The Romanov Succession

1.

The assassin stood in shadow just within the fringe of the oaks. He could not be seen out of the sunlight—he was merely another dark vertical shape in the forest shadows with the heavier mass of the mountains looming above and behind him.

It was his last chance. He’d tried it and miffed it twice before. Blow it again and his employers would have his head in a basket. But he didn’t feel nervous on that account. If you had nerves you didn’t go into this game in the first place.

He held the 8x Zeiss glasses casually by their strap. At intervals he fitted the reticles to his eye sockets and studied the long motorcars arriving by ones and twos.

The villa a thousand meters below him was a restored seventeenth century ducal summer palace, erected recklessly in the foothills of the Pyrenees by an insensitive Bourbon during a time of Spanish decline and retrenchment. Its builder’s wealth obviously had exceeded his grasp of architectural unities: from the assassin’s angle of view it resembled a village of semidetached buildings haphazardly assembled at different times.

He had never been inside it but he had seen photographs of the interior and had committed a draftsman’s schematic plans to memory. Its rooms were constructed on an awesomely grand scale—made possible by the mild Spanish climate which minimized the need to contain heat. The ceilings were very high, most of them arched or vaulted; there were floors of marble and walls of Alhambra tile; floors of inlaid wood and walls of common plaster covered with murals and extensive bas-relief. There were enough stately bedchambers to accommodate a score of royal hunting guests and courtesans; and plain quarters sufficient to contain fifty-two servants. Many of these were unoccupied now.

The assassin knew that the king’s chamber—the four balconied windows directly above the porte cochere—was occupied by the villa’s present owner-of-record, the Grand Duke Feodor Vladimirovitch—one of the three Romanov Pretenders to the throne of St. Petersburg and a leading member of the last ruling family of Imperial Russia.

But the Grand Duke was an old man and infirm. It was his first cousin, Prince Leon Kirov, who managed the Grand Duke’s villa—as well as his widespread business affairs, his social and familial obligations and his life.

Feodor’s estate was maintained by twelve house servants, five gardeners, two grooms and four chauffeurs. On the grounds they kept a string of jumpers and thoroughbred pleasure horses, seven automobiles and a flock of ducks and geese on the man-made pond. The Romanovs and Kirovs took their exercise on bridle paths or playing tennis on the lawn or practicing archery against targets stuffed with straw. There were garden parties all summer long and none of the motorcars parked below the porte cocèhre was below the rank of Duesenberg or Hispano-Suiza.

The thick green lawn stretched away from the house two hundred yards down a wide swath bordered by formal woods. The main gate at the foot of the lawn, just visible to the assassin, was made of heavy wrought iron and it was guarded by two liveried sentries who wore sidearms. Beyond the gate waited a ravenous pack of tattletale journalists from international gossip rags; now and then when a stately car drew up a photographer would rush forward and crouch to get a picture but that was all right so long as they remained outside the gate.

The assassin watched a silver-grey Rolls approach the gate. He focused his field glasses on it until he could read the number plate. It hardly paused; it swept grandly through the portals and up the driveway. The assassin lowered his glasses. He had watched long enough to know the security procedures and that was all he needed. It was inside the villa that he’d have to do the job. He glanced at the sky, slung the field glasses and walked back through the wood.

He opened the boot of the gleaming black Packard. He seated the Zeiss binoculars in their case and changed from his scuffed climbing shoes into a pair of elegant black pumps—a better match for his evening clothes.

The Packard moved slowly down the rutted dirt track toward its intersection with the road that ran past the gate of the villa.

2.

Within the villa the gathering of elegant people sprawled through more than half a dozen of the building’s public rooms on two stories. In the vaulted main ballroom—a spaciously proportioned chamber of seventeenth century grandeur, hung with old masters and ornate tapestries—a string orchestra played saccharine music and guests nibbled tidbits from an immense Louis XIV table set with crystal and silver and candelabra and vased blossoms from the villa’s greenhouse.

Toward the rear of the villa in the high arched gallery which gave out through glass panes onto formal gardens a separate balalaika orchestra provided accompaniment to a band of hired Cossack dancers who entertained inexhaustibly, squatting and leaping, grunting and shouting ferociously. Now and then a noble White Russian general would get swept up in the spirit of it and join the dancers.

Upstairs in the great drawing room the more sedate and elderly guests sat talking after each in turn had made the ritual pilgrimage into the bedchamber that contained the Grand Duke Feodor, confined to his canopied bed by a painful S-curved spine, the result of degenerative disc ailments that had afflicted him for more than a decade. The Grand Duke was sixty-three—not very old by Romanov standards of longevity—but the athletic strength of his St. Petersburg youth had been mocked by two decades of malaise, and what once had been a splendid towering physique was now twisted and cadaverous. A palsy of alarming intensity afflicted his long-fingered hands, mottled with cyanotic spots; his eyes blinked rapidly and his jaws worked and he looked at least eighty; his mind was lucid only at intervals. Prince Leon employed a Swiss physician full-time to watch over the failing Grand Duke with the help of two registered nurses from Harley Street and one of the three was always in attendance in Feodor’s antechamber.

The drawing room was occupied by a male elite. Most of them were fifty or more; all of them held titles or high military commissions from the long-ago Empire of Czar Nicholas II. The room was filled with cigar smoke and the fumes of Courvoisier and vodka and voices that said War, Invasion, Hitler, Minsk, the Stalin Line, Bolshevism, the Wehrmacht, the Red Army, Soviet Disaster—the last phrase spoken frequently and with energetic relish. To the extent that the rambling discussion was led its leader was Count Anatol Markov and he was speaking furiously. Betrayal, he said, and Vulnerability. Consequences. Country. Responsibility. And, he said, Decision.

3.

Sergei Bulygin drove fast down the narrow gravel tracks of the Spanish foothills, enjoying the freedom and the sense of solitary control, the exhilaration of the twelve-cylinder roar and the rush of wind about the cockpit of the open Mercedes touring car. It made him understand what drew the young Prince Felix so obsessively to motor racing and airplanes. The young prince had explained it once to the old soldier, the white teeth flashing in his long tan face. “We’re a useless class of people, Sergei. Our circumstances prohibit us doing the ordinary things that you can do—working, earning a living. A man’s got to take an interest in something to justify his existence.” It had sounded cynical but he knew better: the young prince lived for the racing.

The gravel road carried him down a narrow ladder of bends and on down the river through the farms and villages of the valley. Most of it was cluttered with carts and pedestrians and the occasional chain-drive lorry and he made poor time but he had anticipated that; he arrived in ample time at the corrugated metal airport terminal of Barcelona, parked at the curb and went into the primitive waiting room; it was just past five o’clock and Alexsander’s plane was due.

There was no sign of the aircraft but that was not alarming. The German-dominated customs people at Lisbon enjoyed enforcing their petty bureaucratic power by hectoring foreign travelers with endless paper delays.

Sergei had not seen young Alex since Helsinki but there wouldn’t have been much change unless the American food had put weight on him; scars at the throat now, of course, from that Bolshevik bullet on the Finland border but perhaps Alex had taken to wearing a scarf to cover that. A scarf would be good, Sergei thought: it would give Alex a dashing look like an aviator.

He was only a valet now in the service of Prince Leon Kirov but Sergei was a soldier, that was his real calling and he looked forward keenly to Alex’s arrival because he had a feeling it meant there would be soldiering to do. There was a big war on and there ought to be a piece of it for Sergei Bulygin who had been a lance corporal in the Imperial Russian Infantry.

Sergei watched the sky through the dusty window of the waiting room and finally he was rewarded. The airplane appeared suddenly at low altitude; it described a slow turn at the far end of the tarmac. Sergei stood up.

Alex and Irina were the last of twelve off the plane. Irina was radiant, beaming up into Alex’s face, holding his arm—it was like years ago and Sergei felt a warm thrill of pleasure.

Alex wore a Shetland jacket and butternut trousers; against his thick brown hair the darkly tanned face looked hard and outdoor-wrinkled. He was leaner than ever and he towered over the other passengers walking across the tarmac. The sunlight lit the grey of his eyes as he turned out of sight into the customs-and-immigration doorway and Sergei was shaken momentarily by the coldness of them.

By twos and threes the arriving passengers appeared in the doorway with their luggage, were met and greeted and sometimes embraced; and trooped away across the waiting room. Finally Sergei was alone by the door and he saw them coming from the customs. Alex was folding visas and inspection documents into his passport and sliding it into his pocket, trailed by two porters carrying their grips. Then Alex looked up and found Sergei there.

The smile made him look very American. It was what Sergei had hoped to see. He lifted his big arms.

Alex laughed and folded Sergei in his strong hug. “Old friend—it’s so damned good to see you.”

Irina Markova had the expression Sergei could never fathom—like a cat’s. “I told you I’d bring him back, Sergei.” But then a shadow seemed to cross her face and suddenly her cryptic stare unsettled Sergei. He reached for their luggage.

He thought, Vassily Devenko should have died in Finland. “I’ll take you to the car. Was it a good flight? Was it the Portuguese who made you late? Has America changed at all since we were there?” He kept talking too fast for them to answer, all the way out to the car. They were laughing at him but it was good laughter and when he started the engine he made it roar out of his sheer exuberance.

The air was warm and a little damp coming off the Med. Irina found Alex’s hand and clasped it quietly. The Mercedes sighed in the road and the hair whipped around Irina’s face but she didn’t scarf it or tie it back. They passed under the lee of the mountain with Sergei monopolizing the talk and then they were curling along a river with the low sun stabbing through a spindle tracery of brush and trees. Small clouds scudded over the peaks. Alex felt deaf in the wind.

Sergei said, “The General Vassily Ilyavitch was not yet at the villa when I left. He is expected.”

“Yes,” Alex said. He turned and found Irina’s face deathly calm, chiseled in profile.

Sergei turned the car smoothly toward a massive open gateway. Flashbulbs erupted around them and Irina stared without expression past the photographers: they were beneath her recognition. They angered Alex—petty mongrels scrambling for scraps—but he didn’t let it show. A guard waved Sergei through and when he switched off amid the herd of big cars below the porte cochere the engine pinged with heat contractions and Alex heard music and a multitude of voices muttering from the villa. Colorfully costumed guests walked amid the profusion of formally shaped flower beds in the garden.

The car swayed when Sergei got out: he was a huge old man, a Kuban bear with his kind brown eyes and his wide Russian peasant face. The door opened under Sergei’s hand and Alex got out and waited for Irina; she swiveled to emerge and gracefully smoothed her elegant grey skirt. “You’ll enjoy the villa—it’s rather grand. Sergei, perhaps we can slip in by the kitchen? We’ll have to dress.”

But Sergei was looking past them toward the hills beyond the garden. Alex followed his gaze and saw a solitary horseman cantering down the distant bridle path.

“Heroes are always sculpted on horseback, aren’t they,” Irina said. “Isn’t it just like Vassily to arrive like that.” Then she laughed and the echoes rang back.

4.

The assassin saw the horseman from the open veranda above the garden. The rider threaded the hillside pathways with a Cossack cavalryman’s precision. The evening sun outlined him sharply on the crests—a tall horseman with heroic shoulders and the equestrian posture of a field marshal.

A long low ridge made a wall beyond the meadows and when the rider disappeared behind it the assassin knew it was no good waiting for him to reappear. Devenko was on the alert and he wasn’t simply going to ride boldly up to the villa. Devenko had a guerrilla’s appreciation of distraction and deception. While a hundred guests stood rooted waiting for him to ride out of the shadows of the ridge Devenko would be galloping circuitously toward the back of the villa; he’d leave his horse tethered somewhere in the woods and they wouldn’t see him again until he made his entrance through an unexpected doorway.

He knew that much because he’d made a study of Devenko. The man was a curious amalgam of melodramatic dash and practical caution. Too proud not to make his appearance here today; too careful—because of the prior attempts against him—to make an easy target of himself. That was why it had to take place inside the villa. There’d have been no point in waiting in ambush by the road because Devenko had anticipated that and had come on horseback rather than by car.

It was much too difficult to get a bead on a man if you didn’t know him. That was what the assassin’s employers didn’t understand; it was why the first two attempts had failed: they hadn’t given the assassin sufficient information.

The first shot had been in London. They’d given him a photograph of Devenko, a place and a time—“You’ll have no trouble. You’ve got five days to arrange your getaway and the exact scheme—that’s up to you. But he’s got Haymarket tickets on the twenty-ninth. The interval’s at nine-fifty and the curtain comes down at eleven-ten. You might think about catching him on his way back to the car afterward—at least that’s the way I’d handle it. But it’s your gambit.”

It was only a voice on a telephone. He’d tried to get more: “Where does he live? What’s his routine? What’s he like?”

But the employer refused to be drawn. “You’ve got all you need to go on. You’re supposed to kill him, not marry him—what difference does all that make?”

So he’d botched the first one because he’d had no way of anticipating the speed and agility with which the target was capable of reacting. He’d paced the target toward the underground garage until the moment came when no one else was abroad in the blacked-out street. Then he’d quickened his pace and drawn the gun but the target heard all of that and without even looking behind him he’d dived between two parked lorries and that was that: the assassin ran forward and snapped a running shot but he knew he’d missed and then the target was out of sight in the heavy shadows and you couldn’t go running through the streets of London brandishing a 7.62 Luger with a big perforated silencer screwed to the barrel.

“He’s faster than the telegraph,” he’d reported back. “You didn’t tell me that.”

“Well you know it now.”

It was nearly a month before the employer called back. “You’d better not blow it this time. It’s an RAF airfield in Kent—Biggin Hill, do you know it?”

“I can find it.”

“They’re flying him from Scotland. Some sort of conference with three or four Russian exiles. It’s set up for a hotel in Maidstone but we want him taken out before the meeting—so it’s got to be the airfield or the road. It’s the A20.”

“I know the road. What kind of car will he be in?”

“It’s a Bentley saloon, grey, two or three years old.”

“Number plate?”

“Angel Kevin six three three.”

“Chauffeur?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Then that’s two of them. The price is higher.”

“The price is the same, after your last fiasco.”

He didn’t fight the point too hard; only a token face-saving riposte: “I’d have had him last time if you hadn’t been so jealous with information.”

“Never mind. It’s July fourteen. The meeting in Maidstone’s set for eight in the evening. You’ll have to work back from there to get his ETA at Biggin Hill.”

“There’s another way. Where does the Bentley live?”

“It belongs to one of the White Russians. He lives in London but he’ll be staying at the hotel in Maidstone. The name’s Ivanov. He’s got a detached house in Highgate. Shepherd’s Hill, Number Forty-three. They’ll be going down to Maidstone sometime on the fourteenth.”

“Bastille Day,” the assassin remarked, and cradled the phone.

On the fourteenth he’d parked on the verge with the nose of his Morris pointed out toward the main road; got out of the car with a brush and a jar of black watercolor ink. His license plate number was IPF 311; he closed the characters to make it read TBE 814. Then he screwed a new silencer onto the Luger and put on a white jacket, a pair of clear-glass spectacles and a white trilby hat. Any witnesses would remember only the disguise, and there would be at least one witness: if they weren’t going to pay for the chauffeur he wasn’t going to give them the chauffeur.

He had to wait more than an hour. Several cars and military vehicles came out of the service road and he kept watch in the driving mirror until the Bentley’s big square snout appeared.

He put the first bullet into the front tire because he wanted to prevent the target escaping. Then he had a clear shot at Devenko and no way to miss it because they hadn’t spotted the source of the trouble yet. He squeezed the trigger with firm gentle pressure and the Luger recoiled, mildly as it always did; the bullet left a small grey smear on the window, obscuring his view of Devenko’s left eye.

“It’s your own fault again, blast you. If you’d told me I’d have worked a way around it.”

“Around what?”

“It’s bulletproof glass in that Bentley.”

So this time he’d do it his own way. He turned into the passage behind the villa’s dining hall and let himself into a walk-in cleaning cupboard. It took a moment to find the light switch. He screwed a stubby silencer onto the Luger and then checked the loads and worked the jack-leg-action to seat the top cartridge so that he wouldn’t need to thrash around cocking it when the time came. He set the safety and slid the pistol down between his belt and his trouser-band against his left ribs under the formal jacket; unobtrusive but instantly available to his right hand. There were flatter automatics than the Luger but the flat ones didn’t fit his hand as well: didn’t point as naturally. The 7.62 bullets were small, the equivalent of .32 caliber, but he’d loaded them himself with the maximum charge of smokeless powder and at close range he had no qualms about their stopping power: the bullets were perforated into quarters and designed to expand violently on contact.

He had a pocket mirror and he inspected his disguise. The coat and slacks were cut very generously to make him look heavy; the dress Oxfords had five-centimeter lifts in them. They’d remember him as a man of substantial bulk and height when in fact he was five-feet-nine and weighed just over 150 pounds.

The rest of it was more traditionally stagy. He had a partial skullcap spirit-gummed over his forehead to hide the widow’s peak of his natural hairline; they’d remember him as half bald. He’d darkened the rest of his red-brown hair with a dye-pomade designed to cover grey; it gave him a Mediterranean cast he had confirmed with a pencil-thin divided mustache gummed to his upper lip. His features were unexceptional: he had always had the benefit of an anonymous appearance and he had learned long ago to eschew striking disguises.

It was all nicely in place in the mirror. He switched off the light, adjusted the hang of his jacket over the Luger in his belt and eased the door open a crack.

The hallway was empty of servants. He went toward the front of the villa, ready to smile, pleasant-faced, nerveless, almost jaunty with businesslike confidence because this time he knew the quarry.

5.

Heads turned when Irina entered the ballroom. She hardly noticed; she was used to it.

She smiled and gave her hand to a marquis; she presented her cheek for the tall marchioness’s ritual kiss and bussed the air two points to the starboard of her face. Voices rolled around her—hearty shouts in courtly French and Spanish and High German and the best St. Petersburg Russian; beneath them the orchestra played Chopin.

The wheeling dancers cut across her view of the crowd but she had a glimpse of a large man with a bald spot and her curiosity was stimulated: some vague familiarity perhaps.

Alex was approaching and she smiled when a dowager buttonholed him. Then a mutter ran through the crowd and the guests were turning in waves to stare toward the wide gallery doors. She heard the murmured name Devenko and felt several sudden glances whip toward her and slide away; then the doors parted and Vassily was there with his high austere eyes and stunning white mane. His handsome head dipped regally in acknowledgment of something someone said to him; he lifted one hard long hand as if in benediction to them all.

He had aged. Not the hair; that had been white since his twenties. But she saw deep vertical lines between his eyebrows and he looked tired.

She felt weight beside her. She didn’t have to look that way to know it was Alex. She found his arm and gripped it gently—pointedly.

Vassily’s hard grey stare struck her. He blinked, looked away, looked directly and expressionlessly at Alex and then returned his stare to Irina—and she thought she sensed an appeal.

He walked forward through the crowd ignoring all the rest: he still behaved with people he didn’t have time for as if they weren’t there at all.

He glanced again at Alex. Then he thrust out both arms.

Irina had a moment’s terror when Alex didn’t stir. But it was so brief an instant that she doubted anyone else detected the hesitation—then the two men were locked in the ritual masculine bear hug of Russia and Vassily’s deep voice was rumbling: “My brother—my good brother.”

Vassily turned and surprised her with a nicker of a smile. In a lower voice he said, “Surprise becomes you, Irina. It makes your eyes grow.”

She reached again for Alex’s arm. The Chopin continued in the back; around them some of the couples resumed dancing but she felt the continuing pressure of curious eyes.

Vassily had returned to Alex. “You look very well.”

“And you.”

“No, do not bother with that. I am old, aren’t I?” Vassily was forty-seven. Irina was fourteen years his junior; there had been a time when it hadn’t mattered.

“Vassily…”

“How is it in America?”—to Alex; he had cut her off deliberately. She became aware of the vivid gowns around them; she felt herself close up, become more guarded.

“… learning about twentieth century war,” Alex was replying, “but maybe not fast enough.”

“Really?” Vassily answered in an indifferent way. “Perhaps they need reprimanding by real soldiers, eh?” And back to Irina: “Has he looked after you properly? It is my duty as his brother to inquire.” He said it with dry scorn and she saw he forgave neither of them.

“They’re waiting for you both upstairs,” she said, very cool.

“Yes. Be kind enough to show us the way, would you?”

It was a little cruel of him but she had known far worse. “Come along then.” She led them away, threading the perimeter of the ballroom. Everyone watched and made way. Vassily’s commanding austerity kept them all at bay—even princes and the nephews of dukes. Vassily had no title whatever: he was a commoner. But there wasn’t a White Russian in the villa who didn’t owe Vassily his life.

They were watched with awe by eyes unused to awe—down the long gallery, the central corridor, the vast and opulent rooms in which Bourbon monarchs had entertained crowned guests. Vassily walked between them and a half-pace ahead now; out of the marbled turnings into the vast foyer. The sweeping stair made an elegant curve to the railed balcony above; the last of the day’s sun beamed down through the stained panels of the lofty domed ceiling.

Vassily laid his hand on the bannister and glanced back the way they’d come. His look was almost furtive. He knows fear after all. She touched Alex’s hand. “I’ll leave you here. They’re in the Grand Duke’s drawing room.”

Vassily said, “Walk up with us.”

“I don’t think I’d care to.” She turned away gracefully. There was the slight pressure of Alex’s reassuring fingers, then she was moving across the foyer, her face a study in composure. She did not hurry; nor did she look back to watch them climb the great stair. She didn’t need to. Their ascent was mirrored in the upturned faces of the people watching, like members of an audience awaiting a denouement.

The bald man appeared in the doorway, slipping past the edge of the crowd. It disturbed her: she couldn’t place him but there was something in the back of her mind, a sense that made her glide to one side in order to interpose herself between the bald man and the stairs. He tried to sidestep but a fat woman was in the way. She couldn’t explain it to herself. But she was sure the bald man’s eyes flashed bitterly—so briefly it might never have happened at all.

Very likely her imagination was betraying her. She went on along the gallery, greeting a few people—the ones who didn’t bore her. In the ballroom she accepted an old Kiev duke’s invitation to dance because he was her father’s cousin and had a good laugh which he hadn’t forgotten how to use. She whirled onto the floor holding the skirt of her long red gown.

6.

Heavy drapes were looped back from the long gallery of windows. The inner wall of the upstairs corridor was hung museumlike with pictures darkened by age from which several generations of Romanovs brooded upon the scene. Vassily Devenko strode past them without a glance.

Alex kept pace with him, recognizing the dark formal portraits: Alexander II, Alexander III, Vladimir, Alexis, Serge, Paul, Cyril, Boris, Andrei, Dimitri; then the late Grand Dukes George and Michael and finally Nicholas II and Alexandra Fedorovna…. The physical strength and magnetism of the family was evident in them all.

No one was in sight in the long wide hall. Vassily stopped abruptly. “A word with you.”

Through the bank of high windows the setting sun fanned the cloud bellies with marbled streaks of crimson and pink. A warm hint of cologne and tobacco smoke drifted under the tall arch-buttressed ceiling. Alex said, “Go on,” reserving a great deal.

Vassily shook his head. It emphasized the weary cast of his deep-lined features. “Doesn’t it strike you the way they all go on as if nothing’s changed? Living on the international scale, perpetuating this idiotic love affair with deluxe pleasures and genteel pastimes. And half the world’s blowing up just over the horizon.”

“You can’t change them.”

“I am not condemning them for it. If they gave it all up and put on sackcloth and ashes it would not make a bit of difference to the world. But the unreality of the way they can just go on and on like this—how hard it will be to persuade them to set aside their illusions.”

In jodhpurs and belted grey jacket Vassily had the look of a Prussian martinet; it struck Alex that all it would take to complete the image would be a riding crop slapping into his open palm.

Vassily said, “I asked them to bring you into this.” He put the emphasis on the first person pronoun and it startled Alex as it had been meant to. “I did it for several reasons. First because you are patently the best for the job—best qualified and best situated. Second because you once forced me to make a very careful reexamination of my own impetuosity—and it may be useful to have you in a position where you can do that again if the events call for it.”

Vassily was offering an olive branch but it didn’t have a pure color of truth.

Alex didn’t answer. Vassily nodded as if Alex’s silence confirmed a suspicion. “It is important we find some way to reconcile our quarrel.”

“I don’t carry grudges.”

“No. But you are certain I cannot be trusted. I must find a way to earn your trust back. If you cannot have confidence in my judgment none of this is going to work.”

Alex put it bluntly. “I don’t see how you’re going to do that.”

The weariness seemed ground into Vassily like grit. He glanced out the windows, his squint far-eyed with his visions; his face picked up the reddish reflection of the sunset and seemed very bitter. “They have tried twice to kill me. They will go on trying until they succeed. At first I thought it was an old enemy but it is not likely—too coincidental. Someone has learned of the scheme. They think by killing me they can prevent it happening. They cannot—they are fools. It is a historical turning, one of those events whose time has come. A thousand assassinations would not stop it.”

As if to shake off his premonitions he drew himself up to a parade-ground posture, hands behind him. “When they reach me there must be someone to pick up the baton.”

His face came around swiftly. “It is not a favor to you. It may make you their next target. But you are the best choice to succeed me.”

“Why?”

“Because I trust you.”

“How can you know that when I haven’t even heard the plan yet? I may think it’s drivel.”

“You will not.”

“Once before you thought I’d go along with your plans.”

“It was different. You must believe me.”

It was the closest he’d ever seen Vassily to begging.

Vassily said, “Do not fight me in there, Alexsander. It is too big a thing for personal quarrels. And the decisions may be yours soon enough—you would be a fool to shoot it down before you’ve had a chance at it yourself.”

“You’re talking as if they’ve already killed you.”

“I won’t make it easy for them.”

“Kill them first.”

“I would have done. If I knew who they were.”

“You have no hints at all?”

“Only suspicions and too many of those; they cancel one another out. We are getting off the subject. I want your backing in there. Have I got it?”

“I can’t promise it. If I can’t support the plan I won’t support you.”

Vassily brooded at him and the humanity evaporated from his hard face. “Then we shall have to persuade you of the Tightness of the scheme, won’t we? Come on then.” He swung with an abrupt snap of his big shoulders and strode across the gallery to a huge door. With his back braced as if against an awaited bullet he rapped his knuckles on the oak and almost immediately the door pivoted on oiled hinges and Irina’s father was there: Count Anatol Markov with his impeccable clothes and his urbane countenance.

Count Anatol gave them both a quick unemotional scrutiny and then averted his eyes as if he regarded them both as applicants for a servant’s job who had arrived for an interview at a time when the Count had more important things on his mind. It meant nothing at all, it was only his habitual manner: aloof, contained, distracted, ascetic. It was always off-putting at first and you had to get back into an almost forgotten gear to deal with these people: their lives were overwhelmingly opulent and until you acclimated yourself you didn’t see how anyone who lived in such surroundings and with such mannerisms could have any substance. The fact was that Anatol Markov had one of the cleverest minds Alex had ever encountered.

“We have been waiting for you. Please come in.”

The drawing-room furniture was elegant with intricate fragile curves. The heavy velvet draperies reached from ceiling to floor and they were drawn shut to keep out the waning daylight; electric lamps made the big room richer and warmer. It could have been a calculated effect, shutting out the Spanish vista so that they could have been anywhere: the old villa in France or even the drawing room of the Imperial dascha put-side St. Petersburg from which the Grand Duke Feodor had brought most of these furnishings in 1918.

The chairs were drawn up in a conversational circle and Prince Leon Kirov sat at its focal point beside a table on which was heaped a litter of documents in open folders.

There were eight chairs in the circle; three of them were empty. The five men sat back with their legs crossed, smoking cigars and pipes, watching Vassily and Alex. They nodded and lifted cigars in greeting but they didn’t erupt in customary Russian expansiveness. The seriousness of the occasion was an evident weight.

Count Anatol shut the door behind them and nodded toward the farther doors. Alex paced Vassily across the room; put his hand on the latch and went through.

In his high four-posted bed the Grand Duke raised eyes cloudy with dim sight. A woman in white moved courteously away from the bedside and the visitors approached the bed. The old man’s fingers plucked at his lap robe.

“Your Royal Highness.”

“Who is that? Are you Deniken?”

“Vassily Devenko and Alexsander Danilov, Your Royal Highness.”

Vassily bowed briefly; it went unseen. The Grand Duke seemed indifferent. “It is kind of you to come and see me.”

Alex said, “We wish you better health.”

“Yes…” Da, and the quavering voice trailed off. But then abruptly he groped for Vassily’s hand. “You have come.”

“Yes, Highness.”

“Are we to be restored then?”

“I cannot say, Highness.”

“But the Bolsheviks…”

“The Bolsheviks are finished,” Vassily Devenko said.

7.

The assassin didn’t put much credence in anything beyond the five senses but the woman disturbed him. He knew who she was; he’d seen her photographs. But he’d never been face-to-face with her. There was no way she could have known him from any other complete stranger. Yet in her eyes at the foot of the stair there’d been knowledge. More than suspicion; certainty. It was there as if she could read him like cold type.

He drifted into the hunt room and took a glass of sherry from a servant’s tray and walked through the crowd carrying it—not drinking. He overheard snatches of talk—the weather at Marbella, the rationing under Vichy—and he put on a pleasant face but spoke to no one.

He took his sherry back along to the ballroom and saw the woman in red dancing with an old gentleman. He turned away, not so quickly as to bring attention to himself, and retreated from her sight. He argued with himself: there was no mystery to it, it had been coincidence; she was the sort of woman whose face could create imagined trouble—as if her inscrutable beauty were meant to be invested with whatever you chose to read into it. He had to dismiss her from his concentrations.

But he couldn’t. It stayed in the back of his mind that the woman could spoil it.

8.

Alex’s host was awaiting him at the Grand Duke’s door when he emerged from the bedchamber: craggy old Prince Leon on whom the entire retinue-in-exile depended so much.

“Glad to see you here, Alex. Very glad,” he murmured in his slow splendid deep voice. Genuine feeling trembled in it; he gripped both Alex’s shoulders and gave his grave paternal nod, the next thing to a smile; and limped back toward the others. His hair had thinned and gone silver; the lameness of his battle-shattered leg had grown worse; but his eyebrows remained thick and black over the obsidian eyes and he was very much in command of it all. The name at the head of the family was that of the Grand Duke Feodor but it was Leon who had kept them all together in their endless gypsy exile.

Alex waited for Vassily Devenko to reappear; the Grand Duke was still pressing his dream of restoration.

Count Anatol Markov had returned to his seat—in the circle yet apart from it, quietly drinking vodka from a chilled glass. He watched Alex as he might watch an inanimate object.

Alex had been a long time seeking clues to Count Anatol’s composition; it was very hard to understand the chemistries that had produced Irina out of Anatol’s genes. He was dry, distant, epicene in disposition; cynical and suspiciously skeptical of everyone. He was thin as a sapling, the hair lying across his neat little cannonball head in lonely strands. His face was pale and his mouth in repose looked like a surgeon’s wound.

Tragedy seemed to have hovered around him for decades. At Ekaterinburg in 1918 a Bolshevik fanatic named Jacob Sverdlov had engineered the assassinations of Czar Nicholas and the Empress Alexandra and their children. A month after the brutal murders Jacob Sverdlov had been found beaten to death in a Moscow street; systematically bludgeoned out of existence, every bone in his body shattered. It was fairly well accepted by a good number of the White exiles that it had been Count Ahatol who had thus avenged the Royal Family. It was said that it was the first and last time in his life that Anatol had shown passion; but surely Irina Anatovna was not the product of an emotionless conception.

Of the seven men in the room—Vassily would make the eighth—one was not a Russian.

Prince Leon said, “Our American representative, Colonel Alexsander Danilov. Alex, I am sure you know General Sir Edward Muir.”

He’d seen the old photographs; now he made the connection. The Scotsman nodded to Alex, neither rising nor offering a hand. He was a very tall old man, noble and grand with a white military mustache stained to amber by cigar smoke. His longevity appeared to fall little short of immortality: he’d commanded the British Expeditionary Force in the Crimea in 1919 and he’d been on the verge of retirement age even then.

Prince Leon said, “Sir Edward is here to represent the viewpoint of the British crown.”

“Unofficially of course.” The Scotsman spoke in a Russian that was fast and without hesitation but thickly accented with an Edinburgh burr. He wore grey evening clothes well-cut to his long gaunt frame but too heavy for the Mediterranean climate; there was a sheen of perspiration on his smooth ruddy face.

Alex moved toward the chair beside Prince Leon’s. “Am I here as an American army officer or as a White Russian?”

“Decide that for yourself,” Count Anatol said coolly. “After you have heard our plans.”

“Here is General Devenko,” Prince Leon said. “We can begin now, I think.”

“About bloody time,” said Baron Oleg Zimovoi in his harsh peasant Russian.

Before Vassily sat down he gave each man in turn a studied scrutiny. Alex saw him nod his head half an inch to the British general; Sir Edward cracked a sliver of a smile. It was the extent of their greeting—two men who’d soldiered against a common enemy in the bleeding Crimea of twenty years ago.

Vassily’s face was ungiving: he looked like a man who knew better than to expect too much. “What is it to be then—action or only more debate?”

“The decision will be made tonight,” Prince Leon said. “Every man here has made assurances of that.”

Vassily’s intolerant gaze swept their faces, lingering briefly on Anatol’s and Baron Oleg Zimovoi’s. “I remind you all—Hitler is not standing still while you dispute politics.”

Anatol’s eyes narrowed to slits in the pale flesh. “You doubt our word, Vassily?”

“Only your willingness to keep it if it means the sacrifice of some petty political objective.” Vassily snapped it; clearly his nerves were on a raw edge.

Prince Leon said, “We must put Sir Edward and Alexsander in the picture before the decisions are taken.”

Vassily leaned his head back against the top of the chair. He crossed his legs and closed his eyes. “Let us get at it then.”

“We are eight here,” Prince Leon said, “but some of us represent the proxies, so to speak, of large blocs of interest. I have commitments from General Deniken and his group, and of course I speak for the house of the Grand Duke Feodor. Prince Michael”—he inclined his head toward the old man in the chair beyond Vassily’s—“is here to speak for the house of the Grand Duke Dmitri. Baron Oleg Zimovoi has undertakings from his followers to honor the decisions we make here.”

The council’s spectrum was remarkably full—Oleg on the far left with his following of thousands of White Russian Socialists, the rest of them scattered across the center toward the right where Anatol the monarchist held the extreme position. They’d found a unanimity for which Alex could find no parallel in his experience.

It would have made a singular group portrait. Nearest the door sat Vassily—stern and arrogant, a political man only in his virulent old-fashioned hatred for Bolshevism. Then Count Anatol, the icy conservative with bored contempt in his eyes. Sir Edward Muir, who shared the firsthand memories of a brutal civil war that had seared and scarred them all. Prince Leon at the focal point beside him, his bad leg stretched out. Alex next: the youngest man in the group. Then there was General Anton Savinov—genial and rotund, a middle-aged Muscovite with a big-boned phlegmatic face and an easygoing chuckle—it had been some years before Alex had realized he was slightly drunk all the time. He’d been a hero—Wrangel’s right arm in the Kuban in 1919. That was the penultimate experience of these men’s lifetimes; the final experience had been the talking about it, the judging of everything else in the light of it.

At the edge of the circle sat the venerable Prince Michael Rodzianko—royal first cousin to the Grand Duke Dmitri who lived on a vast lakefront estate in Switzerland.

And finally Baron Oleg Zimovoi. There was no one who pretended to be fond of Oleg: he was everyone’s enemy, everyone’s scapegoat. He was a hard man, physically and morally tough, an old Socialist who had battled his way through life conceding nothing: physically an assembly of cubes and blocks in testimony to his stolid Byelorussian ancestry. His energies had been dissipated for years in the attempt to persuade the monarchist factions that there was a valid distinction between his brand of democratic Socialism and the Bolshevik brand of despotic Communism. It was a distinction the conservative White Russian wings did not choose to take seriously; Oleg had been regarded for years as a misguided pest, an intellectual fool or even a potential traitor. He was tolerated because of his lineage and because he spoke for thousands of Socialists among the White Russian exiles. He maintained a flat in Barcelona, churning pamphlets out of his typewriter and speaking out recklessly against Hitler, Stalin, Franco and the rest of his political demons. At any time there might be the measured tramp of Guardia Civil jackboots in his hall, the rap of a nightstick against his door.

They were a dramatically dissimilar lot. But they had one extraordinary thing in common. Each of them had enjoyed great power and had lost it. The remembrance of that power—now twenty years gone—remained in their bearings and their souls. The twenty lonely years had weeded out all the weak blunderers who had made a travesty of Imperial Russia’s last years; only this hard brilliant cadre remained, waiting for a sign that they were needed once more.

Prince Leon said, “The first thing we must do is dismiss every wishful fantasy. We have got to speak realistically—it is no good dismissing the facts out of hand.”

Vassily Devenko opened his eyes briefly. “The Bolsheviks have made suicidal blunders. That is fact—not wishful fantasy.”

Prince Leon paused as if that remark had taken him by surprise; it was merely a rhetorical trick and then he addressed himself to Alex: “You saw their army in Finland. How do you view them?”

“It couldn’t be poorer,” Alex said. “Their army’s got no morale at all. Unless you count fear.”

“Yes. The entire population’s disaffected.”

Sir Edward Muir said, “Are you quite sure you’re not seeing what you wish to see? I’ve gathered that Joe Stalin is in very firm control.”

“No,” Baron Oleg Zimovoi said—very quiet, very firm. “A year ago that was true. Today, no.”

Count Anatol Markov’s voice came into it with the dryness of a mistral soughing in autumn leaves. “A totalitarian system survives only so long as it can hold the monopoly of power. Communications, the means of indoctrinating the people, the ability to browbeat everybody into collaboration—so that if you refuse to betray your neighbor you will be arrested right along with him. That is Stalin’s leverage—fear, the threat of the Siberian camps. As long as he maintains it he stays in power. But he is not maintaining it. It’s crumbling.”

Prince Leon resumed:

“The weaknesses of this kind of regime show up in a crisis. It is a crisis right now—the worst they have ever had, the worst they are ever likely to have. The Germans are taking Soviet Russia at a rate of eleven miles a day. Stalin has lost an incredible area of territory—including the heavy industries of the Ukraine. Nearly a quarter of the Russian population is presently beyond his reach.”

Alex felt the weight of his meaning. It slowed his breathing and made his palms damp.

“He has lost hundreds of thousands of troops,” Prince Leon continued—resonant, soft-voiced, relentless. “Possibly more than a million. What is left of the Red Army is hanging by its fingernails—fighting the Germans only because they know they will be shot by their own commissars if they try to retreat.”

His face turned. “Oleg is in daily communication with Moscow. Oleg?”

The Socialist baron showed his teeth: more a rictus than a smile. “It is teeming with anti-Communist partisans. They are assassinating commissars by the hundreds. Sabotaging the Red Army, collaborating with the Germans. The villages have been welcoming the Wehrmacht with open arms—gifts of food and flowers and women. There is not one Soviet soldier in twenty who’s loyal to Stalin by choice.”

Vassily Devenko came into it. “If Hitler takes the Soviet Union he will have all the manpower and industry he will ever need—he will throw all of it against England and the neutrals in Europe and after that he will move across the Atlantic.” His sharp creased face came around toward Alex: “Is the American army prepared for that?”

“Right now the United States has a standing army no bigger than Sweden’s.”

“Yes. Exactly.”

Prince Leon said, “Hitler’s goal is world empire. If he can take Russia and hold it the rest is inevitable.”

Baron Oleg Zimovoi said, “Entire battalions are deserting the Red Army—defecting. They would rather be German prisoners than Red soldiers.”

“Because it is not even their own land they are fighting for,” Anatol said. “It is Stalin’s. He has nationalized every plot of land in the Soviet Union.”

Prince Leon addressed himself to the old Scots general: “Can you see those people stopping the tide, Sir Edward?”

“My government want Russia to hold. Not to defeat the Nazis—that may be too much to ask. But to hold, to buy the Allies time to build up.” His glance, almost accusing, came to Alex: “Time for Roosevelt to persuade his people that they can’t keep ignoring the European war. He must convince his Congress.”

Count Anatol spoke again: “The Russian people need something to fight for—it comes down to that. Give them back their land—give them back their own country, and then they won’t be so damnably eager to see German jackboots trampling it. Give them back their pride as individuals. That is our purpose. To give them something to fight for.”

Prince Leon was watching Alex. “Do you understand us now, Alexsander? Do you understand what we’re saying?”

“You want to overthrow Joseph Stalin,” Alex said.

9.

The evening was warm; the spacious rooms were heavy with smoky body heat and a growing number of guests took their refreshment in wicker Madeira chairs in the garden. Irina drifted through it in an uneasy search.

The shadows beyond the villa were deep; around the lamps moths jazzed and Irina felt the day’s heat begin to lift. The manicured hedges made an exact circle and the lawn was a green disc with a round bed of vivid flowers at its axis.

She didn’t find what she sought; she went on inside the villa—still looking for the bald man in the rumpled suit. It had become a serious quest now because somewhere in the past half hour she had realized what it was that had alarmed her about the man.

It was the slight dent in the skirt of his coat that could have been made by the handle of a pistol in his belt.

10.

“The proposal is before this council to organize the overthrow of the Bolshevik government in Russia.

“We must act now with great care,” Prince Leon continued. “We have been powerless exiles for half our lives, trumpeting pronouncements that have no meaning. We have learned how to be harmless. Tonight suddenly our decisions can affect hundreds of millions of people. Once we go beyond this point it will be the first time since Kolchak that our political directives will have real significance.

“Obviously that is one reason why we have got to set aside our own differences. We cannot allow this thing to be sabotaged by our own conflicting aims. In this room tonight we cannot try to resolve the political debates of centuries—but we must find a way to neutralize these differences at the outset.”

Vassily Devenko’s face contorted with pained disbelief. “You can’t be serious.”

“I assure you I am.”

“You could be five years in this room talking it through. In the name of God we have no time for political quibbling.”

Count Anatol’s cold voice cut in. “Even you ought to see that we cannot simply assassinate the Soviet leaders and sit back to quarrel among ourselves afterward. You cannot kill Bolshevism simply by eliminating its leaders. We must provide something that takes the place of the Bolshevik apparatus—otherwise a new Stalin will take over and then what will we have gained?”

Sir Edward Muir said, “You’ve got to present a united movement to the eyes of the Allies. My government are prepared to deal with you as a unified group but you can hardly expect Whitehall to go very far with a loose collection of bickering factions. If you do not settle your differences before you begin, I’m afraid there will be little hope of receiving the support you will need to have when you go into the field.”

Vassily curbed his tongue but Alex knew that expression.

Old Prince Michael stirred and sat upright. “The common enemy is Stalinism. Leon is correct—we must not lose sight of that. Whatever our differences we must all recognize the evil of this monster and the vicious proletarian ideology he pretends to represent. What have the masses ever created? Group intelligence is always far inferior—yes—a civilization achieves its level of greatness in proportion to the amount of significance it gives the individual and his dignity. Yet these heathen atheists glorify the mass spirit, the mind of the mob, as their greatest achievement.”

He stopped to clear his throat and no one interrupted: they gave him their respect because of his birth and the royal house he represented. The Grand Duke Dmitri was one of the three legitimate Pretenders alive; the second was Feodor, infirm and abed in the next room. So long as the houses of these two Grand Dukes spoke with a common voice the weight of the Romanov dynasty supported that voice. But if the two houses divided then the pivotal authority would devolve onto the Grand Duke Mikhail—the only one of the three not represented here because Mikhail lived in Munich and was an ardent Nazi.

Therefore there was no question of curtailing old Prince Michael’s discourse. Having cleared his throat he went steadfastly on:

“The madman has persuaded many of them that they have made great collective strides forward. Give him another ten years and it will be too late to save our country at all—the rot will have gone too deep. So I must say to you that I feel Leon is quite right—it is a cancer consuming Mother Russia and we must destroy it before it is too late.”

The old man paused to examine his audience and Anatol chose the opportunity to speak. “Let us not underestimate the old tribal barbarities of our country. Russia has always been a nation in which a small number of leaders have controlled all policy. Stalin did not invent that—it is the nature of Russia. If we upset Stalin it will be to no avail at all if we do not replace his regime with powerful leadership of our own. Otherwise another Stalin will emerge and that will be that.”

Baron Oleg was scowling. “So we should forestall the rise of a new Stalin by substituting our own Stalin for him. You reactionaries never fail to amaze me. You would negate everything we want to achieve. The idea is to free our country—not replace one tyrant with another!”

“Please.” It was Prince Leon: he said it softly, for emphasis, and eyes swiveled to him.

Leon put both hands on the arms of his chair as if to rise; but he kept his seat when he spoke.

“I believe there is a solution you all may find acceptable.”

Alex watched him. Leon had spent a lifetime holding them all together, preventing the factions from splintering. It was natural and inevitable that Leon would have devised a scheme to catalyze them now.

“I think we agree our immediate goal is to depose Stalin and annihilate the system by which informers are forced to produce names, and the secret police make lists, and mass arrests take place in the night.

“I believe we all agree also that the very first step in any new government in Russia must be to return the farms to the farmers.

“It is a primary rule for any successful revolutionary leader to destroy the forces that brought him to power. Lenin did this by forcing out Trotsky and many others but he made the mistake of keeping Stalin too close. When Stalin took it on he did what Lenin should have done. He wiped out virtually all of the ‘Old Bolsheviks.’ But it has weakened the hierarchy and it makes him vulnerable now.

“We know he has nothing left but a few key people and a horde of nondescript mediocrities. He is afraid to surround himself with capable people—they might prove too dangerous. His sycophants follow him like craven beggars. I think it is clear they go on supporting him because they can count on salvation only so long as he prevails.

“There is a small number who are loyal to him out of conviction—Beria, Malenkov, just a few. Stalin and this handful must be killed but the rest may be brought into the new system. Offer amnesty to the lower echelon of bureaucrats and I do not see much danger of a post-Stalinist Bolshevik revival.”

Prince Leon stopped momentarily. His eyes held them: he wanted their attention now. “Very well. What we must provide is a cadre, a top echelon of power. What I propose is a compromise I believe we all can accept regardless of our ideological leanings. I propose a Union of Russian Republics to be proclaimed under a figurehead Czar.”

Anatol snorted. “A constitutional monarchy. I suspected as much.”

“Yes.” Leon’s firm expression challenged him. “A prime minister system not unlike the British. No, Anatol, please let me finish. I propose that we replace the Bolshevik junta with a new Supreme Ruler of All the Russias.

“The new Czar must be connected by blood to the royal line because these things are still important to the Russian soul, even today. That is one reason why we must reject the thought of putting the mantle on General Deniken, our last Supreme Ruler. Deniken is old. He may be a hero to us in exile but to the Russian people he has the name of an enemy tainted with defeat. And he smacks of the old system, the White Armies with their weaknesses and corruptions.

“The Czar must be a new face but with a name people will recognize. And he ought to be a figurehead of some charm and dash rather than iron-fisted strength. Having this Georgian beast in the Kremlin has been a trauma to the Russian spirit—I believe they will respond best to a leader who is more to be liked than feared.

“The Czar will be the head of state only ceremonially and this must be made clear from the beginning. The real power shall reside in a cabinet of ministers led by a prime minister.

“At the beginning we shall have to provide interim ministries until there has been time to establish a constitution and arrange for elections. Very likely that will have to wait until the end of the war with Germany but we cannot allow postponement to become an excuse for self-perpetuation. There will be free elections in all the Russian republics and it is essential that we show the people proof of this by beginning to set up the apparatus.

“We must earn the goodwill of the people and the bureaucracy, and we must do it quickly. This is one reason we must have as our figurehead a man of overwhelming charm—a man who won’t intimidate the people. He must be a young man, too young to be held responsible for any of the horrors of nineteen-seventeen. He must have presence and speak well in public and he must be able to relax with the people.”

Count Anatol said acidulously, “You do not want a Czar, Leon. You want a cinema star.”

Baron Oleg Zimovoi exhaled a ball of pipe smoke and spoke through it. “You are talking about a specific man, aren’t you? You have someone in mind.”

“Of course I do. Can’t you guess, Oleg?”

“I am afraid to.”

Anatol’s eyes lay uncomfortably against Alex. Then they turned back to Prince Leon. “Are you putting Alex Danilov’s name into the drawing?”

Alex sat bolt upright in alarm.

Prince Leon said, “I admire many of Alex’s excellences but political charm is not among them. No. I have in mind a great-grandson of Nicholas the First—the son of the Grand Duke Mikhail Andreivitch.”

“Prince Felix,” Anatol said.

Oleg snatched the pipe from his mouth. “That motor-racing playboy—you are not serious!”

Anatol said, “I agree with Oleg. Have you ever tried to pin that boy down to a political argument? He would rather talk about cricket matches at Maidstone. He is a frivolous child,”

“And you smiled when you said that,” Prince Leon answered. “No one can help liking him—and no one can possibly fear him.”

General Savinov had developed a slight list in his chair but his voice remained sonorous. “I rather like the boy myself.”

Prince Michael Rodzianko said, “You cannot restore a monarchy without acknowledging the fact that there remain three Grand Dukes eligible to assume the throne. The young prince’s father is one of them—how can you bypass the father and crown the son? It is unthinkable.”

“The point of it is that he is not a Grand Duke,” Prince Leon said. “He is not associated with the Czars of old. We must make every effort to avoid giving our enemies excuses to condemn our actions. By crowning a young charmer we demonstrate at once that the throne is merely ceremonial and yet that we are prepared to honor the great Russian traditions. I put it to you that there is no better candidate than Felix. No Grand Duke would be acceptable to the left-wing factions and nobody without royal blood would be acceptable to the monarchists. Felix is the ideal compromise.”

Anatol shifted his aloof eyes toward Alex. “You know him better than we do. What is your impression?”

Alex did not know Felix terribly well. He was not certain that anyone did. Felix was a frenetic exuder of passions and trivialities but it was more smoke screen than self-revelation; there was a private core to the young prince. Whether it could be dangerous he had no way of telling.

Finally he said, “He meets the qualifications.”

“Then can we agree on this? I impress upon all of you the seriousness of this decision. Once taken it opens the way to the fulfillment of every dream we have harbored for twenty years.”

Eight men in a closed room, seated comfortably on expensively upholstered chairs, stared at one another in a silence that was broken only by the throbbing of a balalaika in a distant part of the palace.

Baron Oleg Zimovoi was the one to break the spell. “I am not thrilled with the idea of restoring even a semblance of the old order. But Leon has the rectitude of inevitability. If the rest of your factions can stretch a point to find this scheme acceptable the socialists will not be the ones to block it.”

“We need more than your indifference, Oleg. We need your active support.”

“You have it.”

“Very well.”

A shiver ran through Alex: his eyes widened. It was done: as simply as that it was done.

11.

In the massive dining hall the banquet was laid on for half-past nine—an early hour to dine in Spain but many of the guests had distances to travel home.

The assassin found himself seated between a pair of very old men who accosted each other with delight: “My God, Leonid, I thought we were both dead.” One of them wore the white uniform of an admiral in a navy that had not existed for twenty-one years.

The table sat six guests at each side and one at either end; there were four rows of four tables each with white-draped serving tables along the walls. The White Russians were serving a seven-course meal to more than two hundred people and the assassin was mildly impressed by the sheer dimension of it.

There were empty seats at the favored tables and that confirmed his expectation that the men in the drawing room did not intend to interrupt their closed meeting to attend the dinner. He had ample time and it would be an excellent meal; there was no reason for concern. He laid his napkin across his lap and masked his face with a benign politeness when the vintner across the table addressed him.

The room was yellowed by the warm glow of crystal chandeliers and tapers and brightened by the spectacular coloration of the ladies’ gowns. It all made a pleasing contrast to the drabness he had left four days ago—the rubble and dust of London’s blacked-out streets.

There was a cheer and a standing toast when the Grand Duke was wheeled in to take his place at the head of the main table. An Archbishop took the dais, dressed in rich vestments and swinging a censor, flanked by bearded priests in black robes and caps and a pair of nuns in black habits and white babushkas. One of them handed a triple-barred Byzantine cross to the Archbishop and the holy man began to chant in the Slavonic archaisms of the Old Church. The assassin understood none of it but a word now and then; his Russian was passable but this was the Latin of the Orthodox Church, the language of ritual and antiquity. When the ceremony was finished, the next ritual began—the drinking of a great many toasts in vodka. They began with the memory of the Czar and the health of the Grand Duke and went on from that to whatever came to mind: the Admiral beside him lifted his glass toward the vintner’s wife and proclaimed with gallant cheer, “To the purest and holiest of Russian womanhood!” And the woman who was nearly as fat as her husband acknowledged it with a polite dip of her head and a twinkle. Occasionally the assassin heard the smash of a glass although the practice had dwindled because of the in creasing difficulty of replacing crystal.

The Luger was a hard pressure against his rib. He shifted his seat to ease it.

12.

Prince Leon spoke to Alex: “Do you think we’re completely mad then?”

“No. If there’s ever going to be a time it’s now.”

“We must be sure it hasn’t been merely the warped judgment of old men living in the past. We need your young view. For God’s sake do not patronize us—do not humor us.”

“No.”

“You honestly believe it can be done?”

“It could be done.”

Count Anatol said through his teeth, “Remember how the Bolsheviks did it twenty-three years ago—remember how few they were?”

Leon said, “Vassily has formulated a military plan. I think it is time we heard it.”

Vassily inhaled. “In outline we need three things. One, a distraction to occupy the Kremlin guard and the Red Army units in the area. Two, a major force to occupy the Kremlin and defend it while key commando squads neutralize the leadership—Stalin, Beria, Malenkov, Zhukov, Vlasov, perhaps a dozen others. Three, a cell of practical leaders prepared to take over the mechanisms of high government and the centers of communication and propaganda.”

General Savinov blinked owlishly in his chair. “Excellent,” he muttered. “Superb.”

Alex said slowly, “How large a force have you got in mind?”

“Regiment size,” Vassily answered promptly. “You can’t do it with less.”

“How do you plan to get them into Moscow?”

“It can be done—that’s all that needs to be said.”

“You’re talking about a fairly large-scale combat operation then.”

“I am,” Vassily said flatly. “I can do it. But it will take a great deal of support and money. Preparation, intelligence, recruitment, training, planning, transport, ordnance, supply. And time. That is why it must be authorized right now without any further stupid debating. We have got to have it rolling before the Germans take any more ground. Even now we may be too late.”

Anatol said, “Putting us in the curious position of hoping that Stalin can hold out.”

Vassily ignored that; he was staring at Alex, “You don’t agree with it, do you?”

“No.”

“Why?”

The weaknesses he saw were as much in Vassily’s character as they were in the plan itself. But what he said was, “The time scale doesn’t permit it—you’ve said it yourself. It could take six months to prepare it and launch it. I don’t think we’ve got that kind of time. The war in Russia will be decided by the end of the year—either Hitler will take Moscow and Stalingrad ahead of the winter or he won’t make it at all. He knows his Napoleonic history—that’s why the panzers are rolling so fast. They’ve got a deadline and they know it. And that means we’ve got a deadline too.”

Vassily’s mouth hardened into a thin line. “Have you an alternative proposal?”

“No. Right now? No.”

“Give me the authorization and support I ask for,” Vassily told the council, “and I will have the Kremlin within one hundred days. I give you that pledge on my honor.”

Anatol’s eyebrows went up in black arcs. “Alex, could you promise a faster result than that?”

He had to be honest. “No.”

“Then it appears we must choose between Vassily’s plan and none at all.”

13.

The assassin excused himself quietly and walked to the nearest door, some twenty feet from his chair. He stopped a servant and said, “Where’s the lavatory, please?” The servant gave instructions with jabs of his finger. That much would be seen by anyone in the room who might have been curious enough to be watching. It would explain his abrupt departure and it wasn’t likely the others at his own table would take much notice of his absence for quite some time.

He found himself in a narrow corridor that ran through the interior darkness of the villa. A turning brought him to a junction and he made an unhesitating turn to the right. The hall was narrow and plain—an access for the serving staff. It took him to the foot of a flight of unadorned wooden stairs: he climbed quietly on the balls of his feet into the housemaids’ wing of the building.

It made for a long and circuitous approach and it was not the route he would use for his escape; he had rehearsed the timing in his mind and it was based on a judgment of several factors, not least of which was the age and decrepitude of Devenko’s companions in the drawing-room conference. The room was architecturally the front sitting-room of a suite which contained the Grand Duke’s bedroom and two smaller bedrooms which presently were occupied by a doctor and two nurses. The doctor was at dinner in the dining hall below; the nurses would be no trouble.

The escape path he’d chosen was the fastest and most direct means of exit from the villa: down the portrait-gallery corridor, down the main staircase and across the foyer and out. From there it was a few strides into the deep shadows of the trees that encroached on the building; once in those trees at night he would be free to move at will. The Packard was parked half a kilometer along the road; he would be well away before a search could be organized effectively or the police brought in.

The assassination would be clean and simple because that was the approach that guaranteed success. If the door was locked he had prepared a ruse to induce them to open it—a “telegram from London for the General Devenko”—a tired-familiar gambit but as effective as any and more disarming than most.

One of them would open the door—perhaps carelessly, perhaps cautiously. In either case it was a matter of slamming the door fully open, finding Devenko, taking his shots and then making his run for it. They were old men in that room, all but the one who was Devenko’s brother and who therefore would react first by crouching at the victim’s side in concern. Even if any of them gave chase there was no cause for fear because he had the advantage of the interval during which they would be stunned and bewildered. And he had the gun.

He left the maids’ wing and went along the narrow hall to the front of the upper story; let himself out into the gallery and walked slowly past the head of the great stair, looking down into the foyer. It was quite unoccupied—every servant in the house had been called into the busy platoon in the dining hall.

He moved without sound along the rank of Romanov portraits. Midway along the gallery stood a small table supporting a half life-size bust of Peter the Great; he debated moving the table across the corridor but decided against it—there would be time to dodge around it. He went on to the drawing room door and stopped to listen: heard voices within but not the words. The oak was thick and sturdy.

He looked both ways along the corridor and lifted the Luger from his belt, testing the silencer to be sure it was screwed tight; locked his grip, flicked off the safety and lifted his left hand to knock.

14.

Irina had not been able to single out the bald man in the dining hall until he called attention to himself by rising from a table across the room and walking toward the door behind him. She watched him talk to one of the waiters and she saw the waiter’s gestures; when the bald man nodded his thanks and went on through the door she settled back in her chair in relief.

It occurred to her a moment later that he would have behaved just that way if he had been trying to allay suspicion. And she remembered the dent in his jacket again.

Abruptly she excused herself from the table and hurried across the room. She went through the door into the corridor beyond it—but he had gone.

The nearest bathroom was just beyond the corner. She knocked and when there was no reply she tried the knob. The room was empty. Now her alarm was real and she was running toward the front of the villa. The end of the servants’ hall admitted her to the ballroom and a dozen surprised musicians stopped chewing their dinners to watch her run across the corner of the great room to the door beyond—the front gallery, past the statuary and across the foyer to the villa’s main entrance.

Sergei Bulygin stood just outside the door smoking a black Spanish cigarette. He came to attention when Irina appeared.

“Come along Sergei, I think there’s trouble upstairs.”

They had crossed half the length of the foyer when she heard the shouts above, the pound of running footsteps.

15.

It had come without warning. They’d been getting down to details: Anatol had said, “Oleg, you must uncover your mysterious contact in the Kremlin.”

“I cannot. I have given him my word. His position is fragile there.”

Alex had suspected there had to be someone like that. Oleg had been tossing out bits of information that could only have come from a source inside the Soviet government.

Vassily said, “I will have to know who the man is—I have to be in touch with him.”

“I will not divulge it here. If you do not know his name you cannot drop it accidentally in the wrong places,” Oleg said and that was when there was a knock at the door.

Anatol was nearest and more agile than old Prince Michael; he went to the door and opened it unsuspectingly—you couldn’t talk through those doors without shouting—and then suddenly the door slammed back and Anatol was thrown off his feet and Alex saw the man with the gun.

All the old instincts sent him diving across the rug toward Vassily: “Down!”

But Vassily was tired, his reactions had slowed and he didn’t understand the threat quickly enough—he hadn’t been facing the door.

Alex wasn’t across half the distance when the pistol chugged, muttering twice through its silencer.

The bullets hammered Vassily Devenko, spun him to one side in the chair; there was a gush of blood the color of death where the two slugs had torn into the heart.

He saw disbelief and anger in Vassily’s face. Rage drove him half to his feet and then the splendid body failed him and Vassily stumbled and fell back across the chair.

Alex exploded with an unthinking wrath. The doorway had emptied: the assassin hadn’t waited to see the results of his work. Alex leaped over Anatol and careened into the gallery and saw the assassin running toward the head of the stairs. There was a small stone bust on a stand: Alex scooped it up and hurled it and ran after, uncaring of the gun in the fugitive’s fist.

The stone bust caught the running man in the small of the back. It pitched him forward off balance and he caromed off the heavy bannister rail onto the stairs: he pitched out of sight, tumbling, legs flying and Alex had the angry satisfaction of hearing the pistol clatter loosely down the stairs. He ran full out….

He reached the head of the sweeping stair and checked himself against the rail and had a momentary tableau impression: the assassin lying awry across the steps, one foot high in the air; Irina staring in shock from the foyer below; huge old Sergei Bulygin reaching for the fallen pistol.

The assassin’s leg pivoted and he collapsed motionless against the bannister posts, his neck twisted at an acute angle.

Alex said to Sergei, “You won’t need that.”

He walked down the stairs stiffly to the sprawled figure. Sergei met him there. Irina watched from the marble floor of the foyer—expectant, intent.

“Yes,” Sergei said, bending over the assassin. “This one is dead.”

“God damn it.”

“What?”

He’d spoken it in English; he only shook his head. “He can’t tell us anything now, can he?”

Irina’s hand had gone to her throat. “Alex—”

He went down to her: took both of her hands. “He’s killed Vassily.”

For a moment it was as if she hadn’t heard him: she stared into his face. Then slowly she turned away from him. He saw her shoulders stiffen. “It’s my fault. If I’d trusted my intuitions—if I’d only acted a little faster.”

“What?”

She shook her head. “I thought I saw a gun under his coat—I just wasn’t certain enough. I didn’t do anything about it until it was too late.”

“It isn’t your fault, Irina.”

“Isn’t it?” She gave him a level glance. “I don’t want to see him, Alex.”

“No.”

“Hadn’t you better get this one away from here?”

He hadn’t thought. Now her meaning grenaded into him. Irina said, “You don’t want the Spanish police here—not tonight. There are too many vulnerable people here—the Guardia Civil would take great pleasure in embarrassing them.”

What she hadn’t said was that the Guardia would take even more pleasure in arresting him for the murder of this one on the stairs. He’d been persona non grata ever since he’d walked out on the Falangist army.

Irina said, “No one’s heard anything. The villa is too solid. I’m going back into the dining room.” But she was searching his face with great intensity. “Vassily knew he was going to die.”

“He told me that.”

“You’d better go up then. But hold me first, Alex—I need to borrow your strength.”

He pressed her against him. After a moment she drew herself up and moved away. “I’ll be all right. Go on.”

Sergei threw the dead man across his shoulder and carried him upstairs. Alex caught up at the landing.

A few of them were trickling out into the gallery from the drawing room—Oleg and General Savinov and Anatol. They looked dazed but a fierce gleam of enraged satisfaction illuminated Oleg’s face when he recognized Sergei’s burden.

Alex stooped to retrieve the bust of Peter the Great. It was intact except for a chip out of the base. He found the chip against the moulding and pocketed it; and carried the bust back to its stand.

Old Prince Michael stood bewildered in the door. “What are we to do?”

Alex shook his head, putting them off; he said sotto voce to Sergei, “Are you willing?”

“Of course.”

“Are there back stairs you can use?”

“No one will see me.”

“Search him first. Then bury him where no one will find him.”

“In the stable, I think. And cover the grave with straw.”

“All right—but keep it private, Sergei.”

“I have no love for the Guardia,” the big man replied, and turned toward the rear of the hall.

Alex went into the drawing room. They had one of the nurses there but it was no good; Alex had known by the way Vassily fell back that he was dead.

The others crowded into the room behind him. Anatol was visibly shaken. Prince Leon seemed to be in command of himself but he said quietly to Alex, “What shall we do?”

The rest of them stared at Alex and he saw they were putting it up to him: they expected an instant solution from him. Only Oleg looked as if his mental machinery was unimpaired by shock.

Alex said, “Don’t let anyone in.” General Savinov was just inside the door; he kicked it shut.

The nurse was a stocky woman with brown hair and a pleasant face. She was watching Prince Leon as if for a sign. Alex said to her, “Would you leave us for a bit?”

“The doctor must be brought,” she said in awkward Russian; she was English, he remembered.

“We’ll send down for him. Please wait in the Grand Duke’s room.”

She left them—trembling with fear.

Oleg said to Leon, “Can she be trusted?”

“I believe so. But for what?”

“You believe so? You’re not sure? This thing is too important for suppositions, Leon.”

Count Anatol burst out with sudden sarcasm, “What would you do, Oleg—murder her to guarantee her silence?”

Oleg remained stubbornly calm. “We must have assurances. She is in love with this doctor, is she not?”

“Yes.”

“Then we must have the doctor sign a certificate that Vassily died of natural causes. Everyone knows he has been under a great strain. A heart attack—everyone will believe that. And once the doctor’s signature is on the certificate the nurse cannot reveal the truth without betraying him.”

“You are too clever by half sometimes,” Anatol snarled.

Prince Leon said cautiously, “I see no need to be devious, Oleg. We must simply tell the truth.”

Alex said, “No.”

They looked at him.

“Too many people would be hurt. We’re not in a country where you can trust the police.”

One of them—perhaps the nurse—had laid Vassily out and covered him with a blanket from one of the adjoining chambers. But he was there in the center of the room, a mute macabre focal point, and they clustered near the door to be away from him. Oleg said vigorously, “We cannot have all our plans—the fate of Russia herself—founder on this murder. Leon, I fail to see how you could even entertain a notion of going to the Spanish police. Among the seven of us don’t you think they’d soon worm it out of at least one? What we were discussing here, what we were planning?”

“It would appear,” said Count Anatol, “that our enemies know our plans already. Otherwise why was Vassily killed?”

Alex tried to steady them. “We’ve got to take up one thing at a time. The first matter’s the doctor. I’ll fetch him.” He turned to the door, his heart still chugging.

Prince Leon said, “Before you go, Alex.”

He turned and waited for it.

Leon said, “Vassily half-expected this. They tried to kill him before.”

“I know.”

“It was Vassily’s wish that you succeed him.”

“He told me that. Obviously it is up to the rest of you.”

“There is no question in our minds.”

Count Anatol said, “I should not accept it too eagerly if I were you. It puts you at the top of their list, whoever these killers are.”

Alex didn’t reply to any of them; he needed time. He left the room and went down into the villa in search of the doctor.

16.

It was nearly four o’clock in the morning and most of them had gone home or to bed.

The announcement would be made in the afternoon by which time Vassily would be embalmed and on view in a casket with his wounds concealed by clothing and the mortician’s art.

Sergei Bulygin found him pacing the veranda. “It will be a long time before anyone finds that vermin.”

“Thank you, Sergei. Did you find anything on him?”

“This—his invitation.” A faint aroma of the stables rolled off Sergei’s clothes. “Are there instructions?”

“Not tonight,” Alex said. “Sleep—there’ll be things to do today.”

Sergei nodded and made a half-turn, and paused. “I grieve with you for the General’s passing.”

“Yes…”

“I will mention him in my prayers.” Then Sergei left him.

A sweetness of honeysuckle flavored the air; the moon had come and gone, the stars made patchwork patterns among scudding cottonball clouds. He stared toward the mountains with preoccupied inattention.

A shadow fell through the doorway and he turned to find Prince Leon there. The Prince limped onto the veranda; he had an unlit cigar between his fingers and was nipping at the end with the blade of a brass-handled dagger. It was a knife the Prince had cherished for many years: Peter the Great had carried it at Azov in 1696.

“The question is, why did they kill him? What did they hope to gain?”

“Maybe they thought the scheme would die with him.”

“Presupposing they knew a great deal about the scheme. But if they knew that much would they not have known it was too big to be destroyed by one man’s death?”

“If you’d killed Lenin in nineteen-sixteen there might not have been an October Revolution.”

“It is not the same thing.”

“They’ve delayed the program. Maybe that’s all they expected to accomplish.”

“We have assumed the assassin was a paid hireling—a professional.” Leon laid the dagger on the stone rail and searched his pockets for matches. The dagger’s blade glinted dully. “It could have been the Germans you know.”

“How would they have found out about it?”

“How would anyone?” Leon got the cigar lighted. “Someone did—that is the sum of our knowledge. It leads to the conclusion we have a traitor among us.” His voice was very soft.

“Who knows about this besides those of us who were in that room?”

“Not many. The Americans—two or three of them. Deniken of course. The Grand Duke Dmitri and perhaps a few of his advisors in Switzerland. Churchill and a few of his people.”

Alex shook his head. “Then any one of them could have let something drop. A secret’s only a secret as long as one person knows it.”

“We can only hope the details of it do not reach the Kremlin.” Leon puffed on the cigar and took it away from his mouth. “Have you decided, Alex?”

He had tried to weigh it: tried to deal with the realities. But the guiding consideration was emotional, not susceptible to reason. The factors of history should have dominated his thinking: the opportunity to free the land of his birth from the evil of Stalin’s tyranny; the chance to help two hundred million people realize the dreams for which his father and millions of Russians had died; the possibility of making the gift of justice to a nation which had never in its history been free of despotism.

Against those he had tried to weigh the odds: the rocky instability of the coalition backing the scheme; the unlikelihood of prevailing with a small commando force where the mighty Wehrmacht of the Third Reich had not yet succeeded. The scheme was absurd from any objective vantage; Stalin’s armies numbered millions. In so many ways it had to be viewed as an exercise in fruitless and suicidal fantasy.

But it wasn’t any of those things that had decided him.

He said, “If you’ll trust me with it then I’m prepared to accept it.”

Leon said, “I don’t have any reservations about trusting you with the command. My reservations have to do with the practicality of continuing without Vassily—without what was in his head. It doesn’t seem possible for you to reconstruct his plan from the hints and clues he gave us—and even if it were, would we have enough time?”

Alex shook his head. “He was right about the time limit. If it isn’t done within a hundred days I doubt it can be done at all. But I wouldn’t like to waste five minutes trying to retrace Vassily’s plan. It wouldn’t have worked. If I take command the plan will be mine, not Vassily’s.”

Leon’s answer was a long time coming. “I think perhaps you had better tell me what it is that would not have worked.”

“The Kremlin’s a fortress. The rock underneath it is honey-combed with bunkers and tunnels—miles of them. The Soviet High Command uses those bunkers for its main headquarters because they’re protected from air raids. This is all common knowledge, Leon—it’s been in the press. The rooms underground are sealed off from one another by armored doors like the waterproof compartments in a modern freighter.”

“I am sure Vassily was aware of all this.”

“If he was it was a bad mistake to ignore it. The idea of storming the Kremlin with a regiment of shock troops just isn’t workable—they’d never get near Stalin. He’s too well protected.”

“He must have had more to his plan than that. More than he told us. He would not have made so obvious a mistake.”

“Probably not. I have an idea of what he had in mind.”

“Then I should like to hear it, Alex.”

“He’d have put his people in Red Army uniforms. Infiltrate them into the Kremlin like saboteurs. Take the chance a few of them would be caught out—count on some of them getting close enough to the Red leaders to be able to assassinate them before there’d been a general alarm.”

Leon watched him in surprise. “Are you clairvoyant, then?”

“It’s a plan he wanted to use once before. In a different context.”

“It sounds brilliant to me. Ingenious.”

“Any wild scheme may work. But that one overflows with risks. Vassily didn’t have much of a head for security—how can you expect to infiltrate a thousand men into one place and be confident that not a single one of them will be captured and reveal what he knows?”

“I see,” Leon said dubiously.

“His idea was to take the Kremlin. He told us that much. It wasn’t a sound objective—the Kremlin isn’t the White House or the Houses of Parliament. It’s an enormous place—a small city in itself, really. You’d have to expect a drawn-out pitched battle. It would take incredible luck to secure the fortress before Red reinforcements arrived. There are divisions—army corps—preparing defenses on the outskirts of Moscow. They could reach the Kremlin within half an hour of the first alarm.”

The cigar had grown a tall ash. Leon tapped it off. His eyes were half-closed, his lips pursed—the expression of a man formulating an argument.

Alex said, “There was a chance. The odds were against it but there was a long chance it might work. Vassily wanted to take that gamble.”

“Are there better odds to be found?”

“Yes.”

Leon said slowly, “You believe he knew this.”

“Yes. He wasn’t a fool.”

“Then why, Alex? You must tell me that.”

“Because if you do it the way it should be done, it won’t produce heroes.”

“You maintain he deliberately chose the less likely alternative because if it worked at all it would make him a hero.”

“I rather suspect it would have made him dictator of Russia in the end. I think he was willing to risk losing the whole packet for that.”

“That is a harsh judgment, Alex. He was arrogant, yes—he was in love with being in command. But I never knew him to show the slightest spark of political desire.”

“A dictator’s not a politician. He’s a conquering general.”

“Vassily’s favorite general,” Leon said slowly—pushing the words out with reluctance—“was Napoleon.”

There was a clatter of china from within—servants clearing up. It seemed to distract Leon; he put the cigar in his mouth and crossed the veranda to shut both doors. He returned slowly to the balustrade and Alex realized he had been using the time to compose his thoughts. He limped to the corner and stood there leaning on both palms, looking toward the dim heavy shadows of the mountains.

Alex said, “Vassily’s out of the picture—it serves no purpose to keep talking about him.”

After a while Leon nodded. “You have hardly had time to formulate a tactical scheme but I infer that you have a strategy in your head. Can you outline it for me?”

“I’ll try. We’ve got to remember we’re not going to war—we’re trying to effect a palace coup. Our objective isn’t military, it’s political. We need to keep the Russian army intact so that it can fight the Germans. What I’m saying is it’s no good trying to storm Moscow with a regiment of rangers armed to the teeth—we don’t want to lose the loyalty of the generals at the outset.”

“What is the alternative then?”

“Trick Stalin and his coterie into an entrapment. Draw them to a place where we can reach them.” He drew a breath. “Then blow them sky high.”

“How do you propose to get them in the open?”

“I’ll need the help of Oleg’s man inside the Kremlin. I can’t explain it better than that before I’ve talked with Oleg.”

“Then do so.” Leon turned to stare him in the eye. “Consider it settled, Alex. I will deal with the others. You will want to move very quickly.”

“I’ll have to start in the States then.”

“That is where the purse strings are. You have met this Colonel Buckner?”

“Yes.”

“You have rapport with him?”

“I think so. As long as our objective is the same.”

“Yes. Do not count on the Americans too much—they want us to do their fighting for them. They want to defeat Germany with their money and our blood. They are willing to fight to the last Russian, as Anatol puts it.” He changed the subject abruptly: “There is something else I must ask you to do. Last night I spoke of installing young Prince Felix on the figurehead throne. But the truth is that I am not sure he will accept.”

“I’m sure he will.”

“He has never had much love for pomp and ceremony.” Leon scraped ashes from the cigar against the stone. “Will you intercede for me with Felix? He has always respected you—he told me once he wished he could care about things the way you do.”

“Leon, it’s you who’s respected. By Felix and everyone else.”

“No—I am taken for granted. You are much closer to his own age. He can’t pretend to regard yours as grandfatherly demands.”

“I’m not a glib talker, you know that.”

“You measure your words. That makes them more valuable. He respects you for that—he will listen to you. Will you do it?”

“If you’re sure it’s best.”

“Thank you. Felix will be racing in Madrid tomorrow. You can be there by car in time to catch him at the end of the race. Then you can fly on from Madrid the following day—it should not delay your schedule.”

17.

He shaved with the great care of dulled concentration. The scars at his throat seemed livid; his face looked weary and very old in the mirror and he was startled by the image. Vassily looked like that.

He put on fawn slacks and a white shirt and prowled the corridors tieless and throbbing as if with hangover. When he knocked at Baron Oleg Zimovoi’s door the echoes of his rapping seemed to carom throughout the villa.

He heard a groggy mutter and finally the door opened just a crack and a suspicious eye glared at him.

“I’m sorry to wake you. It’s important.” He had chosen the hour deliberately because Oleg’s defenses would be down.

“Well come in then.” Oleg stepped back ungraciously, walking away from him in a satin dressing gown that flapped around his calves—a curiously elegant garment for a workingman’s politician.

It was one of the smaller bedchambers in the south wing of the villa but it was nonetheless a spacious room, richly furnished and carpeted. A valise lay carelessly open on the floor and last night’s suit was strewn in rumpled disorder across a chair; Oleg had no valet. The room stank of strong pipe tobacco; moths crashed around the lamp.

Oleg sat down on the edge of the bed and lowered his face, grinding knuckles into his eye sockets. “Time is it?”

“Half-past five.”

“In God’s name, what is it you want at this hour?” Then he looked up, bloodshot but suddenly alert. “You have been fool enough to accept the job.”

“Yes. There’s something I need to know. This contact of yours in the Kremlin. How much can we count on him for? How highly placed is he?”

“Highly enough. The man is General Vlasov.”

It took Alex completely by surprise and he made no effort to conceal it.

“Vlasov has been one of us since Stalin began the purges eight years ago. Actually his sympathies were always with us. By ‘us’ of course I mean the exiled democratic Socialist wing. Vlasov is far too liberal to suit most of my colleagues in this venture. That is one reason I did not expose his name in the meeting. Anatol—to him the difference between Socialists and Bolsheviks is not a centime’s”

Alex knew of Vlasov; the Soviet general had been recently in the news. A wirephoto came to mind: a great slab of a man—very big ears and thick eyeglasses, heavy nose and jaw. He’d had a Red Army in the Kiev sector when the Soviets were trapped there by German armor and Vlasov was the only commander to fight his way out of the trap: he’d used a clever tactic, a planned retreat in the center to draw the panzers in and then a flanking movement, snapping both wings shut behind the Germans to trap them inside the circle. Vlasov had kept his army intact while Budyenny had given up and now, a month ago, Stalin had appointed him Commandant of the Moscow Army. Vlasov had been described as Stalin’s favorite general; he shared responsibility for the defense of Moscow and he was regarded as Zhukov’s most likely successor.

Alex said, “How do you maintain contact with him?”

“The usual thing. A series of drops. Couriers—blind exchanges. There is no way for anyone to trace the chain.”

“That’s too clumsy—too slow. I’ll need direct contact.”

“My dear Alex, I am your only means of communication with him and the only one you are going to have.”

“That’s no good. Suppose you’re arrested by the Spanish police? It could happen at any time.”

“I am prepared to take that risk.”

“I’m not.”

“You have little choice.”

“Vlasov’s security is expendable.” Alex spoke harshly for effect. “If the operation succeeds his cover won’t matter; if it doesn’t he’ll probably be found out anyway. I’ve got to have direct contact with him. Not through you—not through anyone.”

“Impossible. I am the only one he trusts.”

“Then tell him he’s got to trust me as well. Or doesn’t he trust you enough to believe that?”

“Well riposted, Alex, but I have given him my word.”

“Ask him to release you from it.”

Oleg tried to argue wordlessly but it was the easiest thing in the world to meet and hold a man’s stare until he got tired of the game. Finally Oleg went to the dresser where the contents of his pockets were strewn; opened a pouch and spooned his pipe into it, tamping with his thumb. “Does it matter that much—or are you only trying to prove who is in command now?”

“I’ve got to work directly with Vlasov.”

“If you prefer not to work through me then perhaps you had better work out a scheme that excludes Vlasov.”

It had always been exasperating to deal with Oleg; he fought out of stubbornness more than conviction.

Oleg said, “The reason Vassily is dead is that too many people learned about it. I cannot put Vlasov in that jeopardy.”

“He’s already in jeopardy. I can’t do the job without him,” Alex said. “Your loyalty to the idea—the coalition—is it a sham?” He maintained an impassive facade and watched the determined resistance in Oleg’s eyes change to sardonic self-deprecation when he saw he was going to have to surrender his control.

Finally with grudging logic Oleg said, “I suppose your intransigence is more reasonable than my own. Very well. But you must let me do it my way. I shall advise you when you may approach him. Do not attempt it until you have my clearance.”

“It’s got to be done quickly.”

“It will be. We haven’t much time, have we—or the Fuehrer will do our job for us.”

He had got what he’d come for; he turned to go but Oleg’s voice arrested him. “You need men—I can provide them. If I ask them a thousand men will enlist with you.”

“I won’t need a thousand.”

“Vassily wanted a regiment….”

“We’re not using Vassily’s plan.”

The room began to stink of Oleg’s pipe. He gave Alex a long scrutiny. “I see. But you still need people. My offer is genuine.”

Alex supposed his hesitation was obvious. After a moment Oleg said, “You are afraid of an imbalance in your force—too many rabid young Socialists—that would displease our conservative friends. But there is a risk in neutrality, young Alex—if things go awry you will have no strong allies among us. I know the hardships of working alone, remaining aloof from all the rest. Often it is the best way but it is never easy.”

“I haven’t heard anybody suggest the job’s easy.”

“Of course. All right—tell me how many of my people you can absorb without incurring the anger of Anatol and the others. Give me a number and that many young men will be on whatever doorstep you wish on the appointed date.”

“They’d want training. It’s better to use professional soldiers.”

“You may find that the professional soldiers of the world are otherwise occupied at the moment.”

“Then keep the offer open.”

“Of course. But for your own sake do not take too much time—it is the one thing you haven’t got.”

At noon he waited in the garden for Irina. The others hadn’t yet finished lunch and Prince Leon was on a trunk call to Zurich, something to do with the Romanov finances, the sort of call you had to make cryptic and reserved because the lines passed through Vichy France.

A rickety airplane stuttered along the horizon to the south, possibly carrying mail to Barcelona. When Irina appeared on the terrace he climbed the steps and took her hand.

She looked wan but self-possessed. She pushed her hair back from her temples. “You’re leaving right away then.”

“As soon as a few things have been signed.”

“I’ll go with you to Madrid,” she said. “I’ll bring Felix back if he agrees to come.”

“How much have they told you?”

“I’ve made a few surmises.” She had one of her Du Mauriers going; she coughed on the smoke. “I’m very glad you’ve taken it on. Vassily still had all his respect for you in spite of what happened between you.”

She’d given him the opening but he didn’t take it and he felt the distance grow: the violence of Vassily’s death had estranged them. He didn’t know what it meant—what could be done about it.

She said, “I just want to ride to Madrid with you. We’ll sit together and you’ll hold my hand.”

18.

The day was blazing hot and tinder dry on the two-kilometer Madrid course. Felix swept his left hand from the wheel to downshift before going into the turn. His eyes judged the banked edge. He allowed himself a quick glance over his shoulder at the Alfa Romeo: it was gaining. Felix’s grip whitened on the wooden wheel and he cut across the turn, wheels skittering, running in second with his foot flat down on the hard-sprung metal plate of the accelerator and the tachometer needle beyond the red line.

The thunder of engines and wind pierced the cotton stuffed in his ears; dust raveled high above the oval strip, high enough to turn the sky pale, caking the spectators who stood in knots around the track and the mechanics in their grease-black coveralls waiting by the impromptu pits.

The Alfa behind him dropped back on the inside of the tight turn and now, coming out of it, Felix allowed his outside rear wheel to skip along the dusty loose shoulder, freewheeling for the few seconds it took to build up engine speed in high gear. It was a winning trick, practiced into habit; he felt the engine take hold when he sideslid back onto the hardpan. The ripsaw-buzzing Bugatti shot into the straightaway, surging ahead sharply enough to snap his neck back. The bright exhaust tubes shimmered before him.

The wound-up 57SC engine pushed toward its deafening limit in the tach’s red zone. The Bugatti’s polished long snake of a gearshift lever whipped violently with vibration and wind howled across the stark square top of the windscreen.

It was a race for the big cars, not the limited-formula Grand Prix cars he was accustomed to; these were eight-cylinder monsters running at well over a hundred miles an hour. The smallest mechanical malfunction, the slightest error of judgment, a slick of dropped crankcase-oil on the track could smash you to pulp or cause you to be pulled out of the car without a single mark on you, but dead all the same.

A sheared brake-rod had cost him ninety seconds in the pit after the seventeenth lap. He still had nearly a full lap to make up: the pack was running twenty lengths behind him but in fact it was Felix who was behind. It wasn’t the Alfa he had to beat; the Alfa was two laps back; it was the four Mercedes Benz 540K juggernauts, and the D8S Delage but he had a feeling the French car hadn’t the staying power to make the hundred laps. There were three 4-liter Hispano-Suizas in the crowd and a 4-liter Talbot-Lago rushing the inside rail with a hard vicious uproar, and a pair of old Mercedes Benz SSKs; a Frazer Nash-B.M.W., an aging American Duesenberg supercharged SJ, an Invicta and a Daimler. But it was the swollen great Mercedes Benz 540Ks, pledged to win for the Master Race, that had to be caught—and Felix meant to do it.

Another lap and he’d gained a few lengths; he was calculating the ground he had to eat—a hundred and twenty kilometers before the finish: how many meters did he need to gain per lap?

There were drivers who liked running half a lap behind; they would sit there out of the dust and racket and coast until the last ten laps. They called it “stroking”: conserving the delicate machinery for the last push, waiting for the pack-leaders to drop out. Felix was a charger, he pushed his car to its limit and relied on his pit crew and the tough Bugatti engineers who’d built the car. They hadn’t built it for loafing—they hadn’t built him for it either.

He always drove against the red line.

Fiftieth lap… fifty-fifth… sixtieth. The pack was ahead of him and he had their dust in his teeth; he slid forward among the stragglers. The Alfa was still right behind him but the Alfa had an extra lap to make up and wasn’t going to do it. Up ahead one of the German team’s cars had got into a long fender-crashing duel with the Talbot-Lago, wheel hubs screaming and cars lurching, and the rest of the crowd was veering away from that idiocy, some of them falling back for safety. The big red Mercedes made another pass at the Talbot-Lago and the smaller car broke away, giving in, losing ground into the turn because he had to go at it from a bad angle. The red Mercedes thundered ahead with his three teammates blocking the crowd behind him. That was going to be the one to beat—the red one.

The Bugatti’s 3.3-liter engine powered him past a low grey Auto Union with dark smoke coming out of its exhaust. He went tight into the lap turn; the Bugatti’s low heavy chassis kept it on the track and allowed him to cut inside a wide-swinging Hispano-Suiza and the old Mercedes SSK that was crowding its tail. He was against the rear of the solid pack now and had to make openings for himself. Coming out of the turn against the inside of the oval he shot across the front of the Invicta and went across the straightaway to the outside edge, losing half a car length but gaining an opening beside the Daimler which he squeezed through before the Paraguayan had time to try and block him. He had grit in his teeth and a mote in his eye; he blinked it furiously and found the shift knob by laying his open palm forward and letting the whipping flexible lever slap into it. There was a slot to the left of one of the big Mercedes and he judged it without turning the car that way because as soon as the Mercedes saw him make that move the slot would be closed; he’d have to take it in the sharp turn, pry a path between the Mercedes and the Hispano-Suiza to its left before the Mercedes could find room to swing left. The Mercedes had all the bloody power in the world with its enormous eight-cylinder pushrod engine but it was an unwieldy behemoth and it wasn’t going to be able to cut him off when it was in the middle of a turn that strained its cornering to the limit; the Hispano-Suiza was an older car with a smaller engine but it could hug the inside curve and gain lengths and Felix knew the Hispano-Suiza’s driver would have to play it that way, outmaneuvering because he couldn’t outpower. It would leave a spread between the two cars and he had to get the Bugatti into that—at the crest of the turn when it was too late for the Mercedes to anticipate it and too early for the Mercedes to block it.

Now without really thinking it out his body made a rapid sequence of motions to convert theory into practice. The left foot went onto the brake pedal and lay there without pressure. The left hand gripped the shift lever and the right hand at two o’clock on the wheel locked tight, the right arm tensing for its anticipated leftward turn. The left hand popped the gear lever into neutral, without use of the clutch, and the right foot slammed down on the accelerator while the left foot lightly applied the brakes to bring her down to cornering speed. She was in neutral, braking on the end of the straightaway, and now he revved the engine up far across the red line. If there was a weakness anywhere in a piston or a rod it would explode now.

Left foot hard and fast from brake to clutch, and ram the clutch all the way to the floor. Engine still revving: left hand shift into third. Swinging into the turn now with the Mercedes waddling toward the outside and the Hispano-Suiza predictably shearing toward the inside. You could drive a battleship through there now. Dust wheeling up, the awful whine of superchargers drilling through the cotton waste in his ears, the hard seat and the tight leather harness bucking and pitching him around on the Bugatti’s drum-tight suspension. Tires chittering on the track surface and the stink of imperfectly burned gasoline in his nostrils despite the swift sucking wind that made it hard to breathe at all….

Pop the clutch.

The engine, freewheeling beyond its safe margin of operate ing speed, suddenly ran up against resistance from the transmission and the differential gear between the back wheels. Now either something was going to break or the twin-cam power of Ettore Bugatti’s finest engine was going to hurtle him into the gap.

The wheels slithered and gripped. The seat surged forward, pushing him back hard. The rear end was breaking a little to the right but he had that under control and he knew how much room he had to slide toward the Mercedes. He came into the crest of the turn doing a good fifteen miles an hour better than the Mercedes.

The German hadn’t much steering room and couldn’t accelerate yet; it gave Felix time to oil through the gap and then he clutched, revved it in neutral just enough to run the engine up without breaking into a powerless slide: popped the clutch again into fourth and surged ahead of the Mercedes’s massive grille.

The Hispano-Suiza’s driver was Enzione, the Italian, and Felix had a glimpse of the approving grin on his face before the Bugatti’s power took him ahead of the Italian. The big Mercedes kept pace within a meter of his rear fender all the way down the straightaway but he lost the Mercedes on the far turn and then he had just four cars ahead of him—three Germans and the French D8S Delage.

One of the Germans rolled off to the shoulder into the pit for tires and on the eighty-first lap the Delage broke down on the lap turn, braking into the ambulance driveway. Felix had only the two Mercedes ahead of him and he was crowding the green one by the eighty-seventh lap.

He had fuel to finish the race without another pit stop; he was not so certain of the tires. But the red Mercedes was a good twenty lengths ahead of the green one and so there was no question in Felix’s mind about stopping for tires. The four tires could be changed in thirty-four seconds but with only twelve laps left that would cost him the race.

And if the Bugatti’s tires were thin so were the Germans’: they were carrying more weight on theirs and none of them had been into the pits for anything but fuel since the fortieth lap.

There had been some talk around the pits this morning about the Fuehrer’s direct personal interest in this race, which was the first contest outside Nazi-occupied territory in which the newly modified 540Ks had been entered. Enzione had said casually, “They’ll do anything for a win you know. Anything. I suspect it will cost them unspeakably if they don’t take the cup.”

“Then they’re too tense,” Felix had replied, “and tense drivers make, mistakes.”

“Don’t count on that too much. Streicher particularly—Streicher can be something less than a gentleman.”

Felix knew that; he’d raced Georg Streicher for years. He knew most of Streicher’s bag of dirty tricks and he’d heard the brown-shirted veteran’s cries of German invincibility.

To beat Streicher he first had to get past Erich Franke, whom he didn’t know so well: he’d run on the same tracks with Franke a few times but that had been more than a year ago when Franke had still been a second-string driver getting his apprenticeship done on obsolete cars, running respectably fourth and sixth and sometimes third in cars which in other hands wouldn’t have made the first half of the field. You knew he was very good but you never worried about him because he was running inferior machinery. Now they had trusted him with a 540K and Felix had the feeling Franke would have been another half-lap ahead if it weren’t for Streicher’s intimidating presence out front. The Germans didn’t realize that habit of command and subordination was a weakness on the motor track.

He wished he knew Franke better now; wished he had paid more attention to Franke’s repertoire in the past. Franke had won at Molsheim this season, taken a second (to Streicher) at Montlhery Autodrome and another second (to Von Brauchitsch) at the Targa Florio; they were all races in which Felix hadn’t been entered and he regretted that now.

Streicher was good of course: at one time he’d been the very best. But he was not as good as he had been. He needed a little help to win now. That was what Franke was there for: to provide interference for those who tried to get near Streicher.

On the eighty-ninth lap Felix made his bid against Franke, coming out of the turn on the inside and bolting ahead. This time there was no competing car to clutter up the inside rail; there was all the room in the world and Felix used the Bugatti’s superior cornering balance to move ahead. They had lapped the field now and the red Mercedes ahead of him—Streicher—was nosing into the rear of the pack, shouldering the Invicta aside.

Halfway down the straightaway he glanced in the mirror and saw Erich Franke on his rump. Hardly a handspan separated the two cars. He kept his foot to the floor and rushed toward the lap turn.

The Alfa Romeo whined past both of them at reckless speed approaching the turn but Felix paid that no attention; the Alfa was still a lap behind and the driver was only trying to prove something to himself; he had no chance to win unless all the leaders dropped out.

Going into the ninetieth lap. He took his foot off the accelerator, easing for the turn. In the mirror Franke’s green panzer was still riding his rear end like a hungry barracuda. He saw the Mercedes’s nose dip when Franke braked. The Mercedes would have to drop to a slower speed than the Bugatti to make the turn; Franke would have to stay to the outside and he would have the inside to himself. That was how he judged it and he drove accordingly, braking hard when he came into the curve along the inside rail.

Then he heard the sliding scrape of tires and in the mirror he saw the green Mercedes’s snout yaw toward the center of the glass and he realized that Franke was still there, still crowding him into the inside of the turn, and he knew there was only one reason for Franke to do that.

Franke was going to ram him from behind, break his wheels loose in the turn and toss him tumbling off the track.

He hit the accelerator and straightened the wheel.

It sent him careening toward the outside of the turn. His outside wheels rode up on the steep embankment. In the mirror the Mercedes was still there, swaying because he’d taken Franke by surprise and Franke had been forced to correct his steering.

At the top of the turn he was bending in along the very outside rim of the track and his wheels barely had purchase. Either the Bugatti would grip or it would slide off the track.

The seat bucketed under his rump, off-wheels juddering on gravel. You couldn’t touch the brake because that would be death. You just had to hope the frame would take it, stay flat enough for traction. Anything less low-slung than the Bugatti wouldn’t have the slightest chance.

With two wheels off the track surface the Bugatti held the curve and he skittered onto the verge of the straightaway, accelerating hard and eating toward the center track.

That was when the green Mercedes behind him broke loose. Centrifugal force pulled it right off the track and he glimpsed it up in the air, tail high. In the mirror it executed a ponderous somersault right over the astonished faces of the Italian pit crew in their dugout. It slammed down just beyond the dugout, flat upside-down and when it burst into an enormous sheet of flame he knew there was no chance Erich Franke would come out alive.

But Franke must have known that anyway. From the outset. Because once he’d committed himself to the ramming attack there’d been no way for the Mercedes to get through the turn.

Under the eyes of flagmen and race officials the cars idled around the course one half-lap, keeping their positions until the crash trucks and firemen had rushed across the oval.

Through some blind trick of fate the machine had arced clear of the eight men in the Italian dugout and crashed directly behind it in a place where there were no spectators because from that place the roof of the dugout would have obscured their view of the race. No one was hurt except Erich Franke.

Less than twelve minutes after the crash the flagman ordered the race to continue.

On the ninety-fourth lap he passed the Invicta on the straightaway and bluffed an SSK out of the inside position on the far turn. The Talbot-Lago and the Auto Union went into the pits, out of the race. Streicher was in the open, trailed by the one-off-the-pace Alfa Romeo, with Felix closing the margin in grim earnest now because the bloody Fuehrer was not going to win this race; Felix wasn’t dead yet and there were six laps left to decide it.

High anger had infected the Alfa Romeo’s driver and Felix saw him skid too fast through the lap turn, roaring relentlessly in pursuit of the red Mercedes—pure rage driving the car, the search for some obscure vindication because even if the Alfa overtook Streicher it would mean nothing in the record books: Streicher was on his ninety-fifth lap, the Alfa on its ninety-fourth.

The Alfa swung into the far turn beside the Mercedes; the Mercedes gave ground gracefully and the Alfa shot out ahead of it onto the straight. There was something sardonic in the way Streicher lifted his left hand off the wheel for a moment—as if in benediction to the charging Alfa Romeo.

That left nothing between Felix and the German except space: a half dozen car-lengths which Felix made up in the turns, two steps forward in each turn and one step backward in the straightaways where the Mercedes’s superior power took it away from him. On the lap turn with two full laps remaining in the race Felix was within a single car-length of Streicher’s rear hub.

Then he was approaching his own pit dugout and he saw Sergio DeFeo standing on the verge making semaphore Waves of his arms.

Felix ignored the pit boss and pushed the fuel pedal to the floor.

In the far turn Streicher accelerated hard and his tires almost broke loose but he held his lead. But Felix saw his head cock to the side as he went through the turn and that meant something significant: an alert driver normally didn’t do that. It meant Streicher was tired.

But it was the last lap turn coming up: two kilometers left in the race and Streicher still had a jump on him. Felix had part of the Mercedes’s heavy slipstream but he had to overtake.

The crowd was roaring in anticipation. Felix swung left toward the verge—Streicher veered the same way, blocking him. On the long straightaway Felix weaved to the right but Streicher stayed with him, just ahead, the great swollen Mercedes taking up too much room. Streicher wasn’t pushing it full out; he had two thirds of his attention on his wing mirrors. There was more than enough unused soup in the Bugatti to get ahead of Streicher because the Bugatti could accelerate faster than the big car but first there had to be an opening and Streicher wasn’t going to give him one.

He was going to have to make one for himself by outfeinting Streicher; it was the only chance left. The raw final question was whether the old lion’s reaction time was still quick enough and Felix didn’t think it was. He feinted left and broke to the right. Streicher stayed with him but he’d expected that; he feinted left again, straightened, and broke left, and got his nose in before Streicher pushed hard to the left and crowded him against the verge. He had to drop back and they were approaching the far turn now, and Streicher damn well wasn’t going to let him by on the inside even if he had to slow the big Mercedes to a crawl.

That was the answer then—if Streicher wasn’t alert enough to second-guess him. But if Streicher countered with the right move it would finish the race with a German win.

Going into the turn he began to swing wide. He did it hesitantly in order to give Streicher the idea that he only wanted to move Streicher out into the middle before veering back to the inside where the Mercedes couldn’t go because of its centrifugal momentum in the turn. It was the sensible way to do it—the classic ploy—and Streicher wasn’t having any: he stayed two meters off the inside edge of the track, ready to veer either way.

The crest of the turn, and now was the time. Felix slammed throttle to floor and went whistling toward the outside bank of the turn, accelerating so rapidly that both rear wheels broke loose and skidded to the right.

It slid him into line with the straightaway and he dropped the pressure just enough to give the tires a bite before he straightened the steering wheel and drove his foot hard against the accelerator.

Streicher was coming across at him like a projectile but his reaction had been just a hair too slow and Felix saw the prow of the Mercedes off his left shoulder when he reached the whining top of third gear and slipped the rear right wheel off the track onto the loose embankment. The free tire spun a fog of dust into the sky and then his engine speed was up in the red zone and he yanked the Bugatti back onto the track at top revs in fourth and that was the race. The Mercedes chewed up his tonneau all the way to the line but Streicher had no way to get past him and the chequered flag dropped across the Bugatti with the German a single handspan behind.

The pit crew formed quickly around him and he stood under the hard hot sun waiting for his belly to stop chugging. Someone said, “Good, your Highness. Damned good.”

He found a cigarette and took the time to light it and draw deep before his attention came slowly around. “Franke didn’t make it, did he.”

The pit boss, DeFeo, kicked the ground with his foot, splashing a little spiral of dust. “Dead when they pulled him out.” Then a sudden burst of anger: “Didn’t you see me wave you off?”

DeFeo came around the car and pointed to the right front wheel. “Look at it. It’s shredding. You’d have blown it in another half-lap. I could see the pieces flapping for God’s sake.”

“But it didn’t blow, did it, Sergio.” He went to the front of the car and unbuckled the bonnet fasteners and lifted it back to have a look at the intricate confusion of the long Bugatti engine. Heat contraction made it crackle and ping. Little wafts of steam drifted up from the valve covers. He laid the flat of his palm against the steel bonnet and pushed it down.

The middle-down sun burned like a flame at his back. The horizons turned bronze. Enzione came over from his own dugout—grinning. “Beautiful driving.”

“Streicher’s getting too old.”

Enzione nodded; he was twenty-eight. “Lap time gets shorter and the young ones get harder and harder to beat. You and I, we’re getting old too.” He swung himself closer and dropped his voice. “None of us could see that much in the dust back there. Did Franke try what I think he tried?”

“Yes.”

“The pig.”

Felix had to go up to the winner’s box but there was something else first and when he walked up out of the dugout he turned to his left instead of his right. Enzione hurried to catch him, half-running on his thin short legs. “Don’t do it. Not now, anyway.”

“It doesn’t feel like waiting.” He left Enzione standing in his tracks and went along to the Mercedes dugout.

He walked right up to Streicher and hit the unflinching German in the pit of the stomach. When Streicher clutched the injury Felix clouted him across the temple.

Streicher straightened slowly. A sunburned wedge on his chest was visible within the triangle of his carelessly open jumper. He got his breath and said, “The answer to your question is no. I didn’t put him up to it. It was a suicide thing to do—he knew that before he began it. You could see that much?”

By not denying it Felix confirmed it; and Streicher drew a ragged breath. “Then use your head, Highness. He was too good a driver for me to sacrifice. I give you my word of honor. I had nothing to do with it.”

“What is the word of honor of a Nazi flunky worth on the open market these days?”

Streicher wasn’t going to be baited. “You ran a good race. Very good. You might consider joining our team—as you can see there’s an opening now.” He went even more dour: “There may be several in fact.”

Felix took one parting shot: “It was time you thought about retiring anyway.” He left that behind him; turned and walked heavily toward the winner’s box.

19.

He made his way through the congratulatory crowd, answering their hoots with a spare nod. An eddy of heat rose from his stomach; he was thinking about Erich Franke and the closeness of it.

He put the crowd behind him and advanced toward the officials-only car park with the hard sun in his face. Someone spoke to him and he replied with detached courtesy without breaking stride.

He saw two people silhouetted beside the gate; he said, “Well then—this is a surprise,” but he was too washed-out to put inflection in it.

Irina Markova’s eyes were kind; it was an unusual expression on her. “Was that deliberate—what the German tried to do?”

“Yes.”

He shook hands with Alex Danilov. Alex’s long face seemed distracted. “I need a word with you.” The tone of his voice made it more than an idle invitation.

He glanced into the car park. Drivers and pfficials were pulling out. He said, “Have you got a car with you?”

“Yes.”

“I was going to borrow DeFeo’s to get to the airport. Run me out there—we can talk on the way.”

Irina said, “Alex was going there anyway.” There was something poignant about the way she said it.

He said to Alex, “I thought you were cleaning rifles in Texas or something.”

“He came to his senses,” Irina said drily.

“Marvelous,” Felix said. “Then you’ve decided to rejoin our gay little band of Ruritanian fops?” He turned with them and they walked along past the wire fence. Cars shot past, throwing up dust. Someone waved and shouted at Felix from a passing roadster; he waved casually and went on talking to Alex: “I don’t know if there’s going to be much of a polo season for you. The war and all that.”

Irina said, “It’s rather more serious than that, Felix.”

He saw the open Mercedes touring car by the road. Sergei Bulygin loomed beside it in chauffeur’s livery. “My God there’s the old warmonger.” He trotted forward and embraced the old man; Sergei thrust him back and beamed at him and Felix said, “Home from the wars, are you, old friend?”

“Why I imagine that’s only temporary, Highness.” Sergei gave Alex a pointed look; Alex only smiled; and Sergei opened the doors of the touring car. Irina slid into the front and Felix found himself moving into the rear seat beside Alex.

Irina twisted around to face him. “Are you still flying your own plane?”

“Of course.”

“Where on earth do you find fuel for it?”

“If you’re filthy rich there’s always a black market.”

Sergei knew the outskirts of the Spanish capital well enough to choose the empty roads and they drummed along at a good speed with the wind dry and hot in their faces. Alex said, “It’s no good talking now. We’ll find a spot at the airfield.” It wasn’t altogether clear whether he was concerned about the noise of the wind or the presence of Irina and Sergei.

Felix said, “Well then let’s talk about something interesting like the recipe for an American dry martini. You do have one, I hope?”

The hangar’s makeshift toilet room was rancid with the smell of disinfectant. Felix leaned his forearm against the wall over the urinal and dropped his forehead against the back of his wrist.

It was like Alex to come out of hibernation in the Texas desert and trigger a volcanic eruption in his life.

After a while he rolled his head back and forth, stood up straight and went to wash his hands.

He spent longer at it than he had to. Looking at himself. The eyes against him did not dance; the high cheeks were impassive. He had a lot of straight dark hair and his eyes were a very dark blue: the face was precise lines and angles and he looked like one of those French cinema stars, the ones who played troubled artists who inevitably fell in love with the wrong women. The appearance of physical fragility was false; the cliché about women was true enough. Perhaps it was simply because he had been born to that physical stereotype.

Old enough to know better; nothing to show for his life but an empty royal title and a steamer trunk full of racing trophies and a juvenile penchant for foolish bravado, casual promiscuity, pointless trivialities, adolescent pranks. He was ten years too old for all that and he knew it but ordinarily he arranged his life so that he didn’t have to think about it.

He had a look at the towel and shook his hands as dry as he could and went back through the big cluttered hangar. At the mouth of it Alex and Irina stood two paces apart, not talking; the low sun threw their shadows across the tarmac like something out of El Greco. Irina held herself severely upright. A close-guarded distance held her that way. He had been surprised to see her with Alex again; he was not surprised at her evident reserve. Devenko’s death would have done that. Her shoulders were high and taut; her body had its graceful pride and her face was striking as always but less willing now to display haughty amusement. Her long fingers touched the vee of her collarbone; her neck seemed very long because her hair was done up high. Her beauty never failed to stir him but he had never made advances to her—partly because she was a bit taller than he was and that had always mattered to him.

“I have communed with the wise water spirits of the loo,” he said. “Unfortunately they seem to be preoccupied with the outcome of Dominguez’s next bullfight.”

A fly alighted on the corrugated metal edge of the vast doorway, washed its legs and took off into the air. Felix’s hand flashed, cupped the fly and tossed it away over his shoulder. He said, “Outrunning the best in a motor race—I’m told that’s better than sex. It isn’t, but it’s probably better than prancing about in a bemedaled suit making puerile speeches to unwashed hordes.”

Irina strolled away, kicking pebbles, pretending an interest in the sparse row of light planes parked against their chocks outside the hangar. Felix’s was one of them.

Alex looked weary: his eyes were bleak. “You don’t need to like the idea.”

“I see. I’m expected to bow before the wisdom of a group of dreamers whose continued existence is nothing so much as proof that there’s life after death.” He made his voice lavish with scorn. “I’m expected to be dutiful and responsible—I’m expected to be grateful for having been born the son of a Grand Duke. I’m expected to live up to the family name no matter what my own pleasure may be.”

Alex said, “You’re too angry, aren’t you.” He said it gently with the suggestion of an American smile. “What were you fighting the Germans for in that race? Couldn’t have been Russian pride, could it?”

Felix threw up his hands. “What’s going to happen to my lifelong ambition to marry a rich widow with a bad cough?”

His exasperated tones melted away in the smoky clattering racket of a revving Curtiss Hawk. The biplane turned slowly against its rudder and bumped out toward the runway. Its propwash swayed around Irina, pasting the clothes to her body, unraveling her hair. She lifted one hand to shade her eyes and watch it take off.

Felix was a dialectical man and knew it; filled with contradictory moods. He said, “Suppose I accept this absurd proposition today and begin tomorrow to regret it for the rest of my life? I’ll try to be honest, Alex—I suppose I’ve got to for once. Look here, I’m the sort of chap who’s in demand at dinner parties because I’m good at charming the old ladies, but I will sometimes slip a dose of tartar emetic into some old fool’s claret. Now I’m sure Prince Leon can’t expect these qualities to disappear magically as soon as he hangs a mantle on me. My morals are a bit of a nervous tic, aren’t they—something I can’t help.”

“Are you worried about that? I’m not.”

“You’re very reassuring.” He watched the fine line of Irina’s profile turning to indicate her interest in the departing Curtiss. “Of course I’ll accept. I’m too vain not to. Emperor of Russia? The question is whether they’ve got any business offering it to me. I’m just not suitable for it, am I?”

“That decision’s already been made.”

“It can be unmade.”

“The timetable doesn’t allow for that.” Alex gave him a grave look. “They had good reasons for choosing you.”

“An accident of birth. They neglected to consider my character.”

“Don’t think so little of yourself.”

He shook his head dismally. A kind of desperation made him change the subject: “Let me understand this—what’s re quired of me?”

“I’ve told you that.”

“No. I mean immediately. What’s my part of this adventure of yours?”

“You’ll go in with us.”

“In battle?”

“They feel it’s important—politically, for the future.”

“To say I was one of the first, you mean.”

“To say you were the first. You’re to be the one who leads the liberation.”

“That’s absurd. I’ve got all the leadership qualities of a lemming. The truth would get out—then where’d we be?”

“What truth?”

“That I didn’t lead anything. That you were the real leader.”

“When the time comes you’ll be the one to give the order. That will be the final truth.”

He looked down at his hands as if they were unfamiliar objects. “It’s suicidal. We’ll all be captured. They’ll hang us from the highest gallows in Moscow.”

Alex shook his head gently. “You risk your life every time you drive on the racecourse.”

“That’s a different thing—it’s for my own amusement.”

Alex said in his slow spare way, “I know the way your juices shoot up when you’ve got your neck stuck out a mile. You’re alive because you’re in immediate danger of being dead. Stop fighting this—you’ll enjoy it.” He looked at his wristwatch and shot his cuff. “I’ve got a plane to catch. You’ll go back to the villa with Irina.”

“This instant? I had plans….” He realized the inanity of it but it was too late to recall it.

Alex said, “There’s a good deal to do. Prince Leon will lay it out for you.”

“Like jewels on a dark velvet cloth,” he said dubiously. “What do they expect me to contribute at this stage?”

“If you’re going to be the leader of a liberation movement you’ve got to start acting like one.”

Irina was staring at Alex; they were exchanging some sort of private signals with their eyes and the intensity of her expression astonished Felix: he was convinced that was exactly the way she’d look with a man on top of her.

Shaken by it he said lamely, “We’re all making a ridiculous mistake.”