Fire Ice

37

ENGLAND

THIRTY-SIX HOURS LATER, Lord Dodson sat up suddenly in his leather chair, blinked the sleep out of his eyes and looked around at the familiar dark paneling of his study. He had dozed off reading a new biography of Lord Nelson. He muttered to himself. Sign of old age. Nelson's life was anything but boring.

A noise had jarred him from his slumber; he was sure of it. All was quiet now. Je

Great luminous clouds were moving across the moon and stars peeked out here and there. There was no wind. With his hand, he stirred the wind chimes outside the door. No, he thought, the tinkling sound they made wasn't what had awakened him. He went back into the house. As he shut the door, he froze at the ragged cracking noise from the kitchen.

Had Je

Dodson quietly went back into the study and removed the hunting rifle from above the fireplace. With trembling hands, he rummaged through a desk drawer until he found a box of shells. He loaded the rifle and made his way to the kitchen.

The light had been left on. He stepped inside, and his eyes went immediately to the broken window pane in the back door. The floor was littered with shards of glass. The sharp sound could have been someone walking on a broken piece of window. Burglars. Damned cheeky breaking into a house with somebody home. Dodson walked over to the door for a closer look. As he was bending over to examine the damage, he caught the reflection of movement in an unbroken pane.

He whirled around. A man had stepped out of the pantry, pistol in hand.

"Good evening, Lord Dodson," the man said. "Please give me your rifle."

Dodson was cursing himself for not checking the pantry first. He lowered the rifle and handed it over. "Who in the blazes are you and what are you doing here?"

"My name is Razov. I am the rightful owner of a valuable object that you have in your possession."

"Then you've made a big mistake. Everything in this house is mine."

The man's lips widened in a sardonic smile. "Everything?”

Dodson hesitated. "Yes."

The man took a step closer. "Come, Lord Dodson. It's not dignified for a proper English gentleman to be caught in a lie.”

"You'd better leave. I've called the police."

"Tut-tut. Another lie. I cut your telephone line after I had a little chat with your housekeeper."

"Je

"In a safe place. For now. But if you don't start telling the truth, I will have to kill her."

Dodson had no doubt the man meant what he said. "All right. What is it that you want?"

"I think you know. The crown of Ivan the Terrible."

"What makes you think I have this-what is it? Some sort of Russian crown, you say?"

"Don't try my patience with your futile bluff. When I failed to find the crown with the other tsarist treasure on the Odessa Star, I did what any experienced hunter does. I backtracked. The crown was with the tsar's family until they arrived in Odessa. But the tsarina had a premonition that she and her family would never complete their journey. She wanted to make sure that even if the family died, the crown would find its way to a surviving Romanov who would use it to reclaim the Russian throne. She entrusted the crown to an English agent."

"That would have been long before my time."

"Of course, but we both know that the agent was in the employ of your grandfather."

Dodson started to protest, but he could see it was indeed futile. This man knew everything. "The crown is nothing to me. If I give it to you, I must have your word that you will let my housekeeper go. She has no knowledge of any of this."

“I have no use for the old woman. Take me to the crown."

"Very well," Dodson said. "Follow me."

Dodson led the way to a hallway and opened the doors of a walk-in closet. He cleared out the winter jackets and other clothing hanging in the closet, then he pushed boots and shoes aside and stepped in. He lifted a section of floor and pressed a button set under the wood. The back wall of the closet slid noiselessly aside. Dodson turned on a light, and with Razov close behind, he descended a winding staircase made of stone blocks. They were in a stone-walled chamber about fifteen feet square. Rusty iron brackets stuck out of the walls.

"This is the original Roman cellar. They used it to store wine and vegetables."

"Spare me the history lesson, Lord Dodson. The crown." Dodson nodded and went over to a pair of brackets set in the wall. He twisted them both clockwise. "This is the unlocking mechanism." He ran his hands down the stones until his fingers found a depression. Then he pulled and a section of wall, actually an iron door faced with inch-thick stones, creaked open. Dodson stepped back. "There's your crown. Exactly where my grandfather put it nearly a hundred years ago."

The crown sat on a pedestal that was covered with purple velvet.

"Turn around and put your hands behind your back," Razov ordered.

He bound Dodson's hands and ankles with duct tape and pushed the Englishman down on the floor so that he sat with his back to a wall. Then Razov tucked his pistol in his belt and reached inside for the crown. It was heavier than he thought and he grunted with exertion as he hugged it to his chest.

The sparkle of the diamonds, rubies and emeralds covering the domed crown was matched by the glitter in Razov's greedy eyes.

"Beautiful," he whispered. "I always thought it was a bit gaudy myself," Dodson said.

"Englishmen," Razov said with contempt. "You're like your grandfather, a fool. Neither one of you could appreciate the power you held in your hands."

"On the contrary. My grandfather knew that with the tsar's family dead, the appearance of the crown would inflame passions and bring out any number of claimants, legitimate and otherwise." He looked pointedly at Razov. "Other countries would be drawn in. There would be another world war."

"Instead, we got more than half a century of communism."

"It would have come in time, anyway. The tsarist regime would have withered from corruption."

Razov laughed and placed the crown on his head. "Like

Napoleon, I crown myself. Behold, the next ruler of Russia."

"I only see a little man making a vulgar display of wealth."

Razov's serpent's eyes went flat. He cut another piece of duct tape and slapped it over Dodson's mouth, then he picked up the crown and climbed up the stairs. At the top, he paused. "You must have read Poe's 'The Cask of Amontillado.' Where the victim is sealed up forever? Perhaps someday your bones will be found. I leave you here in place of the crown. I'm afraid I must dispose of your housekeeper." He stepped through the closet door and into the hallway.

His hands were both full with the crown, so he didn't close the secret panel in the back of the closet. He would deposit the crown in the back of the car, come back and seal Dodson off for eternity, then kill the housekeeper and dispose of her body in the river.