by Allan Folsom
The sudden chirp of his cell phone broke Kovalenko’s thoughts, and he saw Nicholas Marten suddenly look over as he plucked it from his jacket and clicked on.
“Da,” he said in Russian.
Marten watched him anxiously, sure it was Rebecca or Lady Clem and waiting for him to hand him the phone. He didn’t. Instead, he continued his conversation in Russian. Once, Marten heard him say the word “Zurich,” and later “Davos” and then “Tsarevich,” but those were the only words he understood. Finally, Kovalenko hung up. It was a long moment before he looked to Marten.
“I have been transferred to another assignment,” he said.
“Transferred?” Marten was incredulous.
“I have been ordered back to Moscow.”
“When?”
“Immediately.”
“Why?”
“Why is not a question one asks. You do as you are instructed.”
Kovalenko’s cell phone chirped again. He hesitated, then answered.
“Da,” he said once more, then “Yes,” in English and handed the phone to Marten. “For you.”
DAVOS, HOTEL STEIGENBERGER BELVÉDÈRE. SAME TIME.
“Nicholas, it’s Clem, can you hear me?”
Her hair in curlers, Lady Clementine Simpson was in the luxury hotel’s salon, being worked on by two women at once, receiving a pedicure and a manicure. Her cell phone was on the countertop in front of her, and she was connected to it by an earpiece/microphone.
“Yes,” Marten said.
“Where are you?”
“On the road from Zurich, on the way to Davos.”
“Davos? That’s where I am. At the Steigenberger Belvédère. Father is participating in the forum.” Abruptly she lowered her voice. “How did you get out of Paris?”
“Clem, is Rebecca there?” Marten ignored her question.
“Yes, but I haven’t seen her.”
“Can you get in touch with her?”
“I’m having dinner with her tonight.”
“No,” Marten pressed her. “Before then. Right away, as quickly as possible.”
“Nicholas, I can hear in your voice something’s wrong, what is it?”
“Rebecca has been seeing a man named Alexander Cabrera.”
Lady Clem gave a big sigh, and looked off. “Oh, dear,” she said.
“‘Oh, dear’? What does that mean?”
A sharp crackle of static suddenly came across the line and the signal broke up.
“Clem, are you there?” Marten said urgently.
As quickly the line cleared.
“Yes, Nicholas.”
“I tried Rebecca’s cell number, there’s no answer. Do you have a cell phone number for the Rothfels?”
“No.”
“Clem, Cabrera might be with the Rothfels.”
“Of course he is with the Rothfels, he is Gerard Rothfels’s employer. They’ve taken a villa here for the weekend.”
“His employer?” Marten was stunned. So that was how Cabrera and Rebecca had met. He knew Rothfels ran the European offices of some sort of international industrial firm from offices in Lausanne, but he’d never thought to ask who employed him. “Clem, listen to me, Cabrera is not who Rebecca thinks he is.”
“What do you mean?”
“He—” Marten hesitated, trying to find the right words—“He may have had something to do with the murder of Dan Ford. And with the murder of another man yesterday, in Zurich.”
“Nicholas that’s absurd.”
“It’s not, believe me.”
Suddely Clem looked to the women attending her. “Ladies, would you mind leaving for a few moments? My conversation is a bit personal.”
“Clem, what the hell are you doing?”
“Being polite. I don’t discuss family matters in front of strangers if it is at all possible.”
Clem’s attendants smiled respectfully and moved away, leaving her alone.
“What family matters?”
“Nicholas, I shouldn’t be telling you this because Rebecca was going to surprise you, but, under the circumstances, there is something you should know. Rebecca has not only been seeing Alexander Cabrera, she is going to marry him.”
“Marry him?”
Again the line crackled with static and again the signal started to break up.
“Clem? Clem!” Marten pressed her. “Can you hear me?”
There was more static. This time the line went dead.
82
The door opened and Colonel Murzin brought Tsarevich Peter Kitner Mikhail Romanov into Villa Enkratzer’s library.
The Baroness sat on a leather sofa in front of a heavy oak coffee table in the center of the room. Alexander Cabrera stood farther away, near a large stone fireplace, staring out a large window that had a sweeping view of the Davos Valley. It was the first time Kitner had seen Cabrera in years, but even with the cosmetic surgery he would have recognized him anywhere, if by nothing more than the sheer arrogance of his being.
“Spasiba, Colonel,” the Baroness said in Russian. Thank you, Colonel.
Murzin nodded and left, closing the door behind him.
“Dobra-ye utro, Tsarevich.” Good morning, Tsarevich.
“Dobra-ye utro,” he replied cautiously.
The Baroness wore a pale-yellow and white tailored silk pantsuit—her colors, he knew, but an odd choice of dress in the Alps in the dead of winter. She wore diamond earrings and an emerald necklace. Gold bracelets were at either wrist. Her black hair was turned up in a bun at the back of her head in a style that was almost Oriental, and her green eyes sparkled—not the sensual, enticing green he remembered from so long ago, but more those of a serpent, sharp, piercing, and treacherous.
“What do you want with me?”
“It was you who asked to meet with us, Tsarevich.”
Kitner glanced at Alexander by the window. He hadn’t moved. He just stood staring out as he had from the beginning. Kitner looked back to the Baroness. “I ask again—what do you want with me?”
“There is something for you to sign.”
“Sign?”
“It is similar to the agreement you had us put our signature to all those many years ago.”
“It was an agreement you have broken.”
“Time and circumstance have changed, Tsarevich.”
“Sit down, Father.” Suddenly Alexander turned from the window and came toward him. His eyes were black as night, and they held the same menace as those of the Baroness.
“How is it the FSO do your bidding when I am Tsarevich?”
“Sit down, Father,” Alexander said again, this time indicating a large leather chair next to the coffee table.
Kitner hesitated, then finally crossed and sat down at the table. On it was a slim, leather-bound stationery binder. Next to it was a longish rectangular box, wrapped in brightly colored gift paper. The same gaily wrapped parcel Alexander had carried into the Hôtel Crillon in Paris.
“Open the package, Father,” Alexander said quietly.
“What is it?”
“Open it.”
Slowly Kitner reached forward, picked it up, and for a moment held it without opening it. His mind raced. How to reach Higgs and call for help? How to warn his family to flee their FSO guards? How to escape from here? Which door, corridor, staircase?
He didn’t know how this could have happened as it had, or how they had gained control of Murzin and his men. Suddenly he thought perhaps his guards were not FSO at all but paid mercenaries.
“Open it, Tsarevich,” the Baroness urged in a tone that was soft and seductive and that he had not heard in more than thirty years.
“No.”
“Shall I do it, Father?” Alexander took a step closer.
“No, I will.” hands trembling, Sir Peter Kitner Mikhail Romanov, knight of the British Empire, Tsarevich of All Russia, pulled open the ribbon and then the bright paper wrapping. Inside was a long red velvet box.
“Go ahead, Father,” Alexand
er urged. “See what is inside.”
Kitner looked up. “I know what is inside.”
“Then open it.”
Kitner let out a breath and opened the box. Inside it, lying in a cradle of white silk, was a long antique knife, a Spanish Navaja switchblade, its handle made of horn and intricate inlaid brass.
“Pick it up.”
Kitner looked to Alexander and then to the Baroness. “No.”
“Pick it up, Sir Peter.” The Baroness’s command was a clear warning. “Or should I ask Alexander?”
Kitner hesitated, then slowly reached toward the knife. His hand closed around it and he lifted it out.
“Touch the button, Father,” Alexander commanded. Kitner did. There was a flash of steel and the blade leapt out. It was polished and wide and narrowed quickly to a near-needle point at the tip. Its cutting edge was a good eight inches long and had been honed to razor sharpness.
It was the knife Alexander had used to kill his son, Paul, when he’d been a child of ten. Kitner had never seen it in person, let alone held it. Not even when, so many years ago, Alfred Neuss had wanted to show it to him. It was too real, too awful. The most he’d ever seen of it was when Neuss had made him watch the film and he’d witnessed the murder with his own eyes.
Now that same killing tool, stolen from the slain Fabien Curtay, was in his hands. Suddenly his entire being overflowed with hate and loathing. Knife in his hand, its blade extended, he looked up savagely at the man who had murdered Paul—the man who was his other son, Alexander, who had been little more than a child himself when he’d done it.
“If you wanted to kill me, Father”—Alexander suddenly stepped in and lifted the weapon from Kitner’s grasp—“you should have done it long ago.”
“He didn’t because he couldn’t, my sweet.” The Baroness smiled cruelly. “He had neither the strength, nor the courage, nor the stomach for it. Hardly a man to be Tsar.”
Kitner stared at her. “It is the same knife you used all those years ago on the man in Naples.”
“No, Father, it is not,” Alexander said definitively, making it entirely clear that he and the Baroness had no secrets between them. “The Baroness wanted something more elegant. More appropriately—”
“Royal,” the Baroness finished for him, and then her eyes went to the leather-bound binder on the table. “Open it, Tsarevich, and read it. And when you have, sign it.”
“What is it?”
“Your abdication.”
“Abdication?” Kitner was astounded.
“Yes.”
“To whom am I to abdicate?”
“To whom would you think?” The Baroness’s eyes went to Alexander.
“What?” Kitner’s voice resonated with fury.
“Your firstborn son, and after you, direct successor to the throne.”
83
“Never!” Kitner suddenly stood. His temples bulged and sweat glistened on his forehead. He looked from the Baroness to Alexander. “I will see you both in hell first!”
“You know the FSO are guarding your wife and children.” Alexander closed the knife and put it back in the box. “The FSO will do as they are ordered. The Tsarevich must be protected, even from his own family.”
Kitner turned to the Baroness. This was a nightmare beyond imagination. “You have reached Gitinov.”
The Baroness gave the slightest nod of her head.
“How?”
“It is merely a game of chess, Tsarevich.”
Alexander sat down on the arm of the Baroness’s chair. The lighting in the room and the manner in which they sat made them, together, nearly a portrait.
“Colonel Murzin has informed you of the tragic death of Grand Duchess Catherine,” Alexander said quietly, “and that of her mother and Grand Duke Sergei. An early-morning fire in her leased apartment in Paris.”
“You,” Kitner breathed. The hellish violence went on without end.
“Grand Duke Sergei was the only other possible challenger to the throne. Unless you count Prince Dimitrii. But he doesn’t matter. In agreeing with the triumvirate and presenting you as the true Tsarevich, he took himself forever out of the picture.”
“There was no need to kill them.”
The Baroness smiled. “With Alexander announced as Tsarevich, Grand Duchess Catherine would have become exceedingly distressed. She was a strong, willful, and arrogant person, but still she was admired in Russia. She would have brought up Anastasia, claiming you, and therefore we, were nothing more than claimants to the throne. And for all the proof presented, the populace might well have agreed with her. That possibility no longer exists.”
Abruptly Kitner stood. “I will not abdicate.”
“I’m afraid you will, Petr Mikhail Romanov.” Once again the Baroness’s tone was soft and seductive. “For the sake of your family and for the sake of Russia.”
From outside the window came the slamming of car doors. Alexander turned at the sound of them, and Kitner could see the tiny headset tucked into his ear. Someone was talking to him and he was listening. He listened a moment longer, then turned back.
“Our first guests, Father. Perhaps you would like to see who they are. Please.” Alexander stood and indicated the window.
Slowly, as if in a dream, Kitner got up and made his way to it. Outside he saw three black limousines in the snow-covered motor court. Murzin’s men, dressed in dark suits with black overcoats, stood alongside them, their heads turned toward the entry drive. Then another limousine came into view. Behind it was an armored car, a Russian flag flying from its front bumper. The limousine circled the motor court, then stopped directly below them. Immediately Murzin’s men went to it and opened the doors. For a moment nothing happened, and then one man got out—Nikolai Nemov, the mayor of Moscow; and then a second, Marshal Igor Golovkin, Russian Federation minister of defense; and then came the last, a tall man, bearded and berobed, Gregor II, the Most Holy Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church.
“It’s not just President Gitinov, Father. They expect you to sign the abdication. It’s why they are here.”
Kitner was numb beyond reason, barely able to think. His wife, his son, and his daughters were in the custody of Murzin’s troops. Higgs and any help he might have provided were far out of the picture. The knife and the film were no longer his. What he had left was nothing.
“You are not strong enough to be Tsar,” the Baroness said. “Alexander is.”
“Is that why you had him kill my son, to prove it?”
“One cannot lead a nation and fear to have blood on his hands. You would not want to force him to prove it once again.”
For a moment Kitner stood staring at her; her face, her dress, the jewels she wore, the eerie calmness with which she threatened death. What drove her was revenge, dark and cruel—the way, as a teenager, she had taken brutal and depraved revenge on the man in Naples who had raped her—and nothing more. He realized now that she had been planning this for decades, gambling on the course of history and preparing for that one future day when Alexander, her Alexander, could, if things were done correctly, become Tsar of Russia. That, for her, would be the sweetest revenge of all.
It was why in the end, despite all of Grand Duchess Catherine’s efforts, every manipulation, every glad hand, every friendship she’d forged, she had simply not had enough information nor been ruthless enough to compete with the Baroness. And because of it, she, her mother, and her adored son were dead.
Suddenly Kitner felt his own immense helplessness. He was prisoner, hostage, and victim, all in one. Moreover, it had been his own doing. Afraid to make Alexander’s existence known to his family, afraid to put one son on trial for the murder of another, afraid for the lives of his other children, it was he who had made the pact that set them free. As a result his wife and children were hostage to Murzin’s soldiers, and his family would learn of Alexander anyway and very publicly, along with the rest of the world.
His son Paul, Alfred Neuss, Fabien Curtay,
Grand Duchess Catherine, her son and mother, those killed in the Americas, how many others were dead because of him? Again he thought of Murzin’s soldiers holding his family. What orders had been given them? That any of his loved ones would be harmed or even killed was an idea he couldn’t bear. He looked to Alexander and then to the Baroness. Both had the same savage eyes. Both wore the expression of cold and assured victory. If he had any doubts before, they vanished now. He knew they were capable of anything.
Slowly he turned and sat down to read the article of abdication. When he had finished, and slower still, he signed it.
84
That Rebecca would marry Alexander Cabrera was unthinkable. But so was America’s seeming invulnerability before the World Trade Center and Pentagon disasters. After that, the entire world knew that anything was possible.
His foot nearly to the floor, the ML500 flying over bare pavement, Marten turned fast off the A13 exit for Landquart/Davos. In the last miles he’d tried Lady Clem’s cell phone a half-dozen times but reached nothing more than the recording saying she was either away from the phone or out of the area.
“Take it easy,” Kovalenko said. “Cabrera may not be who you think he is.”
“You said that before.”
“I’m saying it again.”
Marten took his eyes from the road to look at Kovalenko. “Is that why you’re still here instead of ordering me to take you back to Zurich to shuffle off to Moscow? Because Cabrera might not be Raymond?”
“Look out!”
Marten looked back to the road. Directly in front of them was a long line of stopped traffic. Marten jammed on the brakes, bringing the ML to a screeching stop inches from the rear bumper of a black Nissan sedan.
“What is this?” he said at the backup of vehicles.
“Either free speech or Black Bloc demonstrators, a collection of anarchists,” Kovalenko said as suddenly a mass of antiglobalization protestors came running through the traffic toward them. They were mostly young and ragtag; many carried anti–World Economic Forum signs, and others wore large, grotesque masks resembling the faces of world political and business leaders, or black balaclavas to hide their identity.