The Exile

by Allan Folsom

  The tuxedo provided for Marten, which had seemed comfortable and perfectly sized when he’d put it on, suddenly felt tight and stiff. He reached up to loosen the bow tie at his throat, as if that simple gesture in itself would help. It didn’t. It only made him realize his palms were wet and that he was sweating.

  “Relax,” he told himself, “relax. You don’t know anything yet.”

  “Here we are, monsieur.” The host reached the door and knocked.

  “Oui,” a voice said from inside.

  “Monsieur Marten,” the host said.

  There was a moment and then the door opened. Alexander Cabrera stood there, resplendent in a tailored black tuxedo and white ruffled shirt, a black velvet bow tie at his throat.

  “Welcome, Nicholas.” He smiled. “Please come in.”

  Slowly Marten entered Villa Enkratzer’s library with its walls of books and well-worn leather furniture. Across the room, flames crackled from fresh logs in a marble fireplace, filling the room with the distinct smell of oak. Seated on the couch across from the fireplace was a handsome, extremely dignified woman, probably in her late forties or early fifties. Her black hair was in a low bun at the back and she wore a long yellow tunic with an eemine stole over her shoulders. Her necklace was layered with alternating strands of small diamonds and rubies, while clusters of tiny diamonds hung like sparkling wisps from her ears.

  Marten heard Cabrera close the door behind him. “This is the Baroness de Vienne, Nicholas. She is my beloved guardian.”

  “What a pleasure it is to meet you, Monsieur Marten.” Like Cabrera’s, the Baroness’s English was accented with French. She raised her hand and Marten leaned over and took it.

  “The pleasure is mine, Baroness,” Marten said politely. The Baroness was younger, gentler, and far more handsome than he had imagined. She was gracious, welcoming, as if she were truly glad to meet him. Yet, as he let go of her hand and stepped back, her eyes stayed on his. The feeling was unsettling, as if she were purposefully reading him, searching for any flaw or weakness she could find.

  Marten looked to Cabrera. “Where is Rebecca?”

  “She will be here momentarily. Would you care for a drink?”

  “Mineral water if you have it.”

  “Of course.”

  Marten watched Cabrera cross to a small bar in the corner of the room. He looked as he had in Kovalenko’s photographs. Tall, slim, neatly trimmed black beard and hair. The last time he’d seen Raymond—as they faced Polchak and Lee and Valparaiso, and even Halliday before he’d come over to Marten’s side, in the awful Metrolink shootout in L.A.—Raymond had been all but bald in his attempt to take on the identity of the murdered Josef Speer. But the hair wasn’t the only difference. The face was wholly dissimilar, its structure more pronounced, the jawline, as much as he could distinguish it under the beard, even the nose. And his eyes. Before they had been a blue-green, now they were as black as night. Contact lenses, maybe, but the eyes aside, if he was Raymond the plastic surgeon had done a brilliant job in wholly changing his appearance.

  “You are looking at me curiously, Nicholas.” Cabrera came toward him carrying a crystal glass filled with mineral water.

  “I was trying to get the measure of the man who is going to marry my sister.”

  “And how do I compute?” Cabrera smiled easily and handed Marten the glass.

  “I’d like Rebecca to tell me. You seem to have won her heart.”

  “Why don’t I ring for her and let you ask her yourself.” Cabrera crossed to a small side table and pressed a button.

  There was a moment and then a door on the far side of the room opened and Rebecca came in. He caught his breath. She was not only alive and healthy but, in the dazzling evening dress she wore, extraordinarily beautiful.

  “Nicholas,” she blurted when she saw him. Suddenly she was across the room, hugging him, holding him, her eyes filled with tears but laughing all the while.

  “I so wanted this to be a surprise.”

  Marten stepped back to look at her and was suddenly aware of her emerald necklace and pearl and diamond earrings. “It is a surprise, Rebecca. You don’t have to worry about that.”

  “Alexander”—suddenly she twisted away and went to Cabrera—“tell him. Tell him, please.”

  “I think first, you both should meet my father.” Again Cabrera pressed the button. This time he spoke into a small microphone beside it. “Please,” he said, then looked back. “He was resting. He will be here momentarily.”

  “Your father is Sir Peter Kitner,” Marten said carefully. “He is to become Tsar of Russia.”

  “You are well informed, Nicholas.” Cabrera smiled easily. “I should be surprised, but I’m not, considering you are Rebecca’s brother. Yet, things have changed. It is what Rebecca wanted me to tell you.” The smile faded. “My father will not become Tsar. He has relinquished the throne in favor of me.”

  “You?”

  “Yes.”

  “I see,” Marten said quietly. There it was, just as he had told Kovalenko. Only it wasn’t quite the way he’d seen it. Cabrera hadn’t had to kill Kitner to become Tsar, merely terrify him into abdicating. That way there were no politics involved at all. He would have to prove nothing. With the stroke of Kitner’s pen, Cabrera had simply become Tsar.

  An abrupt knock at the door broke Marten’s thoughts.

  “Oui,” Cabrera said.

  The door opened and Sir Peter Kitner entered. He was dressed formally and accompanied not by a host as Marten had been but by Colonel Murzin.

  “Good evening, Tsarevich,” Murzin said to Cabrera, and then looked at Marten. “Monsieur Kovalenko wishes me to convey his regrets. Circumstance has called him back to Moscow.”

  Marten nodded without remark. Kovalenko was gone. The how or why of it was not something he could ask. The simple fact was that from here on in, he was on his own.

  “Father,” Cabrera said, as he escorted Kitner into the room, “I want you to meet the woman I love and will soon marry.”

  Kitner didn’t react at all, merely half bowed as he reached Rebecca. She looked at him for a moment, then put her arms around him and embraced him the way she had Marten. Again joyous tears filled her eyes, and she stepped back, taking his hands in hers and telling him in fluent Russian how wonderful it was to meet him and to have him here. It was all pure and genuine and from her heart.

  “This is my brother,” she said, turning toward Marten.

  “Nicholas Marten, sir.” Marten extended his hand.

  “How do you do?” Kitner said in English, then slowly took Marten’s hand. His grip was barely discernible and he let go almost as soon as the two had made contact. Kitner’s eyes, his entire manner, seemed somewhere else, as if he were aware of what was going on but at the same time unaware. It was difficult to tell whether he was simply tired or under the influence of some kind of drug. Whatever it was, his demeanor was listless and unfocused, hardly what one would expect in a man who oversaw a global media empire and who had become Tsar of Russia, before abdicating to Cabrera.

  “There, my love, you see?” Cabrera put his arm gently around Rebecca. “Our entire family is together. You and me, the Baroness, my father, and your brother.”

  “Yes.” She smiled. “Yes.”

  “Tsarevich,” Murzin suddenly interceded, touching his watch.

  Cabrera nodded and smiled warmly. “Rebecca, it is time to greet our guests. Baroness, Father, Nicholas, please come with us.”

  93

  8:00 P.M.

  The grand ballroom of Villa Enkratzer was sixty meters long and nearly that wide. Its polished marble floor was checkerboard black and white. Its ceiling, high and arched, was adorned with gloriously painted heavenly frescoes from the eighteenth century; its centerpiece, Zeus, enthroned on a flying eagle and presiding over a congregation of the gods.

  A twenty-piece orchestra in white tie and tails played near French doors toward the back, while the hundred or more elegantly dresse
d guests of the Baroness Marga de Vienne and Alexander Cabrera sat at linen-covered tables around the perimeter or danced center stage on the ballroom floor itself.

  “Nicholas!” Lady Clem left her father on the dance floor the moment she saw Marten come in and started toward him. It made no difference that Marten was part of Alexander Cabrera’s entourage making a formal and dramatic entrance into the room. Everyone present knew what had happened, that Sir Peter Kitner Mikhail Romanov had abdicated the throne and that tomorrow Cabrera, né Alexander Nikolaevich Romanov, would be formally introduced to the world as Tsarevich of All Russia.

  “Clementine!” Lord Prestbury tried to call her back, admonishing her under his breath.

  There was no need. As soon as they saw the Tsarevich enter, the orchestra stopped playing; at the same instant, people stopped where they were and a hush fell over the room. And then, as it had for Peter Kitner barely twenty-four hours earlier, loud and sustained applause burst forth in a rousing salute to Cabrera.

  Marten hardly knew Lady Clem was in his arms, or that they were on the ballroom floor dancing to a Strauss waltz.

  Across the room he could see Rebecca glowing with happiness and dancing with a pocket-sized, jovial Russian who had been introduced to him as Nikolai Nemov, the mayor of Moscow. Beyond them Rebecca’s employers, the Rothfels, danced in each other’s arms as if they were newlyweds. Farther away, he could see Lord Prestbury sitting regally at a linen-covered table sipping champagne and engrossed in conversation with the Baroness and a surprisingly animated Gregor II, Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church.

  It was like a dream that made no sense, and Marten struggled for some kind of mental foothold. Making it more impossible was that only moments before Lady Clem had told him she and her father had known the Baroness for years and, in fact, it had been the Baroness who had arranged for Rebecca’s employment at the Rothfels’ residence in Neuchâtel. Moreover, with a mischievous look the equal of the one following the pulling of the fire alarm at Manchester’s Whitworth Hall, she fully admitted being as guilty as Rebecca in keeping Rebecca’s relationship with Cabrera a secret, and then, in a well-practiced, highly superior British manner, answering Marten’s question as to why before he even asked it.

  “Because, Nicholas, we all know how disturbingly overprotective a brother you are. And not only that.” She moved closer. “If you and I could have a clandestine affair, why not Rebecca? It’s quite sensible, really. Furthermore,” she said, looking into his eyes, “as for your absurd comment about the Tsarevich. I asked Rebecca if she knew where Alexander had been yesterday on the off chance he just might have been in Zurich. Her answer was very clear. He had been with her at the Rothfels’ home in Neuchâtel.”

  Marten might have asked if Cabrera had been in Neuchâtel all day, or if he had arrived in the afternoon, plenty of time to have come from the murder scene in Zurich, but he hadn’t. And afterward he had let it all go and simply let the evening unfold.

  He had a glass of champagne and then another and for the first time in what seemed months began to relax. He felt the warmth of Lady Clem as they danced, and the press of her breasts against his chest—hidden as always in the folds of a dark, deliberately oversized evening dress—began to arouse him. Even his previous certainties seemed to fade. No matter that Kitner had signed away his throne; under the circumstances, with Kovalenko gone and Rebecca so close by, it seemed foolish for him to consider any of it, let alone pursue it.

  It was all crazy, as if he had stepped into a parallel universe. But he hadn’t, and if he didn’t believe it, all he had to do was glance at Rebecca and see the wonder and love in her eyes when she looked at Cabrera. The same was true of Cabrera when he looked at her. Whatever else Cabrera might be, there was no mistaking the look of the total, unselfish, uncompromising love he had for Marten’s sister. To see it so openly revealed like that was both moving and truly remarkable.

  Earlier, when Nicholas and Rebecca had danced, she had told him she was studying to become a member of the Russian Orthodox Church, and she’d laughed, telling him how much she was enjoying learning the rites and the names of the saints and how normal and right it felt, as if it were all some integral part of her being.

  That one day in the next months she would not only become Cabrera’s wife but Tsarina of Russia boggled the mind. Lord Prestbury had even joked about it, telling Marten that soon Marten would be a member of the Russian royal family and therefore both Lord Prestbury and Lady Clementine would have to treat him with a great deal more deference than they were used to.

  Marten couldn’t get over what had happened to Rebecca. Not a year removed from the mute, terrified girl confined to a Catholic sanitarium in Los Angeles to this. How could it have come to be?

  He pulled Clem closer as they danced, and then he heard Cabrera’s voice.

  “Lady Clementine—”

  Marten turned. Cabrera stood next to them on the dance floor. “I wonder if I might engage Nicholas privately for a few moments. There is something I would very much like to discuss with him.”

  “Of course, Tsarevich.” Lady Clem smiled and, curtsying knowingly in the royal manner, stepped away. “I will be with Father, Nicholas,” she said, and he watched her walk away across the dance floor.

  “Some crisp alpine air, Nicholas? It’s rather close in here.” Cabrera indicated an open French door behind them.

  Marten hesitated and looked Cabrera in the eye. “Alright,” he said finally.

  Cabrera led the way, acknowledging the appreciative smiles and nods of the guests as they went.

  Neither Cabrera nor Marten was dressed for the cold, but they simply went out unadorned, in the tuxedos they wore. The lone difference was that in one hand, Cabrera carried a slim, gaily wrapped, rectangular package.

  94

  9:05 P.M.

  “This way, I think, Nicholas. There is a lighted walkway that gives a nice view of the villa, especially at night.”

  Their breath hung in the air as Cabrera led them across a snow-crusted terrace outside the ballroom and toward a pathway leading into the woods on the far side of it. Relaxed and a little bit drunk, Marten stayed with Cabrera step for step as they reached the walkway and started along it. In moments, the cold air began to invigorate, and Marten felt his senses sharpening. For some reason he glanced over his shoulder.

  Murzin was following them, keeping his distance, but there just the same.

  “There were rumors that some of the demonstrators had come into this part of the valley,” Cabrera said at Marten’s glance, and smiled his easy smile. “I’m sure there’s nothing to worry about. The colonel is just being cautious.”

  Ahead of them the pathway narrowed between two large conifers and Cabrera slowed, ushering Marten ahead. “Please,” he said. Marten went first and then Cabrera.

  “There is something I want to share with you about Rebecca.” Cabrera caught up and they walked side by side. “I think you will find it remarkable.”

  Now the trail turned and Marten could see the pathway ahead start upward, away from the villa. Again he looked back.

  Murzin was still there, coming up the path behind them.

  “His presence is unnecessary,” Cabrera said suddenly. “I would rather have the colonel back at the villa than traipsing through empty woods protecting us. Excuse me just a moment.”

  Cabrera turned and walked back to meet Murzin as he came up, the brightly wrapped package still in his hand.

  Marten blew on his hands in the cold and looked up. A light wind whispered through the treetops, and he could see a full moon begin to rise over the ridge to his left. There was a ring around it and behind it an advance of clouds. Snow wasn’t far off.

  He looked back and saw Murzin and Cabrera talking. Then Murzin nodded and turned for the villa. At the same time, Cabrera came back up the trail toward him. In that moment a voice stabbed through him. “Never mind how Cabrera looks. Who he knows. How he walks. Talks. Who he is. What he will become. Or anyt
hing else. He is Raymond!”

  “I’m sorry, Nicholas.” Cabrera was almost to him, the snow crunching sharply under his feet.

  Marten’s mind danced forward and back at the same time. Kitner had abdicated the Russian throne to Cabrera there at the villa. If all this had been planned before, to take place in London after Kitner’s knighthood ceremony and his presentation as Tsarevitch the following day to the Romanov hierarchy at the Russian Embassy, it seemed inevitable that the house on Uxbridge Street was to have been used the day after that, the Friday, March 15, Raymond had noted in his calendar, for the same reason—as a place to bring Kitner to his knees and force him to abdicate.

  “You know people in London, yes?” Marten asked casually as Cabrera reached him.

  “Lord Prestbury is from the Baroness’s circle.”

  “You must know others?”

  “Some, why?”

  Marten took a chance. “I recently met a retired British stockbroker. He spends most of the year in the South of France, but he has a large home near Kensington Gardens. His name is Dixon, Charles Dixon. He lives on Uxbridge Street.”

  “I’m sorry, I don’t know him.” He gestured forward, up the trail, “May we go on? I would like to tell you about Rebecca.”

  “What about her?” Marten said as they moved on. Cabrera had given no perceptible reaction whatsoever to either the name Charles Dixon or the designation Uxbridge Street. Nor had he anywhere displayed Raymond’s mannerisms. Was he that good or was Marten just plain wrong?

  “She is not the person you think she is.”

  “What do you mean?” Marten turned to look at Cabrera. Was he Raymond or wasn’t he? If he had Halliday’s disk and could get Cabrera’s fingerprints, he could prove it one way or the other. But the disk was gone, in the mail to Kovalenko’s wife in Moscow.

  “Rebecca is your sister legally but not by birth because you were both adopted. I know because she told me. The more we became involved with one another, for both political and business reasons I felt it necessary to have her past looked into. I love her very much, but in love mistakes are easy to make. It may sound unkind or even cold, but I wanted to make certain of her before I proposed marriage. I trust you can understand that, Nicholas.”