Nicholas Marten 01 - The Exile

by Folsom, Allan

  “Nicholas Marten, you are a bastard!” she whispered, fuming, as she pulled on Leopold’s robe. “How dare you call me like this, and here and now? And—Jesus God.” She felt herself shiver with emotion as the truth of it hit. “Jesus God, you’re alive! Are you alright? Where are you? Where?” Abruptly she shifted gears again. Emotion was everything.

  “You couldn’t have called sooner? Do you have any idea what I have been through? The worry! The despair! The awful sadness!—Do you have any idea what I was just about to—?”

  “I am very sorry, Leopold, a family emergency.” Fully dressed, Lady Clem kissed Leopold the carpenter on the forehead on her way out. “I will call you to say hello when I get back.”

  She reached the door and opened it.

  “Back?” A muscular Leopold sat up. “Where the hell are you going?”

  “Russia.”

  “Russia?”

  “Russia.”

  30

  BALTSCHUG KEMPINSKI HOTEL. SATURDAY, APRIL 5. 1:50 A.M.

  Where was Marten?

  Alexander rolled over in the dark. Maybe he’d slept, maybe not, he wasn’t sure. Rebecca and the Baroness were already at Tsarskoe Selo, the immense imperial complex near St. Petersburg, which the wife of Peter the Great had established nearly three hundred years earlier as a retreat from the duties of government. Tonight, by putting it under the guard of the FSO, Alexander had made it a retreat of a different sort, a fortress to protect his treasured crown jewel from her brother.

  Where was he?

  Immigration records at Sheremetyevo Airport had Nicholas Marten clearing passport control at 7:08 P.M. Moscow time. By ten he had yet to arrive at the Hotel Marco-Polo Presnja, his stated destination as required by his visa. Nor had he been there at eleven or midnight. So where was he? Where had he gone? And how, and with whom?

  NIGHT TRAIN #2, THE KRASNAYA STRELLA (RED ARROW) FIRMENY TRAIN, MOSCOW TO ST. PETERSBURG. SAME TIME.

  Nicholas Marten leaned against the small pillow in the dim light, his hands behind his neck, watching Kovalenko sleep. Outside, beyond the pulled window curtain of their sleeping compartment, Russia passed in the dark.

  Perhaps it was the swiftness of the train and the sound of the wheels over the tracks, but Marten found himself thinking of that night so far in the past when he boarded the Southwest Chief in the California desert, a young, wide-eyed detective filled with eagerness and anxiety on his first assignment as a member of the most fabled squad in the history of the Los Angeles Police Department. How long and dark and treacherous and deeply personal his road had become since.

  Kovalenko snorted loudly twice in his sleep, then rolled over so that he faced the curtained window with his back toward Marten. They were here, rattling northwest through the Russian night, because Kovalenko had insisted they go straight from the airport to Leningradski Station instead of to the Hotel Marco-Polo Presnja to check in as his visa required. If they had, Kovalenko pointed out, it might well have been the last place Marten saw in this lifetime, because once his visa had been processed at Sheremetyevo Airport in Moscow, there was little doubt the Tsarevich would know about it. And finding out, he would know Marten’s destination. And, having learned that—

  “You see how it follows, tovarich. He knows you are going there and—to the world you are already dead anyway.”

  So instead of a bed in a hotel room in Moscow or in a hole in the ground, he was in a sleeping compartment on the Red Arrow with Kovalenko on their way to St. Petersburg. There Lady Clem would meet them, arriving on a flight from Copenhagen at 2:40 that afternoon, and not far from the vast imperial compound of Tsarskoe Selo, where Kovalenko had told him Rebecca was.

  31

  MOSCOW. BALTSCHUG KEMPINSKI HOTEL. SATURDAY, APRIL 5. 4:30 A.M.

  Sleep was impossible.

  Wearing boxer shorts and nothing else, Alexander paced the darkened bedroom of his suite, looking out at the city. A taxi passed below, a municipal truck, a police car. Marten was out there. Somewhere. But where?

  So far neither Murzin nor any of his twenty-man detail knew what had happened after Marten cleared Sheremetyevo Airport passport control. He had simply gone out with the mass of faceless passengers and vanished, as if the city had swallowed him up.

  It was, Alexander thought, the same as it must have been for John Barron in Los Angeles when he was searching every corner of the city for Raymond Oliver Thorne. But then Barron had the help of the media and the LAPD’s nine thousand officers. The difference here was that Alexander could not sound the general alarm, which was why neither passport control nor the border police had been placed on alert. These were not Stalinist times, nor Soviet, nor were they yet Tsarist. The media might be under some restrictions, but unless they were critical of the government, the restrictions were relatively few. Moreover, like media anywhere, the reporters were very well connected. And there was the Internet. Let it be found out that the brother of the Tsarina was alive—and who would be one of the first to learn of it but Rebecca?

  So the trackdown had to be done not only quickly but shrewdly and on the quiet. Promising a large and immediate cash reward to anyone revealing Marten’s whereabouts, yet never revealing his name or why he was wanted, Murzin’s men quickly printed up and handed out hundreds of copies of Marten’s visa photograph to a collection of avtoritet, or leaders of Russian mafia groups who controlled airport and train station workers, hotel and restaurant employees, taxi drivers, and municipal and transport workers. As an extra measure they employed the fartsovchik, black market street-corner dealers, blatnye, street hoodlums, and patsani, young gang members who, like the others, could be trusted to keep their mouths shut and their eyes open and who would be only too eager to turn over a face for hard currency. Since most of these people carried cell phones, a fast if not immediate response was all but certain once he was seen.

  32

  NIGHT TRAIN #2, THE KRASNAYA STRELLA (RED ARROW). 6:25 A.M.

  Kovalenko lifted a cup of tea and glanced out the window, where the morning’s early light touched a cold, gray countryside. It was all woods and water, rivers and streams with lakes and ponds in between. Here and there patches of snow still covered the ground, frozen beneath leafless trees still weeks from budding out.

  “I was thinking about your friend, Detective Halliday.” Kovalenko looked across the small compartment at Marten cradling his own cup of tea, courtesy of the provodnik, the train carriage’s attendant, among whose jobs it was to maintain the carriage’s samovar so that passengers had a constant supply of hot water for drinks.

  “I told you I knew him,” Marten said quietly. “I didn’t say he was a friend.” Kovalenko was pushing at him again as he had before in Switzerland. But why, and especially why now?

  “Whatever you choose to call it, tovarich, he was still a remarkable man.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “For one thing, an autopsy was done after he was killed. He had pancreatic cancer. He might have lived another month, two at most. But he came all the way to Paris, and with a fully purchased ticket to Buenos Aires, just to find out about Alfred Neuss and stay on the trail of Raymond Thorne.”

  “He cared.”

  “But about what?”

  Marten shook his head. “I don’t follow you.”

  “The famous Five-Two Squad, tovarich. He was a member of it long before anyone ever heard of Raymond Thorne. Its commander Arnold McClatchy was a most beloved man, yes?”

  “I wouldn’t know.”

  “Did you ever meet him?”

  “McClatchy?”

  “Yes.” Kovalenko was watching him closely.

  Marten hesitated, but only for an instant because he couldn’t let the Russian sense he was unsure what to say. “Once, briefly.”

  “What was he like?”

  “Tall and rugged, like a man who knew what to expect in the world.”

  “Yet Raymond, or rather our Tsarevich, killed him.”

  Marten nodded.

  K
ovalenko watched him a moment longer, then got off it. “Well, at any rate, Halliday obviously cared a great deal about the Five-Two. Even after it was disbanded and he was no longer a policeman, he cared enough to give it his last full measure. I have to wonder if I would do that, or if any other man would. What do you think, tovarich?”

  “I’m a student learning how to design gardens. Garden designers are not usually put to that test.”

  “Unless they are trying to free their sister from a madman.”

  Marten took a sip of tea and sat back. Now it was he who studied Kovalenko. “Who do you work for?” he asked finally.

  Kovalenko grinned. “The Ministry of Justice, who do you think?”

  “No, tovarich, who do you really work for?”

  Kovalenko grinned again. “I go to work, I get paid, I try not to ask too many questions. It only gets me in trouble.”

  Marten took another sip of tea and then looked away. Ahead he could see the big Czech-made Skoda engines as they eased the long train around a steep curve, the steady click-click of the wheels over the rails made all the more noticeable by the unhurried speed. Then the track straightened out and he could hear a distinct whine as the driver accelerated and the train picked up speed. It was six-forty-five, an hour and fifteen minutes before they would arrive in St. Petersburg.

  “Tovarich.” Kovalenko stroked his beard purposefully.

  Marten looked at him, puzzled. “What?”

  “Once the Tsarevich finds you are not at the hotel, he will begin looking elsewhere. Passport control will confirm you entered the country. He will send people to look for you. They will be looking for a man who resembles the photograph on your visa.”

  “But they will be looking in Moscow.”

  “Will they?” Again Kovalenko stroked his beard.

  “You think I should shave.”

  “And cut your hair.”

  33

  MOSCOW, BALTSCHUG KEMPINSKI HOTEL. 7:20 A.M.

  Where was he? Where was Marten?

  Alexander was on the telephone to Murzin again, ignoring the ringing of his private cell phone. He knew from the number of times it had chirped in the past hours that it was the Baroness demanding to know why she and Rebecca had been spirited to Tsarskoe Selo without warning and without a personal explanation from him.

  Why was there still no news? he demanded of Murzin. What was wrong? Marten had obviously come to Moscow; he thought his sister was there, so there was no reason to think he would go anywhere else. He had to be here. Somewhere! The avtoritet were useless. So were the other street criminals.

  “They have not had enough time, Tsarevich,” Murzin said quietly against Alexander’s anxiety. “It was only late last night that they distributed his photograph. Today the sun is not even up.”

  “That is an excuse, not an answer.” Alexander cut him off harshly, the way the Baroness would have.

  “I promise you, Tsarevich,” Murzin continued, unruffled, “by this time tomorrow they will have found him. There is no street corner in all of Moscow he can pass without being seen.”

  For a long moment Alexander held the phone in the silence, uncertain as to what to do or say next. Sitting and waiting was no good, but what else could he do? His mind raced. What if, in some way, Marten had gotten the number of Rebecca’s cell phone? All he had to do was call her. But that was impossible. The numbers were changed every day, done after hackers had broken in twice, trying to talk with the new Tsarina. Since then Rebecca had been warned to use her cell phone only to make outgoing calls and the Tsarskoe Selo operators, as well as her two private secretaries, screened all incoming landline calls. So, no, Marten couldn’t reach her by phone. Suddenly a new thought came to him and with it a chill that slid across his shoulders.

  “What if,” he said to Murzin, almost in a whisper, “he’s not in Moscow? What if somehow he found out and is on his way to Tsarskoe Selo?”

  “Tsarevich.” Murzin tried to ease his concern. “It is impossible for him to know where she is. And even if he did, the palace is filled with FSO. There is no way he could even get onto the grounds, let alone to the apartments where she is.”

  Alexander’s eyes flashed with anger and he could feel sweat on his palms.

  “Colonel, you are not to tell me what Marten can or cannot do. Here is a man who has survived when everyone said he could not. He is dangerous and he is cunning. I have seen it firsthand.” Alexander felt his stomach tighten and the metronome begin again. He shook it off. “I want the search expanded to include St. Petersburg and all the rail lines and roads and pathways leading to Tsarskoe Selo.”

  “Of course, Tsarevich,” Murzin said quietly.

  “And then I want a helicopter.”

  “For where, Tsarevich?”

  “Tsarskoe Selo.”

  34

  MOSCOW STATION, ST. PETERSBURG. 8:35 A.M.

  Marten stepped off the train, the fourth passenger behind Kovalenko, as if they were strangers, and followed him into the station in the crowd of other passengers. Marten was clean shaven and his hair a great deal shorter than it had been—courtesy of the provodnik, the same train attendant who had made sure the carriage samovar was steaming and provided their tea, and who, for a small wad of rubles pressed into his hand by Kovalenko, brought a razor, bar of soap, pair of old scissors, and hand mirror to the compartment. The rest had been Marten’s personal labor, done over the sink in one of the car’s two tiny lavatories. His hairstyle would win no prizes, but without a beard and with short hair, identifying him from his visa photograph would be a near impossibility.

  Kovalenko saw the young man in the ragged blue jeans with the cigarette near the ticket windows. He was obviously high on something, sitting cross-legged on the floor with a guitar in his lap and strumming chords, as if just to make sound. Kovalenko knew a fartsovchik, a black market street-corner dealer, when he saw one. But this one was familiar. He either knew him or had seen him before, and shortly Kovalenko realized the dealer was an addict he had arrested several years earlier in Moscow as a suspect in the murder of another drug dealer. Later the addict had been cleared of the charge, but he obviously had learned nothing from the experience, because here he was back in business, only now it was St. Petersburg and not Moscow.

  As Kovalenko drew closer he realized that, as stoned out as the addict seemed, he was clearly watching people come off the trains, looking for someone in particular. Whether he saw Kovalenko or not, or if he recognized him, there was no way to know.

  Just ahead a corridor led to the right. Over it was a sign directing passengers toward a connection to the Trans-Siberian Express. Kovalenko reached it and turned quickly down it and out of the fartsovchik’s sight. Ten seconds later Marten caught up with him.

  “They’re here,” Kovalenko said quietly.

  “Who?”

  “The Tsarevich’s spies.”

  “Did they see us?”

  “Maybe. Who knows. Just keep walking.”

  35

  MOSCOW, THE BALTSCHUG KEMPINSKI HOTEL. 9:55 A.M.

  His black hair combed straight back, strikingly handsome in sweater, dark slacks, and leather flight jacket, and wearing comfortable suede crepe-soled shoes, Alexander followed Murzin up the final steps to the roof heliport. At the top, Murzin pulled open the door and they stepped out into warm sunshine.

  Directly across a Kamov Ka-60 Russian army helicopter waited, its rotors slowly churning. Thirty seconds later they were inside, the doors closed, clipping into safety harnesses. It was then that Murzin’s cell phone rang. Quickly he clicked on, then immediately handed it to Alexander.

  “For you, Tsarevich. The palace is calling.”

  “Rebecca?”

  “The Baroness.”

  TSARSKOE SELO. SAME TIME.

  Bright sunshine blazing through the windows in the palace’s Great Library starkly illuminated both the Baroness and a room that, with its dark heavy furniture and its walls of unblemished, white artificial marble covered with
mahogany bookcases that overflowed with almanacs, calendars, travel albums, and anthologies, was a vague remembrance of the past. But at the moment the past held no interest for the Baroness. What enraged her was the present.

  “I’ve called for hours,” she said into the phone, railing at Alexander in Russian as if he were a boy. “I left messages in twenty places. Why did you not answer?”

  “I”—Alexander hesitated—“apologize. There are other things—”

  “What other things? What is the meaning of sending us here in the middle of the night? Not a word from you. Just bundled off from Moscow by the FSO in the dark because you are busy and want us to powder our noses and do nothing.”

  Alexander motioned for Murzin to open the door, then unbuckled and got out. Murzin’s cell phone in hand, he walked across the rooftop and away from the helicopter.

  “Baroness, Rebecca’s brother is alive. He arrived in Moscow last night. That’s why I had you and her taken to Tsarskoe Selo.”

  “Where is he now?”

  “We don’t know.”

  “Are you certain it is him?”

  “Yes.”

  “So, the Tsarina was right all along.”

  “Baroness, Rebecca can’t know.”

  The Baroness de Vienne turned sharply from the center of the room and walked away toward the windows. “Rebecca be damned,” she spat. “There are new things infinitely more important.”

  “What new things?”

  “You met with President Gitinov yesterday.”

  “Yes. So?”

  Abruptly she twisted a curl of black hair behind her ear and turned her back to the harsh sunlight. “He didn’t like you.”