The Romanov Legacy (31 page)

He picked up the phone and dialed Primakov’s number. 
“Vadim Petrovich,” he said.  “I have a problem you must help me to
solve.” 

“What is it?” the older man rasped.  “What has
happened?  Is it Marya?”

“It is your agent, Constantine Dashkov.  He broke into
the Ussov building, where I was entertaining your granddaughter, the American
women, and your agent, Viktor Igorovich.”

“What happened?  Are they alive?” 

He could hear the hope in Primakov’s voice.  The man
wanted only one response and he would question nothing if he were rewarded with
it.  Starinov smiled to think how easily even men bred in the old Soviet
system still believed the lies their betters told them.  “Yes,” he
lied.  “But instead of surrendering, Dashkov escaped with the Romanov
letters and the women.” 

“Then where is Marya?”

Starinov did not respond.  Instead, he listened to the
heavy, panting breaths at the other end of the line.  He pictured Vadim,
red-eyed and shaggy-haired in a wrinkled tweed jacket.  He would be crying
or cursing or praying, none of which were of any use to a man of action. 
That
was always your problem, Vadim.  Too much thought; too little
action. 

“Please tell me,” Primakov begged.  “Where is she,
Maxim?”

Starinov got up from his desk and went to stand beside the
portrait of Ivan.  With the tip of his pen, he counted the jewels visible
in Ivan’s collar as the older man languished at the other end of the
line.  Twenty-six in total, he counted.  He stood back to admire the
painting’s gold leaf border, glinting even in the dim, curtain-shrouded lamplight
of his office. 

“Maxim!” Primakov barked.  “Tell me!” 

“All right,” he said softly.  “If you truly wish to
know.”

“So help me God, Maxim, if you don’t tell me where she is—”

“She is in my care, but only because Dashkov left her
behind.  Viktor was wounded in the fight and Dashkov left him behind,
too.”

He could hear the confusion in Vadim’s voice. 
“Constantine wouldn’t do that.  Why are you telling me this?”

“Isn’t it obvious?  I want the letters.  You want
your granddaughter.  I propose an exchange.”

“I don’t have the letters, Maxim.”

“But you will.  Dashkov will bring them to you. 
He will ask you to arrange his transportation—it’s the only way he can flee the
country without alerting me.  I want you to agree with whatever he asks,
but deliver him to me.  When I have the women and the letters, you will
get your granddaughter back.”

“What will you do with Constantine?”

“That is not your concern.”

“I don’t believe you, Maxim.  Constantine would never
leave Marya and I know you would lie to God in order to get what you wanted.”

“Your belief in your employee is touching, Vadim, it truly
is.  But consider the facts:  he left his own partner and a
four-year-old girl behind.  His judgment is obviously impaired.”

“He’s the best agent I have, Maxim.”

“It’s a question of honor, then.”  Starinov leaned in
closer to study the thin, cruel eyebrows the artist had painted over Ivan’s
Mongol eyes. 
Fascinating
, he thought,
how a simple line can
turn a man’s visage from a source of comfort to a source of terror
. 
“I will pose the question to you like this—do you trust Constantine more than
you love your granddaughter?  If the answer is yes, I will tie your
granddaughter into a pillowcase full of bricks and drop her into the
Moskva.  If the answer is no, you will deliver Dashkov to me and I will
return her to you unharmed.  The choice is yours.”

Starinov looked up at Ivan.  He imagined the ancient
tsar’s rosy lips curling into a smile of approval.

July 2012

Moscow, Russia

“Who the hell is Bark?” Constantine asked, exiting the
Kransportnoye Koltso and heading southbound on Tulskaya.  He looked over
his shoulder and did an illegal u-turn, watching for any trailing cars parting
the swath of traffic behind him.  Viktor was out there somewhere, and so
were more of Starinov’s goons. 

“Sir Peter Bark,” Natalie explained.  “Last finance
minister for Tsar Nicholas II.  During World War I, he made several trips
to London to carry messages between Nicholas and his cousin, King George V of
England.  He fled to London in 1919 to escape the Soviets and eventually
landed a job managing a subsidiary of the Bank of England.” 

Constantine tried to process the information and monitor the
surrounding traffic at the same time.  “So Bark is the one who set up the
account for Soloviev?”

“I don’t think so,” Natalie said.  “The timing is
off.  But I’d put money on it that Bark knew about the account.  He
must have gotten pretty nervous when news of the tsar’s death started making
the rounds, especially when Nicholas’s relatives and so-called massacre
survivors like Anna Anderson started clamoring about foreign deposits that
should now belong to them.  But he was in the ideal position to lock that
account down.  He was already in England, employed in finance, and
handling money for Nicholas’s sisters who escaped the revolution.”

“We’re never going to be able to prove this,” Beth said.

“The proof doesn’t matter if we decipher the
password.”  Natalie turned sideways in her seat to face him, eyebrows lifted
anxiously.  “Vadim will help us get to England, won’t he?”

“He gave me his word.”

“Are you sure we can still trust him?” Beth asked. 
“After all, how would you feel if three out of four captives show up, none of
whom are the one related to you by blood?”

Her words had the effect of a sledgehammer hitting him in
the ribs.  “You’re right,” she said.  “This is going to kill
him.  I have to look him in the eye and tell him I failed him.”
  

“But Viktor’s the one who betrayed
us
,” Natalie
said.  “He’s the one to blame.”

“It doesn’t matter,” he said.  “Blaming Viktor won’t
bring Marya back and it won’t make Vadim any more likely to help us.”

“God, I could feel that bullet go through her.”  Beth
clasped her arms around herself and started to rock back and forth.  “How
could they do it?” 

“They’re trained killers,” he said.  “They weren’t
thinking of her as a person.”

Beth shook her head and wiped away a tear.  “How are we
going to tell him?”

He looked sideways and saw Natalie’s chin quiver, too. 
Then she took a deep breath and reached into her purse.  She handed one of
the small vodka bottles to her sister.  “First you rinse her blood off
your face,” she said.  “And then you drink whatever’s left.”

Constantine took one hand off the steering wheel and rested
it gently on Natalie’s thigh.  He wanted to tell her he understood, that
he was proud of her for giving her sister the luxury of breaking down. 
Without looking at him, she clasped his hand in hers. 
    

They drove the rest of the way without speaking, Beth crying
quietly in the back seat and Natalie squeezing his hand every time her sister
sobbed.  Eventually the gentle drone of the car lulled both of them into a
fitful doze.  He was grateful; they needed the rest, but their sleep also
left him free to scan the roads for an ambush.  The early afternoon
traffic had begun to pick up and delivery trucks clogged the right-hand
lanes.  He knew each one might be a decoy filled with Vympel
assassins. 

He followed the Leninsky Prospekt to the MKAD ring road and
headed for Vnukovo Airport and the bureau’s private runway.  He dreaded
the moment when he had to shape the words that would destroy Vadim’s
future.  He knew Vadim believed in God and wondered whether such a belief
could help soften the blow.  To him, it seemed far more comforting to
believe in randomness than in a deity who targeted the innocent and the
helpless.  At least in a godless universe, only the perpetrator could be
blamed for a crime.      

Finally he reached the winding access road that led past Vnukovo’s
commercial runways.  He stopped once at a mandatory checkpoint to flash
his bureau identification.  The guard waved him through to the circular
ring of private airstrips all leased to government entities, each of which came
with a hangar and single-room administrative trailer. 

A Challenger sat immobile in the bureau’s open hangar with
its hatch closed and lights off.  Constantine pulled past the hangar to
the aluminum-shingle office trailer.  He couldn’t see anything through the
window blinds and there was no car parked beside the trailer. 
This
doesn’t feel right
, he thought. 
No car for Vadim?  No car for
the pilot or maintenance crew? 

He parked the Volga and touched Natalie’s shoulder
gently.  “We’re here,” he said.  She blinked sleepily, nodded, and
reached into the back seat to wake her sister. 

Beth woke quickly, sitting up straight and looking
around.  “It looks deserted,” she said.  “Are you sure this is the
right place?”

“It feels wrong to me, too,” he said.  “Keep your eyes
open.”  He’d already divided up the cache from the Ussov guard
booth.  He’d given the women the pistols, leaving the assault rifle for
himself.  If the worst happened, at least they could defend themselves and
try to escape.

“Could this be a trap?” Natalie asked him.

“It might be, but we have no choice.  We leave here
with Vadim’s help, or we don’t leave at all.  You two stay here.” 

He got out of the car, rifle in hand, and walked up to the
trailer door.  He flung it open and sprang sideways, but no spray of
gunfire rocketed outward from the doorway.  Holding the rifle cocked and
ready, he jumped into the doorway and scanned all four corners of the
room. 

There was only one person inside.  Vadim sat slumped in
a folding chair beside the single window.  A lit cigarette dangled from
his lips, ashing into a pyramid on the floor.  His hair, long and lank,
hung like gray straw around his head, as if he hadn’t washed it in
days.      

“Vadim?”  Constantine asked.  “Are you all right?”

“Come inside.”  Low and scratchy, the older man’s voice
lay buried beneath a thick layer of grief and nicotine.  Constantine
lowered his gun and waved the women inside, closing the door behind them. 
“The pilot is waiting for my signal,” Vadim continued, leaving the cigarette
clenched between his lips. 

“Thank you,” he said.  Then he met Vadim’s eyes and
recoiled from the raw grief in their smoke-reddened depths.  “About
Marya—”

“None of that,” Vadim said, waving the words away like a
fly. 

He knows
, Constantine thought. 
Starinov must
have called him to gloat.
  “You should be at home with Liliya. 
She needs you.”   

Suddenly, Beth stepped forward with her hands pressed to her
chest.  “I held her,” she whispered, blinking back tears.  “She asked
for you, over and over.  I tried to keep them away from her, but
they…” 

“Don’t,” Constantine said, pulling Beth backward.  “It
won’t help.” 

Natalie put her arms around her shaking sister and stared
over Beth’s shoulder at Vadim. 

The older man pointed at Natalie.  “This is the one?”
he asked in Russian.  

“
Da
,” Constantine answered.

Vadim crossed himself.  “She is a rusalka.  An
evil creature.  She must take life in order to live.”

“No, Vadim.”

“There is no soul behind her eyes.  Something has taken
it.”

“You’re wrong.”

Then Natalie gasped in pain and tightened her grip on her
sister.  Her eyes traveled to the ceiling and tracked across it, as if she
were watching the flight of an insect.  “What?” she breathed.  “What
did you say?”  Then, very slowly, she tilted her head back down to eye
level and fixated on Vadim.  “Belial has a message for you,” she
said.  Then she began to enunciate the guttural sounds of a language she
didn’t speak: 
At least my soul is spoken for.  Yours is still
available to the highest bidder.

Beth looked up from her sister’s shoulder.  “Nat, what
did you just say?”

“I don’t know,” Natalie moaned.  “Belial told me to say
it.”

Constantine tightened his grip on the rifle.  “Tell
Belial to be quiet until we’re on that plane.”

Vadim looked at Constantine as if he were crazy, too. 
“You understand this madness?”

He shook his head.  “I don’t understand it but I’ve
seen what it can do.  I believe in it, and I believe in her.  Now go
back to Liliya and let me take care of Starinov.” 

The foggy look in Vadim’s eyes frightened him and he wanted
to get airborne as soon as possible.  His bones were vibrating the way
they did before a bombing raid or rescue mission.  Something wasn’t right
but there was no choice but to keep going until he figured out what it
was.  He ushered the women to the door and virtually shoved them out of
it.  Vadim followed them onto the tarmac. 

Inside the plane, someone unlocked the hatch and pushed it
open, dropping the stairs.  “Go on up,” Constantine said, touching Natalie’s
elbow.  “I’ll be right there.”

Natalie nodded.  She climbed the stairs and ducked her
head to step aboard.  Constantine turned to Vadim, wondering what he could
say that would carry weight when placed next to a human soul, especially that
of a child.  He opened his mouth to speak and heard a scream.  When
he spun to face the hatch, he saw Natalie in Viktor’s arms, a jagged knife
blade held to her throat.  There was an enormous strip of white tape
holding Viktor’s broken nose in place. 

“Natalie!” Beth screamed, fumbling for the gun in her
waistband.

“I wouldn’t,” Vadim said, pulling his own gun and pointing
it at her.

“Vadim!” Constantine yelled.  “What are you doing?”

“I just want Marya back,” he whispered.  “I just want
her back, you see?”      

“But she’s already dead!” Beth cried.  “She died in my
arms.  I tried to tell you…”