Filipp looked down to find a plain chemise draped over his
chest. “My clothes,” he mumbled. “What have you done with them?”
“They’re here,” the nun assured him. “Disinfected, of
course.”
“What?” His heart beat hard enough to break his
ribs. What if the nuns had destroyed the Grand Duchesses’ letters?
The Great Father’s family asked one simple thing of him and now he might have
ruined it all. A sob gathered deep in his chest and he met Sister Marfa’s
gaze head-on. He did not trust this red-faced nun. “Do the sisters
still bring eggs to the Great Father and his family?”
Sister Marfa tilted her head, small gray eyes narrowed to
look like a cat’s. “They are no more,” she said smoothly.
Filipp scrambled to sit up. “What did you say?”
“They are gone,” she said, pressing him back down.
“But where have they been taken?”
“Nowhere you may follow.”
A cold sweat gathered along his breastbone and beneath his
hair. “What do you mean?”
“The guards told us our services were no longer
needed. We heard from no one for several days and then hell descended on
us.” She turned her hands into fists, clenched tightly at her
sides. “Guns and cannon fire raining smoke and noise upon us like the end
of days. The Bolsheviks had run away, and the White soldiers meant to
rule the town. They spent days banging on doors, looking for people,
dragging away some but not others.”
Filipp made his voice as hard as the knot in his
chest. “Where have the Great Father and his family been taken?”
Marfa smiled. “To the earth, maybe? No one can
say. Someone saw a bloody girl hauled up some stairs, another saw
soldiers digging a pit in the forest, some peasants say they saw two trains
pull from the station, going in opposite directions.” She shrugged.
“But anyone who thinks they saw something soon disappears. They do not
come back.”
He understood the warning in her words. “What is
happening to this place?”
“No one knows. God alone remembers Russia, and it is
only to visit plague upon us.”
“But surely you must have hope,” he said, voice rising to
make it a question.
“I have nothing but what He gives me.” Then she rose,
black robes falling about her like a waterfall. “You must rest. Someone
will bring you bread after vespers.”
He closed his eyes and pretended to obey until Sister Marfa
closed the door behind her. Then he threw back his woolen blanket and set
his feet on the floor, feeling his legs shake beneath him. He could not
wait for someone to bring him bread. They might have decided to turn him
in by then. There was a coldness in Sister Marfa’s eyes that he
remembered seeing other places—in the eyes of the guards surrounding the
Tsar. She was one of them, a Bolshevik.
His legs wobbled across the room to the wooden
wardrobe. The knobs turned to reveal his clothing, folded neatly on a
dusted shelf inside. He reached for the dull gray bundle and carried it
back to the bed, knowing he was too weak to stand and dress himself. He
lay back down and slipped the garments on, limb by limb. When he came to
the jacket, he reached inside the pocket and felt for the pieces of paper he’d
taken from the basket.
His thick fingers touched a pocketknife, his watch, a money
clip (money gone, of course), and…there, yes….a folded wad of paper. He
pulled it out to see if his thin attempt at disguising the contents had been
successful. Unfolding carefully, he spread each piece of paper to its
original size and sifted through them: market list, pharmacy receipt, letter
from his mother, and then…yes. The two torn pieces of paper from the
Grand Duchess, one covered with swirly writing, the other with a spidery,
slanted hand.
He said a silent prayer of thanks and returned the papers to
his pocket. There they would remain. He knew he had to take them
far from the people who had imprisoned the Tsar and his family.
His hand, pale and blue-veined, looked no different for
having been touched by the Grand Duchess. Still, he knew it was a sign
from God that he had been chosen. Even though he had failed to follow the
girls’ orders and post the letters immediately, God spared him from the fever
for a higher purpose. There was more he had to do, and he would be kept
alive long enough to do it. He remembered the words the Grand Duchess had
spoken in his ear and thanked God he had not yet committed them to paper.
His shaky fingers fastened the toggles on his peacoat.
If it was still summer, he would look ridiculous but he did not have the
strength to carry it. Overheated and underfed, he would simply claim to
be suffering from the fever—people would stay away.
Once he had the coat on, his fingers swept the seam of the
right-hand pocket, feeling for the hole. He found the spot where his
mother’s stitching had given way and slipped his finger through it.
There, between the lining and the wool, lay the ring that had come from the
hand of Grand Duchess Olga herself. He smiled and left it where it lay.
“Goodbye, Sister Marfa,” he said, arranging the pillows and
blankets to look as if he lay huddled beneath them. Then, without enough
strength to pull himself out of the window, he opened the casement and let
himself fall headfirst into the soft grass below.
July 2012
Moscow, Russia
Liliya’s sharp eyes canvassed Vadim’s legs from knee to
ankle. She pointed at the brown specks near the cuff of his slacks.
“You stepped in a puddle, didn’t you?”
Vadim hung up his raincoat in the foyer. “I just told
you someone tried to follow me home. Is that really the first question
you wish to ask?”
“Yes,” she snapped. “It’s harder to remove a stain
than it is to pull a trigger.”
“You may get to do both.”
Liliya raised an eyebrow. “Go change. I’ll wash
those pants while you entertain your granddaughter.”
Vadim obeyed and went to change into a sweatshirt and
jeans. He tried to clear his mind, hoping to give Marya at least a few
minutes of undivided attention.
The world will still be crashing down
around you in half an hour
, he thought.
You owe her that much.
He found her in the living room, entranced by a television
program featuring a pink puppet and a blue puppet devouring cookies at an
alarming rate. He watched her from the hallway, taking in the gentle halo
of blond hair tied up in two scrawny pigtails. Her feet dangled from the
sofa, encased in glittery pink socks. Sometimes he still had trouble
accepting how close they had come to losing her.
For six months last year, she’d lived with a foster family
while he scrambled to erase Liliya’s conviction for embezzlement. The
court-appointed case worker had not allowed Marya to live with him once she
realized who he was—spies made poor parents and worse grandparents, she
said. The case worker’s ruling had left him no choice. He had
mortgaged his soul to Valery Zyuganov, head of the Moscow Criminal Intelligence
Department, in return for Valery’s help circumventing the charges. Still,
because of the system’s impenetrable bureaucratic cogs, his granddaughter spent
her fourth birthday with strangers.
I will leave her something better
, he vowed.
I
will make a safer world for her to live in.
He swallowed thickly and
cleared his throat. “Hello, pumpkin.”
Marya flung herself off the couch and into his arms.
He felt the warmth of her tiny fingers as they squeezed his shoulders in as big
a hug as she could offer. “Your mother says I’m to entertain you while
she does my laundry,” he said.
Marya’s blue eyes widened to the size of saucers. “Can
I have a horsey ride? Please?”
“How did I know you were going to say that?” He got
down on his hands and knees and waited for Marya to climb onto his back.
She clutched his sweatshirt with hands that smelled of crayon, shrieking in
delight as he crawled through the room. He rounded the coffee table and
reared like an angry stallion at the footstool; experience had taught her to
hang on tight and she locked her ankles around his ribs. Her giggles and
shrieks brought a frown from Liliya in the kitchen, which he ignored.
When his left knee began to ache, he pulled up alongside the couch and gently
tipped her into the cushions. “That’s enough, my girl. You’ll have
me headed for the glue factory.”
From the kitchen, Liliya shushed him with a piercing
whistle.
“Not that horses have anything to do with glue,” he said
quickly. His eyes wandered to his laptop and he wondered if Constantine
or Viktor had checked in yet. Were they even still alive? “There’s
something I have to do,
lastochka
. Do you think you can finish
watching
Ulitza Sezam
by yourself?”
“Didn’t you just work all day? I want you to watch it
with me.”
“All right. We’ll watch together while I check on
something.”
He sat on the sofa and Marya settled herself at his side,
leaning her head against his arm. In his email, he found the first of the
bulk reports generated by the building sweep he’d ordered. Marya’s eyes
glazed over as she scanned the rows of numbers on his computer. “What are
you doing, Grandpapa?”
“Looking for something that’s difficult to find,” he said,
scanning the phone records.
“Can’t someone help you?”
“No, sweetheart. No one can.”
She patted his arm twice. “It’s okay to ask for
help. Mama said so.”
“Did she now?” Vadim glanced into the kitchen, where Liliya
dabbed at the spots on his pants with a sponge. “Your mother has learned
something, I see.”
He wondered if Liliya might be right. Valery Zyuganov
had helped him before...would he do it again? There was very little the
Director of Moscow’s Criminal Intelligence Department did not know. The
three of them, Vadim and Valery and Maxim Starinov, had come a long way since
their days together at Sokolniky’s School Number One.
He stood up and walked to the living room window overlooking
Patriarshy Prudy. From his third floor apartment he had an elevated view
of the calm pond and its lush surroundings. Night had dimmed the day’s
energy, leaving only quiet couples to linger on the wrought-iron benches,
holding hands and tucking heads into each other’s shoulders. God willing, Marya
would be one of them someday.
He tugged on the window’s velvet curtain, leaving a space
just wide enough to observe the street below. Then he reached for his
phone and dialed.
Valery answered on the second ring. “Hello,
Vadim. I hadn’t expected to hear from you. How is that precocious
daughter of yours? I hope prison wasn’t too tough on her.”
“You got her out before the worst of it and I will always be
grateful. But that isn’t why I called. I need to ask you something,
Valery. It’s important.”
“I can’t promise I’ll answer, but go ahead.”
“Why did Prime Minister Starinov send Vympel after one of my
men?”
The line fell silent.
“You know what I’m asking about,” Vadim continued.
“Why would he go to the trouble? Rumkowski couldn’t find the tsar’s
password and neither could Yeltsin. We’re all chasing something that
doesn’t exist. You know that.”
“It doesn’t matter what I know.”
“Then what does Starinov know? Why did he send Vympel
after my agent?”
“Jesus, Vadim, wake up. The man bombs his own subway
system to create sympathy for wars in Chechnya. If he thinks killing your
agent will get him what he wants, he’ll do it.”
“I need more, Valery. What do you know?”
Valery sighed. “Your boy is in trouble, Vadim.
Their orders are to kill him on sight.”
“Can you stop it?”
“It’s too late. It’s out of my hands.”
“Talk to Starinov.”
“And tell him what? That we think he’s wrong?
Men have died for less.”
Vadim scanned the row of cars parked on the street
below. He caught a flash of light inside one, as if someone sitting in
the driver’s seat had swiveled a phone to his other ear. “Tell him that
God condemns all acts of murder.”
“You and I know that God means nothing to the Prime
Minister.”
“That’s not what he told a certain President of the United
States.”
“He said what that silly man wanted to hear. You
didn’t imagine he believed it, did you?”
So many lies
, Vadim thought.
How will Marya
ever know whom to believe?
“I sent a second agent into the field,
Valery. I won’t stand by and see them killed by their own countrymen.”
“You don’t have a choice, Vadim. I suggest you take
comfort in the fact that your daughter and granddaughter have been returned to
you. It is the best that can be done. Kiss them goodnight for me.”
Valery hung up. At the very same moment, the bright
rectangle of light in the car below went out.
July 2012
San Francisco, California
The first thing she noticed was the tingling in her
arm. Hung off the edge of the bed, it wouldn’t move when she tried to
brush her hair out of her face. Natalie turned her head into the pillow
to shield her eyes from the bright morning sun. “Rise and shine,” called
a faintly accented voice.
Looking down, she saw the thin silver band linking her wrist
to the metal bed frame. “You handcuffed me?”
Constantine knelt beside her, dressed in a dark gray suit
and crisp white shirt. His short blond hair was carefully spiked, a
perfect imitation of the work-hard-play-hard bankers who populated the Financial
District during market hours. He held a mug of steaming coffee in
his hands. “Would you like some?” he asked. “I’m sorry about the
handcuffs. I couldn’t take the chance you would run away while I was
out.”