“You know who I am.” Marten’s voice was barely a whisper.
Kovalenko nodded slowly. “I telephoned the University of California at Los Angeles. No Nicholas Marten attended the school when you said you were there. However, a John Barron did. Besides, tovarich, the squad had six men. Only five are accounted for. So what happened to the last man? Not difficult pieces to fit together—not if you stand where I do.”
“Nicholas!” Rebecca called loudly behind them. At the same time, there was a shrill whine as Gray Hair started the launch’s engine.
Kovalenko ignored both. “The Hermitage is filled with people. The Tsarevich will not know what you look like now; neither will the FSO.”
Marten’s eyes went to the automatic in Kovalenko’s hand. It was as if, in one giant twist of time, he had been transported from a deserted auto body shop in Los Angeles to the heart of St. Petersburg, Russia.
Kovalenko might as well have demanded what Roosevelt Lee had. Might as well have said “For Red.” Or “For Halliday” or “For Dan Ford” or even—“For the squad.”
“Who the hell do you work for?” Marten breathed.
Kovalenko didn’t answer. Instead he looked past him to the Hermitage. “He is in there, most probably in the Throne Room where we were, or at least near it. He will be upset about the Tsarina and berating the FSO assigned to guard her. Neither he nor they will be paying much attention to what is going on around them. The museum is filled with people. Not so difficult to escape in a crowd afterward, especially if one knows exactly where one is going. I will have the car waiting on Dvortsovy Prospekt at the door we just came out of.”
Marten’s stare cut the Russian in half. “You sonofabitch,” he whispered.
“The choice is yours, tovarich.”
“Nicholas!” Rebecca cried again. “Come on!”
Abruptly Marten reached out, wrapped his hand around the Makarov’s grip, and slid it into his belt under his jacket. Then he turned, looking first at Rebecca and then to Clem.
“Take her to Manchester, I’ll meet you there!” Marten stared for a heartbeat longer, fixing them both in his memory. Then he turned and started back across the landing.
“Nicholas!” He heard Lady Clem yell behind him. “Get on the fucking boat!” But it was too late. He was already crossing Dvortsovaya Naberezhnaya and moving toward the Hermitage.
45
My Alexander,
It is with the greatest sadness I tell you I will not see you again. This destiny was not ours. I shall miss forever what might have been.
Rebecca
The beat of the metronome thundered. Alexander stood frozen, staring at the sheet torn from the guest book and the handwriting on it he knew so well.
The three FSO assigned to Rebecca, and the FSO who had driven him to the museum, stood back in silence watching, terrified about their futures. All they knew was that when they had arrived in the Throne Room, it was empty. A general alarm had been sounded and the building ordered searched by security personnel. The four FSO had been ordered to remain with the Tsarevich. God only knew what would happen next.
“Get out, all of you.” The voice of the Baroness cracked through the room like a whip.
Alexander looked up to see her in the doorway, Murzin behind her.
“Get out, I said,” she repeated.
Murzin nodded and the FSO quickly left.
“You, as well!” she snapped, and Murzin exited, closing the door behind him.
Three red-carpeted stairs led up to Peter the Great’s golden throne, and Alexander stood at the top of them watching her approach.
“She’s gone.” Alexander’s eyes were vacant, as if he saw nothing at all, or had no idea where he was. All there was, all that existed, was the awful boom, boom, boom, boom, of the metronome deep inside him.
“She will be found, of course.” The Baroness’s voice was calm, even soothing. “And when she is—” Her voice trailed off and she smiled thinly. “You know I love her like my own child, but if she were to die, the public would adore you even more.”
“What?” Alexander was jolted into the present.
The Baroness came closer, to stand, finally, at the bottom of the stairs looking up at him.
“She was kidnapped, of course,” she said assuredly. “The world’s eyes will focus on the event. President Gitinov can say nothing, only share in the nation’s horror. And then, in the end, her body will be found. Do you understand, my sweet? The hearts of the world will be in your hands. Nothing could be more fortunate.”
Alexander was staring at her in disbelief. Trembling, unable to move, as if his feet had suddenly become part of the floor.
“It is all part of your destiny. We are the last true Romanovs. Do you know how many were destroyed after they became Tsar? Five.” She moved up one step, coming closer to him, her voice soft as ever. “Alexander the First, Nicholas the First, Alexander the Second, Alexander the Third, and your great-grandfather, Nicholas the Second. But it will not happen to you. I shall not let it. You will be crowned as Tsar and you will not be destroyed. Tell me—” She moved up the second stair and smiled, softly, lovingly.
Alexander stared at her. “No,” he whispered, “I won’t.”
“Tell me, my sweet—say it as you have since you could first talk, as you have forever. Tell me in Russian.”
“I—”
“Tell me!”
“Vsay,” Alexander began the mantra. He was an automaton, helpless to do anything but her bidding. “Vsay … ego … sudba … V rukah … Gospodnih.”
Vsay ego sudba V rukah Gospodnih. All his destiny is in God’s hands.
“Again, my sweet.”
“Vsay ego sudba V rukah Gospodnih,” he repeated, a little boy giving in to the demands of his mother.
“Once more,” she whispered, and moved up the final step to stand in front of him.
“Vsay ego sudba V rukah Gospodnih!” he said forcefully and compellingly, an allegiance to God and to himself. The way he had when he had been trapped by the police in Los Angeles. “Vsay ego sudba V rukah Gospodnih!”
Suddenly his eyes were wild and the knife was out of his jacket, the blade flashing in his hand. The first cut was across her throat. Then came the second cut. The third. The fourth. The fifth! Her blood was everywhere. On the floor. His hands. His jacket. His face. His trousers. He felt her slide down his body and heard her slump to the floor at his feet, one arm over the footrest of the golden throne.
Somehow he crossed the room and pulled open the door. Murzin stood there alone. Their eyes met. Alexander grabbed him by the jacket and pulled him into the room.
Murzin stared in horror. “My God—”
Again the knife flashed. Murzin’s hand jumped to his throat. The final expression of his life was complete surprise.
Mechanically Alexander knelt and took Murzin’s 9 mm Grach automatic from its belt holster. Then he stood, backed away, and went out the door, the pistol slipped into his belt, the bloody knife back inside his jacket.
46
Marten was going toward the Throne Room, climbing the Hermitage’s main staircase with a large crowd of museumgoers, when he heard a woman’s scream from the floor above. People stopped instantly and looked up.
“The Tsarevich,” a man next to him whispered.
Alexander stood at the top of the stairs staring down, seemingly as startled as anyone else by whoever had cried out. His hands were held half in the air, like a surgeon waiting for the nurse to pull on his surgical gloves, and they were covered with blood. There was a large smear of blood on his face as well, and on the leather jacket he wore.
“Jesus God,” Marten breathed, then started to move—slowly, carefully, easing up the staircase, using the people staring at Alexander to shield his move. Suddenly Alexander turned his head and his eyes locked on Marten’s. For an instant they held there and then, as quickly, Alexander turned and was gone.
Alexander pushed through a door and rushed down an interio
r stairway. His heart pounding, his mind a blur, he barely felt the steps beneath his feet as he raced down them. At the bottom was another door. For the briefest second he hesitated, then pulled it open and stepped into a central corridor on the first floor. In one direction was the Invalid Entrance through which he had come in. In the other was the main staircase where the man he was certain was Marten had stood in a crowd staring up at him. In between were the toilets.
Alexander opened the stall door and went in. He closed it behind him and latched it, then, overcome, dropped to one knee over the toilet bowl itself and threw up. He knelt there gagging and vomiting, emptying everything in his stomach, for a full two minutes, maybe more. Finally, his throat raw, he managed to stand and flush the toilet, then wipe his mouth and nose with tissue. Afterward, he tried to drop the tissue in the toilet but he couldn’t; it was stuck to his hands, and for the first time he became aware of the blood on them.
Suddenly there was a rush of excitement and he heard several people come into the toilet from the hallway outside. The Tsarevich had been seen in the building at the top of the main staircase, they said; he had had blood on him, or at least what appeared to be blood. There were rumors two people had been killed. Security people had sealed off the entire second floor. The killer could be anywhere.
Slowly Alexander bent to the toilet and put his hands into the cold water. Quickly, wildly, he rubbed them together, trying to get the blood off. In a way it seemed almost funny because he didn’t know whose blood it was, Murzin’s or the Baroness’s, or both. He rubbed harder. The blood vanished in the wet, or most of it anyway. Good enough. He straightened and flushed again. Then he saw more blood on his trousers and on his leather flight jacket. He heard the restroom door open and one person and then another go out.
Alexander opened the stall door a crack. A lone man stood combing his hair in the mirror. He was in his thirties, of medium height and build, and was stylishly dressed in a brown plaid suit, with a long navy scarf twisted foppishly around his neck. Curiously, even in the toilet’s muted light, he wore wraparound sunglasses.
“Excuse me,” Alexander said in English as he came out of the stall.
“Yes?” the man answered. It was the last word he ever said.
47
Marten had tried to go up the staircase after Alexander, but a phalanx of FSO agents and uniformed security guards had suddenly closed off the second floor and were sending everyone back down. Minutes later a male voice came over a loudspeaker announcing in Russian and then in English, French, and German that the museum was being closed at once for security reasons and that no one would be allowed to leave until he or she had been cleared by police.
Quickly Marten had retreated back down the stairs with the others and walked swiftly down a long columned room toward the main entrance. He knew that with the scream, whatever had happened upstairs, and the suddenness of Alexander’s retreat, things were moving too quickly for the security lockdown to be fully in place. If he got caught inside with the crowd, he could be hours in line before he was cleared and released—or not released at all, since he was carrying Kovalenko’s automatic and a passport identifying him as Nicholas Marten—and by then Alexander would be long gone.
Ahead, he could see the main entrance.
Another twenty feet and—suddenly he pulled up short. The police were already there. The exit was sealed off and they were setting up their checking procedure.
To his left were the ticket booths, and beyond them, down a short hallway, was the Excursion Office, where Clem had gone to meet Rebecca. Anxiously, he pushed into the hallway, working his way through the pack of confused and frightened museumgoers. In a moment he was at the Excursion Office. Just past it he could see an emergency door leading out. It had a crash bar and maybe an alarm, but it was worth the chance. He reached it and was about to put his shoulder to it when he saw two FSO agents running down the hallway toward him. Immediately he turned and went back, fighting through the crowd, passing the ticket booths and the main entrance. Again the announcement came over the loudspeakers.
Now he was in the columned room once more, heading toward the main staircase. Then he saw a long corridor leading off to the right. He took it quickly, his eyes darting back and forth looking for an exit door. He passed a bookstore and an art shop. There were more people, more confusion. He kept on, passing the museum toilets. A dozen paces farther and something made him look down. He froze. On the black-and-white checkerboard floor in front of him was the bloody toe print of a shoe. A few paces more and he saw another. Immediately his hand went to the Makarov in his belt. Carefully he slipped it out and let his arm drop to his side. He walked on, keeping the automatic as hidden from view as possible.
Another bloody toe print and then another. It was the right foot, and whoever was leaving it was moving quickly. The strides were lengthening, and the prints becoming fainter as the blood wore off.
48
A gray, overcast sky hung above the city as a man dressed in a stylish plaid suit, navy scarf, and wraparound sunglasses stepped cautiously out of the Invalid Entrance and into the Palace Square at the rear of the building, his hand on Murzin’s automatic under his jacket, ready to be challenged by police. But there were none. From the direction of the sirens they seemed, for the moment at least, to be concentrating their efforts on the crowds at the main entrance. Alexander hesitated a moment longer, then adjusted the sunglasses and moved forward.
In front of him was the black Volga. Where his FSO driver was or where the other FSO were, he had no idea. He had last seen them when they left the Throne Room after the Baroness had ordered them out.
Hurriedly he turned and looked across the wide square. In the center was the towering Alexander Column commemorating the defeat of Napoleon. On the far side the General Staff Building was linked to the Guard’s Headquarters by a grand triumphal arch atop which sat a massive sixteen-ton sculpture of Victory riding in a chariot led by six horses. All were reminders of Russia’s victories in the War of 1812. They should have given him the hope and courage of the Russian heart—and they might have, had he not glanced behind him and seen the faint but still visible bloody toe prints and realized he was leaving a trail.
Horrified, he moved on across the square, walking quickly, afraid to break into a run that would certainly draw attention. As he went he scuffed the sole of his right shoe on the pavement, trying desperately and awkwardly to wear off whatever blood was left, and at the same time trying to understand exactly what had happened in the stall of the muzhskoy, the men’s toilet. He’d not had much time to strip off his clothes and change into the plaid suit of the man he had killed. In his haste he must have inadvertently stepped into the man’s blood with his right foot, with the crepe sole of his shoe soaking it up like a sponge. Again, the specter of the knife haunted him. Why had he begun using it once more? If he hadn’t, the Baroness would still be alive, and so would Murzin, to protect him.
He rushed on, passing the Alexander Column, his eyes on the triumphal arch in the distance. All around he could hear the scream of sirens. To his left he could see police cars sealing off the staff parking area. Fifty people, at least, had seen him at the top of the main stairway smeared with blood. In all the chaos and commotion there was no way to know how soon the police and the FSO would find the body in the men’s toilet along with his jacket and trousers. But when they did, it would create even more confusion. No one would be sure what happened, why the Tsarevich’s clothes were there, where he was, or what had happened to him. The first assumption—particularly after he had been seen blood-soaked in public—would have to be that he had been attacked by the same person or persons who had killed the Baroness and Murzin and was either dead or a prisoner or in hiding somewhere inside the cavernous building, which was where they would concentrate their search. Moreover, no one would know, at least right away, that the dead man had worn a plaid suit. Taken together, all of those things gave him the precious time and breathing room he need
ed. Another step and he looked back toward the museum. The square was empty. He kept on.
Suddenly he thought of Marten. He had been there on the staircase in the mass of others, coming up toward him. He was close shaven and thin, with short hair and in an inexpensive brown corduroy suit. It might have been someone else, but it wasn’t, it was Marten without doubt, there, once again, as somehow he always was. Why he had thought he wouldn’t recognize him he didn’t know. He realized now he would know him anywhere. The reason was simple. His eyes. Marten would be looking straight at him, as if he were Alexander’s soul and shadow at the same time.
“Stop it!” he told himself. “You need to think clearly. Stop this obsession with Marten.” He looked up. He was nearly at the triumphal arch. Still there were no police, not here anyway. On the far side of the arch was St. Petersburg, and he knew that once he reached the city he could melt into it the way he had in Los Angeles. Again he looked back toward the Invalid Entrance. No one, nothing. Now he was at the arch. He turned back for one final glance. As he did, the door to the Invalid Entrance opened and a lone man stepped out. He was some distance away but there was no doubt at all who it was.