Suddenly, he was on the floor of a Transit van, the door sliding shut as it accelerated away. There were two men above and around him, lurching with the motion of the van. He heard the sound of tape being peeled from a roll. He tried to sit up, but was shoved back down. His hands were yanked round behind him. The tape was wound tightly round them and his ankles simultaneously. Within seconds, he was trussed and helpless.
‘For God’s sake,’ he gasped. ‘What do you—’ Then a strip of tape was slapped over his mouth as well.
‘Change of plan, Mr Eusden.’ Eusden twisted in the direction the voice had come from and saw Erik Lund smiling at him through the grille from the passenger seat. ‘For you.’ He felt something sharp jab into his left arm. ‘My advice is to stop struggling.’
Eusden had no intention of taking Lund’s advice. But within seconds he had no choice in the matter. The jolting of the van merged with waves of wooziness that swept into his brain. The figures around him blurred into monochrome – then merged into blackness.
THIRTY-SEVEN
For a second, when he woke, Eusden believed he was in bed at home in London, the pounding in his head and the stiffness in his limbs attributable to a serious hangover. But no. Reality pounced on his thoughts with the force of a nightmare. He was still in the van, alone now, alone and cold and enveloped in darkness.
A trace of light was seeping in from somewhere, however, enough to cast shadows within the van. He crawled on to his knees and looked about him as best he could. A shutter was rattling somewhere outside the vehicle, but no other sound reached him. How long he had been wherever he was he had no way of knowing. His wristwatch was out of sight. Why he had been left there was equally impenetrable. ‘Change of plan for
you
,’ Lund had said, as if this had always been the plan as far as Mjollnir were concerned. Koskinen’s behaviour confirmed as much. A trap had been laid for him. But
why
?
He had to break free. For the moment, that was all he could think of. A conjunction of shadows towards the front of the van revealed a tear of some kind in one corner of the grille sealing off the cab. He worked his way over for a closer look. The frame was dented and several wires had sprung out of their sockets. The loose ends were stiff and sharp. He turned round, stretched his arms up behind him and felt one of the wires against the heel of his hand. He manoeuvred so that it snagged on the tape, then sawed away until the tape split.
Within a couple of minutes, he had released his hands. He teased the strip off his mouth, sat down and peered at his watch. It was a few minutes past two. Koskinen should be in the process of collecting the caseload of bearer bonds around now. He must already have given Pernille some cooked-up explanation of Eusden’s disappearance. He felt in his pocket for his phone. But they had taken it. No surprise, really. He unwound the strips binding his ankles and prised at the handle of the side door. Locked. That was no surprise either. He stood up and moved to the rear doors. Also locked. There was no way out. He thumped pointlessly at the nearest door panel, then lowered himself to the floor, flexing fruitlessly at the handle as he sat there, staring glumly into the shadows. God, it was cold. Did Lund mean him to freeze to death?
As much to warm himself as with any realistic hope of getting out that way, he went back to the dented grille and tried to pull it further loose. No more wires budged. Apart from a gash to his finger, he achieved nothing. He slumped down on the floor, sucking the wound, cursing Lund and Birgitte Grøn – and Marty for dragging him into all this.
Unmeasured minutes passed while he contemplated the horrifying nature of his plight. The invisible shutter went on rattling. The cold began to gnaw at him. He started to shiver. ‘Fucking hell, Marty,’ he said aloud, ‘how could you—’
A sound deeper and farther away than the rattling shutter reached his ears. It was a car engine. It stopped and was succeeded by a burble of human voices. There was the creak of a door opening. The light strengthened marginally. Through the grille and the windscreen beyond, he could see shadows moving on a brick wall. A switch was flicked and a fluorescent lamp pulsed into life overhead. A key turned in the rear door of the van. One of them swung open. Then the other.
Eusden blinked as his eyes adjusted to the harshness of the light. A squat, bull-necked, shaven-headed man in jeans and windcheater stared in at him. Then another man appeared at his shoulder: taller and thinner, dressed in a dark overcoat with the collar pulled up. He had a round, soft-featured face, a mop of ginger hair shot with silver and matching stubble round his fleshy jaw. His small blue-green eyes studied Eusden through circular-lensed glasses.
‘You’re Eusden?’ His voice was pure west-coast American.
‘Yes.’
‘Let’s get the party going, then. Come on out.’ His squat companion took something from inside his windcheater and pointed it at Eusden: a gun. ‘We’re not about to take no for an answer.’
The two men stepped back as Eusden stood up slowly, moved to the end of the van and climbed out. They were in some kind of workshop, sealed by a ceiling-high shutter-door and a smaller wicket-door set within it. There were no windows, just three blank walls, along one of which ran a bare bench. A third man was leaning against the bench, staring, like his companions, at Eusden. He was tall and heavily built, with black hair and beard, a hawkish nose and dark, simmering gaze. He wore a long black leather coat and was chewing gum vigorously. Beside him, on the bench, stood Clem’s attaché case.
‘Who are you people?’ Eusden asked, looking straight at the chatty one and trying not to sound as frightened as he really was.
‘I’m Brad. The guy with the gun is Gennady. The guy with the gum – who also has a gun, by the way – is Vladimir. Sorry I couldn’t keep the alliteration going. They speak English when they need to, but they usually communicate in other ways.’
‘What do you want?’
‘You, sport. The guy who offed our very good buddies Ilya and Yuri a few nights back.’
‘That was an accident.’
‘You’re probably right. You don’t look capable of getting the better of them. And Yuri? He was always a hell-rider. But let’s not allow the facts to get in the way of a good grudge. There’s nothing Gennady would like better than putting a bullet in your brain –
after
kicking the shit out of you. A friend dies. A stranger pays. Old Ukrainian tradition. That’s where they’re from. They always like me to point out that they’re not actually Russian. They just look and sound as if they are. And get tetchy when they haven’t swallowed a gallon of vodka recently. For the record, they’re stone cold sober today. Draw your own conclusions. While you’re at it, tell me what your role is in Mjollnir’s organization.’
‘I don’t have one.’
‘Why’d you come to Helsinki, then?’
‘They blackmailed me.’
‘Ah, right. So, what did they say they wanted you to do? I’m assuming they didn’t mention they were planning to hand you over to us.’
‘I was to . . . authenticate the letters.’ Eusden nodded towards the attaché case.
‘Strictly non-essential, sport. We faxed them copies of the whole lot. But I guess it sounded plausible to you. Fact is, though, we stipulated your head on a platter
plus
the big fat pay-off right from the get-go. And they never batted an eyelid. I got the feeling they didn’t mind us rubbing you out one little bit. Now, why might that be?’
‘They seem to think I know too much.’
‘What about?’
‘Tolmar Aksden.’
‘Ah. The Invisible Man. Well, do you?’
‘I know he has a secret.’
‘Don’t we all?’
‘Mjollnir want his kept quiet at any cost.’
‘Of course they do. That’s why they’re buying it from us at a price that makes it well worth our trouble cutting out the original buyer
and
compensates us for leaving twenty million kroner blowing in the Copenhagen wind, not to mention Ilya and Yuri splattered across an unlovely stretch of highway. So, working on the basis that it might, just
might
, persuade us not to kill you, why don’t you tell us what that secret is?’
‘You must know if you have the letters.’
‘Well, there’s the weirdest thing. I never did learn Danish while I was growing up in California. Spanish, right on. French and Italian? I can get by. I’ve even picked up enough Russian to understand Vladimir’s jokes on those rare occasions when he cracks one. But Danish? Somehow I let it slip past me. Careless, I know. But that’s the way it is.’
‘We should have kept Olsen alive,’ Vladimir growled.
Brad grinned. ‘Don’t you just love an after-the-event wise guy? Bet you’re wondering who Olsen was, sport, so I’ll put you out of your misery. He was our original buyer’s very own Danish representative. We were hired for the hands-on side of things. When we decided to sound out Mjollnir as an alternate buyer, Olsen tried to phone his boss. We had to cut him off, if you know what I mean. Unfortunately, he hadn’t quite got round to telling us what the letters were all about when that happened, so we’re . . . looking to you to fill us in.’
Eusden swallowed hard. Making the little he knew about the contents of the letters sound tantalizing enough to persuade them to let him live was a next to impossible task. But it was his only hope. ‘They chronicle the early life of Tolmar Aksden’s father, Peder, on a farm in Jutland.’
‘A farm in Jutland, huh?’ sneered Brad. ‘Why isn’t my pulse racing at the thought?’
‘I can’t read Danish either. But I know Tolmar’s secret has something to do with . . . Anastasia.’
‘Really? You’re sure he’s not Elvis Presley in disguise? The age would be about right.’
‘I don’t pretend to understand it. But it’s true.’
‘You’re saying Tolmar Aksden is related somehow to the daughter of the last Tsar?’
‘Yes.’
‘The one some mad old bat made a small fortune out of claiming to be?’
‘Anna Anderson. Yes.’
‘Anna Anderson. That’s right. Didn’t I catch some crappy mini-series about her on cable a few years back? Jane Seymour in the title role, maybe?’
‘Jane Seymour,’ said Gennady, sounding cheered by the mention of the name. ‘
Dr Quinn, Medicine Woman
. I love her.’
Brad rolled his eyes. ‘You know what? We don’t have time for this, we really don’t. Anastasia doesn’t push any buttons for me, sport. I think we’ll bypass the kicking-the-shit-out-of-you phase and cut straight to the bullet in the brain.’ His affable features suddenly twisted into something tight and vicious. He pulled a gun out of his coat pocket, stepped forward and pointed it at Eusden’s head. ‘Now is the moment to give me one good reason not to pull this trigger. Believe me, there won’t be another.’
‘F-Fingerprints.’ Eusden heard the stammer in his voice from some strange detached place where death was imminent and imaginable and not quite the disabling horror he had always supposed it would seem in such a situation. ‘You should have . . . found a set amongst the letters.’
Brad shook his head slowly and emphatically. ‘No fingerprints.’
‘They must be there.’
‘But they’re not.’
‘Hidden in the case maybe.’
‘Check it out, Vlad.’ Vladimir opened the case and turned it over. The letters fell out on to the bench and slewed across it. ‘Whose fingerprints are we looking for, sport?’
‘Anastasia’s. Taken in 1909, when she was eight years old. I’m in contact with a genealogist from Virginia who’s bought a set of Anna Anderson’s prints, taken in 1938. If they match, it would prove she really was Anastasia.’
Vladimir was tapping the case and peering at it like a sceptical theatre-goer invited to inspect the conjurer’s top hat. ‘
Nichivo
,’ he muttered, which Eusden suspected meant
Nothing
in Russian or Ukrainian – or both.
‘The proof would be worth a lot of money,’ Eusden pressed on, willing Brad to listen to him – and to believe him. ‘It’d be a worldwide sensation. You could name your own price.’
‘Sounds great. Just a pity we don’t have that proof.’
‘It’s got to be there somewhere. Let me look.’
‘Stay where you are. Vlad?’
Vladimir had laid the case on the bench and was prodding at the insides of the lid and base. He shook his head ominously.
‘It’s looking bad for you, sport.’
‘For God’s sake, let me—’
‘Wait,’ said Vladimir. ‘I think, yes, I think there
is
something.’ He flicked a knife out of his pocket and cut a slit in the lining of the lid. A creamy white envelope slid out into the body of the case. He stared down at it in a mixture of awe and amazement. Then, slowly and deliberately, he crossed himself.
‘What the hell is it?’
‘
Tsarski piriot
.’
‘
What?
’
‘See.’ Vladimir held up the envelope. The front was blank. But when he turned it round, there, clearly visible, embossed on the flap, was the black double-headed eagle of the Romanovs.
THIRTY-EIGHT
The envelope was unsealed. Inside was a single sheet of vellum notepaper. At its top was the same black double-headed eagle clutching an orb and sceptre. Beneath, neatly arranged, was a full set of fingerprints in red ink, left hand, then right. Below the prints, in black ink, someone had written
A.N. 4 viii ’09
.
‘What exactly is this, sport?’ demanded Brad. He held the sheet of paper up. He had put his gun back in his pocket, but Gennady still had his trained on Eusden.
‘The fingerprints of the Grand Duchess Anastasia, taken aboard the imperial yacht off Cowes on the fourth of August 1909.’ It was true, then, though Eusden could scarcely believe it. The prints were clearly those of a child and the date was right. A.N. was Anastasia Nikolaievna. Nearly a hundred years had passed since Clem had entertained the Tsar’s precocious youngest daughter with a demonstration of the British police’s most recent advance in the science of detection. Eusden could almost see the sunlight sparkling on the wave-tops in Cowes Roads and hear the blue-blooded little girl’s gleeful laugh. Clem had always had a way with children. ‘
This is how Scotland Yard keeps a track of those infernal anarchists, Your Highness. First one finger. Then the next
.’ ‘They were there for the regatta. The Tsar, the Tsarina and all their children. The King and Queen came down to—’