Then there was his mother, the Baroness, for years intricately acting the part of his guardian, the sister of his deceased mother, who, in truth, never existed.
Who was she in all of this?
16
Marten crossed the room again, this time stopping to listen at the door. He waited, listening intently, but he heard nothing. Finally he went to the washbasin and splashed cold water on his face, then rubbed his wet hands across the back of his neck and stood still, feeling the cool of it and taking a moment out of time. Sixty seconds later he sat down on his cot to cross his legs and lean back against the wall, determined to put more of the parts together, to make himself understand the whole of it. He knew that he if ever got away from his captors, the greater the understanding he had about what had gone on, the better he would be prepared to deal with what would come next—freeing Rebecca from the monster who held her.
Peter Kitner, it was apparent, governed his private life by imperial convention. His only publicly known marriage had been into royalty. His wife was the cousin of the King of Spain. It was a move to suggest Kitner himself had long ago prepared for some future time when the Russian throne might be restored and he, as the true head of the imperial family, would be made Tsar.
For Marten, knowing Kitner was Alexander’s father and the Baroness was his mother, that raised the question—what had happened?
What if, years ago, Kitner and the Baroness had been lovers? Most certainly she would have learned who he was and about the same time become pregnant with Alexander. Possibly, and as a result, Kitner had married her and afterward there was a fight or a falling-out of some kind, which might have included his family, and they were divorced or the marriage had been annulled, maybe even before Alexander was born—and then not too long afterward Kitner married into Spanish royalty, a socially appropriate move for a man who was directly in line to become a monarch himself.
The Baroness might well have been enraged enough to spend the rest of her life seeking not only revenge but power, determined to have what she felt was rightfully hers in the event the imperial throne was ever restored to the man whose first male child she had borne. What if she had begun that long, determined, and hateful war by marrying into extreme wealth and social influence?
Later, when her son was old enough, she might have initiated a secret, conspiratorial partnership with him, telling him who his father really was and what he and his family had done to her and, in turn, to him, and vowing that if the day ever came when Russia restored the monarchy to the imperial family it would be he, Alexander, and not Peter Kitner who would become Tsar.
It was a goal she might have achieved without violence through the use of her position and vast wealth to gain influence with the necessary power brokers, but instead she had chosen blood. Why? Who knew? Maybe she felt it was the price a Tsar and his family—and the necessary others along the way—had to pay for casting her and her child out. Whatever the reason, violent and twisted as it was, it was the path she had pursued for years, slowly manipulating her son into the role and blood-spattered mind-set of the terrible Tsars of old, schooling him, in the process, in the fine art of killing. Finally, when he was a young teenager, she put his fingers to the fire, commanding him to take his first brutal steps toward the throne himself by eliminating his closest possible challenger, his own half brother, Paul.
And Kitner, shocked and horrified, afraid for the safety of the rest of his family, fearful of exposing his past for fear of damning his future, with the killing weapon and film of the event in his possession, had confronted both Alexander and the Baroness and made a pact. Instead of turning Alexander over to the police, he would send him into exile in Argentina, most probably with some kind of stipulation that Alexander would never reveal his true identity and therefore never be able to make claim to the throne.
Once again Marten pushed off of the cot to walk those five short paces back and forth in the inky darkness. Maybe he was wrong but he didn’t think so. It might sound like an over-the-top scenario tailor-made for the movies, but in truth it wasn’t all that different from cases Marten had seen on the streets of L.A. where the scorned woman found her former lover or husband in a bar and stabbed him to death with a knife or shot him five times in the head. What made this different was that such women did not use their children to do the deed. Maybe that was the distinction between ordinary people and those driven by hatred and maniacal ambition, or by the extreme seduction of the highest levels of power.
Suddenly he thought of Jura and the Rothfels and wondered if the Baroness had manipulated that, too. He remembered worrying to Rebecca’s psychiatrist, Dr. Maxwell-Scot, that Jura was far too expensive for him, and he remembered being told that Rebecca’s expenses, like those of all of the patients there, were covered in full by the foundation as stipulated by the grant from the benefactor who provided the facility.
“Who is the benefactor?” Marten had asked and was told that the patron preferred to remain anonymous. At the time he had accepted it, but now—
“Anonymous, hell!” he said angrily out loud in the dark. “It was the Baroness.”
The abrupt sound of the key in the door lock made him freeze where he was, and then the door opened.
There were two of them as usual, with two more in the hallway outside. They were big and wore the balaclavas, and shut the door almost immediately, using flashlights to see by. One carried a large water bottle and had a loaf of black bread and cheese and an apple.
Suddenly Marten was swept with anger. He wanted to be free and he wanted to be free right now!
“I do not work for the CIA or anyone else!” Marten said abruptly and heatedly to the man closest to him. “I am a student, nothing else. When are you going to believe that? When?”
Abruptly the man who had brought him the food swung his flashlight, putting the beam directly in Marten’s eyes.
“Be quiet,” he grunted. “Be quiet.” Immediately he turned the light toward the other man, who carried something Marten could not see and had moved to the far wall and was running the beam of his flashlight over the base of it looking for something. Then he found what he was looking for, an electrical socket. Kneeling, he plugged in a cord of some kind. Marten felt his heart skip with joy. They were giving him a lamp! Anything was better than the perpetual dark. Then he heard a click but no light came on. Instead something began to glow a grayish white and a small picture appeared. On it he saw a German shepherd racing across the screen in black and white. Immediately the picture cut and he saw a troop of U.S. cavalry charging across the desert following the dog.
“Rin Tin Tin,” one of the balaclavas said in English, and then they left, closing the door behind them and locking it. They had brought him food and water and a television.
17
Why they had given it to him he didn’t know. It didn’t matter. The television was Light. After days in darkness he embraced it as if it were an icon. Within the hour it had become a companion, and within the day, a friend. That it received only one channel didn’t matter, nor that the reception, depending on how he manipulated the wire antenna, was alternately clear and crisp or maddeningly impossible, with snowy images and heavily distorted sound. The sound was unimportant anyway because, for the most part, the broadcast was in German, a language he didn’t understand at all. But it made no difference. The television was a connection, however slight, to a world outside his own mind. Never mind that it broadcast mainly old American television shows dubbed into German. For hours he sat fascinated by Davy Crockett, Andy Griffith, Father Knows Best, Gunsmoke, Dobie Gillis, F Troop, The Three Stooges, Miami Vice, Magnum, P.I., more Three Stooges, Hogan’s Heroes, Gilligan’s Island, Leave It to Beaver, more Three Stooges—none of it mattered. For the first time in days there was something besides himself and his own anger and thoughts and inky darkness.
Then something totally different happened and everything changed—the evening news came on. Live and broadcast in German, it seemed to origina
te from Hamburg, but it showed video clips from around the world, many with interviews broadcast in the language of that country, with a German narrative explaining what was happening. Not only did he hear English, he saw stories from New York, Washington, San Francisco, London, Rome, Cairo, Tel Aviv, South Africa. Little by little he began to piece together the day and date, even the time.
It was 7:50 P.M., Friday, March 7, exactly seven weeks since he’d gone into the water above Villa Enkratzer. Suddenly he thought of Rebecca. Where was she right now and what had happened? By this time they must have given him up for dead. How had she reacted to that? Was she alright or had she slipped back to the horrible state she’d been in before? And what about Alexander, or more rightly Raymond! Was he already Tsar? Was it possible they could have been married?
As if in divine answer, they suddenly appeared on the television screen—Rebecca, smiling warmly and dressed as elegantly as he’d ever seen her, and Raymond, his hair perfect, wearing a smartly cut business suit, his beard gone. And still wholly unrecognizable as Raymond Thorne. They were walking down a hallway inside Buckingham Palace with Her Majesty, the Queen of England. As quickly, the story cut to virtually the same scene in Washington, D.C., only this time they were in the White House rose garden and in the company of the President of the United States.
The German narrative overrode the bits of English he was getting as the president spoke, but even with the German he could understand, the information being given—the marriage between Alexander Nikolaevich Romanov, Tsarevich of Russia, and Alexandra Elisabeth Gabrielle Christian, Princess of Denmark, was to take place in Moscow on Wednesday, May 1, the old Soviet May Day, to be followed immediately by the coronation of the Tsar at the Kremlin.
Marten turned down the sound of the television to stand there stunned, staring blankly at the screen. He had to do something. But what? He was a prisoner and trapped in this room.
Suddenly emotion rose. He turned and went to the door and pounded on it, yelling for someone to open it. He had to get out. He had to get out now!
How long he stood there pounding and carrying on, he didn’t know. But no one came, and finally he stopped and crossed back to stare at the television on the floor, its white glow faintly illuminating the room.
Click.
Angrily he turned it off. The glow faded and he went back to his cot and lay down, listening to his own deep breaths. Before, light had meant everything. Now, darkness had become equally welcome.
18
BALTSCHUG KEMPINSKI HOTEL, MOSCOW. THURSDAY, MARCH 21.
10:50 A.M.
CORONATION/STATE DINNER
GRAND KREMLIN PALACE
St. George Hall/1 May—seating approximately 2,000 (to be
confirmed)
Primary Menu
Soup—Ukrainian borscht
Fish—Braised sturgeon
Salad—salat izkrasnoy svykly (beet salad)
Entrée—Beef stroganoff with stuffed eggplant
Relevée—Braised rabbit with four-root purée
Dessert—Crêpes with lingonberries, honey, and brandy
Beverages—Russian vodka, Russian Champagne; wines—
Beaujolais, Moselle, Petsouka, Novysuet Reserve, Burgundy,
Château d’Yquem/Champagne; tea and coffee
Alexander stood behind an antique desk in the eighth-floor Presidential Suite studying the menu for his coronation dinner. Other agendas awaited discussion: security; the Tsarevich’s itinerary for the next six weeks, which included travel plans and housing arrangements for himself, Rebecca, and the Baroness; television and other media interviews; plans for the wedding and for the coronation itself, the seating, the route, the costumes, the carriages.
Across from him Colonel Murzin worked several telephones at once, as did Igor Lukin, his newly appointed private secretary. Farther across the room, a half-dozen secretaries huddled around temporary desks, and these were only the immediate few. The entire eighth floor had been taken over by the Tsarevich’s staff of nearly three hundred. It was as if they were planning a presidential inauguration, the Olympics, the Super Bowl, the World Cup, and the Academy Awards all rolled into one. And in a way they were. It was a vast and huge undertaking—and, to all those personally involved, thrilling. It had never happened in their lifetimes and, barring illness or accident, probably never would again. On May 1 Alexander would become Tsar for life, and he was only thirty-four years old.
It seemed to matter little to anyone that the politics of it made his position merely titular. It was the sentiment of it that was magic, which of course was why the throne had been reinstated in the first place. It was an elixir to divert the attention of the Russian people from the world surrounding them—the endless, dismal poverty; the corruption; street crime; the bloody, rebellious turmoil of the breakaway states—and direct it toward a national conscience of hope and pride that reveled in the youth and glamour of a Russian Camelot, a picture-perfect image of wealth and joy and happiness, and the way life could and should be.
Abruptly Alexander put down the menu and looked toward his private secretary. “Do we have the revised guest list?”
“It has just been finished, Tsarevich.” Igor Lukin walked to one of the secretaries, retrieved a typed list, and brought it to Alexander.
Alexander took it and walked over to stand in the large window warmed by bright sunshine to study it. Other details aside, it was the list of invited guests, gone over and revised any number of times, that really interested him.
He could feel his heartbeat pick up and sweat bead on his upper lip as he scanned the pages. There was one name in particular that kept reappearing, and each time he saw it he asked that it be deleted. He was sure it had been now but had to make certain.
Page ten, eleven. He scanned to the bottom of the twelfth page and then turned to the thirteenth. Eight lines down and—“O gospodi!” God!—he swore under his breath. It was still there.
NICHOLAS MARTEN.
“Why is Nicholas Marten still listed?” He said loudly, not hiding his anger. The secretaries looked up as one. Murzin did, too. “Nicholas Marten is deceased. I asked that his name be removed. Why is it still here?”
Igor Lukin came toward him. “It was removed, Tsarevich.”
“Then why is it back?”
“The Tsarina, Tsarevich. She saw it missing and demanded it be put back.”
“The Tsarina?”
“Yes.”
Alexander glanced off, then looked at Murzin. “Where is she now?”
“With the Baroness.”
“I want to see her, alone.”
“Of course, Tsarevich. Where?”
Alexander hesitated. He wanted her away, isolated from anyone else. “Have her brought to my office at the Kremlin.”
19
THE KREMLIN, TEREM PALACE—THE PRIVATE CHAMBERS BUILT IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY FOR TSAR MIKHAIL ROMANOV, FIRST TSAR OF THE ROMANOV DYNASTY. 11:55 A.M.
Rebecca was already there when he came in. She was sitting in a high-backed chair against a tapestried wall in the elaborate red and gold room that had been Tsar Mikhail’s private study and that Alexander had taken as his own.
“You wanted to see me?” she asked quietly. “I was about to lunch with the Baroness.”
“It’s about the guest list, Rebecca.” He still wanted to call her Alexandra. As Rebecca she was not of royal lineage, not worthy of becoming the wife of the head of the imperial family, but as European royalty, as Alexandra, daughter of the hereditary Prince of Denmark, she was. Still, he followed her wishes, and besides, Rebecca was how the world knew her.
“I had your brother’s name removed. You had it put back. Why?”
“Because he will come.”
“Rebecca, I know how painful his death was for you and for all of us. How heartbreaking it still is. But the guest list will become a public document, and I cannot have a man who everyone knows is dead, and for whom the coroner’s office in Davos formally filed a death ce
rtificate almost two months ago, be invited to the coronation. It is not only bad taste, it is bad luck.”
“Bad luck? For whom?”
“Just—bad luck. Do I make myself clear? Do you understand?”
“Do what you want with the list. But he is not dead. I know that in here.” She touched her heart. “Now, may I go? The Baroness is waiting.”
Alexander’s eyes locked on Rebecca’s. He must have said yes or nodded or something, because a moment later she turned and left.
That his memory of actually seeing her leave the room was vague was understandable, because his mind had already drifted to something else, something he had felt before but never as strongly as now. The first time he’d noticed it had been during the search for Marten’s body when they’d hunted hour after hour along the river near Villa Enkratzer and found no trace of him. It came again during the memorial service in Manchester. It was a rite without a body and only an assumption of death. The ceremony had been performed only after Alexander had convinced Lord Prestbury and Lady Clementine of the importance of bringing closure to Marten’s death, saying he wanted to spare Rebecca any more pain than she had already suffered.