by Jenni Wiltz
Suddenly, Beth stepped forward with her hands pressed to her chest. “I held her,” she whispered, blinking back tears. “She asked for you, over and over. I tried to keep them away from her, but they…”
“Don’t,” Constantine said, pulling Beth backward. “It won’t help.”
Natalie put her arms around her shaking sister and stared over Beth’s shoulder at Vadim.
The older man pointed at Natalie. “This is the one?” he asked in Russian.
“Da,” Constantine answered.
Vadim crossed himself. “She is a rusalka. An evil creature. She must take life in order to live.”
“No, Vadim.”
“There is no soul behind her eyes. Something has taken it.”
“You’re wrong.”
Then Natalie gasped in pain and tightened her grip on her sister. Her eyes traveled to the ceiling and tracked across it, as if she were watching the flight of an insect. “What?” she breathed. “What did you say?” Then, very slowly, she tilted her head back down to eye level and fixated on Vadim. “Belial has a message for you,” she said. Then she began to enunciate the guttural sounds of a language she didn’t speak: At least my soul is spoken for. Yours is still available to the highest bidder.
Beth looked up from her sister’s shoulder. “Nat, what did you just say?”
“I don’t know,” Natalie moaned. “Belial told me to say it.”
Constantine tightened his grip on the rifle. “Tell Belial to be quiet until we’re on that plane.”
Vadim looked at Constantine as if he were crazy, too. “You understand this madness?”
He shook his head. “I don’t understand it but I’ve seen what it can do. I believe in it, and I believe in her. Now go back to Liliya and let me take care of Starinov.”
The foggy look in Vadim’s eyes frightened him and he wanted to get airborne as soon as possible. His bones were vibrating the way they did before a bombing raid or rescue mission. Something wasn’t right but there was no choice but to keep going until he figured out what it was. He ushered the women to the door and virtually shoved them out of it. Vadim followed them onto the tarmac.
Inside the plane, someone unlocked the hatch and pushed it open, dropping the stairs. “Go on up,” Constantine said, touching Natalie’s elbow. “I’ll be right there.”
Natalie nodded. She climbed the stairs and ducked her head to step aboard. Constantine turned to Vadim, wondering what he could say that would carry weight when placed next to a human soul, especially that of a child. He opened his mouth to speak and heard a scream. When he spun to face the hatch, he saw Natalie in Viktor’s arms, a jagged knife blade held to her throat. There was an enormous strip of white tape holding Viktor’s broken nose in place.
“Natalie!” Beth screamed, fumbling for the gun in her waistband.
“I wouldn’t,” Vadim said, pulling his own gun and pointing it at her.
“Vadim!” Constantine yelled. “What are you doing?”
“I just want Marya back,” he whispered. “I just want her back, you see?”
“But she’s already dead!” Beth cried. “She died in my arms. I tried to tell you…”
Vadim shook his head. “I know the truth. She is alive.”
He felt a cold lump of fear puddle in the bottom of his stomach. “I told you not to believe anything they said.”
“She isn’t dead,” Vadim muttered. “I can get her back. They just want you, my boy. You understand, don’t you?”
“Marya’s gone, Vadim. Starinov’s men killed her and then lied to you. Jesus, you know I would never have left her behind! Why did you believe them?”
“Just get on the plane, my boy,” Vadim said, pointing the gun at him with teary eyes and shaking hands. “Please, get on the plane and they’ll bring her back to me.”
Beth pointed at Viktor. “You were there! Tell him what happened!”
Viktor ignored her. He executed a mock bow towards Vadim. “Your cooperation will be rewarded, sir,” he said as he shoved Natalie behind him. He motioned for Beth to follow and, with a bent head, she obeyed. Constantine knew he could kick the gun out of Vadim’s hand and overpower the older man. But if he did, Viktor might close the hatch and leave him behind.
He met Vadim’s pain-sore eyes. “I tried to save her. And I would never have left her behind. When you come to your senses, you’ll see that.” Then he tossed the rifle onto the tarmac at Vadim’s feet and walked up onto the plane.
Chapter Fifty-Three
July 2012
Moscow, Russia
Natalie heard the plane’s hatch click shut behind them. Viktor marched her straight to the back, where a blue-eyed man with sharp features sat with a drink in his hand. The top of his head reflected light, and the remaining hair on the sides was cut so short as to be almost invisible. He looked too young to be bald; his red lips were thin and well-defined, and his pale skin remained smooth. “Welcome,” he said, baring short, narrow teeth that looked like those of a child.
Belial twitched. Beware, little one. I have met this one before.
Viktor pushed her into a seat across from the red-lipped man and threw Beth down next to her. In the front of the plane, two armed soldiers tossed Constantine into a seat and pointed their guns at him.
“I am Maxim Apraximovich Starinov,” the man said. “And I believe you know why you are here. Believe me, I find it truly amusing that two Americans will be the ones to help me unlock our tsar’s last secret.”
“Why is that?” she asked.
“Because after supposedly winning the last cold war, you are going to give me what I need to defeat your country in the next one.”
“Those of us who went to college call that ‘ironic,’ not amusing,” Beth said.
Natalie watched his eyes but they registered no humor, no anger, not a single flicker of human emotion. He’ll kill us all and feel nothing, she realized. Belial seconded her opinion. Do not let him see your fear, little one. He feeds on it.
“Please,” Starinov said. “Relax. We will not arrive in London for several hours. Let us get to know each other.”
“We know you already,” Beth said. “We don’t like you.”
Starinov grimaced. “I fail to understand why the world’s worst citizens are still considered its moral police. Your Uncle Sam is a bad parent who gives you vodka before school, ice cream before bed, and a whore for your fourteenth birthday. He steals the wallet from your pocket and when you ask him for money, he offers what he has already taken from you. Still the world idolizes him and turns its back on its true savior.”
“Let me guess,” Beth said. “That’s you?”
“When children cry, whom do they ask for? Not an uncle, surely. They want their mother.”
“You don’t strike me as the nurturing type.”
Natalie thought about the ancient nicknames for the country’s tsar and tsarina—“little father” and “little mother.” The parent/child relationship was sown deeply into the soil of Russian culture. “Mother Russia,” she said. “He’s talking about Mother Russia.”
“Very good,” Starinov said. “What could be more natural than a mother taking care of her children? Who better to decide which children should be punished and which should be rewarded?”
“Mothers don’t punish their children by killing them,” she said.
“Perhaps that is why there are so many bad children in the world.”
“That’s what Hitler said.”
“Americans always invoke Hitler when a strong ruler does something of which they disapprove.”
“How long did it take you to realize Chechnya wasn’t Poland?”
“As long as it took your country to realize Iraq wasn’t France.”
“Just because Vichy and al-Maliki rhyme doesn’t mean they’re the same thing.”
“Excuse me,” Beth said, “but what the hell does any of this have to do with the Romanovs?”
“It doesn’t,” Natalie answered. “It’s just
foreplay.”
“Call it what you will,” the prime minister said, taking a sip of vodka from a cut-crystal glass. “But the world has never seen a man as wealthy as the tsar. You cannot tell me you’ve never imagined being that rich or powerful.”
“Never,” she said.
“Why not?”
“Angels don’t take bribes.”
Viktor leaned over Natalie’s shoulder. “Don’t let her go on with this angel rubbish,” he said. “It’s a voice in her head and she does whatever it tells her to. It told her to stab Yakov in the neck with a brooch.”
“I had a good reason,” she snapped, glaring up at Viktor. “You know I did.”
“Oh?” Starinov asked. “What was that?”
He won’t like this part, Belial said.
She smiled and leaned forward, looking Starinov in the eye. “Have you ever felt your heart stop in your chest and quiver, just long enough to miss a beat? Afterward, once you’ve caught your breath, your heart pumps a little faster to catch up. Does that sound familiar?” He nodded and she continued. “That’s an angel. They read our blood like it’s a book. Sometimes when they’re reading you they want the pages to turn a little faster.”
Starinov blinked twice. “You’ve quite the imagination, don’t you?”
“You can call it that if it makes you feel safer.”
Viktor snorted. “You see what I’ve been up against?”
“I do,” Starinov said. He had the same dismissive look her shrinks had, a false smile that barely kept the disdain veiled behind a polite public façade. He pointed at her hair clip and then at the brooch she’d reattached to her shoulder. “Where did you get those?”
“A man gave them to me.”
“And where did he get them?”
“The Ipatiev house.”
“All property of the former tsar belongs to me now.”
“It belongs to the people of Russia and the Russian state.”
“I am the Russian state!”
“Your legislative branch would disagree.”
“Enough,” he said, slamming his empty glass on the table. “Bring us the letters!”
Viktor walked up the plane’s center aisle to where two more Vympel men held Constantine and put out his hand. Natalie turned in her seat but she couldn’t see Constantine—he was situated lower than the head cushions. She heard the rustle of fabric and paper, then a muffled groan. Over the seat backs, she saw Viktor’s face go pale.
“What is it?” she asked, afraid for Constantine. What if he’s unconscious? What if they’ve killed him?
Viktor turned and held the letters up. They were soaked through with blood. “Ivan,” Natalie said, remembering the slash he’d given Constantine. “Viktor, can’t you do something for him? He’ll bleed to death!”
“Like what, love? Call an ambulance?” He carried the sodden letters to Starinov, who wrinkled his nose and pointed at Natalie. “All yours,” Viktor said, dropping them onto the table in front of her.
At her side, Beth gasped. “That’s Marie’s writing, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” Natalie said. “I’ve read that one, but I haven’t seen Olga’s.”
She separated the top letter from the bottom letter but the blood had already thoroughly dissolved the ink. It had left nothing but charcoal-like smudges across the page, illegible beneath the stain. At the top of the page, the date remained untouched. July 12, 1918. She couldn’t even make out a signature at the bottom.
It was gone, all of it, along with any chance of finding the password.
Chapter Fifty-Four
July 2012
Moscow, Russia
Vadim heard the Challenger take off from the private runway, a breathless god’s exhale of heat and air. He leaned his head against the window, incapable of rising from his chair. He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a small gold picture frame.
She wore her favorite purple dress and a purple ribbon in her hair. In her arms she clutched an irate cat that belonged to their neighbors. She’d tied a matching ribbon around the cat’s neck. The animal hung stiffly from her grasp, as if willing the girl to put it down. No matter how many times Marya teased and tormented the cat, it tolerated her caresses with remarkable good grace for a full five minutes. Marya loved it as if it were her own, smuggling smoked salmon in her pockets in case she saw it on the way to school.
He stroked the glass over her cheek, unable to believe he would never touch her or hold her again. Constantine had been right all along. Starinov lied to him and he’d swallowed it up. But who could blame me? he thought. Who would believe someone could murder this tiny person, a girl who’d barely begun to live?
His lips quivered and a pile of ash fell from his cigarette to the floor. Now he faced the prospect of telling Liliya. He knew his daughter’s temperament. She would want to hate him, but because of what he and Valery had done for her, she would feel unable to express that anger. The resentment would build inside her every day until it grew and spread, killing her like a cancer.
For himself, he knew he was finished. He’d heard stories of snipers with hundreds of kills whose steady hands never faltered until a single shot went astray and killed the wrong person. Then the sniper lost his confidence and his abilities, thanks to shaking hands or cloudy eyes. Despite hundreds of repetitions and the body’s own muscle memory, the mind lost what had made it special in the first place—control. He’d believed he was being so careful to reward loyalty and honesty in his agents, but he’d obviously failed. How long had Viktor been working for Maxim? How long had he been feeding the FSB information from the bureau’s private databases?
He could never trust his own judgment again.
Maxim had done more than kill Marya. He’d destroyed Vadim and Liliya, too. Maybe that’s what he wanted all along. Had Constantine’s rusalka been right? At least my soul is spoken for, she’d said. Yours is still available to the highest bidder.
But he hadn’t sold his soul. He simply hadn’t used it.
You must leave Liliya with more than this, he thought. You must make her believe you tried to set it right.
He ground out his cigarette on the floor and texted his driver. There was still one person who might be able to help.
Chapter Fifty-Five
July 2012
En route to London, England
Natalie glanced out the window as the Mercedes S-class flew down the M3 from Farnborough to London. It was late afternoon and most of the cars she saw were moving in the opposite direction, away from the city. The Mercedes, closely followed by a second identical sedan, had little difficulty weaving past colicky Peugeots and sputtering Vauxhalls.
Separated from Constantine and her sister, Natalie rode in the lead car with Starinov, Viktor, and a bodyguard. At first, she noted landmarks as they passed: the ring road, a reservoir, a big stadium, and two separate river crossings. But the Romanov letters, clutched in her hand, thrummed with a life and energy of their own and drew her attention back to them. Part of her held out hope that if she stared at them hard enough, the dissolved letters would reform. Belial, I need a miracle, she begged.
I’m sorry, little one, he answered. You know it doesn’t work like that. He tapped his fingers against her brain and she gasped with the impact of lightning-bright pain. You know that if you want me to get you out of this, all you have to do is ask.
No, she commanded. You’ll take over and you’ll fight and you won’t care who gets hurt.
Belial shrugged his shoulders in defeat. Every wingtip brushed her brain case, delivering the sting of a needle piercing flesh. She closed her eyes before Starinov or Viktor could see her cry.
From the safety of the darkness behind her eyelids, she tried to piece together what she remembered from Marie’s letter. Somewhere there had to be an unusual word or phrase, a bit of diction that seemed wrong. If she could just find one loose thread and pull it until it unraveled, maybe she could guess the password.
Suddenly, it occ
urred to her that she was looking for help in the wrong place. What could Belial possibly know? If the Romanovs had selected the password, they were the ones she needed to ask. She tried to clear her mind and let the ghosts of the Romanov children float over her, the way she’d seen them in hundreds of photographs and film reels. She saw Tatiana standing in the snow, Anastasia with her skirt bunched around her ankles in the waters of Livadia, Olga turning her head sideways from a book to bare the beginnings of a smile, Alexei holding a ball above his dog’s head. They were one of the richest families in the history of the world, yet one of the most tragic. What could it all mean in the end? How would they have chosen a single word to encapsulate their lives? “Help me,” she whispered. “Help me understand.”
“Understand what?” Viktor said. “How insane you are?”
His words broke the spell. Natalie took a deep breath as the car pulled through a wrought-iron gate and slowed to a stop. In front of them stood a pale but imposing Gothic mansion with a three-story tower at its center. The Russian flag flew to the right of the entrance and two armed sentries stood between the car and the mansion’s front porch. Natalie wiped beads of sweat from her brow. She could feel Belial, nervous and restless, as he prowled the space beneath her skull. She ground her teeth and concentrated on containing him.
“Let’s go,” Starinov said. He and his bodyguard got out of the car and Viktor pulled Natalie out after them. The prime minister led them straight through a red-carpeted ballroom with staircases ascending on either side. Natalie looked up in awe at the light streaming in from the third-story window, falling brightly over golden urns, paintings, and detailed fretwork.
Viktor pulled her to the back of the house, to a golden ballroom with a parquet floor and crystal chandeliers. It was furnished with beige salon chairs and a large marble bar. At the far end of the room, Natalie thought she saw a bank of windows and then realized they were mirrors, framed and draped in curtains. She glanced around again and confirmed her suspicion—there were no windows, no view of the outside.