Nicholas Marten 01 - The Exile

by Folsom, Allan

  Murzin sat back. “Are you comfortable, Tsarevich?”

  “Yes, thank you.” Kitner nodded, and looked at the faces of the other men protecting him. He had had personal bodyguards for years, but none were like these. Each was a former member of the elite Russian Special Purpose Forces, the spetsialnoe naznachenie, or Spetsnaz. They were all like Murzin; young, muscular, and extremely fit, their hair razor-cut to the scalp. From the instant Kitner had been named Tsarevich and bowed his head to the others in formal acceptance, he had become their property. In a flash Higgs was pushed into the background, his only job now to inform the top MediaCorp executives who needed to know that their chairman had been called away for “personal reasons,” but that he was well and would return within a few days. At the same time, the remaining Romanov family members were sworn to secrecy. Requiring the same of the personnel working the dinner—waiters, chefs, beverage servers—was not necessary; they were all FSO agents.

  For the Tsarevich’s personal safety and because of the stunning historical magnitude of what was about to be revealed—that Alexei Romanov had indeed survived the Ipatiev massacre and that Peter Kitner, chairman of one of the few privately owned multinational media companies in the world, was his son, coupled with Moscow’s near-incredible decision to reinstitute the imperial throne—made it essential that the information be kept secret until security elements were in place for the formal announcement to be made by the Russian president at the Davos forum. As a result, only Kitner’s immediate family, Higgs, and his private secretary, Taylor Barrie, had been informed.

  Moreover, the swift changeover to state security was not Kitner’s alone. In the same moment that he had become Tsarevich and had been spirited away from the house on the Avenue Georges V, the FSO had taken over the protection of his son, Michael, in Munich on MediaCorp business; Kitner’s wife, Luisa, still in Trieste; and their daughters, Lydia and Marie, in London, and Victoria, in New York. All of them would travel to Davos tomorrow under FSO guard.

  Whether Kitner had been right or wrong in his fear that the Baroness was plotting physical harm against any of them, the presence of this highly trained security force resolved the question. He was isolated now and, as Tsar, would be for the rest of his life. The freedom he had given up, he had given up willingly—for his father, for his country, for his birthright. Finally, who he was was no longer secret. His father’s great fear of a Communist reprisal against them had been resolved by time and history. The same, he knew, could be said about the Baroness and Alexander.

  75

  PARIS, THE PENTHOUSE APARTMENT AT NUMBER 127 AVENUE HOCHE. FRIDAY, JANUARY 17. 3:14 A.M.

  Grand Duchess Catherine Mikhailovna lay awake in the dim glow of a bedside nightlight, her eyes absently focused on the digital bedside clock, which she had watched click past seemingly every minute since she had gone to bed just after one-thirty. How many times in those nearly two hours had she replayed the entire evening in her mind? Never mind the feelings of deep betrayal by her “close friends” the mayor of Moscow and the Patriarch of the Church. What troubled her most deeply was why, with the exception of Prince Dimitrii, none of them, not one other single Romanov, had known about Peter Kitner, or the truth about the escape of Alexei from the Impatiev house. Secrecy she could understand, the protection of the life of the true Tsarevich, but there seemed no reason to withhold the information from all the Romanovs except Dimitrii—not just about Kitner’s existence, the truth of who he was and who his father had been, but about the decisions made in the Russian parliament and by the president of Russia that had so colossally affected the entire family.

  Click.

  3:15 A.M.

  She thought of her son’s reaction at the introduction of Peter Kitner and the announcement of who he was. She remembered that despite all his years in preparation and with the full expectation that he would become Tsar, he had not wavered at all. Not so much as blinked. He would not sit on the throne of Russia, but he would honor and obey the man who would. It was his privilege and duty to do so. At that moment she knew that, at age twenty-two, Grand Duke Sergei Petrovich Romanov was more Russian than any of them.

  3:16 A.M.

  She heard her mother roll over in the bed behind her. A strong gust of wind rattled the windows, and heavy snow spat against the glass.

  They should have told her, the mayor if no one else. But he hadn’t. Why had he said nothing and led her on? Suddenly it came to her there was someone else involved. Someone to whom both the mayor and the Patriarch had more loyalty than to her. But who?

  Click.

  3:17 A.M.

  Suddenly everything went dark.

  “What happened?” Her mother sat up in bed.

  “It’s nothing, Mother,” Grand Duchess Catherine Mikhailovna said. “The power went off. Go back to sleep.”

  76

  BASEL, SWITZERLAND. STILL FRIDAY, JANUARY 17. 6:05 A.M.

  “We will want access to his files and business records, this morning if possible … . Yes, alright. Very good, thank you.” Kovalenko clicked off his cell phone and looked to Marten.

  “A Chief Inspector Beelr of the Zurich Kantonspolizei will meet us at the University Hospital morgue within the hour. The police already have permission to search the victim’s personal property at both his home and his place of business.”

  Kovalenko’s eyes were red and puffy, and stubble was beginning to show on his throat at the base of his beard where he normally shaved it. Both men were tired from the long drive, a journey made even more exhausting by the hazardous conditions. But the storm had eased as they crossed from France into Switzerland, and by now the snow had dwindled to little more than flurries in the throw of the ML500’s headlamps.

  Marten glanced at the SUV’s navigation screen and then took the A3 expressway toward Zurich.

  “The victim’s name is Hans Lossberg. Age forty-one, three children. The same as me,” Kovalenko said wearily and looked off toward the still-dark eastern sky. “Have you ever been in a morgue before, Mr. Marten?”

  Marten hesitated. Kovalenko was probing again. Finally, he found a way to say it. “Once, in L.A., Dan Ford took me there.”

  “Then you know what to expect.”

  “Yes.”

  Marten kept his eyes on the road. Early as it was, commuter traffic was building and he had to watch his speed on the snow-slicked highway. Still, he couldn’t help but be bothered by what Kovalenko was doing. He had obviously talked to the Russian investigators who had been in L.A. He knew about Red and Halliday and the squad. Marten wondered if somehow he suspected who he was, and that was why he kept pushing at him. Like just now about the morgue and the innuendoes about being a detective, and then the business with his university education and where he had begun it. And before, in Paris, when he watched him as he compared Raymond’s fingerprint with the one the French police had taken from Dan Ford’s car, knowing it took someone with considerable knowledge to understand what he was looking at. And again when he had made the conjecture about Dan Ford and why Vabres might have delivered the menu to him in the middle of the night the way he had, and Kovalenko had just stared at him in silence before he said anything.

  He was also sure the reason Kovalenko had insisted on getting out of the car after they had gone off the road was not because he was afraid the ML would go over the side but because he wanted Marten behind the wheel, to see how well he handled an automobile in a difficult situation, if he had training and experience above and beyond what would be considered normal driving.

  But even if he did suspect that Marten was not just the university-student-friend-of-Dan-Ford he said he was, and was waiting for him to give himself away, what did he hope to gain from it? Unless he had friends on the LAPD, which Marten strongly doubted.

  Whatever the reason, Marten couldn’t let it get in the way. He was convinced that with every passing moment he was getting closer to Raymond, and Kovalenko was the only ally he had. Moreover, with Kovalenko’s opening doors in
pursuit of his own agenda, he was sweeping Marten with him. They had begun a dialogue in which they shared information, and, after their experience in the snow and getting the car back on the highway, even started a friendship of sorts. It was something Marten didn’t dare let go of, even if it meant exposing himself further. Slowing some against the icy roadway, he glanced at the Russian and let himself think out loud.

  “Last year, in L.A., Raymond used a gun to break out of jail and murder a number of innocent people, some of them policemen. He used a gun in Chicago when he killed the Azov brothers. A gun was used to murder the Romanovs in the U.S. and Mexico. Neuss was killed with a gun in Paris, and Fabien Curtay was shot to death in Monaco. So why is Raymond—and we know it is Raymond—suddenly using a razor or knife? And not just using it, but handling it like some kind of crazed zealot. Butchering his victims.”

  “I had thought before we might be looking at some kind of ritual killing,” Kovalenko said, “and maybe it is.”

  “Or maybe it’s not,” Marten said. “Maybe he’s starting to lose it. Ritual is controlled. The only thing we’ve seen controlled here is the first cut, as if he had it planned out. After that it’s all emotion and lots of it. Love, hate. One or the other, some of each. All very passionate, as if he couldn’t hold himself back. Or didn’t want to.”

  For a long moment Kovalenko said nothing, then finally did. “A large vintage knife, a Spanish switchblade called a Navaja, was taken from Fabien Curtay’s private safe in Monaco. Something else was taken, too, a small reel of eight-millimeter motion picture film.”

  “Film?

  “Yes.”

  “Not video?”

  “No, film.”

  “Of what?

  “Who knows?”

  The sky was still winter-dark as the A3 became the A1 and they could see the lights of Zurich in the distance.

  “Tell me more about Kitner,” Marten said. “Anything that comes to mind. His family maybe, not Cabrera, but the one he talks about.”

  “He has a son who will one day take over his firm,” Kovalenko said with a sigh. He was getting tired and it showed. “And a daughter who is an executive who also works for the company. Two other daughters are married, one to a doctor, the other to an artist. His wife, as I already told you, is Spanish royalty, a cousin of King Juan Carlos.”

  “Royalty marries royalty.”

  “Yes.”

  Marten felt the weariness, too. He put a hand to his face and felt the growth of his own stubble beard. They both needed to shave and clean up and rest, but they couldn’t, not yet. “How long has his wife known who he is?”

  “Maybe from the day they met, maybe only when he agreed to become Tsar. I couldn’t say. I don’t know how those kind of people talk to each other, what they say or don’t, and I probably never will. It’s a perch in life I’m not likely to reach.”

  “What else, personally? How did he know Alfred Neuss?”

  “They grew up together in Switzerland. Neuss’s father worked for Kitner’s, that’s why he ended up in the jewelry business.”

  Marten looked over and saw the Russian watching him, the way he had before. Watching his hands on the wheel. His feet as they alternately touched the brake pedal and the accelerator.

  “What else?” Marten asked.

  “Kitner had a son who was murdered when he was ten years old,” Kovalenko said almost reluctantly. “It happened twenty-some years ago. Kitner’s name wasn’t as important as it is now, so it wasn’t in the headlines; still, it was tabloid news. Some young criminal stabbed him while he was attending a children’s birthday party in Paris.”

  “Paris?”

  “In Parc Monceau. The same park where the body of Alfred Neuss was found.”

  “This is fact?” Marten was incredulous.

  “It is fact. And before you again begin making scenarios, let me tell you that so far there is nothing at all to connect the crimes other than the fact that Neuss and Kitner were friends and the piece of real estate was the same.”

  “What happened afterward?”

  “As far as I know the killer was never caught.”

  “You said Kitner’s son was stabbed. What if the knife taken from Curtay’s safe was the murder weapon?”

  “You are guessing.”

  “Yes, but then there was the film taken along with the knife.”

  “What about it?” Kovalenko didn’t understand.

  “The murder was committed some twenty years ago, before video came into common use. Before that people used movie cameras. Children’s birthday parties were a main event for home movies, and most of them were shot on eight-millimeter film. What if someone was taking movies of the birthday party and inadvertently filmed the murder itself, and that film was what was taken from the safe? What if Neuss and Kitner had both the murder weapon and a filmed record of the murder and had hidden them away, and Cabrera knew about it?”

  My God! Marten suddenly thought. What if the knife and film were the “pieces”? The things Raymond had been after the whole time. If they were, they would have been the reason for the safe deposit keys. Keys to a safe deposit box that held the knife and the film. A safe deposit box that might have been in a bank in Marseilles, where Neuss had stopped before he went to see Curtay in Monaco. How the rest of it played, he didn’t know—except that it was possible that the people murdered in the Americas had been given the keys for safekeeping in the event something happened to Kitner but were never told what they were for or to. Kitner knew Cabrera had murdered his son but didn’t want it to come out, so he sent him away to Argentina and kept the knife and film of the murder as insurance he would never return.

  So if the knife and film were indeed the “pieces”—how had Raymond put it? The pieces that would ensure the future. What future, what had he been talking about? And why had Cabrera committed the murder in the first place?

  Abruptly Marten looked to Kovalenko. “Follow the thinking. Twenty years ago Alexander Cabrera would have been how old, thirteen, fourteen? What if he was your young criminal?”

  “You are suggesting he would kill his own brother.” Again Kovalenko sounded reluctant.

  “You’re the one who said he might be trying to kill his father.”

  “No, Mr. Marten. I said that Peter Kitner might have been the target of Raymond Thorne, not of Alexander Cabrera.” Kovalenko fixed Marten with a stare, then looked off.

  “What is it, Inspector?”

  Kovalenko didn’t reply, just kept looking off.

  “I’ll tell you what it is. It’s the same as it was before,” Marten pressed him. “You know in the pit of your stomach Raymond and Cabrera are the same person. But for some reason you don’t want to admit it to yourself.”

  “You are right, Mr. Marten.” Abruptly Kovalenko turned back. “Forget for the moment about Kitner’s murdered son and suppose, as you say, Alexander Cabrera and Raymond Thorne are one and the same. And suppose it was Kitner and not Alfred Neuss or the others who was his primary target all along. In that situation, we do have a son trying to murder his father.”

  “It’s happened before.”

  “Yes, it’s happened before. But the trouble here is that very soon this particular father is to become the next Tsar of Russia. Suddenly that changes everything, taking it out of the category of attempted familial homicide and making it a very touchy matter for state security, one that must be kept entirely classified until it is proven one way or the other. Which is the real reason why we could not tell Lenard and why I could not leave you behind to discuss it. I sincerely hope you can appreciate my position, Mr. Marten. That’s why we drove all night through a raging blizzard—for proof that this Hans Lossberg was killed by the same person who executed Dan Ford. Perhaps with luck, we will even get another fingerprint.”

  “Why don’t you just get a writ of some kind that will force Cabrera to give you his fingerprints?”

  “At this time yesterday we possibly could have. But yesterday morning I did not kn
ow of the existence of the LAPD file containing the fingerprints of Raymond Oliver Thorne.”

  “Yesterday, today, what’s the difference?”

  Kovalenko smiled faintly. “The difference is that today Cabrera has officially become a member of the imperial family. It is one of the difficulties with having a monarchy. The police do not ask a king or a tsar or a member of his family for his fingerprints. At least not without irrefutable evidence that a crime has been committed. And it is why, if I am to be the one who accuses him, there must be no doubt whatsoever that he is the right man.”

  77

  UNIVERSITY HOSPITAL MORGUE, ZURICH. 7:15 A.M.

  Hans Lossberg. Age forty-one, married with three children. The same, as Kovalenko had said, as him. Only he wasn’t the same as Kovalenko. He was dead, butchered with a razor-sharp instrument. The same way Dan Ford and Jean-Luc Vabres had been killed. Maybe with even more reckless passion. And no, the perpetrator had not left fingerprints. Fingerprints or not, the lone glance between Marten and Kovalenko said everything—Raymond had been in Zurich.

  “Could we see Herr Lossberg’s place of business?” Kovalenko asked as the young, friendly Inspector Heinrich Beelr of the Zurich Kantonspolizei was giving them details of the crime. When it had happened and where.

  Fifteen minutes later they were in the sizable back room of Grossmünster Presse, an industrial printing firm on Zahringerstrasse, poring through drawers of artwork looking for the paste-up for a recently printed menu or one about to be printed. What kind of menu it might be, they had no idea, except that it might be in Russian or have something to do with the Romanov family.

  An hour later they were still there with nothing to show for their labor. Making the situation more difficult was the steadfast assertion by Bertha Rissmak, the printing shop’s large and decidedly severe fifty-three-year-old manager, that they were looking for something that didn’t exist. While the late Hans Lossberg had been Grossmünster Presse’s owner, he was also the company’s only salesman and had been for the last fifteen years. And as far as Bertha Rissmak knew, in those same fifteen years Grossmünster Presse had not once printed a menu. Their specialty was business forms—inventory lists, letterheads, cards, shipping labels, and the like, nothing else. Compounding the problem was that Lossberg had literally handled all of the thousands of accounts himself and had his own filing system—fifteen four-drawer filing cases of it. Making things even more difficult was the fact that many of the accounts had been dormant for years and the files neither discarded nor updated. More frustrating still was that they were not categorized by date or subject but were simply in alphabetical order. It was a needle-in-a-haystack game, only they had no idea which haystack or even if there was anything to find at all. Still, they had no choice but to pore through every piece of artwork, look at every order and invoice. It was a tedious process that was taking up invaluable time, especially if Raymond had more on his agenda.