The Romanov succession

He left the maids’ wing and went along the narrow hall to the front of the upper story; let himself out into the gallery and walked slowly past the head of the great stair, looking down into the foyer. It was quite unoccupied-every servant in the house had been called into the busy platoon in the dining hall.

He moved without sound along the rank of Romanov portraits. Midway along the gallery stood a small table supporting a half life-size bust of Peter the Great; he debated moving the table across the corridor but decided against it-there would be time to dodge around it. He went on to the drawing room door and stopped to listen: heard voices within but not the words. The oak was thick and sturdy.

He looked both ways along the corridor and lifted the Luger from his belt, testing the silencer to be sure it was screwed tight; locked his grip, flicked off the safety and lifted his left hand to knock.

14

Irina had not been able to single out the bald man in the dining hall until he called attention to himself by rising from a table across the room and walking toward the door behind him. She watched him talk to one of the waiters and she saw the waiter’s gestures; when the bald man nodded his thanks and went on through the door she settled back in her chair in relief.

It occurred to her a moment later that he would have behaved just that way if he had been trying to allay suspicion. And she remembered the dent in his jacket again.

Abruptly she excused herself from the table and hurried across the room. She went through the door into the corridor beyond it-but he had gone.

The nearest bathroom was just beyond the corner. She knocked and when there was no reply she tried the knob. The room was empty. Now her alarm was real and she was running toward the front of the villa. The end of the servants’ hall admitted her to the ballroom and a dozen surprised musicians stopped chewing their dinners to watch her run across the corner of the great room to the door beyond-the front gallery, past the statuary and across the foyer to the villa’s main entrance.

Sergei Bulygin stood just outside the door smoking a black Spanish cigarette. He came to attention when Irina appeared.

“Come along Sergei, I think there’s trouble upstairs.”

They had crossed half the length of the foyer when she heard the shouts above, the pound of running footsteps.

15

It had come without warning. They’d been getting down to details: Anatol had said, “Oleg, you must uncover your mysterious contact in the Kremlin.”

“I cannot. I have given him my word. His position is fragile there.”

Alex had suspected there had to be someone like that. Oleg had been tossing out bits of information that could only have come from a source inside the Soviet government.

Vassily said, “I will have to know who the man is-I have to be in touch with him.”

“I will not divulge it here. If you do not know his name you cannot drop it accidentally in the wrong places,” Oleg said and that was when there was a knock at the door.

Anatol was nearest and more agile than old Prince Michael; he went to the door and opened it unsuspectingly-you couldn’t talk through those doors without shouting-and then suddenly the door slammed back and Anatol was thrown off his feet and Alex saw the man with the gun.

All the old instincts sent him diving across the rug toward Vassily: “Down! ”

But Vassily was tired, his reactions had slowed and he didn’t understand the threat quickly enough-he hadn’t been facing the door.

Alex wasn’t across half the distance when the pistol chugged, muttering twice through its silencer.

The bullets hammered Vassily Devenko, spun him to one side in the chair; there was a gush of blood the color of death where the two slugs had torn into the heart.

He saw disbelief and anger in Vassily’s face. Rage drove him half to his feet and then the splendid body failed him and Vassily stumbled and fell back across the chair.

Alex exploded with an unthinking wrath. The doorway had emptied: the assassin hadn’t waited to see the results of his work. Alex leaped over Anatol and careened into the gallery and saw the assassin running toward the head of the stairs. There was a small stone bust on a stand: Alex scooped it up and hurled it and ran after, uncaring of the gun in the fugitive’s fist.

The stone bust caught the running man in the small of the back. It pitched him forward off balance and he caromed off the heavy bannister rail onto the stairs: he pitched out of sight, tumbling, legs flying and Alex had the angry satisfaction of hearing the pistol clatter loosely down the stairs. He ran full out…

He reached the head of the sweeping stair and checked himself against the rail and had a momentary tableau impression: the assassin lying awry across the steps, one foot high in the air; Irina staring in shock from the foyer below; huge old Sergei Bulygin reaching for the fallen pistol.

The assassin’s leg pivoted and he collapsed motionless against the bannister posts, his neck twisted at an acute angle.