Eternal Empire

by Alec Nevala-Lee

  Maddy left the room, closing the door behind her, and stood for a moment at the head of the staircase, listening to the muffled notes of the piano playing down the hall. For a moment, she thought about throwing herself over the balustrade. She had been so close. Another minute, and she might have been able to bring the conversation around to the yacht.

  Looking down the stairs, she saw clearly what she had to do now. Her second option was all she had left. She had been holding it in reserve, knowing that it amounted to a full confession, but even if the consequences were severe, they were nothing compared to the alternative.

  Since yesterday, she had gone more than once to call Powell. Each time, standing at the pay phone, she had wavered. Glancing around the street, she had reassured herself that she was alone. Yet she could never shake the sense that she was being watched, and that someone was waiting patiently to see what she would do next. And if she failed to do what they asked—

  As she began to gather her courage again, the sound of the piano abruptly ceased. Looking up, Maddy saw a slender girl of twelve emerge from the parlor down the hall. It was Nina, Tarkovsky’s daughter. As the girl headed along the landing toward the other end of the house, she glanced back, her dark eyes briefly brushing Maddy’s. Then she turned away.

  A voice came from over her shoulder. “I don’t know what you said, but it worked.”

  Maddy turned to see Elena standing behind her, a look on her face of mingled disdain and admiration. She had emerged noiselessly from the other room. “What are you talking about?”

  Elena smiled tightly. “You’re coming with us. Vasily wants you on the yacht. He says that he’d like me to keep an eye on you. So it appears you and I will be sharing a cabin.”

  At first, Maddy couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “He said this to you?”

  Ignoring the question, Elena headed for the stairs. “You will pack tonight, and bring your passport. We need to get your visas in order.” She glanced down at Maddy’s pencil skirt. “And you might want to find something nice to wear. We’re leaving tomorrow for Romania.”

  30

  Clifford Hughes was short and muscular, his face mottled with freckles, a scruffy growth of ginger stubble beginning to appear on his face and shorn head. Wolfe observed that he was still wearing his clothes from the day before, although his red jacket was gone, and that a smile was playing across his lips as he studied the three photographs set before him on the table. “Mare Street, innit?”

  “That’s right.” Asthana tapped a figure in one of the shots. “Could this be you?”

  Hughes leaned forward. In the photo, a screen capture from a cell phone video taken during the riots, a figure in a red jacket could be seen. “Can’t really say. Could be me. Or someone in similar clothes.”

  At Asthana’s side, Wolfe remained silent, her hand resting lightly on a folder on the table. She was tired, but there had been little time to rest since the events of the previous day. In the aftermath of the riots, police stations in the city were packed to capacity, with arrestees sent to outlying areas as the court system worked through its backlog of cases. Even here, in Watford, all the interrogation rooms were occupied, so they had been forced to squeeze into the kitchen, where the door frequently opened and closed as officers came in for cups of tea.

  Asthana resumed her questioning. “And what were you doing at Mare Street? Hoping to break an officer’s skull?”

  Hughes rubbed the top of his head. “I live there, don’t I? King Edward’s Road.”

  “And you aren’t working these days. Wormwood Scrubs for burglary, wasn’t it?”

  “If that’s what you want to call it,” Hughes said easily. “I was alone that morning, watching the telly. Heard the noise and thought I’d go for a look. It seemed like a bit of fun.”

  Asthana pointed to the second photo. “What about this shot? It looks like you’re talking to a group of men near the park. Or is this a different person in the same kind of jacket?”

  Wolfe shot Asthana a look. Although she knew that her partner was under a great deal of stress, this was still a leading question. Not surprisingly, Hughes took the hint. “That’s right. Lots of jackets like those.”

  Asthana pointed to the last picture, which showed the man in red throwing something visible only as a blur in the air. “Whoever he was, he threw a piece of wood at an officer at the scene. You’re still saying it wasn’t you?”

  Hughes gave a shrug. “What can I say? It’s all a mistake. I’ve been saying this since I got nicked.”

  As Hughes leaned back smugly in his chair, Wolfe did her best to tamp down her frustration. Since the prison break, she had been presented with one setback after another. Dancy had gone into hiding, evidently out of fear for his own life, and they had been unable to bring the solicitor in for questioning about his knowledge of his clients’ intentions.

  She fought away a fresh wave of anger. This was the hardest part of all. She had never pretended to know Ilya well, but she had believed that he would rather die than fall in with Vasylenko. Now, instead, witnesses were claiming that Ilya himself had unlocked the old man’s shackles. She was also aware that given her history with Ilya, questions had been raised about her failure to stop him on Mare Street. And the only way to silence these doubts was to bring him back herself.

  Wolfe spoke up at last. “Clifford, do you remember the forensic examination you were given after your arrest? It would have been conducted by a scenes of crime officer. He took a sample from the inside of your cheek—”

  Hughes’s face lit up. “Right, a little man. Pulled a comb through my hair, didn’t he? And wiped off my hands.”

  “Yes. It was a nitrate test. And the results came back a few hours ago.” Wolfe opened the folder in front of her, which contained a single printed page. “The tests found traces on your hands of penthrite, a chemical used in high explosives. Similar traces were found on your jacket. And both tested as a match for another set of chemicals found at a scene in Woolwich. Does any of that sound familiar?”

  Hughes’s eyes were on the printout. His smile was gone. “Can’t say that it does.”

  “Let me explain, then. There was a prison escape that morning. The explosives they used left a residue that perfectly matches the nitrate test I have here. It was all over your jacket, Clifford. And both of your hands.”

  This was largely a bluff. In the confusion, Hughes’s hands had been swabbed only after he had spent the night in his holding cell. Normally, the samples would have been taken immediately, before there was a chance of contamination, and in any case, such chemicals could have come from any number of sources.

  Hughes did not seem aware of this fact. He looked with pointed calm at Wolfe, but his hands trembled slightly where they rested against the table. “I don’t know about any escape.”

  “That’s hard to believe. As I see it, there are two explanations. Either you were there in Woolwich, with the others, or you encountered them in some other way.” Wolfe pointed to a face in the second picture. “I’m most interested in this man. Ilya Severin. Perhaps you spoke to him briefly, and one of the others brushed past you. A moment of contact is all it would take.”

  Hughes studied the picture. At last, he said, speaking slowly: “Maybe. But—”

  “So you were there,” Wolfe said. “In that case, you should tell us what you remember about these men.”

  Hughes hesitated again, as if wondering how much he could safely give up. Finally, he shook his head. “I don’t remember anything. And I have nothing to say to the likes of you.”

  For a moment, Wolfe weighed whether to push things further, then decided that Hughes might be more receptive after another day or two in holding. After they had gone through the closing formalities, a police officer came to take custody of Hughes, who did not say another word. Asthana gathered up the photos, then rose with Wolfe and left the kitchen.


  As Wolfe went to find the duty officer, Asthana remained in the hallway of the custody area, checking the email on her phone.

  It was lucky, Asthana thought, that Hughes had held his tongue. Listening to him talk, she had wanted to smack him across his blotchy face. He thought he was being clever, but if he were really smart, he wouldn’t have said anything at all. Clearly he didn’t fully understand the situation, or that the last thing he needed to worry about was the police. And although he knew nothing that could put them at risk, it would still be necessary to keep an eye on him, and perhaps to pass a message along to his parents in Lower Clapton.

  Asthana slid the phone back into her purse, then, glancing around, removed a second phone, which had been set to silent mode. There were no new messages, but she wasn’t particularly concerned. Before the end of the day, she suspected, she would have the answer she needed.

  Rogozin, she saw now, had gone wrong in several ways. He had put too much trust in a single man. Sometimes, for reasons of simplicity or security, you had no other choice, but you also had to take other precautions. And she was about to put a very useful safeguard into place.

  Even as this thought passed through her mind, Asthana saw Wolfe turn away from the duty officer and come quickly up the corridor. There was a grim look on her face. “What’s wrong?”

  “Word just came over the radio,” Wolfe said. “They’ve found Andrew Ferris.”

  31

  Ilya arrived at Brasov at shortly before noon the following day. Leaving the gray railway terminal with a flock of arrivals from Bucharest, he and Bogdan headed for the parking lot, where they came to a halt before a green Vauxhall Corsa. Bogdan gestured toward the vehicle. “Get in.”

  Remembering the keys that he had been given with the rest of his papers, Ilya unlocked the car. He tossed his bag on the backseat and slid behind the wheel. “Where are we going?”

  Bogdan put away his own bag and climbed in on the passenger’s side. “Sinaia. Fifty kilometers south. You know it?”

  Ilya adjusted his mirrors and glanced at the glove compartment. “See if you can find a map.”

  Bogdan opened the glove box, rifled through its contents, and emerged with a road atlas, which Ilya accepted. He knew how to get from here to Sinaia, but he had wanted to see whether the glove compartment contained anything else.

  They drove without speaking through Brasov, a chilly, spare alpine city lined with apartment blocks from the time of Ceausescu. As they continued south, the traffic grew light and the sides of the highway became thickly forested, the blue peaks of the Carpathians standing like ghosts in the distance. Looking out at the mountains, Ilya felt as if he were passing out of the world in which he had spent the last ten years of his life, drawing ever closer to his past.

  In time, they neared Sinaia, a resort town east of the Bucegi mountain range. Leaving the highway, they turned north, the road narrowing as it wound up through the forest. As they approached a gravel parking area at the shoulder, Bogdan spoke up. “Stop here. We walk the rest of the way.”

  Ilya turned into the lot, in which a handful of other cars were visible, and shut off the engine. Bogdan told him to leave his bag behind. As Ilya emerged from the car into the cool mountain air, he found that he knew exactly where they were going, but he still wasn’t sure why.

  The two of them headed on foot up a road paved with cobblestones. Aside from a few hikers in the distance, they were alone in the forest, the slender gray trunks of firs marching up and down the mountain.

  They continued in silence for ten minutes. After they had walked half a mile, Bogdan paused, checking to make sure that no one else was in sight, and left the main road, moving deeper into the trees, where an almost invisible footpath led up the wooded hillside.

  Behind him, Ilya paused. Bogdan motioned impatiently. “Come on. Not far to go.”

  After a beat, Ilya followed. As they passed out of sight of the main path, the ground grew steeper. He kept several steps behind Bogdan. It seemed doubtful that they would have brought him this far only to kill him now, but he was well aware that bad things could happen in woods like this.

  Finally, through the firs, he caught a glimpse of a building near the crest of the hill. Drawing closer, he found that it was a cottage, two stories high, with flecks of brown paint on its weathered boards. There were no vehicles in sight. A stone wall ran along one side of the house, which seemed to fade into the woods. In the rear yard stood a pile of gravel as white as bone.

  Bogdan went up to the cottage and knocked twice. A second later, the door was opened by a man whom Ilya had last seen at the house in Hackney Wick. A shotgun was slung over his shoulder.

  Inside, the house was only sparsely furnished. A worn rug lay on the floor, the boards creaking audibly at every step. Looking into the next room, Ilya saw a kitchen table and chairs with the remains of a recent meal.

  As Bogdan kicked off his shoes and headed without a word for the couch, the guard closed the front door and began to climb the stairs to the upper story, gesturing for Ilya to come as well. Ilya let him get most of the way up before following, one ear tuned to the floorboards behind him.

  On the second floor, which was equally bare, Ilya heard voices coming from a room at the end of the hall. One of them he recognized at once. Following the guard toward the door, he found himself standing at the threshold of a small bedroom facing the clearing below.

  The first thing he saw was Vasylenko. The old man was seated at the edge of the bed, in new clothes, with a fresh haircut and shave. He was talking quietly to another member of the team from Hackney, breaking off as the two others came in. The guard from downstairs said nothing, but went at once to the window, the lower sash of which had been raised.

  Before the window, a tripod had been set. And on the tripod was a sniper’s rifle.

  Ilya took in the rifle, then looked around at the others. “Has the time come already?”

  Vasylenko smiled. “Not exactly. If it were that easy, we never would have brought you this far.” He nodded at the window. “Please, take a look. I’m sure you’ll find it interesting.”

  Ilya went to the windowsill. Looking past the rifle, he saw that the cottage had a fine view of a broad sloped clearing below. Past a field dotted with haystacks, there stood a striking building, a palace with slim spires and towers in the style of a timbered chalet. “Peles Castle.”

  Vasylenko said nothing. Ilya kept his eye on the window, wondering why they were here. It was a former royal hunting preserve and summer retreat, now a museum, a frequent destination for tourists in this part of the country, a number of whom he could see wandering in the terraced gardens surrounding the palace. He turned away from the view. “So?”

  In response, Vasylenko signaled at the guard standing next to the tripod. Bending down, the guard looked through the rifle’s telescopic sight, checking the view through the scope, then nodded. As the guard withdrew again, Vasylenko turned his eyes back to Ilya. “See for yourself.”

  Ilya bent over the scope. He found that its crosshairs were trained on a woman seated on a stone bench in one of the gardens, some five hundred yards away. She was by herself, talking on a cell phone, and although her face was visible only in profile, Ilya recognized her. It was Maddy Blume.

  At once, he understood. Ilya turned back to Vasylenko, who was smiling. “Why?”

  “Consider it a precaution,” Vasylenko said softly. “I have no doubt that you will do exactly what you have promised. But I also know how I would be tempted to act in such a situation. I would play along while I could, waiting for the right moment to take my revenge. This is a safeguard. If you flee, or do anything else to upset the plan, we can kill the girl at any time.”

  Ilya kept his face still. “What makes you think this girl means anything to me?”

  “Only a hunch,” Vasylenko replied. “I suspect that you have one weakness. You
still think of yourself as a righteous man. And you would not allow this woman, whose life you have already complicated, to die through no fault of her own.” The old man paused. “In any case, there’s one sure way to find out.”

  At these words, the guard at the windowsill bent down again over the rifle, his eye at the scope. He adjusted his aim slightly, then waited in silence, his finger resting lightly on the trigger. Through the window, Ilya could just make out the figure of Maddy in the garden below. She had a guidebook in her hands.

  Vasylenko looked back at Ilya, his eyes full of dark humor. “The choice is yours. Life or death. Which shall it be?”

  32

  Maddy had bought the guidebook at the airport that morning, and as she opened it now, she noticed for the first time that its cover bore a picture of the palace in whose garden she was seated. Glancing over her shoulder, she turned to the inside cover, on which she had been secretly taking notes. “Are you ready?”

  “Yes,” Powell said over the cell phone. “Tell me who you’ve seen so far.”

  Maddy shifted the phone to her other hand. She was sitting on a stone bench on one of the terraces, alongside a fountain decked with reclining nudes. Upon their arrival at the palace, she had declined to join the others on the tour. They had been gone for some time, led no doubt by Tarkovsky himself, who took a great deal of interest in the history of this part of Transylvania.

  She looked over her notes. “There are something like thirty guests scheduled to travel on the yacht, with roughly the same number of crew. I’ve seen about half of them. The rest will meet us at Constanta tomorrow. I have a list of names if you want it. Are you ready?”

  The voice of Adam Hill came over the line. “I’m ready whenever you are.”

  Maddy quickly ran down the list. “Tarkovsky and his wife, of course. They’re separated, but she’s here for the sake of appearances. His daughter, Nina, and her tutor. Elena Usova, Orlov, and the security team.”