The Romanov succession

When the ambulance skittered across the frozen isthmus the ice was breaking up underneath and it wobbled badly, one rear wheel sinking into stuff that had gone soft as pablum. But the momentum carried it over the slush. Two fifty-five-millimeter salvos smashed up the lake behind them and he crabbed the ambulance to the left as quickly as he could without losing traction., They had two field guns in play as far as he could tell; both had an open field of fire as long as he remained within range. They didn’t have to hit him. All they had to do was punch a hole in the ice ahead of him-close enough so he couldn’t evade without skidding. The only answer to it was to keep doglegging-chasing salvos, trying to outwit the spotters.

Speed was his advantage and his hazard at the same time. On the ice every notch of speed meant that much less maneuverability. He was putting nearly a mile behind them with every full minute that elapsed but those guns could reach out six or seven miles and they still had plenty of time to stop him. Four minutes was an eternity in a race like this.

Ice lies thinnest along the bank. Out over deep water it was thickest and could absorb great impacts without shattering. The guns were firing a random mixture of armor-piercings and high explosives but now the armor-piercings simply drilled straight through, leaving holes no bigger than the fist-sized diameter of the shells that punched them; and the HEs dug powdery craters in the surface but no longer broke them through to the water beneath. When a shell exploded dead ahead of him Alex knew he didn’t have time to turn and he trusted to chance and the strength of the ice: he accelerated right into the blinding rain of crystals. The ambulance slammed violently through the crater and bounded up over the far lip of it; came crashing down on all four wheels and kept right on going with slush oiling down the windscreen. Sergei reached up and cranked the wipers back and forth to clear it. Alex caught the old man’s defiant grin.

Too many of those and she could break an axle but they had a chance now. The guns were elevating steadily: the next one hit well out ahead of him and slightly to the right. He bent his course to veer around the far-right-hand side of the crater while the next salvo of HEs blew geysers in the ice considerably to the left. He steered straight this time because they’d expect him to chase back to the left and they’d be waiting for that. The next two drilled holes to his left again but still he didn’t change course. He waited until the next salvo-a neat bracket, one on either side and a bit behind him-and then he jinked to the left: a random move on impulse. It threw them off again and now the shells were falling behind. going wide; six miles and the spotters couldn’t see him very well. The ambulance was a small white object moving very fast against a blinding white background: at best they only had him in sight intermittently.

One at a time the two field guns gave it up. Sergei sat up and mischievously poked a finger through a hole torn in his coat sleeve by a Bolshevik bullet. “Magnificently done, my general.”

Maybe thirty miles in an arc across the ice now: they’d be at the Finland shore. He began to let himself relax. Another mile to be sure they were out of range and he’d stop and check the back for casualties.

It came without warning. He hadn’t thought to check the sky. He didn’t know the plane was there until the strafing tracers rattled a stitched line across the ice, walking the bullets right up to the speeding ambulance. He tried to take evasive action but it was much too late. He heard the diving whine of the aircraft. He felt it when the fifty-calibers shredded a rear tire; the ambulance dropped down on the rim and began to circle blindly like a half-crushed beetle. The jacketed bulletstore into the body of the ambulance and they were screaming in the back compartment and then the other tire blew and something broke apart and she was skidding to a stop, mangled and dead on the ice.

Sergei had taken a bullet and there was blood all over his coat-it looked like an arm wound; he showed his teeth. Alex heard the plane whining and when he looked up through the windscreen it was at the top of its turn, coming back for another pass: diving for the kill.

12

She stood on the tarmac watching the main gate. The wind was cruel-dry and frigid; puffs of powder snow blew across the runway. The only sounds were the footfalls of the Finnish sentries as they moved back and forth to keep warm and the growl of the diesel generator behind the control tower.

Prince Leon came to her from the building behind her. He leaned heavily on his cane; his face was deeply trenched by exhaustion and the emptiness of defeat. “We shall have to go soon.”

“Go where?”

“I do not know, Irina. Back to Spain I suppose, where else can we go? You will catch a chill out here, you must come inside.”