The Exile

by Allan Folsom

  41

  3:45 P.M.

  Alexander leaned anxiously forward, pulling against the seat harness, as his driver raced the black Volga through traffic and toward the city. Behind him was Rzhevka Airfield where the pilot had set the Kamov helicopter down for another refueling, while waiting for Alexander’s return from the Hermitage Museum with Rebecca.

  That he was here against the dictates of the Baroness was not an issue because she had no idea what he was doing. As far as she knew he had simply left Murzin behind as she had demanded and flown off for Moscow.

  Flown off, but not for Moscow and not before having Murzin find out where Rebecca was at that time, and then personally radioing the FSO guarding her to stay at her side until Alexander arrived. As he left the palace, Murzin warned him not to draw a crowd by landing in the city proper. Such a maneuver would only complicate things when the Tsarevich and Rebecca left St. Petersburg. Rzhevka had been the pilot’s call. They needed more fuel, the city was only a short drive from the airfield, and Murzin had arranged to have an FSO car waiting at the airfield for Alexander when he arrived.

  Murzin himself had been instructed to inform the Baroness that he had located the Tsarina at the Hermitage in St. Petersburg and was taking a car from Tsarskoe Selo into the city to retrieve her and bring her back to the palace. Once back with Rebecca, Murzin was to tell the Baroness that the Tsarevich had requested that Rebecca be flown directly to Moscow for their six o’clock tea with the president. It was a simple and concise way to get the Baroness and her ceaseless meddling out of the picture.

  3:50 P.M.

  The Volga crossed Alexander Nevsky Bridge and turned onto Nevsky Prospekt into the growing congestion of rush hour traffic. The crush of vehicles was claustrophobic. Alexander felt trapped and unable to move, and right now, movement was everything because it kept the metronome stopped. If he moved, it didn’t. But sitting there, all but helpless in the creep of trucks, buses, and automobiles, he could feel it begin to move inside him.

  Boom, boom. Boom, boom.

  The beat of his heart like a leitmotif of doom.

  3:52 P.M.

  Traffic crept.

  He was the Tsarevich! Why was the roadway not cleared for him? Didn’t people see his car, know who he was? No, how could they? He was riding in a simple black Volga, not a limousine. Nor was this a motorcade.

  The booming beat of the metronome grew louder.

  Why had Rebecca suddenly decided to go into the city? And if it was only for shopping, why had she gone to the Hermitage? To buy gifts? Maybe. But for whom? The government took care of state gifts, and if she wanted something personally, she could have asked for a consultant to come to the palace. She was Tsarina. All she had to do was ask.

  Suddenly he thought of her question about the package he had taken with him when he went on his walk with Marten in Davos.

  “You had a gift with you,” she’d said, “a gaily wrapped package under your arm. What was in it?”

  “I don’t know, I don’t remember,” he’d lied.

  But maybe she had known, and that was why she had asked, trying to get him to deny his knowledge. What if somehow Marten had been in touch with her long before he returned to Russia, and told her about the knife? Perhaps that was the reason she had been so steadfast in her refusal to believe he was dead, because she had spoken to her brother afterward.

  On the other hand, maybe she hadn’t questioned him about the package at all. Maybe it was all in his mind. Maybe he was so terrified of losing her, he was creating imaginary scenarios. Maybe the Baroness was right and the man seen in the railway station with Kovalenko was someone else and not Marten at all.

  Absently he touched his leather flight jacket, the way he had on the flight from Moscow to Tsarskoe Selo, to reassure himself that the knife was still in the inside pocket and close at hand.

  “Pass the traffic! Pass it!” he suddenly commanded.

  “Yes, Tsarevich,” his FSO driver said, immediately pulling the Volga out of its lane and accelerating. He swerved around a large truck, then cut in front of a bus, just missing a young man on a bicycle coming toward them in the opposite direction. As quickly, the driver cut right and went up the inside as they reached the traffic circle at Vosstania Square.

  3:55 P.M.

  The knife. Why had he started using the Navaja again, after killing his half brother Paul with it twenty-one years before? Simply because he had it back after all that time? Was that it? Retribution for his own near-death at the hands of the LAPD? A furious reaction to the intricate game of keep-away his father and Alfred Neuss had played for decades? Or was it more? Was he using it to exorcise his demons? Instead of attacking his mother, who’d spent Alexander’s lifetime single-mindedly and selfishly twisting, manipulating, and shaping her son into a weapon for her vengeance and an instrument for her ambitions, Alexander had released his homicidal rage and butchered his victims with increasing savagery.

  And what about Marten, who was still alive only because of Alexander’s love for Marten’s sister?

  He had to have been the man the fartsovchik had seen with Kovalenko in the railroad station. Alexander knew what Marten looked like the last time he had seen him in Davos. What would he look like now? Long haired and bearded like his visa photograph or thin and clean shaven as the fartsovchik had described? Would he even recognize Marten if they stood side by side? Maybe he could tell from Marten’s eyes, as he had from the visa photo. But maybe not.

  Suddenly a fearsome irony settled over him. He would not recognize Marten any more than Marten would have recognized him in Paris, if Marten had seen him, or had recognized him for the time they had been intimately face-to-face in Davos, both in the villa and on the mountain trail. If Marten was in St. Petersburg, if he was at the museum, he could be inches away and Alexander would never know it.

  The metronome beat louder.

  3:59 P.M.

  42

  THE MALACHITE DRAWING ROOM,

  HERMITAGE MUSEUM. SAME TIME.

  Svetlana and one of the old women whose job it was to guard the artworks kept a crush of people out of the room and gawking in from the doorway as the Tsarina and Lady Clementine Simpson privately toured what was possibly the museum’s most imposing room—a hall of magnificent malachite columns, studded with gold-and-malachite figurines, bowls, and urns.

  “Clem.” Rebecca smiled. “What is going on? There was a surprise, what is it?” She was coy, even silly, as if she expected Clem to have something girlishly frivolous waiting for her.

  “Be patient.” Lady Clem smiled back and casually stepped to the window to look out at the River Neva. By now the sun of earlier had turned to a gray, sullen overcast. From where she stood she had a clear view of the river and the boat landing in front of the Hermitage. As she watched a lone vessel pulled from the river traffic and approached the landing. If that was the boat she had been told to expect it was hardly the kind of seagoing craft Marten had described. Instead, it was a simple river launch with open seating and a small, covered wheelhouse, and she looked past it and upriver for a larger boat. All she saw was the stream of river traffic and nothing approaching the landing, and she turned her attention back to the launch. As it neared she could see a lone man standing in the stern. He was tall and had a mass of thick, curly gray hair. He was the man she was looking for.

  Clem suddenly crossed the room and opened the front door. “Svetlana, the Tsarina would like to see the Throne Room.”

  “Of course.”

  The walk down the hallway from the Malachite Drawing Room to the Throne Room was short and took almost no time. A sign in front advised that the room was closed for the afternoon.

  “Svetlana.” Lady Clem stopped at the door and turned to their guide. “The Tsarina and I would like to be alone for a few moments.”

  Svetlana hesitated and looked to Rebecca, who nodded in agreement.

  “I will wait here,” Svetlana said.

  “Spasiba.” Lady Clem smiled
, then opened the door, and she and Rebecca went inside.

  43

  Alexander could see the gilded spire of the huge and sprawling old Admiralty building ahead of them. On the far side of it was the River Neva, and directly across was the Palace Square, with a rear entrance to the Hermitage inside its circle of buildings.

  “Radio the FSO guarding the Tsarina,” he said to his driver. “Have them bring her down to the Invalid Entrance immediately.”

  “Yes, Tsarevich.” The driver slowed, turning into the square and picking up his radio microphone.

  Nicholas Marten saw a flurry of movement as the two women came in; then Clem closed the door and she and Rebecca looked at the waiting Marten and Kovalenko.

  Marten could see the breath go out of Rebecca as she saw him. The moment was incredible, and for the briefest instant, time stood still.

  “I knew it!” Rebecca cried out and suddenly was across the room. Holding him, hugging him. Crying, laughing. “Nicholas, Nicholas, how, Nicholas, how?”

  Abruptly, as if she’d forgotten who she’d come with, she whirled to look at Lady Clem. “How did you know? When? Why did we have to keep this secret from the FSO?”

  “We have to go.” Kovalenko moved beside Marten. Getting into the Throne Room had been one thing—all he’d had to do was show his Ministry of Justice identification—but getting out and to the boat would be something else if they didn’t move quickly.

  Puzzlement crossed Rebecca’s face as she saw him. “Who is he?” Her eyes went to her brother.

  “Inspector Kovalenko. He is a homicide investigator for the Russian Ministry of Justice.”

  “Nicholas,” Clem warned abruptly, “Alexander went to Tsarskoe Selo from Moscow a short while ago. He knows where Rebecca is. He is on his way here now.”

  Rebecca looked sharply from Marten to Clem. She could see fear and apprehension in both of them.

  “What is it?”

  Marten took her hand strongly. “In Paris I told you Raymond might still be alive.”

  “Yes—”

  “Rebecca.” Marten wanted to do this gently, but they didn’t have the time. “Alexander is Raymond.”

  “What?” Rebecca reacted as if she hadn’t heard.

  “It’s true.”

  “It cannot be.” She took a step backward, horrified.

  “Rebecca, please listen to me. We have almost no time before the FSO come through the door. Alexander carried a wrapped package with him when he and I went out on the trail above the villa in Davos. Do you remember?”

  “Yes,” Rebecca whispered. She remembered. She’d even asked Alexander about it. At the time it had simply been a thought that had come to her and made her curious, but he had reacted angrily, and so she’d dropped it and not brought it up again.

  “When we were away from everyone and on the high bridge, he suddenly took the wrapping from it. Inside was a large knife.” Abruptly Marten pulled back his corduroy jacket and lifted his sweater. “Look—”

  “No.” Rebecca turned away, shocked at the sight of the jagged, twisted scar just above Marten’s waist. That was why Alexander had reacted as he had when she mentioned the package. He thought she had guessed what was in it.

  “He tried to kill me, Rebecca. The same way he killed Dan Ford and Jimmy Halliday.”

  “What he is telling you is the truth,” Kovalenko said gently.

  Rebecca shivered. She was fighting it, desperate not to believe. She looked to Clem, wanting her to say they were wrong.

  “I’m sorry, my dear,” Clem said genuinely, loving her, “I’m so very sorry.”

  Rebecca’s mouth twisted, and her eyes filled with pain and disbelief. All she could see was Alexander, how he looked at her, how he’d always looked at her. With kindness and respect and undying love.

  The room where she stood whirled around her. Here, in this room, in this grand building, was the immense and imposing history of imperial Russia. Behind her, so close she could touch it, was the golden throne of Peter the Great. Everything, all of it, was Alexander’s birthright. It was what he was and what she was to be part of. Yet in front of her stood her beloved brother, and with him, her best friend in the world. And with them both, a Russian policeman. Still, she didn’t want to believe it. There had to be some other answer. Some other explanation. But she knew there wasn’t.

  Marten saw the pale fragility, the awful, agonized disquiet, the same look of horror and loss and terror he had seen at the warehouse massacre when Polchak had held her hostage as he tried to kill her brother. If Rebecca was going to collapse into that emotional, traumatized state for the third time in her life, it would be now, and he couldn’t let it happen.

  With a glance at Clem, he put his arm around Rebecca and led her toward the door. “We have a boat waiting,” he said authoritatively. “It’s going to take us out of here. You and Clem and me. Inspector Kovalenko is going to make sure that it does and that we are all safe.”

  “Maybe we have a boat, maybe we don’t,” Clem said quietly.

  “What do you mean?” Marten started.

  “It’s not at the landing?” Kovalenko was incredulous.

  “Oh, it’s there, alright, and your gray-haired man is in it. But it’s a river launch, and if you think Rebecca and I are going to take it across the Gulf of Finland filled with ice in the middle of the night, you’d better think again.”

  There was an abrupt knock at the door, and Svetlana came in.

  “What is it?” Clem said.

  “The FSO are coming to bring the Tsarina downstairs. The Tsarevich waits.”

  Suddenly Rebecca drew herself up. “Please leave us, and tell the FSO I will be right down,” she said directly to Svetlana, regally and with no emotion whatsoever.

  “Yes, Tsarina.” Immediately Svetlana left, closing the door behind her.

  Rebecca looked to Marten. “No matter what Alexander has done, I cannot leave him with nothing.” Immediately she turned and walked toward the throne. Near it was an open guest book and beside it a pen. She went to the guest book and tore out a blank page, then picked up the pen.

  Marten glanced at Kovalenko. “Watch the door,” he said, then quickly went to his sister. “Rebecca, we don’t have time. Forget it.”

  She looked up. Rebecca was strong and filled with her own will. “I shall not forget it, Nicholas. Please.”

  44

  Alexander ran from the Volga toward the museum’s Invalid Entrance.

  Inside he found no one, not even the normally posted guard. He dashed up a corridor. Museum visitors stopped, open-mouthed, as they recognized him.

  “The Tsarevich.” Hushed voices resonated down the hallway. “The Tsarevich. The Tsarevich.”

  Alexander ignored the staring faces and the rolling murmur of his name and kept on. Where were the FSO, where was Rebecca? Just ahead he saw a woman in uniform step out from the gift shop.

  “Where is the Tsarina?” he demanded, his face reddened with anger. “Where are the FSO?”

  She didn’t know, she stuttered, horrified that he was addressing her personally and in awe at the same time.

  “Never mind!” He ran on. Where were they? Why had they disregarded his orders? The metronome beat louder. Something was terribly wrong. He was going to lose her, he knew it!

  “Tsarevich!” a loud voice cried out from behind him. He stopped and turned.

  “All the FSO have gone upstairs to the Throne Room!” His FSO driver ran toward him, the two-way radio in his hand crackling a storm of overlapping FSO communications.

  “Why? Is she there? What is wrong?”

  “I don’t know, Tsarevich.”

  “This way!” Kovalenko said sharply as they came out of the museum’s secondary entrance, the same door to the museum that Lady Clem had used to go in. The Russian was first, then Clem, and Marten with Rebecca. Marten had his arm around his sister, and Clem’s Burberry raincoat was thrown over her head and shoulders, as much to keep her from public view as to protect her
from the chill wind blowing in off the river.

  In seconds Kovalenko had them across Dvortsovaya Naberezhnaya, the boulevard between the museum and the river, and hurrying toward the boat landing, where Gray Hair stood alongside a moored river launch, smoking a cigarette.

  “Hey!” Kovalenko shouted as they neared.

  Gray Hair waved, tossing his cigarette into the water and going quickly to the stern to unfasten the mooring line.

  “You’re not taking the Tsarina across open water with this!” Kovalenko was right in Gray Hair’s face as they came up, jamming his finger at the launch. “Where the hell is the boat we negotiated for?”

  “We have a trawler anchored in the harbor, but we couldn’t very well tie it up here without every policeman in St. Petersburg wondering what the hell we were doing. You should know that, old friend.” Gray Hair raised an eyebrow. “What’s the matter, you don’t trust me?”

  The briefest smile crossed Kovalenko’s face; then he abruptly looked to the others. “Get on board.”

  Gray Hair steadied the craft against the landing as Marten helped Rebecca and then Lady Clem across the gunwale and watched them go into the covered wheelhouse and out of sight. Then Gray Hair was casting off the bow line and climbing over the forward gunwale. “Come on,” he shouted to Marten.

  “By morning they will be in Helsinki.” Kovalenko was standing so close to Marten that none of the others could hear, or see the Makarov automatic in his hand held out toward Marten, grip first. “What are you going to do?”

  “What am I—?” Marten stared at him. So this was what it had been about all along. The probing into his past, the carefully developed friendship, the quickness and ease with which Kovalenko had arranged for his passport and visa, the talk about Halliday’s terminal cancer and his extraordinary dedication to the squad. Alexander was Raymond, and he knew Kovalenko had been certain of it for a long time. But the only way to prove it was to match Alexander’s fingerprints with those on Halliday’s computer disk, and now that was gone, a victim of procedure and politics. Still, something had to be done about Raymond as the Tsarevich of All Russia; the how and what must have been churning over in Kovalenko’s mind since Paris. That was why he had so carefully probed Marten about his past. With no choice but to answer, Marten had told little lies, pieces that could be checked. In the end he had given Kovalenko what he needed—a man protecting his true identity, who knew how to kill, and had any number of very personal reasons for executing Raymond.