by Jenni Wiltz
Belial ruffled his wings. I don’t like him. I want him to leave.
“Hush,” she said softly. “Leave him alone.”
“I thought you wanted me to fix him,” Viktor said.
“I wasn’t talking to you. Keep working.”
“So pleased to have your permission, sweet pea.” Viktor moved to the sink and mixed a solution of iodine and bottled water in a resealable sandwich bag. Then he used his pocketknife to poke a tiny hole in the bottom of the bag. Constantine clenched his fists and took a deep breath as Viktor held the bag over the wound and squeezed. The solution squirted into the wound and Constantine roared.
This time, Natalie fought the urge to look away. This happened to him because of you, she thought. Watching him suffer is your punishment. Finally, Viktor patted Constantine dry with a towel and applied a dressing and bandage to his chest. “Finished!” he proclaimed. “Now let’s have a drink.”
Constantine groaned. “I thought you’d never ask.”
Natalie hopped up to rummage through the bags. She found the bottle and poured into the motel’s plastic cups. She handed the first to Constantine, ashen and sweating but smiling weakly. His fingers brushed hers as he grasped the cup and her belly fluttered as if Belial’s wings had landed there.
She turned away quickly, handing the second cup to Viktor. He stared at her empty hands. “Based on your previously demonstrated alcoholic tendencies, I expected you to be joining us.”
“I am,” she said. “Mine’s the bottle.”
“Of course it is, lamb chop.”
Constantine drained his cup in two quick gulps. “Viktor, did you see any sign of Vympel out there?”
“Let’s talk about something more cheerful, shall we? Like leprosy or the holocaust.”
“Viktor.”
“No,” Viktor sighed. “I didn’t see anything. And that’s what worries me.” He paused. “Do you think we can still trust Vadim?”
“I don’t know. But that password is the only leverage we have.”
“Speaking of which, what happened to the box?”
Natalie’s heart froze in her chest. Why had Belial told her to hide the box? And how was she supposed to keep it hidden when they were all in the same room? I promise you I’m right, he whispered. I will never lie to you.
She looked Viktor in the eye. “It’s in a safe place.”
“Safe from whom? I thought you couldn’t wait to get your hands on those letters.”
“Belial said we should wait,” she lied.
“Then by all means, let’s do what your imaginary friend says!” He turned to Constantine. “Are you going to allow this?”
“Leave her be, Viktor. If she says wait, we wait.”
“Do you know what happens if we wait? Vympel comes knocking on the door!” He turned to Natalie. “What does your imaginary friend say about that? Is he prepared to die?”
“Technically he’s already dead. I don’t think he’s worried.”
“Brilliant!” He threw his empty plastic glass against the wall and slumped down in a rolling chair. “Fucking brilliant.”
“Look,” Constantine said. “We all need to rest. Let’s sleep for a couple of hours and then we can be reasonable again.” He looked at Viktor. “Can you do that?”
Viktor glared at Natalie. “Fine.”
Constantine nodded, head sinking down onto the pillow. “Viktor, you take first watch. Wake me up in an hour.”
Viktor retrieved his gun from the nightstand and repositioned himself in the chair. “I don’t want to hear another word out of you,” he said, pointing the gun at her.
She flipped him off and slipped under the covers for a nap.
Chapter Twenty-Five
June 1950
Taesongdong, South Korea
Filipp lay weak and exhausted, clutching the bedspread embroidered by his wife. Now that the end had come, he wanted to hold something that reminded him of her. Every time he ran his fingers over her stitches, he imagined he could still feel her touch. “Milla,” he whispered.
His son Grigori shifted in the bedside chair. “What did you say, Papa?”
A thunderous boom shook the glass in the window. Filipp waited for the echoes of the blast to die because he couldn’t summon the breath to drown them out. “They’re getting closer,” he said.
The last time he’d heard artillery blasts on the edge of town, the entire world fell apart. He could still feel the thick Siberian air in his lungs and see the Bolshevik soldiers polishing their pistols outside the merchant Ipatiev’s house. On the bedspread, his son’s hand rested near his. Tan and unlined, it symbolized all the strength he now lacked. Filipp picked it up and clasped it as firmly as he could. “It was this hand she touched, you know.”
Grigori smiled, crinkling the skin beside his pale gray eyes. “I know, Papa.”
“You think you do,” Filipp corrected. “But there is more.”
“You mean the part where the Grand Duchess kissed you? You told me that already.”
Filipp opened his mouth to chide his son but couldn’t gather the breath. He coughed violently and Grigori pulled him upright just in time to disgorge a clot of blood into a small metal bowl. “Don’t try to talk,” Grigori said. “I’ll bring you some tea.”
“No,” he said again, looking up at his son with all the fear in his heart. “There is more.”
“You’re serious,” Grigori said, sinking back down onto the chair. “Tell me, Papa.”
“You must forgive me, my son. I never told you because I did not want to put you in danger. But my time is over and now you are the only one I trust.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The last time I saw her, Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaievna entrusted me with letters to take from that horrible house.”
Grigori’s face grew pale. “Oh, God, Papa. What have you done?”
“She told me a secret, something she wanted me to write on the letters before I sent them. But I did not do it.”
“Why not?”
“I failed her,” Filipp said, looking away so his son could not see the depth of his shame. “I fell ill and did not send the letters at all. By the time I recovered, the Great Father and his family were gone.”
“That wasn’t your fault, Papa. You couldn’t have saved them.”
“What about the people who would have received those letters? Perhaps they might have saved them.” Filipp took a breath and shook his head. “No, God would not be so cruel. I believe He intended for me to keep them all along. It has been my sacred duty for more than thirty years and now it falls to you to carry these words until the Great Father rises again.”
“The Tsar is dead, Papa.”
“Then where is his body? There is no proof he is dead. No proof at all. Do you know what they say about that woman in Germany?”
“That she is a fraud who takes advantage of people who believe she is Anastasia.”
“Yet it remains unproven. If her own relatives cannot decide who she is, who are we to say? I cannot. I will not.” He felt tears collect in the corners of his eyes. “You did not see them, Grigori. They were such beautiful girls. Who would not wish one of them to survive?”
“Wishing does not make it true, Papa.”
“It is beyond us, boy. God has chosen us to guard their secret. Why would he not also choose one of them to survive?” His wet eyes flickered to the shrine he had erected in the corner of his bedroom. On a rectangular table, he’d propped up photos of Nicholas II and his family, along with a few of their belongings he had been able to buy from impoverished émigrés: a belt buckle, a hairpin, a brooch, a pair of earrings. “If even one of them remains alive, we must give them back their legacy.”
“A few rusty trinkets are hardly a legacy.”
“There is more than what you see here.”
“What, exactly, did the Grand Duchess say to you?”
Filipp’s rheumy eyes swept the room. “I cannot speak it. Even walls have ear
s.”
“There is only me,” Grigori said, placing his ear in front of his father’s wrinkled mouth. “Now tell me what she said.”
Filipp felt the telltale rattle in his chest and knew he had no choice. The North Korean army was closing in on Taesongdong, and everyone knew they would be followed by the Soviets. His son—and the letters—must be gone by then. He opened his lips and let his tongue form the words he had never before uttered.
“Good God,” Grigori gasped. “But that’s—”
“Hush,” Filipp ordered, clamping a hand onto his son’s shoulder. “You must never speak it aloud.”
A second blast shook the ground beneath the house. Filipp imagined tanks rolling across the hilled countryside, crushing people and animals beneath their tread, stealing the breath from their lungs. Suddenly, the entire war made sense. “I should have seen it,” he gasped. “The Soviets know we are here, my boy. They have sent the North Koreans to seek us out.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Papa. Just try and rest.”
“I know what happened in the gulags! I know what they were looking for! Do not underestimate what they will do to claim what they believe is theirs. You must go, my son. Do not let them find you here.”
“What are you talking about? I won’t leave you.”
“You must!” Filipp said. “We were chosen for this. It is why God spared me that summer.”
“You survived because the nuns cared for you.”
“I survived because God willed that it be so!” Filipp took both his son’s hands in his. “The Great Father and his family ask this of us from their seat in Heaven. I ask it of you as a father’s dying wish. Will you refuse me?”
Grigori sighed. “No,” he said sadly. “How could I?” His shoulders sank under the weight of his father’s bequest. He felt dizzy and nauseated. His father had lived a double life, guarding the secret of the world’s richest man, even beyond the grave. Everyone knew the Tsar was dead. Why couldn’t his father see that? What was he supposed to do? Where was he supposed to go? He had known no home but Korea and the outside world gaped like the edge of a map, leading to black pits of death and despair. “I’m afraid, Papa.”
Filipp tried to smile but could barely move his lips. “So was I. God will not take away the danger, but he can take away your fear. Go put on the uniform, my son.”
Grigori nodded and trudged into the next room. At the back of the closet, Filipp had hidden the uniform and dog tags of an American soldier, killed on the road to Panmunjon during the U.S. and Soviet withdrawal from the 38th Parallel five years earlier. At the time, Grigori believed his father’s manic desire to steal the uniform was some form of dementia; now he realized his father had always planned for this moment. He began to wonder how much of his father’s life had been lived in the service of the dead Tsar. Still, he could not refuse his father’s last wish. He believed in God and Heaven, and he would not have his father greet either with disappointment in his breast.
Grigori stripped off his loose Korean tunic and pants and replaced them with the scratchy fabric of the soldier’s jacket and trousers. He draped the dog tags around his neck and made his way back to his father’s room, where a bright, fresh blood clot lay on the pillow beside Filipp’s mouth. “Papa!” he cried, lifting Filipp upright.
Filipp couldn’t even take in enough air to cough. He gasped and wheezed, gripping Grigori’s arms with the strength of a man half his age, but he could not force the breath from his mouth for a last word. Slowly, Grigori watched his father’s lips turn blue. He held Filipp to his chest, sobbing like a child until the frantic twitches ceased. He could not face the bulge and the wild fear in his father’s eyes.
Minutes later, he unclasped his arms and laid his father back down on the bed, closing the sky-blue eyelids. He kissed Filipp’s lips and crossed his hands over his chest. Then he went to his father’s bureau, removed the Grand Duchesses’ letters from the false-bottomed drawer, and tucked them inside his jacket. He scooped up the contents of his father’s shrine and placed them in a burlap rucksack. This was all he would take with him out into the world, into the bombs and bayonets of the approaching North Korean army.
Chapter Twenty-Six
July 2012
San Francisco, California
The noise of a jet engine screaming overhead woke her. Natalie gasped and sat up straight. The unfamiliar room lay swathed in darkness, light-blocking curtains overlapped across the only window.
Her bedside clock read 9:35 p.m. She couldn’t remember when they’d gone to sleep, but it was far more than an hour ago. As her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she recognized the forms of the two men: Constantine in the other bed and Viktor, snoring, slumped in the chair. First watch, my ass, she thought.
She lay back down, angry at Viktor for falling asleep on the job. Constantine needed the rest, undoubtedly, but Viktor had no excuse for not waking her to take a second watch if he felt himself drifting off.
Belial snickered. He doesn’t trust you, little one. Are you surprised?
No, she thought. I don’t trust me, either. I talk to you, after all.
She pulled the covers over her head but sleep wouldn’t return—not as long as that box remained hidden beneath the bed. She had never been this close to something so important. Other kids traded comic books and pretended to be X-Men; she carried a beat-up copy of Robert K. Massie’s Nicholas and Alexandra and superimposed their world over her own. Before Belial and the death camp, there had been St. Petersburg and the Winter Palace.
If the letters in that box were genuine, it was the find of the decade. If they were genuine and contained the password, it was the find of the century. She didn’t care at all about the money. All the rubles in Russia couldn’t evict Belial from her head. What mattered was the truth. The ghosts of the Romanov girls had been her childhood companions, better than anyone real or invented. If they had done something as shocking as betray their father’s secret, she had to know and she had to know now.
Natalie flung back the covers and leaned over the side of the bed, reaching for the box. Her fingers grasped the edge of the cold metal and pulled. It slid across the floor easily and she lifted it up, placing it in her lap.
The cold metal felt like snow in her lap. She gripped the lid and it forced it off, flaking thousands of rust particles onto the sheets. Dried blood, she thought. She blinked twice to clear the image and glanced across the room—Viktor had heard nothing; his shoulders remained slack, his breathing constant.
She closed her eyes and inhaled the scent of old paper wafting from the open box. It worked on her like the incense in a censer swung by a Catholic priest—she felt drunk, transported, part of something bigger than the four walls that surrounded her. “Belial, this is it,” she whispered.
On top of the paper lay a velvet bag. She opened the drawstring and poured the contents into her hand: a belt buckle, a jeweled hair pin, earrings, a brooch. They emanated waves of light, like the halos of Byzantine saints.
It was the light that interested Belial. What have you got there, little one? He stretched and peeked out through her orbital sockets. What he saw made him jump, slamming his head against her skull. Where did those come from?
“From the box, you son of a bitch,” she gasped. “Are they real?”
Yes. My brother’s hand has been upon them. I can feel it.
“Your brother?”
Lucifer.
The angel shuddered and Natalie fought the wave of nausea rising from her belly. She shoved the trinkets back in their velvet pouch and pulled the drawstring shut.
Next, she reached for the stack of papers resting below the pouch. On top there were dozens of postcards: thick sepia-toned stock printed with photos of the imperial children. They felt raw beneath her fingertips, jagged and torn like flesh carved by a dull bayonet. A few receipts lay between the cards, handwritten on napkins and other scraps. A name, an item or service received, an amount dispensed, a signature. She couldn’t read the Cyril
lic text, but the numbers were clear and the signature was the same on each one.
Finally, at the bottom of the stack, she found the two letters she’d glimpsed earlier that day. She opened them gently and stared at the handwriting. Olga, she thought, running her hand over the first piece of yellowed paper. The Grand Duchess had signed her name in English, even though the rest of the letter was written in Russian. Her eyes devoured the unclosed top loop of the “g,” the wide space between the two last letters of her name, and the period after it—exactly how she signed letters to her family.
She couldn’t read the Cyrillic words in the body of the letter—all she could do was decipher the name in the salutation: Павел. There was only one Pavel to whom Olga would have written during the last days of her life: the man she loved, a sailor named Pavel Voronov. Separated by rank, her mother’s disapproval, and Pavel’s hastily arranged marriage, Olga never fell out of love with him. She’d loved him enough to bestow her last written words on him.
No one else in the whole world knows this, she thought. Her heart ached for the girl. A realist susceptible to black fits of depression, Olga understood better than the rest of the girls what would happen to them. A letter to a married man, a deeply unsuitable match for a Tsar’s daughter, meant only one thing: Olga knew the end was near. She had nothing left to lose and nothing else to give.
Such lovely girls, Belial sobbed. Why did he have to kill them?
Natalie blinked away her own tears and reached for the second letter, clearly written in Marie’s hand. Natalie recognized her flamboyant signature, with multiple lines criss-crossing beneath her name. She had signed in Russian, unlike her sister. Marie was the family’s romantic, the one who dreamed of nothing more than a husband, children, and family to call her own. Her letter was addressed to Иван.