Ghost Phoenix

by Corrina Lawson

  “You’ll forgive me for thinking this is a waste of time and you know nothing,” Richard said. “See ya.”

  “I know far too much. That is the problem.” Romanoff put his hands behind his back and walked to the windows. “I am loathe to expose Marian to a curse.”

  “Too late. I’m already involved,” Marian said.

  “Hah. Maybe so.” Romanoff stared out his window.

  “We need to know, sir,” she said.

  “You must stop this.” Romanoff turned to face them. This wasn’t a room for dignity but somehow he managed it. “There were rumors about Rasputin’s strange abilities that interested certain elements of the KGB who remembered the hold the Mad Monk had on the czar’s family. They were taken with absolute seriousness. I know of this because I was assigned to trail one of Rasputin’s daughters for a time. As I said, the circus was the proper place for her. That task ended abruptly when the man who gave me the order died.” He shook his head. “I later found out that every member of that particular department either died in ‘accidents’ or mysteriously vanished. I counted myself lucky to have only done the one job for them.”

  “That’s some curse,” Marian said. His information matched up with what Drake had told them.

  “Indeed. You see, then?” He spread his hands apart. “It’s dangerous to ask these questions, even now.”

  “Perhaps those in that department did something to anger those in charge?” Richard asked.

  “A more likely tale than a madman’s curse, I grant you that. Still, they are dead and it chills me to contemplate sending Marian, of all ladies, into such a dangerous wilderness.” He bowed. “You deserve all consideration. I will speak no more of this.”

  “The lady’s under my protection,” Richard said. “She’ll come to no harm.”

  “And what resources do you have to protect her?”

  “Considerable, as you can tell from our choice of bodyguard. And if you recognize what’s dangerous, then you recognize it in me.”

  Romanoff’s eyes narrowed. “You hide it well.”

  Richard shrugged. “A rep as a dangerous man isn’t as useful as it was once. It’s better to be underestimated.”

  Romanoff sat back down. “You are determined, Marian, to go on with this?”

  Marian nodded. “If you turn us away, I’ll go to the next source. But your information is the most reliable. I need your help.”

  Romanoff scowled. “They tell me women today can do all that a man can. Bah. Valuable women need to be protected. See you do that for her, Genet.”

  Richard nodded.

  The Russian finally settled and crossed his legs, signaling the beginning of a tale.

  “It is true I have made a study of things lost after my country was liberated from the czar’s tyranny. And after my assignment to follow Rasputin’s heiress ended so abruptly, I decided to look into whether we possessed any of Rasputin’s relics.”

  Nice way to parse his ownership of various illegal goods, Marian thought. In truth, she had smuggled out pre-Bolshevik weapons, uniforms and artwork, including one gorgeous Fabergé egg, for him. Romanoff also referred to items the Soviets had taken from the Nazis, who had likely taken them from their victims.

  Romanoff had used those proceeds to buy this home.

  She felt more guilt about that than about Richard’s quest. At least she had made sure to quietly see that most of the artwork had ended up in the hands of collectors who let the objects be displayed in museums. But she often wondered about the true owners of such things.

  Another reason to quit this work. Her new life would be clean, whatever it was.

  “So Marian’s correct, and you do have information for me?” Richard asked.

  “Despite her endorsement of my knowledge, it is not as solid as many things I could tell you.” He stared at her. “And it is not free. Not with the curse attached. You must pay for that.”

  “What do you want?” Richard answered for her.

  “Not from you. From her.”

  “Sir?” she asked.

  “Your firm is genius in acquiring items for me.”

  She nodded. “Thank you, but could you please stop being polite and tell me what you want?”

  “You will find one of Elvis’s cars for me.”

  What? “You mean you wish my firm to find and arrange for you to buy one of Elvis’s cars?”

  “Yes, yes. I can pay for the car, but it must be authentic. It must be one he personally drove. And you must also arrange transportation here. And you will waive your customary finder’s fee.”

  A fee that normally ran into the thousands or tens of thousands given how valuable the item was. “I may have to obtain permission from the firm on the last condition.”

  “Worried about whether your grandfather will agree? I know he keeps you on a tight leash,” Romanoff said.

  Shame closed her throat. A client had sensed that?

  Richard stood. “The collector I represent will be glad to cover that fee for your firm, Marian.”

  Marian shook her head. Again, he came to her rescue. Was her knee-jerk shame at the mention of her grandfather that obvious? Yes, it was. Even Romanoff knew it and had used it as a lever against her.

  “Finding Rasputin is my highest priority at the moment, as my firm well knows,” Marian said. “I agree to your terms, Lord Romanoff.”

  All true. Let Grandfather eat the expense. He wanted her to take this job, after all.

  Romanoff nodded. “Good!” He stared at Richard. “You make me very curious about this private collector of yours, who also calls on a family obligation.”

  “That’s too bad because his identity is confidential,” Richard answered.

  Romanoff glared for a second, then laughed. “Very good. Keep your secrets. We all have them, eh? Now, tell me what information you are beginning with and I will try to match it to what I know.”

  “The tale I have involved a servant of the czar’s family. He was ordered to secure certain objects before the revolution succeeded. This included Rasputin’s body. It was moved from the public burial location and onto royal grounds. Empress Alexandra was insistent that the body be under her care. It may even have been Rasputin’s wife and family who helped swap the body with that of another.”

  These details were more than Richard had revealed to her. It was possible he was making that up. In any case, he was being very careful in the information he was parceling out to Romanoff. And Romanoff was doing the same.

  “Ah.” Romanoff sank deeper into his chair. “I can see why the new republic would want to hide that information. If word had gotten out, it is possible some would have believed Rasputin had risen from the dead. Religious fervor was not what was needed in those perilous times, as I said earlier.”

  “Hardly likely he could rise from the dead, given that he was drugged, shot, stabbed and drowned. Even a Russian does not survive that,” Marian said.

  Romanoff laughed. But she glanced over at Richard, and his thoughtful expression told her that he didn’t take that story at face value.

  “True, not even one of us would survive death times four,” Romanoff said. “But religious people are a breed apart. They are not so logical and so the body was burned and scattered. I admit, that could have been a cover.”

  “My information ends with the body being moved by the empress. Where does yours begin?” Richard asked.

  “With the curse, of course.”

  “Were you hurt by it?” Marian asked.

  “Your concern touches me.” Romanoff smiled and tapped his heart. “It is an old hurt and one of the heart and not the body. I was determined to find my…” He stared off into space for a moment. “My friend. I wanted to find her after her disappearance, along with others from that office who specialized in Rasputin. I would not believe she was dead. It took me two y
ears. When I finally found her, she was living in a decrepit apartment building in old Stalingrad, an area that still bore the scars from Hitler’s invasion.”

  He sighed.

  “I thought our reunion would go well but, no, she was terrified. She thought I had come to kill her or that I would lead an assassin to her doorstep. She didn’t believe at first that concern and curiosity lead me to discover her fate. We Russians are not an optimistic people.

  “My comrade turned aside my concern, though she did accept my gifts of cigarettes and fresh bread. But it was the wine that loosened her tongue. And she spun a tale that I doubted in retrospect but knew it was the only explanation I would ever have.”

  Romanoff walked over to the bejeweled Elvis mannequin again. “Like this lovely costume, jewels were involved. The tale was, that in the days just before the Revolution, Empress Alexandra was said to have lost a close family friend, a long-time nurse who had been with her since she was a child. As the empress was of German origin, so was the nurse. A beautiful coffin was prepared to honor the nurse’s long service. Priceless jewels were embedded into it. The nurse’s family and several long-time Romanov servants accompanied the coffin to Germany. But my friend told me the coffin held Rasputin and that the supposedly dead nurse was on the journey but very much alive.

  “It was she who brought her coffin to the valley of the River Nehe, where her hometown of Idar was located. My friend said it was because then Rasputin’s body could be carefully hidden in the many tunnels and hiding places in that area. The jewels were removed to provide funds for those caring for the body. My friend said her department interviewed one of the nurse’s daughters and got the tale from her. My friend said our leaders wanted to bring Rasputin home. Why our government wanted the body back in Mother Russia, she never said. It’s a ridiculous idea.”

  Romanoff shrugged. “Someone else apparently saw it that way. Her department was dissolved, made to vanish in a day, as if it never existed. She believed that many of her fellow agents were killed by the curse of Rasputin. Curse or no, they were all killed, save for one who apparently defected to the West. I’ve never heard of what happened to him.”

  If Drake’s story was true, that man had been Lansing, Alec Farley’s foster father.

  “Isn’t it more likely that the KGB killed them for some reason? Or that the defector you speak of killed them before he vanished?” Richard asked.

  “Yes, some KGB officials were notoriously paranoid and did away with anyone who could even mention a failure. Still, it was odd for a whole division to be destroyed. My friend and the rest of the comrades in her department knew nothing connected with national security. They had only tracked down rumors of a long-dead man. This is a curse.”

  “You are too logical a person to speak of curses,” Marian said.

  “I am Russian. We know curses. Things will always go wrong, somehow.”

  No wonder Romanoff loved Elvis and American pop culture if he was this cynical. Elvis must look like a window into some strange, bright foreign land for him.

  “Did your friend provide more details? Such as the family name of the nurse?” Richard asked.

  “Fenstermaker.”

  “Window maker. Interesting,” Marian said. “Does the family still live in the area?”

  “I never had a chance to ask my friend more questions. A day later, she was found hanged in her apartment. Suicide, they said. I did not believe them. I did not ask further questions at the time. I wished to live.”

  “I’m sorry,” Marian said.

  “It was necessary for survival. And I survived.” He poured another bourbon and drank it in one gulp.

  “Do you have contacts who might be willing to talk to us more about this?”

  “You ask for more than I have given? Hah! I asked for one of Elvis’s cars. Perhaps I should have asked for a higher price. Curses are bad business.”

  “I would be happy to meet a higher price,” Richard said.

  “That desperate, are you?”

  “Disappointing this particular person is not an option,” Richard said. “It’s an obligation, similar in some ways to what you owed your friend.”

  “A matter of honor?”

  Richard inclined his head. “Exactly that.”

  “I have a source. Perhaps. I could ask if they would be willing to talk to you.”

  “Stellar,” Richard said.

  “It is a source that is even more paranoid than I.” Romanoff grinned. “But for dear Marian, for a matter of honor, and for one of Elvis’s cars, I will see if they will meet with you.”

  Richard offered his hand. “Thank you, Lord Romanoff.”

  Romanoff shook his hand briskly. “And now, I am bored by the past. We will go outside and celebrate the present and the imminent arrival of my new car!”

  He led them out of the jungle room and locked the doors behind them.

  “Madame Claudet! Set a table for lunch on the patio! My best wine.”

  Claudet rose from her desk near the door. “How many? Three?”

  “Oh, I think they brought another American with them. Him too.”

  Claudet wrinkled her nose. “He paced the entire floor but finally settled in the study. I will let him know.”

  Romanoff smiled. He clapped Richard on the back. “I like Americans! It is good luck to have one with you and even better to have two! It is said Americans are immune to curses.”

  “Of course we are,” Daz said as he stepped out from a room off the front entrance. “It’s why we won the Cold War.”

  “Careful, boy, or I will serve you my vodka,” Romanoff said.

  Daz put up his hand in mock horror. “No! Not Russian vodka. I surrender.”

  “You see?” Now Romanoff clapped Richard on the back. “Americans are good luck. They bring laughter.”

  Romanoff excused himself to make phone calls to “his people”, but after he was done, they sat down outside on his back patio. The house muted the wind from the sea, so they were only left with wisps tickling the trees overlooking a flower garden. The skies were so blue that Marian wished she could forget this talk of curses.

  Daz and Richard drank the wine freely, so apparently they had no problem forgetting curses. Romanoff drank not at all, though he was in good spirits. As the dinner ended and they rose to go, he pressed a note into her hand.

  “As you wish, here is someone who might help you and where you can meet him.” Romanoff seized her shoulders and kissed her on both cheeks. “I received this contact point through another party. Therefore, I cannot answer to its reliability and trustworthiness as much as I would want.” He held her out from him. “Be careful.”

  She nodded. “Thank you, Lord Romanoff.”

  “No, thank you.” He bowed. “Thankyouverymuch.”

  She smiled at the Elvis impersonation.

  As they climbed back into the car, Daz said, “And now we have left Elvis’s building.”

  Chapter Eleven

  An informant wishes to meet you at Fontevraud Abbey tomorrow at 10 a.m. to discuss Mr. Genet’s acquisition. Will call in the morning with exact details. I look forward to my Elvis car. Be careful, Marian. These are not good people.

  Richard handed the note back to Marian. If a former KGB agent considered them “not good” people, they probably should start being concerned about curses. The choice of rendezvous was ominous as well. That was where the Immortal Court lived before the French Revolution.

  All of it was suspicious.

  “I’ve always wanted to visit the abbey, but somehow, it had never worked out. At least, whatever happens, I finally have a chance to see it,” Marian said.

  “I could wish for any other place. ‘Whatever happens’ might be worse than you imagine.”

  Marian tucked the note back in her pocket.

  “What do you mean?” Daz asked
.

  “I don’t like it. I’m familiar with the abbey from my time in France. It feels like a trap.”

  “If it is, and if you still want to find Rasputin, we have to walk into it,” Daz said.

  “Absolutely,” Richard said. “But Marian doesn’t have to take the risk.”

  “The hell I don’t,” she said.

  After breakfast in the hotel suite the next morning, they set out for the abbey. It was close enough for a nice, brisk stroll. Marian suspected that the person who’d agreed to meet with them knew that.

  Curses. She’d tossed and turned thinking about it. She didn’t believe in curses, but she believed in psychic abilities. A curse could mean a psychic was protecting Rasputin’s remains, for some reason. Maybe a descendant? Or a descendant of a former pupil? Rasputin had lived long enough that he could have trained a successor, like one generation of Doyles trained the next.

  But whatever was behind this curse, they didn’t know about her. And she had Richard on her side, and Daz. She’d take those odds. She’d faced dangerous situations alone before. Having back-up was better.

  As the massive stone towers of Fontevraud Abbey loomed above them, Marian sensed Richard’s growing discomfort. He looked down, not up. He almost bumped into several pedestrians, and he didn’t glance at the shop windows.

  She was getting used to his not talking when something was on his mind. But this seemed different.

  As they neared the entrance, he stopped, as if he’d encountered some invisible force field. His head was down and his gaze kept sliding away from the abbey.

  This was not Richard. He ruled the world. The world did not rule him. What bad memories stalked him here?

  “What’s wrong, Richard? Are you worried about curses?” she asked.

  “I’m more worried about flesh-and-blood men. This is an odd place to exchange information on Rasputin.”

  “But it’s public and that’s better for us than a private, remote location,” Daz said.

  “You were shot at in public,” Richard said.

  “Not going to let me live that down, are you?”