“We’re going to go to the elevator like one big happy
family,” Viktor said, pistol in hand. “Down to the garage and into the
G55. Con, you’ll go first, hands on your head. Ivan will follow and
shoot you if you do anything he finds disagreeable. Ladies, you’ll follow
Ivan. If you try to run, I’ll shoot you in the leg. It won’t be
fatal, but it will hurt like hell.”
“Wait,” Beth said. “We need to bring some of that
vodka, for Natalie.”
“I’ve already got some in my purse,” Natalie said.
“May I have it back?”
Viktor grabbed the bag from the mahogany desk and tossed it
to her. “By all means, take it and drink absolutely everything in it once
we’re in the car. I don’t want to hear any more of this avenging angel
rubbish.”
“Is it because you’re scared of the angels or of me?”
“Both,” Viktor said. He nudged Constantine’s arm with
his gun. “Go.”
They proceeded out of the blood-spattered office and Viktor
closed the door behind them. He could hear Natalie whispering a prayer,
the traditional Psalm 23. He put his arms on his head and marched back
down the marble hallway, pausing at the elevator. Ivan reached around him
and pressed the “down” button with the muzzle of his gun.
When the elevator opened, Constantine moved all the way to
the back, knowing Viktor would never allow him to remain there. It was
standard Stealth procedure: get into the elevator first, wait for your
enemy to follow, grasp the handrail in back and use it to balance yourself for
a kick, striking your opponent above his ear, preferably with steel-toed boots.
“Goddamn it, Con,” Viktor barked. “How stupid do you
think I am?”
Constantine tried to look chagrined. He moved forward
and stood next to the control panel as the rest of the group filed in.
Viktor placed himself at the rear, with the women in front of him, facing the
doors. Ivan stood in front of them, his gun jammed into Constantine’s
back. When the polished metal doors closed, Constantine could see each of
their reflections. He watched Natalie take her sister’s arm and squeeze
it.
She knows
, he thought.
I don’t know how, but she
knows.
Ivan punched the button for the garage and the elevator
descended. There was a pause as it landed on the correct floor and
settled. Then, in the space of a single breath, the doors slid open and
Constantine ducked.
From the ground, he snatched Ivan’s ankle and jerked him to
the floor. The Vympel man hit the ground heavily, head slamming onto the
grooved metal strip separating the elevator shaft from the concrete garage
floor.
“Run!” Natalie cried, shoving Beth forward out of the
elevator.
Viktor raised his gun and aimed at the fleeing women.
Constantine reached for Viktor’s legs, pulling hard enough to force his shots
off course. Then he catapulted to his feet, grabbed Viktor’s head, and
slammed it into his upraised knee.
He wrenched Viktor’s gun from his hand and used the butt to
whack Viktor’s skull as hard as he could. Beneath him, Ivan rolled into
his feet, trying to rise, but one kick to the head left the man
motionless. “That was for Marya,” he said.
Then he heard a terrified scream from Beth. He
sprinted around the corner to see Natalie wrap her arms around her sister,
shielding her from the two men firing on them from the guard station.
Constantine fired back, catching one guard in the chest. The other ducked
back into the booth.
“Natalie!” he yelled, sprinting to catch up to the
women. “Jump the gate and run. The car is thirty meters down the
driveway, parked on the frontage road, unlocked.”
Her frightened eyes met his. “What about you?”
“I’m right behind you. I just need to borrow
something. Go!” He pulled her to him for a quick, fierce kiss and
then shoved her toward the gate.
He made for the booth, swiping the M2 from the dead guard’s
hand and rolling past the entry, aiming his shots inside. He waited for
the grunt that indicated a hit and rolled in the opposite direction, spraying
the booth with more fire. There was another grunt and then silence.
Constantine popped out of his crouch and approached the booth.
The guard’s feet were outstretched in his field of vision, but he didn’t know
if the man was incapacitated or luring him into a trap. He aimed at one
of the feet and shot. The bullet went straight through—no movement, no
groan, no nothing. He wiped the sweat from his brow and went into the
booth.
It held just what he’d expected. He shoved Viktor’s
bureau-issued Walther into his waistband and grabbed the SR-2 from the gun rack
beneath the monitor bay. Clutched in the dead man’s grip was an M2 pistol.
He took it, along with the clip on the dead guard’s belt.
He hesitated once, pausing long enough to look back over his
shoulder. Before that morning, he never would have believed he could
leave Viktor behind. But everything was different now and he had only
himself to blame. He vaulted over the garage gate and ran toward Natalie
and the Volga.
*
“Where was Viktor going to take us?” Natalie asked.
She sat beside him in the front seat with Beth perched in the back, leaning
forward to look out the front window. The women made an eerie sight, both
of them spattered with blood and streaked with tears.
“I don’t know,” Constantine said. He pressed the gas
pedal, urging the Volga toward the Transportnoye Koltso. He glanced from
mirror to mirror, waiting for the armor-plated Mercedes to come flying up
behind him. “But as long as we’re in Moscow, Starinov will keep sending
Vympel after us.”
“What do we do?” Beth asked. Her voice was hoarse with
fear and unshed tears. When she brought her hand up to grasp Natalie’s
headrest, he saw it shake. “Should Nat and I go to the embassy?”
“No. They’d send you to the airport with an armed
escort, but all Starinov has to do is wait until they put you on the plane and
then pull it off the runway.”
“So we’re sitting ducks.”
“Wait.” Natalie reached out and put her hand on his
arm. “Can we get to London? If we unlock the account first, it’s
all over. Starinov won’t have a reason to hurt anyone else.”
He smiled at her. “I asked Vadim to arrange a flight
for us before I came after you.”
“Oh my God,” she said. “It’s really going to
happen. We’re really doing this, aren’t we?” Her hand stayed on his
arm, squeezing slightly.
“Wait a sec,” Beth said. “The account really
exists? Are you sure?”
Natalie nodded. “There are pencil markings on both
girls’ letters that say ‘Bank of England’ and ‘Soloviev.’”
Beth wrinkled her nose. “Soloviev? What does
that douchebag have to do with it?”
“I don’t understand,” Constantine said, swerving past a
clunking, smoke-spewing Lada. “Who is this Soloviev?”
“Boris Soloviev is Rasputin’s son-in-law,” Natalie
explained. “I never would have picked him, Beth, but it makes sense,
doesn’t it?”
“No, it doesn’t. Soloviev’s the one who fucked it all
up. He took money, promised to set up an escape for that poor family, and
absolutely nothing happened. Hell, some of the sources even claim he’s a
double agent.”
Constantine cleared his throat. “I’m confused.
He was a double agent for the Soviets?”
“I don’t think anyone knows that for sure,” Beth said.
“The guy was a liar, and official records from that time are so spotty that
it’s impossible to prove it one way or the other.”
“Look,” Natalie added, “we know Boris Soloviev married
Rasputin’s daughter, Maria—that’s his Romanov connection. We also know he
was a dick. Maria wrote that she didn’t trust him, even though she was
married to him. That doesn’t mean he didn’t do one good deed.”
Constantine frowned. “But how did he get the money?”
“He followed the Romanovs to Tobolsk and then Ekaterinburg,
the two places they were imprisoned after they left St. Petersburg.
That’s when their friends and employees tried to slip them money.”
“What did they need money for? I thought the tsar was
richer than God.”
“Before World War I, he might have been. But the war
drained most of the treasury and his personal fortune. When Nicholas
abdicated in 1917, most of the things he considered his personal property
became the property of the state.”
Beth leaned forward. “It’s like a divorce. Imagine
being married to the richest man in the world for, oh, 300 years, and then
having to go through and separate your stuff, his stuff, and the community
property. It’s a pain in the ass.”
“So his assets were frozen and he was short on cash,”
Constantine said.
“Exactly,” Natalie agreed. “And once the Soviets took
over the government, they eventually decided Nicholas and his family should pay
for their own upkeep during exile. So they barely had enough money to
eat, let alone plan an escape or a more comfortable exile in another country.”
“And this Soloviev guy, possibly a double agent, followed
them into exile. Then what?”
“He acted as a go-between between the Romanovs and the
people who wanted to give them money. But he was also a world-class
dickweed who ended up pocketing most of the money…or so we all thought.”
She stopped to take a breath. “Beth, what if Soloviev didn’t steal
anything? What if he put that money in the bank, anticipating the day the
imperial family was rescued and needed money to support themselves?”
Beth bit her lip. “It’s vaguely possible.
Soloviev’s father was the treasurer of the Holy Synod. He might have been
able to make contact with bankers and financiers by dropping his father’s
name.”
“Plus, if the account isn’t under a Romanov name, the bank
holding the money can deny it has any Romanov property without telling a lie.”
“But when did Soloviev do it? And how?”
“I don’t know,” Natalie said, shaking her head. “It
must have been after Tobolsk. Remember Yaroshinksy?”
“You’re losing me again,” Constantine said. “Who is
Yaroshinsky?”
“A businessman who gave the Romanovs 175,000 rubles in 1917,
but they never got all the money. That must be what Soloviev started the
account with.”
Beth grabbed the backs of his and Natalie’s seats.
“But Soloviev didn’t go to England, you guys. He never left Russia.
He even got arrested at one point, didn’t he?”
Natalie nodded. “In early 1918. It doesn’t mean
he didn’t sneak out of the country before that or send someone else, pretending
to be him.”
“This still doesn’t make sense,” Beth said. “Even if
we tally up all the money Soloviev collected from royalists, we’re not talking
that much. Maybe half a million rubles total? Why are we being
hunted down by lunatics and murderers over half a million defunct tsarist
rubles?”
“There must be more,” Constantine said. “Starinov
wouldn’t care about half a million rubles. What happened to the rest of
Nicholas’s money?”
“It evaporated,” Beth replied. “Whatever survived the
war effort got destroyed by post-war inflation or confiscated by the Soviets.”
Natalie pressed her fingers to her temples. “There’s
more,” she said. “There has to be.”
“Wait,” Beth continued. “Even if there are hundreds of
millions of rubles we’re missing, how does a Russian walk into the Bank of
England in 1918 with boatloads of cash and not end up in front of Lloyd
George? The Russian government owed England big time—they were behind on
war supply payments. Wouldn’t someone have raised a red flag?”
“They must have got around it.”
“How?” Beth chided. “With a hall pass?”
Natalie sat up straight and clutched the seat bottom.
“The Romanov girls passed notes to their friends on the outside whenever they
could. Why couldn’t Nicholas or Alexandra slip something out to
Soloviev? Something he or his representative took to England to set up
the account.”
Beth snorted. “This is hairy, Nat.”
“Not if there’s an inside man who can connect the bank, the
king, and the tsar. Think, Beth.”
Constantine felt their eyes on him and sighed. “Don’t
look at me. I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Natalie turned to face her sister. “You know who I’m
talking about, right?”
“Jesus, Nat, are you saying what I think you’re saying?”
The sisters looked at each other, the same tentative smile
playing on their lips. “Bark,” they said in unison.
July 2012
Moscow, Russia
Starinov slammed the phone down and swore, anger radiating
throughout his body. What was wrong with the world? Why was there
no one in it who could follow simple orders? Viktor had failed him badly;
the American women and Dashkov were gone. Primakov’s niece was dead, as
were three Vympel men. Viktor hadn’t been able to give chase and now the
letters and the captives were loose in Moscow. Even if he marshaled every
man and woman in the FSB office, it could be days before they were found.
Still, there was only one way they could get out of the
country. Whether the women fled back to the U.S. or they went after the
tsar’s money in London, Primakov was the only agency head not loyal to him who
had the authority and reach to get them out of Russia. Stopping their
escape was as simple as stopping Vadim from helping them.
It will be my word against theirs
, he thought.
Who
will he believe?
Starinov looked up at his portrait of Ivan the Terrible and
smiled. Ivan, he remembered, was the one who had commissioned St. Basil’s
Cathedral. When the glorious cathedral was finished, Ivan summoned the
architect and asked him to describe his achievement. The proud architect
called it the most beautiful cathedral ever built. Ivan agreed, showered
the man with praise, and ordered the man’s eyes put out. If the architect
capable of such greatness were blinded, he would never build another, more
glorious cathedral for a local
boyar
. Ivan knew how to possess and
keep beauty.
I, too, know how to keep what’s mine
, Starinov
thought.