The Romanov succession

After the longest time she palmed the hair back from her temples. “Darling, take me to bed and hold me in your arms. I don’t want to talk any more tonight.”

8

In the morning she was watching him with a drowsy expression that told him she wasn’t quite awake enough to be sure whether she wanted him to make love to her. But she was enjoying the way his eyes traced the contours of her nakedness.

“I don’t suppose you realize what time it is.”

“Quarter to seven,” he said. “The men have been up for two hours.”

“How inexcusably uncivilized.” She yawned and stretched and sat up; she looked somehow bruised by the daylight when he threw the curtains back. He stood to one side in the shadows and swept the Scottish scrub with an alert scrutiny. Two sentries stirred at the gate and a solitary guard marched along the fence farther down. Beyond the bleak military buildings the highlands lifted in faint craggy tiers into a mist the color of the North Sea. A pale disc of sun rode low above the headlands in a grey overcast and he saw gulls beating their way toward the glint of food. A low haze covered the green-grey earth and the tufts of weedy bushes were indistinct along the flatlands tilting toward the sea. The air had that heavy sweetness that landsmen called the smell of the sea and sailors called the smell of land.

If there was a gunman he was well hidden and in any case it was a poor light for shooting. Nevertheless he closed the curtains before he turned back to Irina and bent over the bed. She gave him a soft-lipped kiss and when he straightened he watched for her quick slanting glance of mockery which was the next thing to a smile but she was looking at the bandage on his thigh. Then she tipped her head back and searched his eyes with an odd intensity.

He began to get into his fatigues. Irina propped both pillows behind her, drew her knees up and leaned forward. She was hunching her shoulders together, pressing her breasts against each other as if to suffocate something.

He sat on the edge of the bed to pull on his socks; he felt her hand on his arm. “What?”

“Nothing. I only wanted to touch you.”

“You’ve got such a strange look on your face, Irina.”

She wet her lips with the tip of her tongue. “May I stay, Alex? Is there something useful I can do here?”

“It would be better if you went back.”

“Why?”

“The rest of them are confined to barracks and the training areas. They’d resent it.”

“Is that the only reason?”

“I’d want to spend the evenings with you-the nights.”

“Yes.”

“There isn’t time for it.”

“Doesn’t it help, knowing you’ve got someone who cares what happens to you?”

“Of course it does.”

“I want to be here, Alex. I want to watch it take shape. I’ve got a stake in this.”

He threaded his belt through the loops, waiting for her to come out with it.

She said. “There were a lot of Free Poles in the brigade. Auchinleck was putting together a great deal of human flotsam to hold back the Afrika Korps. The Poles volunteered to fight in North Africa. Vassily didn’t like desert warfare-he was toying with some silly idea of taking the rest of the regiment back to China. Then Leon told him about this project and naturally it galvanized him-he forgot about China. But this scheme wasn’t Vassily’s idea. And it wasn’t Leon’s.”

It hit him and he turned slowly, adjusting to it, absorbing it.

Bitterness bubbled to the surface and Irina said, “I couldn’t trust anyone but Leon to listen to me. The rest of them-even my father-I knew they’d turn me aside. They’re not in the habit of listening to a woman’s ideas,”

She combed the hair away with her fingers and tossed it back. “Do you know how long ago it came to me? It was when the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was signed. A week before Hitler invaded Poland. Almost two years ago. I knew one of them would violate the pact-one of them would attack the other and that would be our chance.

“The whole conception was mine, darling. The coalition, the design for a new government, the choice of Felix to be the figurehead. Dear old Leon saw the possibilities at once. We’ve worked together ever since. We had to think of every objection-we had to have an answer for everything.”

She watched him without guile but he took his time thinking it out.

She said, “May I stay now?”

“I can’t refuse you, can I.”

“No.” she said. “I planned it that way, don’t you see?”

He buckled the holsters flat against his waist and when Sergei locked the bolt of the Mannlicher rifle Alex opened the door and went through it quickly. Walking down the short driveway and across the narrow highway he had time to survey the barrens on either side. Sergei was back there in the corner of the house with two windows to observe through and if anything stirred in the brush Alex would hear the pane shatter when Sergei’s rifle moved.