The Romanov Succession

“You can’t change them.”

“I am not condemning them for it. If they gave it all up and put on sackcloth and ashes it would not make a bit of difference to the world. But the unreality of the way they can just go on and on like this-how hard it will be to persuade them to set aside their illusions.”

In jodhpurs and belted grey jacket Vassily had the look of a Prussian martinet; it struck Alex that all it would take to complete the image would be a riding crop slapping into his open palm.

Vassily said, “I asked them to bring you into this.” He put the emphasis on the first person pronoun and it startled Alex as it had been meant to. “I did it for several reasons. First because you are patently the best for the job-best qualified and best situated. Second because you once forced me to make a very careful reexamination of my own impetuosity-and it may be useful to have you in a position where you can do that again if the events call for it.”

Vassily was offering an olive branch but it didn’t have a pure color of truth.

Alex didn’t answer. Vassily nodded as if Alex’s silence confirmed a suspicion. “It is important we find some way to reconcile our quarrel.”

“I don’t carry grudges.”

“No. But you are certain I ca

Alex put it bluntly. “I don’t see how you’re going to do that.”

The weariness seemed ground into Vassily like grit. He glanced out the windows, his squint far-eyed with his visions; his face picked up the reddish reflection of the sunset and seemed very bitter. “They have tried twice to kill me. They will go on trying until they succeed. At first I thought it was an old enemy but it is not likely-too coincidental. Someone has learned of the scheme. They think by killing me they can prevent it happening. They ca

As if to shake off his premonitions he drew himself up to a parade-ground posture, hands behind him. “When they reach me there must be someone to pick up the baton.”

His face came around swiftly. “It is not a favor to you. It may make you their next target. But you are the best choice to succeed me.”

“Why?”

“Because I trust you. ”

“How can you know that when I haven’t even heard the plan yet? I may think it’s drivel.”

“You will not.”

“Once before you thought I’d go along with your plans.”

“It was different. You must believe me.”

It was the closest he’d ever seen Vassily to begging.

Vassily said, “Do not fight me in there, Alexsander. It is too big a thing for personal quarrels. And the decisions may be yours soon enough-you would be a fool to shoot it down before you’ve had a chance at it yourself.”

“You’re talking as if they’ve already killed you.”

“I won’t make it easy for them.”

“Kill them first.”

“I would have done. If I knew who they were.”

“You have no hints at all?”

“Only suspicions and too many of those; they cancel one another out. We are getting off the subject. I want your backing in there. Have I got it?”

“I can’t promise it. If I can’t support the plan I won’t support you.”

Vassily brooded at him and the humanity evaporated from his hard face. “Then we shall have to persuade you of the Tightness of the scheme, won’t we? Come on then.” He swung with an abrupt snap of his big shoulders and strode across the gallery to a huge door. With his back braced as if against an awaited bullet he rapped his knuckles on the oak and almost immediately the door pivoted on oiled hinges and Irina’s father was there: Count Anatol Markov with his impeccable clothes and his urbane countenance.

Count Anatol gave them both a quick unemotional scrutiny and then averted his eyes as if he regarded them both as applicants for a servant’s job who had arrived for an interview at a time when the Count had more important things on his mind. It meant nothing at all, it was only his habitual ma

“We have been waiting for you. Please come in.”

The drawing-room furniture was elegant with intricate fragile curves. The heavy velvet draperies reached from ceiling to floor and they were drawn shut to keep out the waning daylight; electric lamps made the big room richer and warmer. It could have been a calculated effect, shutting out the Spanish vista so that they could have been anywhere: the old villa in France or even the drawing room of the Imperial dascha put-side St. Petersburg from which the Grand Duke Feodor had brought most of these furnishings in 1918.

The chairs were drawn up in a conversational circle and Prince Leon Kirov sat at its focal point beside a table on which was heaped a litter of documents in open folders.

There were eight chairs in the circle; three of them were empty. The five men sat back with their legs crossed, smoking cigars and pipes, watching Vassily and Alex. They nodded and lifted cigars in greeting but they didn’t erupt in customary Russian expansiveness. The seriousness of the occasion was an evident weight.

Count Anatol shut the door behind them and nodded toward the farther doors. Alex paced Vassily across the room; put his hand on the latch and went through.

In his high four-posted bed the Grand Duke raised eyes cloudy with dim sight. A woman in white moved courteously away from the bedside and the visitors approached the bed. The old man’s fingers plucked at his lap robe.

“Your Royal Highness.”

“Who is that? Are you Deniken?”

“Vassily Devenko and Alexsander Danilov, Your Royal Highness.”

Vassily bowed briefly; it went unseen. The Grand Duke seemed indifferent. “It is kind of you to come and see me.”

Alex said, “We wish you better health.”

“Yes…” Da, and the quavering voice trailed off. But then abruptly he groped for Vassily’s hand. “You have come.”

“Yes, Highness.”

“Are we to be restored then?”

“I ca

“But the Bolsheviks…”

“The Bolsheviks are finished,” Vassily Devenko said.

7

The assassin didn’t put much credence in anything beyond the five senses but the woman disturbed him. He knew who she was; he’d seen her photographs. But he’d never been face-to-face with her. There was no way she could have known him from any other complete stranger. Yet in her eyes at the foot of the stair there’d been knowledge. More than suspicion; certainty. It was there as if she could read him like cold type.

He drifted into the hunt room and took a glass of sherry from a servant’s tray and walked through the crowd carrying it-not drinking. He overheard snatches of talk-the weather at Marbella, the rationing under Vichy-and he put on a pleasant face but spoke to no one.

He took his sherry back along to the ballroom and saw the woman in red dancing with an old gentleman. He turned away, not so quickly as to bring attention to himself, and retreated from her sight. He argued with himself: there was no mystery to it, it had been coincidence; she was the sort of woman whose face could create imagined trouble-as if her inscrutable beauty were meant to be invested with whatever you chose to read into it. He had to dismiss her from his concentrations.

But he couldn’t. It stayed in the back of his mind that the woman could spoil it.