The Romanov Succession

Sergei said, “The General Vassily Ilyavitch was not yet at the villa when I left. He is expected.”

“Yes,” Alex said. He turned and found Irina’s face deathly calm, chiseled in profile.

Sergei turned the car smoothly toward a massive open gateway. Flashbulbs erupted around them and Irina stared without expression past the photographers: they were beneath her recognition. They angered Alex-petty mongrels scrambling for scraps-but he didn’t let it show. A guard waved Sergei through and when he switched off amid the herd of big cars below the porte cochere the engine pinged with heat contractions and Alex heard music and a multitude of voices muttering from the villa. Colorfully costumed guests walked amid the profusion of formally shaped flower beds in the garden.

The car swayed when Sergei got out: he was a huge old man, a Kuban bear with his kind brown eyes and his wide Russian peasant face. The door opened under Sergei’s hand and Alex got out and waited for Irina; she swiveled to emerge and gracefully smoothed her elegant grey skirt. “You’ll enjoy the villa-it’s rather grand. Sergei, perhaps we can slip in by the kitchen? We’ll have to dress.”

But Sergei was looking past them toward the hills beyond the garden. Alex followed his gaze and saw a solitary horseman cantering down the distant bridle path.

“Heroes are always sculpted on horseback, aren’t they,” Irina said. “Isn’t it just like Vassily to arrive like that.” Then she laughed and the echoes rang back.

4

The assassin saw the horseman from the open veranda above the garden. The rider threaded the hillside pathways with a Cossack cavalryman’s precision. The evening sun outlined him sharply on the crests-a tall horseman with heroic shoulders and the equestrian posture of a field marshal.

A long low ridge made a wall beyond the meadows and when the rider disappeared behind it the assassin knew it was no good waiting for him to reappear. Devenko was on the alert and he wasn’t simply going to ride boldly up to the villa. Devenko had a guerrilla’s appreciation of distraction and deception. While a hundred guests stood rooted waiting for him to ride out of the shadows of the ridge Devenko would be galloping circuitously toward the back of the villa; he’d leave his horse tethered somewhere in the woods and they wouldn’t see him again until he made his entrance through an unexpected doorway.

He knew that much because he’d made a study of Devenko. The man was a curious amalgam of melodramatic dash and practical caution. Too proud not to make his appearance here today; too careful-because of the prior attempts against him-to make an easy target of himself. That was why it had to take place inside the villa. There’d have been no point in waiting in ambush by the road because Devenko had anticipated that and had come on horseback rather than by car.

It was much too difficult to get a bead on a man if you didn’t know him. That was what the assassin’s employers didn’t understand; it was why the first two attempts had failed: they hadn’t given the assassin sufficient information.

The first shot had been in London. They’d given him a photograph of Devenko, a place and a time-“You’ll have no trouble. You’ve got five days to arrange your getaway and the exact scheme-that’s up to you. But he’s got Haymarket tickets on the twenty-ninth. The interval’s at nine-fifty and the curtain comes down at eleven-ten. You might think about catching him on his way back to the car afterward-at least that’s the way I’d handle it. But it’s your gambit.”

It was only a voice on a telephone. He’d tried to get more: “Where does he live? What’s his routine? What’s he like?”

But the employer refused to be drawn. “You’ve got all you need to go on. You’re supposed to kill him, not marry him-what difference does all that make?”

So he’d botched the first one because he’d had no way of anticipating the speed and agility with which the target was capable of reacting. He’d paced the target toward the underground garage until the moment came when no one else was abroad in the blacked-out street. Then he’d quickened his pace and drawn the gun but the target heard all of that and without even looking behind him he’d dived between two parked lorries and that was that: the assassin ran forward and snapped a ru

“He’s faster than the telegraph,” he’d reported back. “You didn’t tell me that.”

“Well you know it now.”

It was nearly a month before the employer called back. “You’d better not blow it this time. It’s an RAF airfield in Kent-Biggin Hill, do you know it?”

“I can find it.”

“They’re flying him from Scotland. Some sort of conference with three or four Russian exiles. It’s set up for a hotel in Maidstone but we want him taken out before the meeting-so it’s got to be the airfield or the road. It’s the A20.”

“I know the road. What kind of car will he be in?”

“It’s a Bentley saloon, grey, two or three years old.”

“Number plate?”

“Angel Kevin six three three.”

“Chauffeur?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Then that’s two of them. The price is higher.”

“The price is the same, after your last fiasco.”

He didn’t fight the point too hard; only a token face-saving riposte: “I’d have had him last time if you hadn’t been so jealous with information.”

“Never mind. It’s July fourteen. The meeting in Maidstone’s set for eight in the evening. You’ll have to work back from there to get his ETA at Biggin Hill.”

“There’s another way. Where does the Bentley live?”

“It belongs to one of the White Russians. He lives in London but he’ll be staying at the hotel in Maidstone. The name’s Ivanov. He’s got a detached house in Highgate. Shepherd’s Hill, Number Forty-three. They’ll be going down to Maidstone sometime on the fourteenth.”

“Bastille Day,” the assassin remarked, and cradled the phone.

On the fourteenth he’d parked on the verge with the nose of his Morris pointed out toward the main road; got out of the car with a brush and a jar of black watercolor ink. His license plate number was IPF 311; he closed the characters to make it read TBE 814. Then he screwed a new silencer onto the Luger and put on a white jacket, a pair of clear-glass spectacles and a white trilby hat. Any witnesses would remember only the disguise, and there would be at least one witness: if they weren’t going to pay for the chauffeur he wasn’t going to give them the chauffeur.

He had to wait more than an hour. Several cars and military vehicles came out of the service road and he kept watch in the driving mirror until the Bentley’s big square snout appeared.

He put the first bullet into the front tire because he wanted to prevent the target escaping. Then he had a clear shot at Devenko and no way to miss it because they hadn’t spotted the source of the trouble yet. He squeezed the trigger with firm gentle pressure and the Luger recoiled, mildly as it always did; the bullet left a small grey smear on the window, obscuring his view of Devenko’s left eye.

“It’s your own fault again, blast you. If you’d told me I’d have worked a way around it.”

“Around what?”

“It’s bulletproof glass in that Bentley.”

So this time he’d do it his own way. He turned into the passage behind the villa’s dining hall and let himself into a walk-in cleaning cupboard. It took a moment to find the light switch. He screwed a stubby silencer onto the Luger and then checked the loads and worked the jack-leg-action to seat the top cartridge so that he wouldn’t need to thrash around cocking it when the time came. He set the safety and slid the pistol down between his belt and his trouser-band against his left ribs under the formal jacket; unobtrusive but instantly available to his right hand. There were flatter automatics than the Luger but the flat ones didn’t fit his hand as well: didn’t point as naturally. The 7.62 bullets were small, the equivalent of. 32 caliber, but he’d loaded them himself with the maximum charge of smokeless powder and at close range he had no qualms about their stopping power: the bullets were perforated into quarters and designed to expand violently on contact.