The Romanov succession

“If I’m challenged I’m prepared to testify that you and I are meeting right now to discuss your duties on your new assignment on the Soviet desk at War Department Intelligence. That’s your official roster duty, by the way, until you hand in your resignation.”

“My what?”

“We’ll get to that,” Buckner said. “This is a complex operation they’ve proposed. We’re going to need close liaison at all points. Your name was put forward by Prince Leon and his group-they said you were one of them and one of us at the same time, you’d be the ideal contact man.”

“What about you? What do you think?”

“I go along with them. It’s their operation.”

“From the way you’re talking I’m getting the feeling you’re making it yours. President Roosevelt’s.”

“It’s got to be a Russian operation. Led by Russians and manned by Russians exclusively. There can’t be a single American involved in it. We’ll provide support but it’s got to be invisible. You can understand that.”

“I might if I knew what it was.”

“I have to leave that up to your own people.”

“I’m an officer in the United States Army. You’re my people,”

“Not if you take this job on. You’ll have to resign your commission. That’s what I meant before.” Buckner smiled a bit ruefully; his smile laced crow’s feet around his eyes and gave him an outdoor look. “It won’t be a piece of cake, Colonel, but it could make you a mighty big place in history if that sort of thing impresses you.”

“Tell me this-who’s got the final authority over operational plans?”

“I’d hope we’d be able to take that on the basis of mutual cooperation. But the decision will have to be up to your people, ultimately. Frankly that’s one reason I’m pleased with this meeting. I have a feeling you and I should be able to work together pretty well.”

Buckner riffled the files in the open folder on his desk. “If your people blow the operation it’s their own neck. The United States had nothing to do with it. I hope they all understand that.”

“I’ll make sure they do.” It could affect their decisions; it might even cool them from the plan, if that seemed necessary. He felt handcuffed by ignorance: he had to contain his anger.

Buckner produced a typed letter-order. “You’re officially on thirty-day furlough as of now. Go to Europe, talk to them, get it all settled among you. Then come back and tell me what you’ve decided and we’ll get to work.” He handed it across the desk. “Don’t waste time. The war isn’t standing still for us. I’m going to book you on the diplomatic plane to Lisbon tomorrow afternoon.”

“You’d better make it two seats.”

It caused a momentary freeze. Buckner’s expression inquired of him; then it changed before Alex could speak. “The Countess. Sorry, I forgot.”

It was Irina’s mother who was the Countess but he didn’t take the trouble to set Buckner straight. “You don’t miss much, do you?”

Buckner had an ingratiating grin that showed a great many teeth. “Not when it counts. That’s what the President pays me for.”

Alex found himself liking the American despite his suspicions. Buckner didn’t have the secretive trappings that usually went with positions like his.

Buckner seemed to sense the line of his thinking. “You’re coming into this dead cold, aren’t you? It’s all brand new to you. I gather the Countess couldn’t tell you much about it.”

“No.”

“That’s a hell of a woman.” He was turning pages over; he paused at one. “This is your letter of resignation. You’ll decide whether you want to sign it-it’ll be waiting here when you get back from Europe.”

“You’re pretty confident. Otherwise you wouldn’t have had it typed up.”

“You’ll take the job,” Buckner said. “You’d be crazy not to.”

But Buckner didn’t know Vassily Devenko.

PART TWO:

August 1941

1

The assassin stood in shadow just within the fringe of the oaks. He could not be seen out of the sunlight-he was merely another dark vertical shape in the forest shadows with the heavier mass of the mountains looming above and behind him.

It was his last chance. He’d tried it and miffed it twice before. Blow it again and his employers would have his head in a basket. But he didn’t feel nervous on that account. If you had nerves you didn’t go into this game in the first place.

He held the 8x Zeiss glasses casually by their strap. At intervals he fitted the reticles to his eye sockets and studied the long motorcars arriving by ones and twos.

The villa a thousand meters below him was a restored seventeenth century ducal summer palace, erected recklessly in the foothills of the Pyrenees by an insensitive Bourbon during a time of Spanish decline and retrenchment. Its builder’s wealth obviously had exceeded his grasp of architectural unities: from the assassin’s angle of view it resembled a village of semidetached buildings haphazardly assembled at different times.