

  “The church as a body of believers,” Jeffrey asked calmly, “or the church as a building?”

  “It is in the church that we have priests who can assist us in understanding spiritual matters,” she said, so angry the words tumbled out upon one another. “In the church we have traditions handed down over centuries that maintain our sense of community and of faith. Where would the church be if everyone was like you? You pray at the table, you pray in the car, you pray on the street corner. Where is the sacred place where you go to meet God?”

  Jeffrey responded calmly, “Ivona, the ritual will never save you.”

  “I—” She stopped in midsentence. “What?”

  “Jesus Christ does not reside in ritual. He resides in your heart.”

  The faltering confusion returned to her eyes, but not the hostility. Now there was only naked anguish. “You are wrong. Simplistic and wrong.”

  He shook his head. “This truth is both simple and eternal. You either have a personal relationship with your Savior or you do not. If you don’t, no ritual on earth will bridge that gap.”

  He leaned forward, filled with a certainty that surprised even him. “Unless your ritual is done for Christ and toward Christ, unless it is truly Spirit-filled, it has no meaning. If not . . .”

  Jeffrey stopped, searched her aching gaze, wished there were some way simply to give her the peace himself. “If not,” he continued softly, “then you need to go before the Lord on your knees. In solitude. In humility. You must ask Christ to fill your life with His everlasting love. And meaning.”

  Chapter 38

  Sadko’s was a restaurant favored by the city’s underworld bosses, a smoke-filled din of imitation Western elegance and outrageous prices. Hard-faced men in tight-fitting suits cut deals in quiet voices while dining on Frenchified dishes. Hired muscle slouched around the room’s periphery, decked out in dark colors, sporting a variety of weapons, and holding their bosses’ portable telephones like badges of honor.

  Yussef pulled his rusting car up at the far corner of the street, away from the early arrivals’ Mercedes and BMWs and Volvos. He hustled down the filthy alleyway leading to the service entrance and hoped that he was not too late.

  The average Russian wage was 450 rubles per month, less than one American dollar at current exchange rates. With the new power of green money, spoken in English and denoting dollars, all rules were off. When one dollar could buy eleven pounds of fresh meat in a starving land, and two dollars could purchase an air ticket from Moscow to Saint Petersburg—farther than from Boston to Washington—all barriers were down.

  The result was visible everywhere.
A surgeon became a doorman at a restaurant catering to foreigners. An avionics engineer became a hotel bartender. Bars and restaurants and nightclubs sprouted leather luxury, were guarded by former KGB officers dressed in evening wear, and over their door bore the single word Valuta. It was a world within a world, open only to those who found a means of obtaining green money.

  A valutnaya, a currency girl, earned four years’ average earnings in one night. A black-market tout gained eighteen months’ salary with each scalped ticket to the Kirov or Bolshoi. Taxi drivers shunned anyone who did not dress in Western style. Eyes on the street hunted out wandering tourists and hungered for the immeasurable wealth they carried in their pockets.

  Yussef opened the restaurant’s back door, spoke in most respectful tones, asked if he might have one word with a friend about a most urgent matter. Then he waited, the scar-faced back-door bouncer watching him with eyes the color of a very dark pool.

  His friend blanched when Yussef came into view, recovered quickly, came forward with hand outstretched, and said loudly, “Yussef, so kind of you to bring word personally. How is my brother?”

  Yussef allowed the man to guide him back outside into the alley. He answered quietly, “Your brother the bishop needs your help. Badly.”

  “So badly that he would wish to see me dead?” The man hissed his words through teeth clenched in fear. “What is it that could not wait for a more private meeting?”

  “I tried your apartment,” Yussef replied. “I was told you had moved, and I knew nowhere else to go.”

  “This is true,” the man subsided slightly, but his eyes continued to dance their nervous gait up and down the narrow way. “Business has been good. The pay is nothing, but the tips are sometimes in dollars. I have been able to take a larger flat.”

  “I am happy for you,” Yussef replied, and lowered his voice even more. “The Tombek clan. They come here still?”

  At the name the man’s face turned the color of old bone. “Do not ask, Yussef.”

  “I must.”

  “Horrid things happen to people who ask about such as them. Things from your worst nightmares.”

  “Still, I must. Have you ever heard mention of a winter palace? It would be a place where things are stored.”

  The man wiped a face damp from more than just the day’s gathering heat. “I waited on them three nights this week. Enough to make me wish for a government job that paid in rubles. I hold my breath and pray unceasingly whenever I approach their table.”

  “And you heard something,” Yussef said, tensing in anticipation.

  “It is a place on the Fontanka,” he replied, the effort of forcing air through over-tensed muscles causing his whispers to rise and fall in power. “Near the old royal stables.”

  Yussef jerked as though slapped. Hard. “It can’t be.”

  “People like that can’t be,” the man hissed. “But they are. Now go. If the walls have ears, my children will starve.”

  Chapter 39

  Jeffrey was out the door, his hand raised to flag a taxi, when he realized what it was that had kept nagging at him. He dropped his arm, turned, and raced back into the hotel.

  Sergei was less than excited to see him again. His eyes resembled eggs fried for several hours on a very hot stove. But Ivona was nowhere to be found, and Jeffrey knew no one else to translate. So he grabbed the young man by the shirtsleeve and dragged him complaining to where his grandmother sat knitting by the little parlor fireplace.

  “What, what,” Sergei complained, then raised a hand to the side of his head. “Ah, too loud. I speak too loud. What you want, Sinclair?”

  “Your grandmother,” Jeffrey puffed, suddenly out of breath. “She said something last night about a cellar in the Markov palace.”

  With a martyr’s long-suffering expression, Sergei translated, listened to her reply, told Jeffrey, “She say, of course there is cellar. What you do in that house for so long?”

  “How big a cellar,” Jeffrey demanded.

  “Size of whole house,” he translated, as puzzled as the old lady. “Bigger. Run back under garden.”

  Jeffrey smacked the table beside him. “It’s there,” he breathed. “It’s been there all along.”

  “Of course it’s there,” Sergei replied, misunderstanding. “Big house like that, have cellar for food, wine, heat, maybe treasure room. How you miss such a thing, my grandmother wants to know.”

  But Jeffrey was already moving. He ripped a sheet from the note pad by the telephone, scribbled furiously, flung it at Sergei. As he raced for the door, he shouted over his shoulder, “Give this to Ivona or Yussef, whoever shows up first. Tell them to meet me there as soon as they come in. Tell them I think I know!”

  * * *

  The architect was bent over his blueprints when Jeffrey arrived. He had made a trestle table by taking a door off its hinges and laying it across two sawhorses. The entire front hall was awash in partially uncoiled drawings. Jeffrey flung a greeting toward the bespectacled man as he raced on past.

  First the kitchen, just to be sure. He tore through the main scullery, scrambled down the feeble stairs, carefully searched the cramped storage room. The walls were filthy with the dirt of ages. If anyone had erected a false barrier it was impossible to tell. Tapping on the walls yielded nothing but a shower of dust.

  Back up the stairs, down the hall connecting to the ground-floor parlors, scrambling over the pipes and steel sheeting and rod-iron, thinking all the while how easy it would be to disguise a former cellar entrance under all this junk. Just as Yussef had said about hiding contraband in his own car; it was all too heavy to lift unless there was a very good reason.

  Through the smaller private parlor, the one formerly belonging to the young prince, Vladimir Markov’s father. Through the dust-blanketed study, his footsteps skidding as he took the turning into the hallway leading to the bath and the bedroom and the dressing salon. And the wardrobes.

  There were six of them, lining both sides of a chamber made into a hallway by their size. They rose from floor to distant ceiling, each door a full four feet wide. Jeffrey opened each door in turn, the massive hardwood frames groaning with disuse but swinging easily, testifying to the quality of their original workmanship. Even through the heavy whitewash, it was possible to trace the wood’s grain, to see where the full-length mirrors had hung, to see how the drawers had been fitted and the shelves made to swing out so that even the item farthest back could be easily retrieved. It was also easy to see where the framed paintings had been placed.

  Jeffrey searched each of the small shadow-frames in turn, his heart beating a frantic pace. Not until he had worked his way past the first wardrobe did he realize that in order to have a box behind it, the painting Sergei’s grandmother had spoken of would have to be set upon something other than a door.

  There were four painting-shells not on the doors themselves, two set at either end of the long chamber. Jeffrey struck gold on the third try. At his gentle pressure the wooden block squeaked aside on hidden hinges, revealing a hiding space perhaps a foot square. His hand scrabbled in and back, his lungs chuffing like an ancient locomotive as he found the knob. And pressed. And felt the wall beside him tremble as something unseen gave way.

  He pulled his hand out, looked into the closet next to him, and saw that the back section had swung out and away. Leading down into the gloom was a set of ancient stairs.

  A shout from the front hallway made him jump two feet in the air. Carefully he sealed the little box, then spent a frantic minute trying to figure out how to close a door that had no handle. The shouting continued unabated as he settled on a hairsbreadth of breathing space, sealed all the closet doors, and raced back to the front hall.

  Sergei was dancing a full-throated, panic-stricken two-step when Jeffrey appeared. “They come! They come! My grandmother, she speak with them. I escape through kitchen! They know your name! They come for you!”

  Jeffrey fought for meager breath, asked, “Who has?”
<
br />   “They! They! Who needs a name for terror?”

  His heart tripped into a higher beat than he thought possible. “You mean the mafia?”

  “Mafia, KGB, who knows the name these days? They seek you, Sinclair. That is all you need to know.”

  His mind froze, unable to move beyond the point of, I’ve found it! “But what for?”

  Sergei turned, exasperated. “What do you think for, to dance? They come to make you disappear!”

  His legs grew weak. “What do I do?”

  “You wish to live? Yes? Good. Then leave, Sinclair. Go to consulate. Run. Fly. Go now.”

  A car scrunched on the gravel lining the main entryway. Sergei swung around at the sound, backed away from the door, groaned, “My head hurts too much to die.”

  Jeffrey’s mind raced into high gear. He turned to the panic-stricken architect. “Tell them this. You let yourself in with your own keys, as usual. You were here alone. You haven’t seen me since yesterday.”

  The architect yammered in fear, “But I—”

  Sergei hissed a soft scream at him in Russian. Footsteps sounded along the drive.

  Jeffrey grabbed his friend’s arm, pulled him back through the main hall and into Markov’s private salon. Jeffrey moved in frantic haste as Sergei scrambled and drew short chopping breaths. Together they raced back through the private rooms. Sergei stopped at the dressing chamber, saw a bathroom with barred walls, a shuttered bedroom, moaned, “We shall soon be corpses.”

  “Not yet,” Jeffrey urged. He flung open the closet, pushed out the back wall, asked, “Do you have any matches?”

  “What?”