The Romanov Stone

by Robert C. Yeager

  THE ROMANOV STONE

  Robert C. Yeager

  The Romanov Stone

  Copyright © 2013 Robert C. Yeager

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  Abbott Press books may be ordered through booksellers or by contacting:

  Abbott Press

  1663 Liberty Drive

  Bloomington, IN 47403

  www.abbottpress.com

  Phone: 1-866-697-5310

  Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

  Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

  Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

  ISBN: 978-1-4582-0156-0 (sc)

  ISBN: 978-1-4582-0157-7 (hc)

  ISBN: 978-1-4582-0155-3 (e)

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2011962575

  Abbott Press rev. date: 1/10/2013

  Contents

  Part I

  Chapter 1: The Present

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Part II

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Part III

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Part IV

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Epilogue

  Historical Notes and Acknowledgements

  For Judi

  PEPE LE MOKO (admiring her necklace): What did you do before?

  GABY: Before what?

  PEPE: Before the jewels.

  GABY: I wanted them.

  —Charles Boyer and Hedy Lamarr in

  “Algiers,” Wanger Productions, (1938).

  On the eve of World War I, estimates put the wealth of the Romanovs at beyond fifty billion dollars—as great in real terms as the combined fortunes of Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, and the Sultan of Brunei today. In power for three hundred years, the tsars controlled the world’s fourth-largest economy and held its most sizeable store of gold. Their jewelry included the Imperial Crown, encrusted with nearly five thousand diamonds weighing 2,858 carats; the Imperial Scepter, which contained the 194.5-carat Orlov diamond, said to have been pried from the eye of a Hindu idol; the fabulous Moon of the Mountain diamond of 120 carats; and the Polar Star, a breathtaking 40-carat ruby. The Romanovs had imperial trains and yachts, seven palaces, and five theaters. They directly employed more than fifteen thousand servants and officials.

  June, 1831

  THE GEMSTONE lay on a small, plump cushion of white silk. In the private chambers of the Tsar of all Russia, it glittered darkly, like wet winter grass.

  “It is an especially large emerald,” Nicholas I observed. His tone seemed distant. He walked across the room and gazed out a window. In the summer of 1831, with revolutionary fervor sweeping Western Europe, the state of his empire’s armies was of greater concern to the tsar than his lapidaries.

  “That is precisely what is so unusual, sire. It is not an emerald.”

  Eight months earlier, a charcoal peddler had been making his way along the banks of the Tokovaya River in western Siberia. Slogging through the snow, his shoes wrapped in rags for warmth, the man came upon a large tree, upturned by a storm the night before. In the exposed roots, the peasant found a cluster of stones he believed were emeralds.

  A few weeks later, he took them to Ekaterinburg, center of the tsar’s cutting and polishing operations.

  The emissary from the emperor’s jewel works cleared his throat. “It was under illumination,” he recounted, “that the lapidists first saw the extraordinary properties of these stones. A small party journeyed to Tokovaya and more were found. This was the largest.”

  Nicholas returned to the small table. His towering figure made the cushion and its contents seem tiny and insignificant. He would not have added this meeting to an eleven-hour day had not the Urals mining operations grown steadily more important to the Romanov purse.

  “Notice please, Your Highness,” his visitor said, “size is not what distinguishes this stone. This is what sets it apart from all others.”

  The visitor lit a small kerosene lamp with a polished reflector and a brass-ringed focusing lens. He aimed its beam directly into the stone.

  In an instant, the gem that had appeared to be an emerald flared into a ruby. Its purplish fire rose from the cushion like a vermilion sunrise.

  “Astonishing!” Nicholas exclaimed.

  The man from Ekaterinburg put down the lamp and moved around the table to stand daringly close to his liege. “Your Highness,” he gushed, “consider the colors. Green and red—the imperial colors! There is something else, sire, if you will permit me.”

  The emperor some called the handsomest nobleman in Europe nodded.

  “The gem’s discovery was confirmed on April 30 of this year, the same date as the eighteenth birthday of his young Highness, Alexander. Indeed, Majesty, the lapidists call this the Tsarevitch stone.”

  Part I

  Chapter 1: The Present

  “THEY HAVE found us.”

  Shaking, Irina Gavrill lifted herself on one elbow in the hospital bed. Muffled by the oxygen mask, her voice sounded fearful and weak.

  “Who has found us, Mom?” Kate’s stomach lurched at the sight of her mother’s tubes and bandages. She’d not seen her parent in nearly eight years, and during that time they’
d barely spoken. Looking at her now, like this, was unnerving. The room’s white curtains glared from the walls like an overexposed photograph. Outside the door, a steady stream of intercom announcements droned down the corridor. Despite the sticky June heat, Kate’s fingers shivered as she gripped the bed’s metal side rails.

  Less than an hour ago, in rural central Pennsylvania, Irina had been struck by a pickup truck as she crossed a street. Now she whispered between gasps.

  “We haven’t had a real talk for a long time, Katya, not since your troubles. But there are certain things I must tell you now, things that should have been said long ago.”

  Irina’s use of her birth name—the name she’d hated as a teenager—conveyed an urgency Kate Gavrill recognized from childhood. She pulled a chair closer to the bed and looked into her mother’s eyes. They were her own glacier-blue eyes—“wolf eyes,” Kate’s students at Marion State called them—but they lacked luster, as if, quite abruptly, Irina’s inner source of energy had been unplugged.

  Leaning forward, Kate caught her own reflection in the room’s aluminum-framed window. With shoulder-length, black hair and lean muscled limbs, she knew she sometimes appeared almost as young as her students.

  Fortunately, her professorial bearing and focus were as sharply defined as her East European cheekbones—almost feline in their angularity. Often, just in the way Kate Gavrill lifted her chin, her pupils sensed their separateness. Kate’s typical outfit for work, a tweed blazer, penny loafers, and white oxford cloth shirt underscored her buttoned-down style. A widening at the bridge of her nose, a somewhat broad forehead, and a slight fullness in her lips softened her appearance, but not enough to encourage any youthful inclinations to depart from academic decorum.

  Irina pulled Kate back into the moment, back into the white room and the terrible, inexplicable events that had transpired only a short time before. “There has been a long coldness between us, Katya,” her mother said, “and a time when I swore I could never forgive you. But you are my daughter and you must know everything now. All of it. Everything we kept from you for so long.”

  “Please, don’t talk.” Kate’s voice caught. She felt an internal dam crumbling. How many times in the last few years had she yearned to talk, really talk, to the injured woman before her?

  Wincing, Irina continued. “Hush, girl, and listen. I have little strength and less time. On your mantle, in the frame behind Anya’s picture, you will find my tape recording and her letter. You are in great danger.”

  “Mother, what are you saying?”

  The older woman’s head dropped back to the pillow. She did not answer.

  * * *

  SIX HOURS earlier, Irina Gavrill had pulled her shawl closer and brushed at a spill of white hair. She stood before a booth of antique farm implements, admiring their rough-hewn, wooden handles and worn wrought iron. For the eleventh year, she’d attended the opening day of the annual Pennsylvania Dutch Festival in Kutztown. What a contrast, she thought, between the fairgrounds scenes of peaceful Amish farm life, and the tumult of her own and her family’s lives. Her palms moistened and the muscles in her arms grew taut. With age, she thought, emotions grow as brittle as bones.

  She remembered the expression on her grandmother’s face, years before, when Anya spoke of the night that meant they could never be safe again, not even in Paris, not even in 1933, more than sixteen years after they’d fled Russia. Irina had been a small child, but she still remembered the terror, the night of shouting and screams, and Anya, her beautiful, lithe granmama, pulling her across the slippery rooftop tiles in the dark.

  Shaken by the memory, Irina stumbled on a paving stone as she walked toward the exit. Her legs, however, moved lightly and instinctively, and she steadied herself with deceptive grace.

  She sighed and twisted a square of brightly colored quilting between her fingers. Clouds were gathering over the fairgrounds. Suddenly, Irina wanted more than anything to see her daughter. The time had come to put their differences aside, if for no other reason than their own mutual safety.

  * * *

  IN A deserted field a few miles away, two men stepped from a Mercedes sedan they’d driven under a stand of covering trees. Beside the big German vehicle sat an ancient Ford pickup, dented and dull. The truck was black, the same color as the men’s suits and flat-brimmed hats.

  The smaller of the pair, pudgy, with a soft face and hard, dark eyes, entered on the passenger side, the old door clanging shut behind him. The other man slid behind the wheel. When he turned the key, the engine—a high-performance motor installed just two weeks before—started without hesitation.

  Moments later, they parked the truck in Kutztown. A thin scribble of smoke slipped from the driver’s partially opened window.

  They sat for nearly an hour.

  Abruptly, the men spotted a slender, gray-haired woman striding across the fairgrounds at a surprising pace. They stared at a photograph the driver had balanced on the dashboard, then back at the woman.

  Beneath the ancient Ford’s rusty hood, the transmission made a grinding sound as the driver shifted into gear.

  The tires squealed, pluming blue, acrid smoke. The photo slid off the dashboard.

  From the opposite side of the street, a brightly colored ball slowly rolled across the pavement. Five-year-old legs churned close behind.

  * * *

  FIFTEEN MINUTES later, the old pickup, with its bloodied front fender, shrank in the departing Mercedes’ rearview mirror.

  Tartov, the shorter, fleshier man, pressed a button on his cell phone and, quite suddenly, the old vehicle burst into flames. His companion fished in a pocket to retrieve his own ringing mobile. “Yes, Excellence,” he said, then listened wordlessly to the caller. He handed the phone to Tartov. “It’s for you,” he said.

  “Yes, Excellence,” repeated Tartov, who listened, then closed the phone. He shifted in his seat.

  “Stop the car,” Tartov ordered.

  The Michelins ground into a patch of gravel on the edge of the road. In the adjacent field, rows of corn gleamed in the fading sun. “You swerved,” Tartov said, staring straight ahead. “She might not even be dead.”

  “If not, she will die soon.”

  Tartov twisted his short body fully around to confront the driver. “You swerved,” he said again. “Your job was to hit her full on. Did you think Excellence wouldn’t find out?”

  The driver’s lips firmed into a straight line. “You saw the boy, Tartov. Why kill him too? That’s all. It won’t happen again.” His voice had a high, pleading tone.

  “No, it won’t,” his passenger replied.

  The little fat man slipped a hand inside his jacket. It emerged holding a German-made Walther automatic. “Get out,” he ordered. “Walk.”

  Descending an embankment, the pair disappeared into the corn stalks. Only the smaller man returned.

  December, 1911

  SEATED AGAINST the carriage window, knowing precisely how brightly the moon would flash in her chesnut hair, Anya Putyatin tossed her head. Outside, the night’s otherwise peaceful silence was shattered by the clatter of sixteen hooves—the drumbeat of a prancing quartet of horses drawn from the Cossack Imperial Guard.

  The white-haired man opposite her seemed to sink into the ostrich hide upholstery. Hidden in shadows, his face effectively disguised any expression. He’d scarcely spoken since arriving for her at the comfortable flat she shared with her parents on Strastnoy Bulvar. Now he stared beyond her to the dark streets. Grand Duke Alexander did not approve, Anya sensed, of a 16-year-old ballerina, most especially the Imperial Ballet’s prima ballerina, visiting Russia’s Tsar aboard his private train.

  Moments later, however, that is exactly where she stood. Alone in the elegant saloon car, with its gracefully curved silk and leather armchairs and polished oak paneling, Anya felt suddenly plain and inconsequen
tial. The train itself stood motionless on a heavily guarded siding just outside Kursky, the main Moscow rail station to St. Petersburg. Leaning forward, she parted a window curtain. Outside, puffing tiny clouds of cold air, two dozen soldiers in heavy woolen coats formed a single line parallel to the train.

  Boots thumped on metal steps, a door swung open and Nicholas II strode into the railcar, bringing with him a gust of frozen air and the pungent smell of cigar smoke and locomotive fumes. He clapped his gloves against the cold and bowed slightly, waving an apologetic hand over his green and red military tunic with its heavy epaulets, light blue sash and campaign ribbons.

  “Please forgive my over-dress,” Nicholas said, smiling. “I’m afraid I had to attend a regimental banquet.” He took Anya’s hand, bowed slightly and looked directly into her eyes. “I’m so glad you could come.”

  Lifting her dark lashes, Anya took him in. He was short, though at five feet-seven inches still two inches taller than she. Somehow, however, his uniform, the room and, yes, the unmistakable aura of power, endowed him with impressive apparent height. His light brown hair was—as it had been since he was a boy—parted to the left side. His blue eyes were simultaneously intense and gentle. He touched her elbow, leading her to a deep maroon setee.

  “I know you are wondering why I sent for you,” he began. “The answer is quite simple.”

  Anya lowered her eyes again and smiled nervously. She’d wound many a danseur around her finger, and even traded mash notes with a young Prussian baron until his wife discovered one of the missives in his jacket. This, however, was no junior member of the German aristocracy. This was the most powerful man in Russia, and one of the most powerful men in the world. Anya lifted her gaze, awaiting his explanation.

  “My dear Anya Putyatin,” he began, “surely you know of my love for ballet. I have seen you perform now half a dozen times. It may not be prudent to say this to one so young, but truth is truth and not served in the denying. You are simply the greatest dancer there has ever been.”