It was all nicely in place in the mirror. He switched off the light, adjusted the hang of his jacket over the Luger in his belt and eased the door open a crack.
The hallway was empty of servants. He went toward the front of the villa, ready to smile, pleasant-faced, nerveless, almost jaunty with businesslike confidence because this time he knew the quarry.
5.
Heads turned when Irina entered the ballroom. She hardly noticed; she was used to it.
She smiled and gave her hand to a marquis; she presented her cheek for the tall marchioness’s ritual kiss and bussed the air two points to the starboard of her face. Voices rolled around her—hearty shouts in courtly French and Spanish and High German and the best St. Petersburg Russian; beneath them the orchestra played Chopin.
The wheeling dancers cut across her view of the crowd but she had a glimpse of a large man with a bald spot and her curiosity was stimulated: some vague familiarity perhaps.
Alex was approaching and she smiled when a dowager buttonholed him. Then a mutter ran through the crowd and the guests were turning in waves to stare toward the wide gallery doors. She heard the murmured name Devenko and felt several sudden glances whip toward her and slide away; then the doors parted and Vassily was there with his high austere eyes and stunning white mane. His handsome head dipped regally in acknowledgment of something someone said to him; he lifted one hard long hand as if in benediction to them all.
He had aged. Not the hair; that had been white since his twenties. But she saw deep vertical lines between his eyebrows and he looked tired.
She felt weight beside her. She didn’t have to look that way to know it was Alex. She found his arm and gripped it gently—pointedly.
Vassily’s hard grey stare struck her. He blinked, looked away, looked directly and expressionlessly at Alex and then returned his stare to Irina—and she thought she sensed an appeal.
He walked forward through the crowd ignoring all the rest: he still behaved with people he didn’t have time for as if they weren’t there at all.
He glanced again at Alex. Then he thrust out both arms.
Irina had a moment’s terror when Alex didn’t stir. But it was so brief an instant that she doubted anyone else detected the hesitation—then the two men were locked in the ritual masculine bear hug of Russia and Vassily’s deep voice was rumbling: “My brother—my good brother.”
Vassily turned and surprised her with a nicker of a smile. In a lower voice he said, “Surprise becomes you, Irina. It makes your eyes grow.”
She reached again for Alex’s arm. The Chopin continued in the back; around them some of the couples resumed dancing but she felt the continuing pressure of curious eyes.
Vassily had returned to Alex. “You look very well.”
“And you.”
“No, do not bother with that. I am old, aren’t I?” Vassily was forty-seven. Irina was fourteen years his junior; there had been a time when it hadn’t mattered.
“Vassily …”
“How is it in America?”—to Alex; he had cut her off deliberately. She became aware of the vivid gowns around them; she felt herself close up, become more guarded.
“… learning about twentieth century war,” Alex was replying, “but maybe not fast enough.”
“Really?” Vassily answered in an indifferent way. “Perhaps they need reprimanding by real soldiers, eh?” And back to Irina: “Has he looked after you properly? It is my duty as his brother to inquire.” He said it with dry scorn and she saw he forgave neither of them.
“They’re waiting for you both upstairs,” she said, very cool.
“Yes. Be kind enough to show us the way, would you?”
It was a little cruel of him but she had known far worse. “Come along then.” She led them away, threading the perimeter of the ballroom. Everyone watched and made way. Vassily’s commanding austerity kept them all at bay—even princes and the nephews of dukes. Vassily had no title whatever: he was a commoner. But there wasn’t a White Russian in the villa who didn’t owe Vassily his life.
They were watched with awe by eyes unused to awe—down the long gallery, the central corridor, the vast and opulent rooms in which Bourbon monarchs had entertained crowned guests. Vassily walked between them and a half-pace ahead now; out of the marbled turnings into the vast foyer. The sweeping stair made an elegant curve to the railed balcony above; the last of the day’s sun beamed down through the stained panels of the lofty domed ceiling.
Vassily laid his hand on the bannister and glanced back the way they’d come. His look was almost furtive. He knows fear after all. She touched Alex’s hand. “I’ll leave you here. They’re in the Grand Duke’s drawing room.”
Vassily said, “Walk up with us.”
“I don’t think I’d care to.” She turned away gracefully. There was the slight pressure of Alex’s reassuring fingers, then she was moving across the foyer, her face a study in composure. She did not hurry; nor did she look back to watch them climb the great stair. She didn’t need to. Their ascent was mirrored in the upturned faces of the people watching, like members of an audience awaiting a denouement.
The bald man appeared in the doorway, slipping past the edge of the crowd. It disturbed her: she couldn’t place him but there was something in the back of her mind, a sense that made her glide to one side in order to interpose herself between the bald man and the stairs. He tried to sidestep but a fat woman was in the way. She couldn’t explain it to herself. But she was sure the bald man’s eyes flashed bitterly—so briefly it might never have happened at all.
Very likely her imagination was betraying her. She went on along the gallery, greeting a few people—the ones who didn’t bore her. In the ballroom she accepted an old Kiev duke’s invitation to dance because he was her father’s cousin and had a good laugh which he hadn’t forgotten how to use. She whirled onto the floor holding the skirt of her long red gown.
6.
Heavy drapes were looped back from the long gallery of windows. The inner wall of the upstairs corridor was hung museumlike with pictures darkened by age from which several generations of Romanovs brooded upon the scene. Vassily Devenko strode past them without a glance.
Alex kept pace with him, recognizing the dark formal portraits: Alexander II, Alexander III, Vladimir, Alexis, Serge, Paul, Cyril, Boris, Andrei, Dimitri; then the late Grand Dukes George and Michael and finally Nicholas II and Alexandra Fedorovna.… The physical strength and magnetism of the family was evident in them all.
No one was in sight in the long wide hall. Vassily stopped abruptly. “A word with you.”
Through the bank of high windows the setting sun fanned the cloud bellies with marbled streaks of crimson and pink. A warm hint of cologne and tobacco smoke drifted under the tall arch-buttressed ceiling. Alex said, “Go on,” reserving a great deal.
Vassily shook his head. It emphasized the weary cast of his deep-lined features. “Doesn’t it strike you the way they all go on as if nothing’s changed? Living on the international scale, perpetuating this idiotic love affair with deluxe pleasures and genteel pastimes. And half the world’s blowing up just over the horizon.”
“You can’t change them.”
“I am not condemning them for it. If they gave it all up and put on sackcloth and ashes it would not make a bit of difference to the world. But the unreality of the way they can just go on and on like this—how hard it will be to persuade them to set aside their illusions.”
In jodhpurs and belted grey jacket Vassily had the look of a Prussian martinet; it struck Alex that all it would take to complete the image would be a riding crop slapping into his open palm.
Vassily said, “I asked them to bring you into this.” He put the emphasis on the first person pronoun and it startled Alex as it had been meant to. “I did it for several reasons. First because you are patently the best for the job—best qualified and best situated. Second because you once forced me to make a very careful reexamination of my own impetuosity�
�and it may be useful to have you in a position where you can do that again if the events call for it.”
Vassily was offering an olive branch but it didn’t have a pure color of truth.
Alex didn’t answer. Vassily nodded as if Alex’s silence confirmed a suspicion. “It is important we find some way to reconcile our quarrel.”
“I don’t carry grudges.”
“No. But you are certain I cannot be trusted. I must find a way to earn your trust back. If you cannot have confidence in my judgment none of this is going to work.”
Alex put it bluntly. “I don’t see how you’re going to do that.”
The weariness seemed ground into Vassily like grit. He glanced out the windows, his squint far-eyed with his visions; his face picked up the reddish reflection of the sunset and seemed very bitter. “They have tried twice to kill me. They will go on trying until they succeed. At first I thought it was an old enemy but it is not likely—too coincidental. Someone has learned of the scheme. They think by killing me they can prevent it happening. They cannot—they are fools. It is a historical turning, one of those events whose time has come. A thousand assassinations would not stop it.”
As if to shake off his premonitions he drew himself up to a parade-ground posture, hands behind him. “When they reach me there must be someone to pick up the baton.”
His face came around swiftly. “It is not a favor to you. It may make you their next target. But you are the best choice to succeed me.”
“Why?”
“Because I trust you.”
“How can you know that when I haven’t even heard the plan yet? I may think it’s drivel.”
“You will not.”
“Once before you thought I’d go along with your plans.”
“It was different. You must believe me.”
It was the closest he’d ever seen Vassily to begging.
Vassily said, “Do not fight me in there, Alexsander. It is too big a thing for personal quarrels. And the decisions may be yours soon enough—you would be a fool to shoot it down before you’ve had a chance at it yourself.”
“You’re talking as if they’ve already killed you.”
“I won’t make it easy for them.”
“Kill them first.”
“I would have done. If I knew who they were.”
“You have no hints at all?”
“Only suspicions and too many of those; they cancel one another out. We are getting off the subject. I want your backing in there. Have I got it?”
“I can’t promise it. If I can’t support the plan I won’t support you.”
Vassily brooded at him and the humanity evaporated from his hard face. “Then we shall have to persuade you of the Tightness of the scheme, won’t we? Come on then.” He swung with an abrupt snap of his big shoulders and strode across the gallery to a huge door. With his back braced as if against an awaited bullet he rapped his knuckles on the oak and almost immediately the door pivoted on oiled hinges and Irina’s father was there: Count Anatol Markov with his impeccable clothes and his urbane countenance.
Count Anatol gave them both a quick unemotional scrutiny and then averted his eyes as if he regarded them both as applicants for a servant’s job who had arrived for an interview at a time when the Count had more important things on his mind. It meant nothing at all, it was only his habitual manner: aloof, contained, distracted, ascetic. It was always off-putting at first and you had to get back into an almost forgotten gear to deal with these people: their lives were overwhelmingly opulent and until you acclimated yourself you didn’t see how anyone who lived in such surroundings and with such mannerisms could have any substance. The fact was that Anatol Markov had one of the cleverest minds Alex had ever encountered.
“We have been waiting for you. Please come in.”
The drawing-room furniture was elegant with intricate fragile curves. The heavy velvet draperies reached from ceiling to floor and they were drawn shut to keep out the waning daylight; electric lamps made the big room richer and warmer. It could have been a calculated effect, shutting out the Spanish vista so that they could have been anywhere: the old villa in France or even the drawing room of the Imperial dascha put-side St. Petersburg from which the Grand Duke Feodor had brought most of these furnishings in 1918.
The chairs were drawn up in a conversational circle and Prince Leon Kirov sat at its focal point beside a table on which was heaped a litter of documents in open folders.
There were eight chairs in the circle; three of them were empty. The five men sat back with their legs crossed, smoking cigars and pipes, watching Vassily and Alex. They nodded and lifted cigars in greeting but they didn’t erupt in customary Russian expansiveness. The seriousness of the occasion was an evident weight.
Count Anatol shut the door behind them and nodded toward the farther doors. Alex paced Vassily across the room; put his hand on the latch and went through.
In his high four-posted bed the Grand Duke raised eyes cloudy with dim sight. A woman in white moved courteously away from the bedside and the visitors approached the bed. The old man’s fingers plucked at his lap robe.
“Your Royal Highness.”
“Who is that? Are you Deniken?”
“Vassily Devenko and Alexsander Danilov, Your Royal Highness.”
Vassily bowed briefly; it went unseen. The Grand Duke seemed indifferent. “It is kind of you to come and see me.”
Alex said, “We wish you better health.”
“Yes …” Da, and the quavering voice trailed off. But then abruptly he groped for Vassily’s hand. “You have come.”
“Yes, Highness.”
“Are we to be restored then?”
“I cannot say, Highness.”
“But the Bolsheviks …”
“The Bolsheviks are finished,” Vassily Devenko said.
7.
The assassin didn’t put much credence in anything beyond the five senses but the woman disturbed him. He knew who she was; he’d seen her photographs. But he’d never been face-to-face with her. There was no way she could have known him from any other complete stranger. Yet in her eyes at the foot of the stair there’d been knowledge. More than suspicion; certainty. It was there as if she could read him like cold type.
He drifted into the hunt room and took a glass of sherry from a servant’s tray and walked through the crowd carrying it—not drinking. He overheard snatches of talk—the weather at Marbella, the rationing under Vichy—and he put on a pleasant face but spoke to no one.
He took his sherry back along to the ballroom and saw the woman in red dancing with an old gentleman. He turned away, not so quickly as to bring attention to himself, and retreated from her sight. He argued with himself: there was no mystery to it, it had been coincidence; she was the sort of woman whose face could create imagined trouble—as if her inscrutable beauty were meant to be invested with whatever you chose to read into it. He had to dismiss her from his concentrations.
But he couldn’t. It stayed in the back of his mind that the woman could spoil it.
8.
Alex’s host was awaiting him at the Grand Duke’s door when he emerged from the bedchamber: craggy old Prince Leon on whom the entire retinue-in-exile depended so much.
“Glad to see you here, Alex. Very glad,” he murmured in his slow splendid deep voice. Genuine feeling trembled in it; he gripped both Alex’s shoulders and gave his grave paternal nod, the next thing to a smile; and limped back toward the others. His hair had thinned and gone silver; the lameness of his battle-shattered leg had grown worse; but his eyebrows remained thick and black over the obsidian eyes and he was very much in command of it all. The name at the head of the family was that of the Grand Duke Feodor but it was Leon who had kept them all together in their endless gypsy exile.
Alex waited for Vassily Devenko to reappear; the Grand Duke was still pressing his dream of restoration.
Count Anatol Markov had returned to his seat—in the circle yet apart from
it, quietly drinking vodka from a chilled glass. He watched Alex as he might watch an inanimate object.
Alex had been a long time seeking clues to Count Anatol’s composition; it was very hard to understand the chemistries that had produced Irina out of Anatol’s genes. He was dry, distant, epicene in disposition; cynical and suspiciously skeptical of everyone. He was thin as a sapling, the hair lying across his neat little cannonball head in lonely strands. His face was pale and his mouth in repose looked like a surgeon’s wound.
Tragedy seemed to have hovered around him for decades. At Ekaterinburg in 1918 a Bolshevik fanatic named Jacob Sverdlov had engineered the assassinations of Czar Nicholas and the Empress Alexandra and their children. A month after the brutal murders Jacob Sverdlov had been found beaten to death in a Moscow street; systematically bludgeoned out of existence, every bone in his body shattered. It was fairly well accepted by a good number of the White exiles that it had been Count Ahatol who had thus avenged the Royal Family. It was said that it was the first and last time in his life that Anatol had shown passion; but surely Irina Anatovna was not the product of an emotionless conception.
Of the seven men in the room—Vassily would make the eighth—one was not a Russian.
Prince Leon said, “Our American representative, Colonel Alexsander Danilov. Alex, I am sure you know General Sir Edward Muir.”
He’d seen the old photographs; now he made the connection. The Scotsman nodded to Alex, neither rising nor offering a hand. He was a very tall old man, noble and grand with a white military mustache stained to amber by cigar smoke. His longevity appeared to fall little short of immortality: he’d commanded the British Expeditionary Force in the Crimea in 1919 and he’d been on the verge of retirement age even then.
Prince Leon said, “Sir Edward is here to represent the viewpoint of the British crown.”
“Unofficially of course.” The Scotsman spoke in a Russian that was fast and without hesitation but thickly accented with an Edinburgh burr. He wore grey evening clothes well-cut to his long gaunt frame but too heavy for the Mediterranean climate; there was a sheen of perspiration on his smooth ruddy face.
Romanov Succession Page 6