The Romanov succession

“We’ll try to make it easy for him,” Alex said. “I’ll stagger my routine. I won’t follow any pattern from day to day except for one habit we’ll show him. Every morning at exactly half-past seven I’ll leave this house and walk through the back gate in the base fence and walk straight to the main hangar. He’ll be watching my movements. He’ll try to find a pattern and he’ll learn there’s only one time of day when he can anticipate where I’ll be-half-past seven in the morning, going from here to there on foot. That’s where he’ll try to kill me. It won’t be for two or three days, perhaps a week.”

“You must go armed of course.”

“I’ve got my pistols. I’ll wear them from this morning on.” They were a pair of British Webley. 45 revolvers he’d acquired from a captured Japanese lieutenant general in the mountains of Kansu Province. Once in the Shensi he’d nearly bought the farm when the hammer spring of his Smith amp; Wesson had broken at full cock and since then he’d carried two revolvers-revolvers because he had never trusted automatic pistols, they jammed too easily with a little mud or cold weather. He’d settled on the big. 45s because when you hit an enemy with them he went down and lost interest in fighting.

Sergei was assembling the Mannlicher mechanism and began to thumb cartridges into the Krag box. Alex watched him set the safety. “I’ve got an envelope I want you to keep for me.” He produced it. “Put it where it won’t be found. These are the plans for the operation. If I’m taken out they won’t have time to try to reconstruct my plans or devise new ones. If it happens you must get these plans to Prince Leon immediately.”

“I understand.”

4

Officers’ call was at nine. He was in the hangar by seven-forty, ready to go over the mound of papers that abstracted the regiment’s status: its personnel, its supplies, its readiness.

Tolkachev came strutting out of the office. He didn’t offer a greeting; just stood at attention waiting.

“Let’s go back to your office.” The leg twinged angrily when he strode past the Cossack.

He waited for Tolkachev to follow him into the cubicle. “Shut the door please.” There were enlisted men elsewhere in the hangar; it wasn’t for their ears.

Tolkachev shut them in. Alex stayed on his feet. He felt brittle. “We haven’t got room here for personal antagonisms. Are you prepared to work under my command?”

“I will not resign voluntarily from the regiment.”

“That’s not what I asked you.”

Finally Tolkachev said, “I have been adjutant here for nearly two years, sir.”

“You’ve been used to having it your own way here. You’ve been the operations man-General Devenko wasn’t to be bothered with the details of running a unit. And in the last few weeks you’ve got accustomed to being in command-there was no one here but you. That’s got to change. Can you accept that?”

“I would be willing to take orders…”

“But not from me, is that it?”

“I would prefer not to.”

“I commend your candor, Tolkachev.”

“I must resign then?”

“No. You’re a first-rate combat soldier. I’ve got a job for you.”

“I see.”

Tolkachev didn’t see-not yet. Alex said, “I’ll want the company rosters now.”

Tolkachev got them from the files. Alex spread the papers on the desk and stood leaning over them on his hands. He studied names: put faces to them from memory and summoned recollections of their talents and excellences. Here and there he checked off a name with the blunt point of a pencil.

When he’d done he had checked fifty-eight names and he withdrew from the desk. “I need forty more than I’ve marked.”

“For what purpose?”

“Combat skills and good minds. Russians only-no Poles.”

Tolkachev bent over the rosters. Alex left him alone until he’d finished and then went over it, the names he knew and the names he didn’t know, and he erased four or five of Tolkachev’s marks. When Tolkachev stiffened he said, “I’ve got to use my own judgment.” He glanced up and surprised a look of white-hot hatred on Tolkachev’s flat face. “Give me half a dozen more. I want the very best of them.”

Tolkachev did the job again and when Alex was satisfied he put the rosters aside. “All right. Now you’re going to have to reorganize the regiment. You’ll have to shuffle the assignments. These men whose names are checked off-I want them assigned to a special training company. They’re to have a barracks to themselves. Their officers will live in that barracks with them and there’s to be absolute security maintained at all times on that building.”

“Yes sir.”