The Black Sun (28 page)

Dominique was silent. Then, surprising herself more than anyone, she reached up and gave

him

a

kiss

on

the

cheek.

CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

DECEMBRIST’S SQUARE, ST. PETERSBURG

January 9—4:03 p.m.

Boris Kristenko felt guilty. It wasn’t just that he had slipped out of the office and that if his boss found out there would be questions. He was more worried about letting his colleagues down. With only three weeks to go till the grand opening of the new Rembrandt exhibition, they were working flat out. He should have been back at the museum, coordinating the hanging. But he’d made a promise and he liked to keep his promises—especially when they were to his mother.

So he hurried along, head bowed, trying not to make eye contact for fear someone from work might recognize him, although he could just as well have asked them what they were doing out themselves. That realization emboldened him somewhat, and he allowed himself to look up, although he quickened his step to compensate for his bravery as he crossed the Neva and headed along the Leytenanta Schmidta embankment. His mother wanted three Russian dolls. Apparently she couldn’t get such nice pieces out in the suburbs, although Kristenko doubted she’d even looked. He knew his mother; the black sun 241

this was her way of getting him to both pay for the items and deliver them. Not that they were for her, of course. The
matryoshka
were intended as gifts for her nephews and nieces over in America, her brother having swapped the cold Russian winters for humid Miami summers about fifteen years ago. God, how Kristenko envied him. It was a small shop, catering mainly for tourists, with a fine selection of Russian souvenirs. He purchased the dolls and emerged back onto the street, checking his watch. He’d been away twenty minutes. Maybe if he ran he’d be back before anyone had noticed he’d even gone.

The first punch, to the side of the head, caught him completely unawares. The second, he saw coming, although it still winded him as it slammed into his stomach. He dropped to the ground, gasping for air, his head ringing.

“Get him over there.” He registered a voice, then felt himself being dragged by his arms and hair into an alleyway. He didn’t have the strength or the will to fight them. He knew who they were and he knew he couldn’t win.

They threw him to the filthy cobblestones, smeared with rotting food and dog excrement. His head bounced off a wall, and he felt a tooth break as his chin connected with the bricks.

“Where’s our money, Boris Ivanovich?” came the voice. He looked up and saw three of them, looming over him like upended coffins.

“It’s coming,” he mumbled, finding it difficult to move his jaw.

“It had better be. Two weeks. You’ve got two weeks. And next time, just so you know, it won’t be you we come for. It’ll be your mother.”

One of the men kicked him hard in the head, the boot catching his nose. He felt the warm trickle of blood down his face as the shadows faded, their cruel laughter rising through the air like steam.

Lying there, his head supported by the cold brick wall, he looked down at his bruised knees,

his

ripped

and

soiled

242 james twining

coat, his scuffed shoes covered in shit. The blood dripped from his nose through his fingers and onto his front with the steady rhythm of an old clock marking time. Alone,

he

began

to

cry.

CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

CATHERINE PALACE, PUSHKIN

January 9—4:37 p.m.

Dusk fell with a crimson mantle, lengthening shadows slipping furtively between the naked trees. As Tom stepped through the weaving gilt-and-black filigree of the entrance gates to the Catherine Palace, the first streetlights blinked on. In a way, he was glad that Dominique had not made the trip out to the suburbs with him. He needed some time on his own to recharge his batteries and take stock. Although he knew she’d been trying to help by making him talk about his father, the conversation had left him feeling uneasy. The problem was that since her confession about her past, and the part his father had played in it, Tom had found himself wrestling with a gnawing feeling of jealousy. This was not an emotion he’d had to contend with before, and he was still having difficulty coming to terms with it.

What was clear was that, in the five years leading up to his father’s death, Dominique had had the sort of relationship with his father that Tom had only ever dreamed about. And even if she was right about his father taking her in to compensate for the way he’d failed his own son, it still felt like a betrayal. He wondered whether she suspected as 244 james twining

much, and if that had motivated the kiss she’d given him. She wasn’t usually one for such open displays of emotion or affection.

Being in St. Petersburg certainly wasn’t helping matters. Tom remembered the nights his father would tuck him into bed while telling him about this dazzling city, his eyes growing distant and dreamy as he described the glittering prize it had once contained; its star-struck history; its mysterious fate. Tom would listen, awestruck, scarcely daring to breathe in case he broke the spell.

The palace surged out of the gloom, the arched windows of its three stories encrusted with ornate stucco ornamentation, each separated from its neighbors by columns and sculptures that repeated along its one-thousand-foot length with monumental symmetry. Bands of turquoise scrolled down the white and gold façade like thick ribbons, as if the building had been gift-wrapped especially for him.

Tom ascended the main staircase, passed through the main door into the entrance hall, and turned left. He knew the way, having memorized it long ago from a plan in the book his father had given him. His pace quickened as he drew nearer, the White, Crimson, and Green Dining Rooms—sights he would normally have lingered over, absorbing their unrestrained opulence—warranting no more than a cursory glance. Even the masterpieces on display in the Picture Hall couldn’t hold his attention for any longer than it took to traverse the polished parquet floor. Instead he was drawn, as if by magic, to the far doorway, his path lit by the enchanting glow emanating from the room beyond. The Amber Room.

It wasn’t the original room, of course, consisting instead of a modern replica, crafted to celebrate the city’s three hundredth anniversary. Even so, the result was no less stunning. The glittering walls spanned a spectrum of yellow, from smoky topaz to the palest lemon. And while most panels were undecorated, some were adorned with delicately crafted figurines, floral garlands, tulips, roses, and seashells that looked as if they might have been plucked from a distant beach or some exotic garden and then dipped in gold. Only

one

other

visitor

was

present,

examining

one

of

the

the black sun 245

panels on the far wall. A stern-faced attendant occupied a creaking velvet and giltwood chair near the entrance.

As he stood there, the Amber Room’s warmth washing over him, an unexpected thought crept into Tom’s mind. Despite its magnificence, he couldn’t help but feel that he was somehow glad his father had never stood where he was standing now. After a lifetime of anticipation, to actually see it, as Tom was, might have come as something of an anticlimax to him. By foundering on the rocks of war, leaving only its whispered memory and a few faded photographs behind, the Amber Room had given birth to a myth. A myth that had immediately transcended the limitations of human observation and scrutiny, entering instead the world of the imagination, where its magnificence could never disappoint or be questioned. For that reason, if nothing else, this reproduction, while exquisite, could never hope to equal the sublime image people might conjure up in their own minds.

“It took twenty-four years . . .”

The other visitor had crossed the room to join him. Tom said nothing, assuming the man had taken him for a fellow tourist. “Twenty-four years to rebuild it. Amazing, is it not? See how it glows, how the surface both reflects the light and yet at the same time seems so deep you could plunge your hand in it up to the elbow?”

Tom turned to look at the man properly. From the side, he could barely make out the profile of his face, obscured as it was by a black bearskin hat pulled down low so that it skimmed his upturned collar. And yet there was something in the man’s voice that he recognized, a spark of familiarity that danced around the edges of Tom’s memory without his quite being able to place it.

“Hello, Thomas.”

Slowly, the man turned to fix him with a pair of unblinking steely green eyes. Eyes that were at once familiar and yet totally foreign. Eyes that aroused feelings of hatred and of fear. And loneliness.

Harry Renwick’s eyes.

“Harry?” Tom gasped as the spark exploded into a sudden blaze of understanding. “Is that

you?”

246 james twining

Renwick, perhaps mistaking Tom’s tone, held his gloved hands out, palms upturned, in welcome. “My dear boy!”

But Tom’s surprise instantly evaporated, a cold, biting rage taking its place. His next words left no doubt as to his true feelings. “You fucking—” Tom took a step forward, his fist clenching at his side.

“Careful, Thomas,” Renwick said softly, edging away. “Do not try anything rash. I would not want you to get hurt.”

There was a scrape of wood, and Tom turned in time to see the frightened-looking attendant being bundled from the room by two shaven-headed thugs. Two more marched in after them, their coats open to display the guns casually tucked into their waistbands. The taller of the two made his way to Renwick’s side. Tom recognized his massive shape as the man filmed leaving the hospital after Weissman’s murder. The other, meanwhile, approached Tom and rapidly patted him down, before relieving Renwick of his bearskin hat and retreating across the room.

“I believe you have not yet had the pleasure of meeting Colonel Hecht?” said Renwick.

“He is a . . . colleague of mine.”

“What do you want?” Tom asked sullenly. Given the odds, he knew had no choice but to hear Renwick out.

“Ah, Thomas.” Renwick sighed heavily. He remained the only person to call Tom by his full name, but then he had always eschewed abbreviation, acronym, or any other form of linguistic shorthand. “It is sad, is it not? After everything that has passed between us, the time we have spent together, that we should not be able to meet and talk as friends.”

“Save it,” Tom spoke through gritted teeth. “Our friendship was built on your lies. The day you betrayed me, we lost anything we ever had. You mean nothing to me now. So if you’ve come to kill me, let’s just get it over with.”

“Kill you?” Renwick laughed and strolled across to the left-hand wall, leaving Hecht staring stonily at Tom. “My dear boy, if I had wanted you dead, you would not be here. Outside the Hotel Drei Könige; at that café in the Hauptbahnhof; as you were walking down

the

Nevsky

Prospekt

the black sun 247

this very morning . . . God knows there have been any number of opportunities over the past few days. No, Thomas, your death, while satisfying the need to avenge the loss of my hand”—he brought up his gloved prosthetic hand and regarded it dispassionately, as if it wasn’t really his—“would not serve my purposes.”

“Your purposes?” Tom gave a hollow laugh. “You think I’d help you?”

“Oh, but you have done so much already, Thomas. The key you recovered from Lammers, the safety-deposit box, the identification of a possible location for the contents of the missing carriages—”

“How the hell . . . ?” Tom started, before realizing what this meant. “Raj! What have you done to him?”

“Ah, yes.” Renwick sighed. “Mr. Dhutta.” He removed the glove from his left hand and gently placed it against one of the panels. “A very loyal friend, if I may say. Right until the end.”

“You bastard,” Tom swore, his voice cracking at this latest example of Renwick’s mindless cruelty. Raj was a good man. Tom blamed himself for getting him involved. Renwick gave a brief smile but said nothing, gently stroking one of the floral motifs with his ungloved hand.

“So, now you know what I have known for some time,” he said eventually. “The Order was sent to protect a train. When they realized it was not going to get through to Switzerland, they took it upon themselves to remove the most precious part of its cargo and hide it, committing the secret of its location to a painting that now lies in some private collection.”

Tom said nothing, his thoughts alternating between fear, anger, and revulsion at the sight of Renwick lovingly stroking the amber and the thought of Raj’s twisted corpse lying discarded in some alley or hidden room.

“Think about it, Thomas—the original Amber Room.” Renwick’s eyes flashed.

“Finally recovered after all these years. Think of the money. It must be worth two, three hundred million dollars.”

“You

think

I

care

about

the

money?”

Tom

seethed.

248 james twining

“Your father spent half his life on its trail. Imagine what he would say if he could be where we are now—so close.”

“Don’t bring my father into this,” Tom said icily as he stepped forward, ignoring Hecht’s menacing gaze. “He wanted to find it so he could protect it. All you want to do is destroy it.”

“Your father is already involved, Thomas.” Renwick was smiling now. “How else do you think I found out about this in the first place? He told me. He told me everything.”