The Exile

by Allan Folsom

“Not just Romanovs, Mr. Marten, but very influential members of the family, even the Chicago tailors.”

  Marten was incredulous. “That’s what this is all about? A power play inside the Romanov family to see who becomes Tsar?”

  Kovalenko nodded slowly. “Perhaps, yes.”

  64

  THE HOUSE AT 151 AVENUE GEORGES V. 7:30 P.M.

  Diminutive, animated, and rocking lightly back and forth on his heels as he talked, there was no mistaking the elegantly dressed Nikolai Nemov, the exceedingly outspoken, highly influential, and enormously popular mayor of Moscow, and Grand Duchess Catherine caught her breath when she saw him. He was standing in the middle of the grand home’s marble-floored parlor holding court over a group of formally dressed Romanovs who represented all four branches of the family.

  Nikki, as Mayor Nemov was known to his friends, was one of Catherine’s most coveted prizes, a personal friendship molded carefully and gradually over the years to the point where they now chatted on the phone about nothing, the way friends do, at least once a week and often more. That he had come here was a complete surprise, and she knew he had done so for her and for her son, Grand Duke Sergei. And because he had, she knew it was already over and the war was won. Yes, there would still be fighting, but it would be for naught; by the sheer weight of Romanov factions surrounding Nemov, and the singular preeminence of the men within the factions, she knew her long battle was over and the rightful decision had been made. The imperial Romanov crown would soon rest on the head of her son. To her, Grand Duke Sergei was already Tsarevich of All Russia.

  Peter Kitner rode alone in the passenger section of his limousine as the car neared the Arc de Triomphe, his driver moving the vehicle slowly in the blowing snow, guiding it warily through the deserted streets in what was an almost postcardlike still life of Paris. Up front, Kitner could see Higgs beside the driver talking on his cell phone, but security glass separated the front from the back, so he could not hear what was being said. The snow and glass insulated everything, making him feel like a prisoner in a silent cell.

  65

  “Why has Kitner kept it a secret that he is a Romanov?” Marten pressed Kovalenko. Outside, the wind and swirling snow rattled against the windows, making the room feel even colder than it already was.

  “That is a question for him, not me.” Kovalenko was distracted by an e-mail that had just come up on his screen, and he was replying to it in Russian.

  “Who inside the family knows?”

  “Few, if any, I think.” Kovalenko tried to concentrate on what he was doing. “Why don’t we talk about the blizzard?”

  “Because I want to talk about Peter Kitner.” Marten moved closer to look over Kovalenko’s shoulder. All he saw was a screen filled with Cyrillic Russian.

  “Does he have enough influence to cast the winning vote for the Tsar, is that why he’s going to the dinner? Then call in that favor to expand his business in Russia when the Tsar is in place?”

  “I am a homicide investigator. You are asking me about power and politics, which are not my domain.”

  “Who is Raymond working for? How does he fit into this ‘war of the Romanovs’?”

  Kovalenko finished his e-mail and sent it, then shut down the machine and looked up at Marten.

  “You might be interested in an e-mail I just received from my office in Moscow. It was a forwarded Interpol communiqué from the National Central Bureau in Zurich. Some children were ice-skating on a pond when they came upon the body of a man in a wooded area nearby.”

  Marten felt a cautionary flag go up. “And?”

  “His throat had been cut, the head nearly severed from the body. It happened at about three this afternoon. The police think he was killed several hours earlier. An autopsy has yet to be done.”

  “Do you have a Paris telephone directory?” Marten asked abruptly.

  “Yes.” Puzzled, Kovalenko went to the bedside table and forced open a warped drawer, then took out a Paris phone book and gave it to Marten.

  “It started snowing heavily at what time?” Marten began turning pages.

  Kovalenko shrugged. “The middle of the afternoon. Why?”

  “By the looks of what’s going on outside I would expect that by now the airports are closed and train and highway travel has been slowed to nothing.”

  “Probably, but what does the weather have to do with a man found dead in Zurich?”

  Marten saw what he was looking for. He picked up the telephone and dialed.

  Kovalenko’s eyebrows came together in bewilderment. “Who are you calling?”

  “The Hôtel Ritz.”

  Marten paused as the phone rang through and someone answered.

  “Alexander Cabrera, please.” There was a long moment as he waited, then, “I see … . Do you know if he is in the city? … Yes, the storm, I know … No, no word. I’ll call back later.”

  Marten hung up.

  “He’s not there. That’s the only information they’ll give out. But they did ring his room, which makes me think that at some point today he was there.”

  “What are you suggesting?”

  “That if he did the killing in Zurich, he can’t get back to Paris because of the snow. Which means he might still be in Switzerland.”

  66

  NEUCHTEL, SWITZERLAND. SAME TIME.

  The snowstorm bringing Paris to its knees had not yet crossed into Switzerland and the night was bitter cold and star-bright with a sliver of a moon bathing Lake Neuchâtel and the countryside around it with faint silver light.

  “Watch.” Alexander smiled and blew out a breath of air. The vapor hung there, frozen in the air like a puff in a children’s cartoon.

  Rebecca giggled and did the same, her breath floating out to hang like Alexander’s before simply vanishing into nothing.

  “Poof.” He laughed, and then took her hand and they walked on as they had been, along the frozen edge of the lake, both dressed in long mink coats with mink hats and mink gloves.

  Some distance behind strolled Gerard and Nicole Rothfels. With them was the Baroness, at fifty-six, sleek and alert, like the others enjoying the predinner walk and the bracing air, and all the while watching Alexander and his future bride. The beautiful girl-woman who was the love of his life and for whom she had bought Jura and then given it away.

  The girl-woman whom she had known for nearly five months now and whom she adored and who adored her, who was exceptionally bright and eager, and whose learning of languages she had carefully orchestrated and quietly overseen herself. By now Rebecca’s French and Italian and Spanish and Russian were nearly fluent and were becoming almost second nature, enabling her, like the Baroness and Alexander, to switch between them at will.

  The Baroness’s education of Rebecca had not stopped with languages. On any number of occasions she had brought Rebecca to her apartment in Zurich, where, like a wealthy aunt, she took her shopping and dining, and carried on supplemental schooling—the instruction in style and personal presence, what clothes to wear and when, and how to wear them; the fashion of her hair and makeup, its selection, color, application; how to walk and carry herself; the learning of to whom one spoke, and how and when. The Baroness encouraged Rebecca to smile more without losing the fragile vulnerability that made her so attractive to men of any age; encouraged her to read, and then read more, the classics especially, and in more than one language. She schooled her, herself, in the intimacies of romance, in the ways to be with a man, socially and in private, how to care for him, pamper him, scold him—and how to make love to him, though she knew Rebecca was still a virgin. As the Baroness saw the romance between Rebecca and Alexander progress, she constantly assured Rebecca that when her wedding night came she would be unafraid and natural, pleasuring her husband and herself beyond measure, as the Baroness had pleasured herself and her husband on her own wedding night.

  The teaching, the lessons, had been done over a period of scarcely five months, a period in which she had seen Reb
ecca fall ever more deeply in love with Alexander. The end result had been nothing short of extraordinary; in such a short time Rebecca had been transformed from little more than an unsure girlish American babysitter into a beautiful, poised, and self-confident young woman, one with the requisite underpinnings of a blue-blooded European aristocrat.

  There was a muffled chirp as Nicole Rothfels’s cell phone rang inside her pocket.

  “Oui? Ah, merci,” she answered, and clicked off.

  “Monsieur Alexander,” she called, “if you please, dinner will be on the table in ten minutes.”

  “Go back to the house.” Alexander grinned. “We will be there in fifteen.”

  Nicole Rothfels smiled and glanced at the Baroness.

  “Love has its own clock,” the Baroness said quietly, her breath, like that of the others, like Alexander’s, a puff in the frigid air. Then she and Nicole and Gerard Rothfels turned and walked back toward the warmth of the lighted house in the distance.

  Alexander watched the Baroness’s strong step lead them swiftly away in the moonlight.

  “Baroness,” he’d called her since he’d first learned to speak.

  “My sweet,” she’d called him for as long as he could remember, their lives steadfastly intertwined for most of a lifetime. Yet, as much as he cared for her, the truth of it was, in all of his life there was only one human being he’d ever truly loved.

  Rebecca.

  67

  7:50 P.M.

  “Yes, yes—spell the name for me, in English, please.” Kovalenko was hunched over, his cell phone in one hand, scribbling into his spiral notebook with the other. Lenard was on the other end of the line giving him information on the Zurich murder.

  Marten stood back waiting, unsure what Kovalenko would do. So far Kovalenko had made no mention to Lenard of Marten, Halliday’s computer disk, or that they had matched the fingerprint found in Dan Ford’s car to Raymond Oliver Thorne. From what Marten could tell their conversation focused solely on the body found in Zurich and whatever else the French policeman had learned about the circumstances surrounding it.

  “So maybe it’s our man and we got lucky, or maybe not, eh? Maybe just another lunatic with a knife or a razor.” Kovalenko glanced at Marten, then looked back to the phone and the notes he was making.

  Marten knew Kovalenko had gathered just about all the information he could from him, so why not just turn Marten over to the French police? Legally and professionally it was what should be done, and it would remove any suspicion Lenard might have that Kovalenko had taken Halliday’s appointment book from his hotel room himself, as Marten had jokingly suggested, if the whole thing came out later. Yet, and there was a big yet, Kovalenko had still not mentioned either Marten or the fingerprints, and that puzzled him.

  “I will go to Zurich myself,” Kovalenko said abruptly. “I want to see the body and where it was found … . Yes, the weather, I know. The airports are closed and the trains are barely running. But it’s important I get there quickly. If he is our man and has moved his business to Switzerland, we have to stay on top of him … . How? I will drive. We Russians are used to snow and treacherous roads. Can you get me a good four-wheel drive snow car?”

  Suddenly Kovalenko straightened from his hunched-over position and looked at Marten.

  “By the way, Philippe, our friend Mr. Marten is in Paris. In fact he’s here with me now.”

  Marten started. Kovalenko was giving him to Lenard after all. It meant he could forget about finding Raymond and instead try to keep the French police from finding out who he was.

  “It seems he is still very upset over the murder of his friend. He went back to the apartment on rue Huysmans and stumbled across Detective Halliday’s appointment book … . Yes, the book, that’s right … . Someone seems to have left it in the courtyard … . I know your men searched it, perhaps you should ask them how they missed it. At any rate, I’d given Marten the number of my cell phone sometime before, he called me, and I picked him up. He’s been telling me stories about what Dan Ford knew of the investigations in Los Angeles ever since. There may be more to learn, so I’m taking him with me.”

  “What?” Marten blurted.

  Kovalenko covered the phone. “Shut up!” He fixed Marten with an icy stare, then turned back to the phone.

  “I would appreciate it if you called off your dogs. I’ll give Halliday’s book to whoever brings the car … . What is in it? Tiny handwriting and a lot of notes. My reading of English scrawl is not so good, but there doesn’t seem much there to help us. Have a look yourself, you may be better at it than I am. Can you get me a car quickly? … Good. I’ll report from Switzerland.”

  Kovalenko hung up and his eyes went to Marten. “The dead man was a close friend and longtime business associate of Jean-Luc Vabres. More than that, he owned a small printing company in Zurich.”

  Marten caught his breath. “There is your second menu.”

  “Yes, I know. It’s why we are going to Zurich tonight.” Kovalenko looked to the materials on the bed.

  “How do you know Lenard will not just throw me in jail?”

  “Because I am a guest of the French government, not the Paris police. I have requested you come with me, and he will say nothing because he understands the politics of it.

  “Now, open Halliday’s appointment book and take out the page with the references to Argentina and the plastic surgeon, Dr. Odett, and the envelopes with the computer disk and Halliday’s airline ticket to Buenos Aires and give them to me. Then get your coat and take a piss. It’s going to be a long, snowy night.”

  Peter Kitner’s driver eased the limousine guardedly down the Avenue Georges V, using the streetlamps on either side of the road as guide markers in the swirl of blowing snow.

  The near-whiteout conditions made it almost impossible to see more than a few yards in any direction, and Kitner himself was becoming alarmed. What if they had taken a wrong turn? Somewhere close by was the Seine. What if they suddenly crashed through an unseen barrier and plunged into the water? The streets were empty. No one would see them. The limousine was hugely heavy, armored last summer at Higgs’s insistence. It would sink to the bottom like granite and might never be found. To his family, to the world, Sir Peter Kitner would simply have vanished.

  “Sir Peter,” Higgs’s voice suddenly came over the limousine’s internal speaker system.

  Kitner looked up. Higgs was peering at him through the security glass.

  “Yes, Higgs.”

  “Cabrera and the Baroness are in Switzerland. Neuchâtel. They are dining at the home of Cabrera’s manager of European operations, Gerard Rothfels.”

  “That’s confirmed?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Have your people stay on top of them.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Suddenly Kitner felt enormous relief. At least he knew where they were.

  “We’re here, sir,” Higgs’s voice came again.

  Suddenly the car was slowing and Kitner saw bright lights and a phalanx of French police behind street barricades. They stopped, two policemen came forward, and Higgs put down his window and identified Kitner.

  A policeman peered into the car, then stepped back in the snow and saluted crisply. A barricade was moved aside and the limousine crept slowly forward through the gates and onto the grounds of the Romanov house at 151 Avenue Georges V.

  68

  NEUCHTEL, SWITZERLAND. SAME TIME.

  The Baroness saw the candlelit dinner table in a blur, the people and activity there barely existent—Alexander across from her, Gerard Rothfels at one end, his wife Nicole at the other, Rebecca to her immediate right, the brief disruption as the Rothfels children came in in their pajamas to say good night. Her thoughts were elsewhere, for some unknown reason dipping back and touching people and events that had carried her to this point in her life.

  Born in Moscow, she had been brought to Sweden from Russia by her mother as a young girl. Both her mother and father were of
the Russian aristocracy, and their families, through guile, sacrifice, and love of the Motherland, had managed to live through Lenin’s reign and then under Stalin’s punishing iron rule through the Second World War and after it, when the dictator tightened his grip even more. The shadow of the secret police was everywhere. Neighbor turned in neighbor for the most minor offenses. People who complained loudly enough simply vanished. Then Stalin died, but the Communist noose continued to tighten against dissenters. Angry and fed up, the Baroness’s father rebelled, raising his voice against the totalitarian regime. As a result, when the Baroness was five, he was arrested for subversion, tried, and sentenced to ten years at hard labor in one of the dreaded gulag work camps, the so-called corrective labor institutions. Stamped forever in her mind was the sight of him being led away in shackles toward the train that would take him to the gulag. Suddenly he twisted away from his guards and looked back at her and her mother. He smiled broadly and blew her a kiss, and in his eyes she could see not fear but pride and a fierce love—for her, for her mother, and for Russia. That same night her mother, suitcase in hand, woke her from sleep. In moments she was dressed and they were out of their apartment and into a car. She remembered boarding a train and later a ship for Sweden.

  The next years of her childhood were spent in Stockholm, where her mother found work as a seamstress and she went to an international school and had friends who spoke Swedish, Russian, French, and English. Her mother made a ten-year calendar, and at the end of every day they crossed the date off. It meant they were a day closer to the time when her father would be freed and come to join them. Every day she and her mother wrote him notes of love and encouragement and mailed them, with no idea whether or not he ever received them.

  Once, when she was seven, they received a short handwritten note from him that he’d somehow managed to have smuggled out. He did not mention their letters to him, but he told them he loved them dearly and was bearing up and counting the days until his release. He also confessed that he’d killed a man, another prisoner, in a fight because the man had stolen his comb and he had tried to get it back. No one cared about prisoners’ lives, so nothing happened to him. Outside the gulag a battle to the death over a hair comb seemed insane, but inside the story was entirely different. Combs, all but impossible to come by, were greatly treasured because to be able to keep one’s hair and beard neat was the one thing that allowed a prisoner to keep what little self-respect he still had, and inside the gulag self-respect was everything because that was all there was left. So for dignity a man had stolen her father’s comb. And for dignity her father had killed him.