Grigori looked into his grandson’s eyes and saw only
anger. The boy missed his father, but without an outlet, the grief was
eating him alive. He didn’t know how to let go. Grigori mourned
Alexander, too, but he never lost sight of his family’s destiny.
He released the boy’s arm and watched Yuri pedal furiously
down the block. For the first time, he forced himself to think about what
would happen if Yuri could not be trusted. What if, when the time came,
Yuri betrayed them?
Perhaps it is time for a test
, he thought. He
would wait for Yuri to grow up, and he would try to trust his reckless
grandson. But not even a blood connection would blind him to the purpose
of his sacred task—protecting the Tsar’s secret. There was only one thing
he could think of that would test Yuri’s devotion and keep Nicholas’s secret
safe.
He left the bike ramp on the lawn and went into the house,
wondering where he had put his wife’s old books and calligraphy pens.
July 2012
San Francisco, California
Natalie pulled the covers over her head and squeezed her
eyes shut. She dreaded telling Constantine and Viktor the truth—they had
been sent here for nothing. It was all a hoax. Just thinking about
it made her want to cry. The Romanov letters, had they been real, were
worth dying for. They’d given her a purpose, which was more than any of
her shrinks had been able to do. For one shimmering moment, however
brief, she’d known something no one else in the world could know. Now it
was gone and she had nothing. She put a hand over her breast, where the
velvet pouch lay tucked inside her bra. The family’s possessions were
sacred to her and she had no intention of leaving them behind.
Sleep refused to come. Belial was restless, too,
drumming his fingers against her brain until it felt like a herd of horses
stampeding through her head.
Something’s not right
, he said.
Something’s not right.
After an hour of tossing and turning, she gave up.
“Fuck it,” she said as she flung back the covers. If she rummaged through
the other bags Viktor had brought back, maybe she’d find more vodka.
There was no other way to get Belial to calm down.
She swung her feet off the bed and stopped. Something
was
wrong. There was a strange noise in the hallway—light footsteps in rapid
succession that stopped just outside the door, followed by a series of metallic
clicks.
Belial paused.
What’s that noise?
She heard a latch click open across the hall, followed by
the abrasive whir of an air conditioner. The noise didn’t go away because
the door didn’t close.
They were just standing there, waiting.
“Viktor,” she whispered. “Viktor, wake up!”
The first blast shot out the deadbolt and a chunk of the
doorframe. A second destroyed the electronic lock. Viktor woke
instantly, flailing in the chair and diving for cover.
The intruders kicked in the door and stormed the room,
shadowy bodies silhouetted by the hallway’s flickering fluorescent light.
Viktor raised his pistol and fired. Constantine, slower to react, sat up
in bed and reached for the pistol on the nightstand. He fired and one of
the black-clad figures groaned and fell backward. Another one dropped to
the floor and crawled on his belly toward her.
Fight him
, Belial ordered.
I’ll help you.
From the bed, she kicked out at the dark, crouched
figure. Her heel caught his face, but he recovered quickly, grabbing her
ankle and pulling her to the floor. Her tailbone slammed against the thin
carpet and she cried out.
Hit him with the box
, Belial directed.
It’s
useless for anything else.
Her fingers swept beneath the bed, reaching for the
box. She swung it against the attacker’s head, but the corroded metal did
little damage.
That just made him angry. Perhaps you’d better let
me handle this?
Belial gave her no time to respond. He rose to his
feet, pressing against her skull with enough force to split it in half.
When he spread his wings, her vision went black. She screamed with
a rush of pain and fear.
Belial’s energy animated her, moving her body as he willed
it. All her senses had gone dark, leaving only a thick blackness and a
pulsing electric hum. Her arms and legs carried her toward the attacker
instead of away from him. She screamed at Belial to stop, but her voice
echoed inside her hollow body.
Belial made a fist and slammed it into the attacker's
face.
His rage blazes forth like fire and the mountains crumble to
dust in his presence!
The Lord is good!
Natalie felt a dim ache, centered on her jaw. The
attacker had struck back. Instinctively, she told her body to pull away
but it did not obey her. Her synapses refused to carry her
commands. Belial had turned them all off.
The one who has stolen what was set apart for destruction
will himself be burned with fire!
Belial moved her up and down. Sensations reached her
in their dimmest form, long after they had actually happened. Something
wet blanketed her face and hands. She imagined it was blood.
And the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake
of fire and brimstone!
Now he was having fun. She felt it. There was
something thick and heavy at her feet that did not move.
Then she felt herself being lifted. She squirmed,
trying to crawl away from whatever had her in its grip.
No
, she
screamed inside.
Belial, let me go!
Suddenly, one voice made its way through the black fog
shrouding her head. “Natalie! Natalie, look at me! Are you
all right?”
Her body jerked uncontrollably, like falling from a cliff in
a dream. The pulsing hum in her brain vanished and her eyelids flew open
as she gasped for air. Everything hurt: her hands, her face, her
head.
“Are you all right?” Constantine asked. His anxious
face hovered next to hers, red-veined eyes wide and unblinking.
“What happened?” The movement of her lips and throat
sent waves of pain through her skull and she moaned.
“Vympel. They took Viktor and box. Good God,
what did they do to you?” He tilted her head to the side and touched her
jaw. Lightning bolts of pain shot out from the place his finger touched.
“It’s nothing. You’re hurt, too.” The dressing taped
over his wound was saturated with blood.
“I’ll be fine. Natalie, what happened?
You…weren’t yourself.” He dropped her gaze and looked at the floor, as if
he were still trying to find an explanation other than the obvious.
“Belial,” she said, holding down a wave of nausea. “It
was Belial, not me. I couldn’t control it.” She looked down at her
red, scraped knuckles and felt tears gather in her eyes. “I didn’t want
to. I told him to stop, but he wouldn’t.”
Constantine pulled her into his arms. “Hush,
vozlyublennyi
.
You’re all right. I was afraid they would take you, too, but they gave up
once they had Viktor.”
“Why did they take him?”
Constantine’s blue eyes narrowed, taking on a shade of gray
she hadn’t seen before. “I don’t know. But we have to get him
back. And we have to get out of here before your police show up.”
Three dead bodies lay on the floor, two near the door with
bullet wounds and one at the foot of her bed. The man’s face was a pile
of red mush. Bile rose in her throat and she felt like she would throw
up.
Belial, I won’t forgive you for this
, she thought.
This
was you, not me.
Constantine slipped back into his wrinkled, bloodstained
shirt and gathered up the rest of the Walgreens bags Viktor had bought.
He took her hand and pulled her down the stairwell to the parking lot,
populated by less than a dozen cars. The Monte Carlo was untouched.
They got in without speaking. Natalie handed Constantine
the screwdriver and Constantine started the car. He revved the engine
once then took off down the street, passing an ambulance and police car headed
for the motel. Natalie held her breath until they had gone several
blocks, toward the freeway entrance. “Where are we going?” she
asked.
Constantine’s profile, illuminated in yellow streetlight
glare, looked sharper than she remembered it. “I don’t know yet.”
“Are they taking him back to Russia?”
“Maybe. It depends what those letters say.” He made
a fist and punched the steering wheel, honking the horn. “I should have
copied them. God, I was so stupid.”
“The letters are fake,” she said softly, clenching her
folded hands in her lap.
“What?”
“Yuri must have made them himself. That paper didn’t
come from the Ipatiev House.”
“How do you know that?”
“They ran out of paper,” she said, feeling a thick sob clog
her throat. “They had to recycle or slit blank pages from their
books. The real thing would either have a super-straight edge, after
being cut with scissors, or a jagged one from being torn out of a hand-sewn
binding.”
“So this was all for nothing?”
She felt a tear slide from her left eye to her cheek.
“I didn’t want this to happen. I’m sorry.”
His foot pressed the gas pedal to the floor and he merged
onto the freeway at a hundred miles an hour. “Why the hell didn’t you
tell me?”
“I couldn’t sleep so I got up to read the letters. It
was already too late. It wouldn’t have changed anything.”
But as soon as she said the words, she knew they were all
lies. What if she’d woken the men once she’d made her discovery?
What if they’d left immediately? Vympel would have found an empty
room.
Belial sighed.
It’s true. This is all your
fault, little one.
“Haven’t you done enough?” she snapped. She turned in
her seat and sifted through the plastic bags. When she found the second
bottle of vodka, she opened it and began drinking.
Is this how you thank me for saving your life?
“You killed someone, Belial,” she said. “With my
hands. I’m going to drink this whole bottle if that’s what it takes to
make you go away.”
Constantine gripped the wheel with angry white
knuckles. “He’s talking to you, isn’t he?”
Natalie nodded, helpless, and raised the vodka bottle.
I was going to tell you the truth about those letters,
little one. But if you’d rather sulk and drink yourself into a
stupor…
Natalie jerked the bottle from her lips, spilling some down
her chin. “What truth?”
I thought you wanted me to go away.
“Belial, what truth?”
The Grand Duchesses’ signatures matched. You said
it yourself. Under what conditions are a forger’s best works produced?
She thought about it, imagining herself as the forger.
Then it hit her. “Belial, you’re kidding, right? You wouldn’t make
me think it if it weren’t true, would you?” But he didn’t answer.
He simply folded his wings and crouched down beneath them, silent and
immobile. “Tell me, you winged asshole!”
“Natalie,” Constantine said. “What the hell’s going
on?”
“We still have a chance.” She felt her heart quicken
inside her rib cage. “Turn the car around.”
July 2012
Moscow, Russia
The sun had not yet set, but the blue velvet curtains in
Prime Minister Maxim Starinov’s office had been drawn for hours. He
preferred darkness to light. Light gave hope to people who came to ask
him for things, and he wanted them to know that nothing in Russia would help
them get what he would not give.
The wood-paneled walls held portraits of Ivan, Peter, Lenin,
and Stalin: the great men who had made Russia fearsome in the minds of
her enemies. He would be another like this, an uncrowned Tsar who gave
Russia back to herself after her brief, sloppy affair with Western-style
capitalism.
Starinov turned his attention to the stack of folders
sitting on his desk. Each contained a dossier on an active FSB
agent—name, photo, and biographical sketch. Periodically it became
necessary to sort the wheat from the chaff, or even the wheat from the
wheat. It mattered less who was sorted than that the sorting be
done. Without fear, men became lazy.
He picked up a pen and glanced through the dossiers.
If he read something that displeased him, he drew a slash across the photo and
tossed it to the floor. One by one, he made his way through the stack,
spending no more than a few seconds on each. When he was through, the man
sitting quietly in the corner would gather the discarded files and pass them on
to Vympel.
Starinov picked up the last file and held back a
smile. “Galen Ibrahimovich Popov,” he read, waiting for the man in the
corner to comment. The agent in question was one of his; surely he would
not let his own perish without offering a trade.
“Not him,” the man said quickly.
“Popov’s last three attempts at recruitments have
failed. He is useless.”
“He is my brother-in-law. I brought him into the
agency.”
“I see,” Starinov purred. “Well, I suppose I can offer
you a bargain. Popov can be spared if you give me another name.”
The man pressed his lips together. Beads of sweat
gathered within the fine hairs of his neatly trimmed moustache. To his
credit, the man held eye contact as he processed his options.
“Time is short,” Starinov pressed. “And I wish to
retire for the evening.” He held the pen in his right hand, poised to
make the final stroke. “What is your answer?”
The man’s mouth opened just as the phone rang.
Starinov glared at the blinking red light on the
console. “I am not through with you,” he said, leaving his pen uncapped
on the desk. He picked up the handset, watching the man in the corner
shift uncomfortably in his chair.