Behind them came a rush of Swiss police in full riot gear. Almost on cue, the protesters turned and threw a fusillade of rocks. Marten saw the police duck behind plastic shields. An instant later, four policemen stepped forward. They were dressed in black, with the word POLIZEI stenciled on their hats and flak jackets, and carried small, short-barreled rifles.
“Tear gas!” Marten yelled and glanced in the outside mirror. A large truck was right behind them with more vehicles backed up behind it. Others had pulled to the outside lane hoping to pass and now completely blocked the road.
“Clear the area! Clear the area!” A police bullhorn blasted from nowhere. The order came in English, then in German, French, and Italian.
Marten looked to Kovalenko. “Bring up a local map on the GPS screen.”
Now the protestors were surrounding the ML, using it as a shield while they threw more rocks and screamed at the police.
Seconds later there were four rapid-fire booms as the police fired the tear gas, the canisters bursting around the ML and filling the close vicinity with choking white smoke.
Immediately Marten cut off the air intake, put the ML in gear, and threw the wheel to the right. Leaning on the horn, he moved out of traffic and onto the right shoulder. Coughing, gagging, shouting, protesters pounded on the car. Then the ML was clear. Marten touched the accelerator and the SUV shot forward along the roadway’s inside shoulder, moving fast toward the police.
“We’re going to need Beelr’s pass,” he said to Kovalenko, “and all your influence as a cop.”
Ahead, several of the black-uniformed Police broke toward them, waving their arms for them to stop. One of them raised a bullhorn.
“White SUV! Stop where you are!” The bullhorn blared the message again in German, French, and Italian.
Marten kept on. Looking for a way out. Then he saw it. A side road, little more than a path down from the shoulder and out across a frozen field. Swinging wide, he took it. The ML bumped off the highway and accelerated across the open track, a wide, grassy meadow dusted with light snow.
“Across this there appears to be a secondary road.” Kovalenko was looking at a map glowing on the GPS screen on the dashboard. “It circumvents the town, crosses a bridge, and then picks up the main road again on the far side.”
“I see it! Hang on!” Marten slowed a little for a ditch. The ML hit it, banged hard over it, then came up high on the far side. Suddenly they saw a narrow canal right in front of them. Instinctively, Marten accelerated, then touched the brakes and swung the wheel left, sending the SUV into a controlled four-wheel drift. The car touched the edge of the canal, hung there for an instant, then came back, and Marten accelerated forward.
“There’s the bridge,” Kovalenko yelled.
“I see it!”
The bridge, old and low, made of wood with iron girders, was a hundred yards ahead. Marten’s foot pressed down on the accelerator. Five seconds, ten. They hit the planking at eighty miles an hour and in a blink were across it. Suddenly there was a tremendous roar. A shadow passed overhead. An instant later they saw a Swiss army helicopter. It dipped to near ground level, flew ahead, and then abruptly turned and came back to settle on the road directly in front of them.
Marten jammed on the brakes and the ML came to a stop no more than twenty yards away. Immediately the helicopter doors slid open and a dozen Swiss army commandos carrying automatic weapons jumped out and ran toward them. At that moment, Kovalenko’s cell phone rang.
“Shto tyepyer?” What now?
“Answer it,” Marten demanded.
Kovalenko clicked on. “Da,” he said and then looked to Marten.
“For you.”
“Who is it?”
Kovalenko shrugged. “A man.”
Quickly Kovalenko handed the phone to Marten. The commandos were nearly on top of them. Marten clicked on.
“Yes,” he said, puzzled.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Marten.” The voice was gentle and had a French accent. “My name is Alexander Cabrera.”
85
Marten covered the phone and looked to Kovalenko, unbelieving. “It’s Cabrera.”
“I suggest you talk to him.” Kovalenko fixed Marten with a hard stare, then, purposefully leaving his Makarov automatic on the floor, opened the door and stepped out to meet the commandos, raising his hands as he did.
VILLA ENKRATZER. SAME TIME.
Cell phone in hand, Alexander Cabrera stood at the window of a small study a floor above the library where his father had abdicated the Russian throne. Directly beneath him he could see snow removal crews clearing the snow that had fallen overnight so the guests could stroll at their leisure over the villa’s network of spectacular wooded hiking trails.
“I telephoned you, Mr. Marten, because I understand you have been trying to reach Rebecca.”
“Yes. I would like to speak with her, please,” Marten said with measured calm, trying to ignore the Swiss army commando just outside his window with his finger on the trigger of a submachine gun. To his left, he could see Kovalenko surrounded by commandos, his hands still in the air, talking directly to their officer-in-charge. Now Marten saw him gesture to get permission to reach inside his coat. The officer nodded and Kovalenko carefully reached into his breast pocket and took out the pass Kantonspolizei Inspector Beelr had given them as they’d left Zurich.
“I’m afraid she is outside with the Rothfels children, Mr. Marten,” Cabrera said as politely as could be.
Immediately Marten turned his full attention to Cabrera’s voice and speech pattern. He listened for anything recognizable, but there was nothing. He needed to make Cabrera talk further, say more.
“I’m on my way to Davos now. I would very much like to see Rebecca when I get there. Maybe you could—”
“May I call you Nicholas, Mr. Marten?”
“Alright.”
Alexander turned from the window and crossed to a large desk. At the moment the Baroness was downstairs in a private dining room enjoying lunch with the mayor of Moscow, the Russian Federation minister of defense, and Gregor II, the Most Holy Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church—explaining in detail how gracious Peter Kitner had been in signing his abdication for the good of Russia and how eager he would be to join them later that evening when Pavel Gitinov, the president of Russia, would arrive for dinner.
“I believe Lady Clementine Simpson—how do you say, ‘spilled the beans,’ and you know Rebecca and I plan to wed.”
“Yes.”
“I didn’t mean to create a scandal, Nicholas, or seem rude in keeping secrets, but our relationship has been kept quiet from nearly everyone for many rather complicated reasons.”
Marten heard nothing familiar at all in the way Cabrera talked. Maybe he was crazy. Maybe Kovalenko was right, Cabrera was not Raymond at all.
“Why don’t you come to the villa, Nicholas? You can not only see Rebecca but it will give us the opportunity to meet. Come for dinner and plan to spend the night, please. We will be having some very interesting guests.”
Marten saw Kovalenko nod to the Swiss army commander and then the two shook hands, the commandos lowered their weapons, and Kovalenko started back toward the car.
“The château is called Villa Enkratzer. Anyone in Davos can give you directions. Come to the guardhouse. I will leave word for you to be admitted. I am very much looking forward to meeting you.”
“Me, too.”
“Good. I will see you this evening, then.”
There was a click as Cabrera hung up. And that was it, no good-bye, nothing more at all. Simply a polite invitation to dinner and to spend the night. It was the last thing Marten had expected.
86
STILL FRIDAY, JANUARY 17. 4:10 P.M.
The long shadows of afternoon slid across the Davos Valley as Marten turned the ML onto the Promenade, Davos’s main street, and slowed behind a long line of taxis and limousines. Men and women in business suits and overcoats crowded the sidewalks, talking t
o each other or on cell phones and seemingly unmindful of the snow underfoot or the patrolling police or the soldiers wearing berets and carrying submachine guns. Little seemed safe anywhere anymore, even for the richest and most powerful people in the world, sequestered in a fortified village in the middle of the Swiss Alps. Still, they had accepted armed patrols as a way of life, and if there was danger here they chose to ignore it.
“Seven kilometers out of town and then turn right at a pyramid-shaped sculptured rock with the name ‘Enkratzer’ chiseled into it,” a Davos policeman told them. “You can’t miss it, the rock is thirty meters high. Besides, there are two armored cars full of commandos stationed at the entryway.”
“How are you going to explain me?” Kovalenko asked as Marten navigated through the traffic. The Russian might have been ordered back to Moscow, but he had said nothing more about it and neither had Marten.
“I am Cabrera’s guest, you are my traveling companion. It would be impolite not to admit us both.”
Kovalenko smiled faintly and looked off. Within minutes they were out of the bustling village and into the deep shadows of a conifer forest, and then as quickly into the postcard beauty of the sprawling winter farmland that made up the Davos Valley. Rimming it high above on either side were snow-covered Rhaetian Alps with names like Pischa, Jakobshorn, Parsenn, and Schatzalp/Strela.
4:40 P.M.
Runoff from melting snow was beginning to harden on the roadway. Soon it would freeze solid and become treacherous and nearly invisible black ice.
Marten eased off the accelerator and felt the tires take a surer grip on the road, then glanced at Kovalenko. He was quiet and still looking off, and Marten knew he was troubled. By deliberately not returning to Moscow as he had been ordered, he had put himself in a difficult situation, one that became even harder as time wore on. The question was, why was he doing it? In his heart did he really believe that Cabrera was Raymond and not the contrary as he had said more than once? Or was he just not sure, and refused to get this close and not find out? Or—did it have to do with his own agenda? And if it did, was he working for, or with someone else? Someone important enough to risk turning his back on orders from his own department?
Suddenly something else came to mind. Why Marten hadn’t thought of it before, he didn’t know.
“London,” he said sharply and looked to Kovalenko. “Was the announcement of who Kitner was and that he was to become Tsar to have been made in London the day or the day after he had been knighted?”
“No. It was far too important to have been tacked onto the coattails of that. The announcement was to have been made several weeks later.”
“Several weeks?”
“Yes.”
Marten stared at him. “April 7.”
“Yes.”
“In Moscow.”
“That information was highly privileged. How did you know?” Kovalenko was astonished.
“Halliday’s book,” Marten lied, covering himself quickly. “He had the date and the place, but there was a big question mark after it, as if he didn’t know what it meant or what it was about.”
“How did Halliday come to have it at all?”
“I don’t know,” Marten lied again and turned back, his eyes searching the road ahead for the turnoff to Villa Enkratzer. Then another thought came. Cabrera had rented the Davos villa just prior to the announcement. Had he planned the same for London? But not a villa, an elegant private home—at 21 Uxbridge Street and close to the Russian Embassy. Furthermore, Raymond had noted in his calendar just beneath the March 14, London entry—Russian Embassy/London. Did that mean the presentation to the Romanov family was to have taken place there and on that day?
Abruptly Marten looked to Kovalenko. Once again he lied. “There were two more dates in Halliday’s book. They were noted ‘London’—March fourteenth and fifteenth. If the public announcement about Kitner was not to have been made then but three weeks later, when was he to be presented to the—”
“Romanov family?” Kovalenko finished the sentence for him.
“Yes.”
“March fourteenth. At a formal dinner at the Russian Embassy in London.”
Oh, Jesus! There it was! At least part of it. Raymond’s notation about the Russian Embassy.
Marten looked away and then back. “And then the dinner was abruptly canceled.”
“Yes.”
“Who canceled it?”
“Kitner himself.”
“When?”
“I believe it was on March thirteenth. The day of his knighthood ceremony.”
“Did he give a reason?”
“I was not told. I don’t know that anyone was. It was simply his decision to put it off until a later date.”
“Maybe the reason was that Alexander Cabrera was still on the run from the police in Los Angeles as Raymond Oliver Thorne. Thorne wasn’t brought down until March fifteenth. Kitner runs a huge global news operation. He may well have known about the killings in Mexico and San Francisco and Chicago and learned who the victims were even before the police confirmed them. Those murders might have been what sent Neuss running to London. Not just to save his life if he was next on Raymond’s list but for him and Kitner to figure out what to do to stay ahead of Cabrera. Who, I should point out, as Kitner’s eldest son is next in line for the throne.”
“You’re suggesting Cabrera thought he could become Tsar?”
“He thought it then and he thinks it now,” Marten said. “All he has to do is wait until the family is informed who Kitner is and then, sometime before the public announcement is made, leak the word to the press. Suddenly the world knows who Kitner is and what he is about to become.”
Kovalenko looked at him coldly. “And then Kitner is killed and, as his eldest son, Cabrera is automatically next in line for the throne and the process is already under way.”
“Yes,” Marten picked up the reasoning, “and within days, maybe hours, the handsome, successful, but reclusive Alexander Cabrera reveals who he is and travels to Moscow to mourn openly for his dead father, declaring at the same time that if the people want him, he is willing to serve in his father’s place.”
“And since the government has already agreed to the return of the monarchy, there seems very little reason to think they wouldn’t go along. Which is something Cabrera and the Baroness have been counting on from the beginning.” Kovalenko smiled thinly. “Is that what you’re thinking?”
Marten nodded. “It should have happened a year ago, and it might have if Cabrera hadn’t nearly been killed by the Los Angeles police.”
For a long moment Kovalenko was quiet. Finally he spoke. “The problem with what you postulate, Mr. Marten, is that you are telling it from Cabrera’s point of view. I remind you it was Peter Kitner, not Alexander Cabrera, who canceled the Romanov family meeting and postponed his own ascension to the throne.”
“Until when?”
“Until now. This weekend at Davos. And with it the presentation made to the Romanov family yesterday in Paris.”
“Kovalenko, who selected the dates? Kitner? Or was that a decision that came from inside the government?”
“I don’t know. Why?”
“Because it seems neatly calculated to have given Cabrera enough time to find a way to expunge his records, both the hard evidence files and the databases, recover from the wounds sustained in his ‘hunting accident’ and the cosmetic facial surgery that followed—cosmetic surgery that might have been necessary or that might have been elective, so that anyone who had seen him as Raymond Thorne would not recognize him—and then get back to running his business so that nothing seemed out of the ordinary.”
“You’re suggesting someone was able to delay the entire process until Cabrera was ready.”
“That’s what I’m suggesting.”
“Mr. Marten, to do that someone would have to have enormous influence inside Russia, enough to control both houses of parliament. It’s not possible.”
�
��No?”
“No.”
“Not unless that person”—Marten carefully underscored each word—“was a hugely rich, impeccably credentialed, highly sophisticated, and very socially prominent person who personally knew—and, in one way or another, held influence over—the most important people at the highest levels of Russian business or politics, or both. And therefore had the money, the power, and the guile to manipulate them.”
“The Baroness.”
“You tell me.”
87
VILLA ENKRATZER. 5:00 P.M.
Rebecca watched in the mirror as her lady’s maid helped her dress. This was a night of nobility, elegance, and romance, and Alexander himself had chosen what she would wear—a Parisian-designer floor-length purple silk and velvet Chinese sheath dress with lace cutouts and sleeves that took the fabric to her wrists. She smiled as the lady’s maid did the final clasp at the back of her neck and stepped back as she turned her profile to the mirror. The dress trimmed her slender figure all the more and gave her the look she knew Alexander wanted—that of a beautiful, exquisite doll.
Now she pulled her hair back, fastening it with a clip of South Sea pearls and then added elongated South Sea pearl and diamond earrings, finishing it all with a small emerald necklace. Standing back, she thought she had never looked so lovely—as lovely as she was certain the evening would be. Within the hour, dinner guests would begin to arrive from Davos. Among them would be Lord Prestbury and his daughter, Rebecca’s closest female friend in the world, Lady Clementine Simpson, whose jaw she knew would drop to the floor when she saw the dress. Rebecca would enjoy the moment, of course, but considering the grandness of the evening the dress and Lady Clem’s reaction to it were hardly that important.
Nicholas Marten 01 - The Exile Page 55