Romanov Succession (11 page)

One of them would open the door—perhaps carelessly, perhaps cautiously. In either case it was a matter of slamming the door fully open, finding Devenko, taking his shots and then making his run for it. They were old men in that room, all but the one who was Devenko's brother and who therefore would react first by crouching at the victim's side in concern. Even if any of them gave chase there was no cause for fear because he had the advantage of the interval during which they would be stunned and bewildered. And he had the gun.

He left the maids' wing and went along the narrow hall to the front of the upper story; let himself out into the gallery and walked slowly past the head of the great stair, looking down into the foyer. It was quite unoccupied—every servant in the house had been called into the busy platoon in the dining hall.

He moved without sound along the rank of Romanov portraits. Midway along the gallery stood a small table supporting a half life-size bust of Peter the Great; he debated moving the table across the corridor but decided against it—there would be time to dodge around it. He went on to the drawing room door and stopped to listen: heard voices within but not the words. The oak was thick and sturdy.

He looked both ways along the corridor and lifted the Luger from his belt, testing the silencer to be sure it was screwed tight; locked his grip, flicked off the safety and lifted his left hand to knock.

14.

Irina had not been able to single out the bald man in the dining hall until he called attention to himself by rising from a table across the room and walking toward the door behind him. She watched him talk to one of the waiters and she saw the waiter's gestures; when the bald man nodded his thanks and went on through the door she settled back in her chair in relief.

It occurred to her a moment later that he would have behaved just that way if he had been trying to allay suspicion. And she remembered the dent in his jacket again.

Abruptly she excused herself from the table and hurried across the room. She went through the door into the corridor beyond it—but he had gone.

The nearest bathroom was just beyond the corner. She knocked and when there was no reply she tried the knob. The room was empty. Now her alarm was real and she was running toward the front of the villa. The end of the servants' hall admitted her to the ballroom and a dozen surprised musicians stopped chewing their dinners to watch her run across the corner of the great room to the door beyond—the front gallery, past the statuary and across the foyer to the villa's main entrance.

Sergei Bulygin stood just outside the door smoking a black Spanish cigarette. He came to attention when Irina appeared.

“Come along Sergei, I think there's trouble upstairs.”

They had crossed half the length of the foyer when she heard the shouts above, the pound of running footsteps.

15.

It had come without warning. They'd been getting down to details: Anatol had said, “Oleg, you must uncover your mysterious contact in the Kremlin.”

“I cannot. I have given him my word. His position is fragile there.”

Alex had suspected there had to be someone like that. Oleg had been tossing out bits of information that could only have come from a source inside the Soviet government.

Vassily said, “I will have to know who the man is—I have to be in touch with him.”

“I will not divulge it here. If you do not know his name you cannot drop it accidentally in the wrong places,” Oleg said and that was when there was a knock at the door.

Anatol was nearest and more agile than old Prince Michael; he went to the door and opened it unsuspectingly—you couldn't talk through those doors without shouting—and then suddenly the door slammed back and Anatol was thrown off his feet and Alex saw the man with the gun.

All the old instincts sent him diving across the rug toward Vassily:
“Down!
”

But Vassily was tired, his reactions had slowed and he didn't understand the threat quickly enough—he hadn't been facing the door.

Alex wasn't across half the distance when the pistol chugged, muttering twice through its silencer.

The bullets hammered Vassily Devenko, spun him to one side in the chair; there was a gush of blood the color of death where the two slugs had torn into the heart.

He saw disbelief and anger in Vassily's face. Rage drove him half to his feet and then the splendid body failed him and Vassily stumbled and fell back across the chair.

Alex exploded with an unthinking wrath. The doorway had emptied: the assassin hadn't waited to see the results of his work. Alex leaped over Anatol and careened into the gallery and saw the assassin running toward the head of the stairs. There was a small stone bust on a stand: Alex scooped it up and hurled it and ran after, uncaring of the gun in the fugitive's fist.

The stone bust caught the running man in the small of the back. It pitched him forward off balance and he caromed off the heavy bannister rail onto the stairs: he pitched out of sight, tumbling, legs flying and Alex had the angry satisfaction of hearing the pistol clatter loosely down the stairs. He ran full out.…

He reached the head of the sweeping stair and checked himself against the rail and had a momentary tableau impression: the assassin lying awry across the steps, one foot high in the air; Irina staring in shock from the foyer below; huge old Sergei Bulygin reaching for the fallen pistol.

The assassin's leg pivoted and he collapsed motionless against the bannister posts, his neck twisted at an acute angle.

Alex said to Sergei, “You won't need that.”

He walked down the stairs stiffly to the sprawled figure. Sergei met him there. Irina watched from the marble floor of the foyer—expectant, intent.

“Yes,” Sergei said, bending over the assassin. “This one is dead.”

“God damn it.”

“What?”

He'd spoken it in English; he only shook his head. “He can't tell us anything now, can he?”

Irina's hand had gone to her throat. “Alex—”

He went down to her: took both of her hands. “He's killed Vassily.”

For a moment it was as if she hadn't heard him: she stared into his face. Then slowly she turned away from him. He saw her shoulders stiffen. “It's my fault. If I'd trusted my intuitions—if I'd only acted a little faster.”

“What?”

She shook her head. “I thought I saw a gun under his coat—I just wasn't certain enough. I didn't do anything about it until it was too late.”

“It isn't your fault, Irina.”

“Isn't it?” She gave him a level glance. “I don't want to see him, Alex.”

“No.”

“Hadn't you better get this one away from here?”

He hadn't thought. Now her meaning grenaded into him. Irina said, “You don't want the Spanish police here—not tonight. There are too many vulnerable people here—the
Guardia Civil
would take great pleasure in embarrassing them.”

What she hadn't said was that the
Guardia
would take even more pleasure in arresting him for the murder of this one on the stairs. He'd been
persona non grata
ever since he'd walked out on the Falangist army.

Irina said, “No one's heard anything. The villa is too solid. I'm going back into the dining room.” But she was searching his face with great intensity. “Vassily knew he was going to die.”

“He told me that.”

“You'd better go up then. But hold me first, Alex—I need to borrow your strength.”

He pressed her against him. After a moment she drew herself up and moved away. “I'll be all right. Go on.”

Sergei threw the dead man across his shoulder and carried him upstairs. Alex caught up at the landing.

A few of them were trickling out into the gallery from the drawing room—Oleg and General Savinov and Anatol. They looked dazed but a fierce gleam of enraged satisfaction illuminated Oleg's face when he recognized Sergei's burden.

Alex stooped to retrieve the bust of Peter the Great. It was intact except for a chip out of the base. He found the chip against the moulding and pocketed it; and carried the bust back to its stand.

Old Prince Michael stood bewildered in the door. “What are we to do?”

Alex shook his head, putting them off; he said
sotto voce
to Sergei, “Are you willing?”

“Of course.”

“Are there back stairs you can use?”

“No one will see me.”

“Search him first. Then bury him where no one will find him.”

“In the stable, I think. And cover the grave with straw.”

“All right—but keep it private, Sergei.”

“I have no love for the
Guardia,
” the big man replied, and turned toward the rear of the hall.

Alex went into the drawing room. They had one of the nurses there but it was no good; Alex had known by the way Vassily fell back that he was dead.

The others crowded into the room behind him. Anatol was visibly shaken. Prince Leon seemed to be in command of himself but he said quietly to Alex, “What shall we do?”

The rest of them stared at Alex and he saw they were putting it up to him: they expected an instant solution from him. Only Oleg looked as if his mental machinery was unimpaired by shock.

Alex said, “Don't let anyone in.” General Savinov was just inside the door; he kicked it shut.

The nurse was a stocky woman with brown hair and a pleasant face. She was watching Prince Leon as if for a sign. Alex said to her, “Would you leave us for a bit?”

“The doctor must be brought,” she said in awkward Russian; she was English, he remembered.

“We'll send down for him. Please wait in the Grand Duke's room.”

She left them—trembling with fear.

Oleg said to Leon, “Can she be trusted?”

“I believe so. But for what?”

“You believe so? You're not sure? This thing is too important for suppositions, Leon.”

Count Anatol burst out with sudden sarcasm, “What would you do, Oleg—murder her to guarantee her silence?”

Oleg remained stubbornly calm. “We must have assurances. She is in love with this doctor, is she not?”

“Yes.”

“Then we must have the doctor sign a certificate that Vassily died of natural causes. Everyone knows he has been under a great strain. A heart attack—everyone will believe that. And once the doctor's signature is on the certificate the nurse cannot reveal the truth without betraying him.”

“You are too clever by half sometimes,” Anatol snarled.

Prince Leon said cautiously, “I see no need to be devious, Oleg. We must simply tell the truth.”

Alex said, “No.”

They looked at him.

“Too many people would be hurt. We're not in a country where you can trust the police.”

One of them—perhaps the nurse—had laid Vassily out and covered him with a blanket from one of the adjoining chambers. But he was there in the center of the room, a mute macabre focal point, and they clustered near the door to be away from him. Oleg said vigorously, “We cannot have all our plans—the fate of Russia herself—founder on this murder. Leon, I fail to see how you could even entertain a notion of going to the Spanish police. Among the seven of us don't you think they'd soon worm it out of at least one? What we were discussing here, what we were planning?”

“It would appear,” said Count Anatol, “that our enemies know our plans already. Otherwise why was Vassily killed?”

Alex tried to steady them. “We've got to take up one thing at a time. The first matter's the doctor. I'll fetch him.” He turned to the door, his heart still chugging.

Prince Leon said, “Before you go, Alex.”

He turned and waited for it.

Leon said, “Vassily half-expected this. They tried to kill him before.”

“I know.”

“It was Vassily's wish that you succeed him.”

“He told me that. Obviously it is up to the rest of you.”

“There is no question in our minds.”

Count Anatol said, “I should not accept it too eagerly if I were you. It puts you at the top of their list, whoever these killers are.”

Alex didn't reply to any of them; he needed time. He left the room and went down into the villa in search of the doctor.

16.

It was nearly four o'clock in the morning and most of them had gone home or to bed.

The announcement would be made in the afternoon by which time Vassily would be embalmed and on view in a casket with his wounds concealed by clothing and the mortician's art.

Sergei Bulygin found him pacing the veranda. “It will be a long time before anyone finds that vermin.”

“Thank you, Sergei. Did you find anything on him?”

“This—his invitation.” A faint aroma of the stables rolled off Sergei's clothes. “Are there instructions?”

“Not tonight,” Alex said. “Sleep—there'll be things to do today.”

Sergei nodded and made a half-turn, and paused. “I grieve with you for the General's passing.”

“Yes …”

“I will mention him in my prayers.” Then Sergei left him.

A sweetness of honeysuckle flavored the air; the moon had come and gone, the stars made patchwork patterns among scudding cottonball clouds. He stared toward the mountains with preoccupied inattention.

A shadow fell through the doorway and he turned to find Prince Leon there. The Prince limped onto the veranda; he had an unlit cigar between his fingers and was nipping at the end with the blade of a brass-handled dagger. It was a knife the Prince had cherished for many years: Peter the Great had carried it at Azov in 1696.

“The question is, why did they kill him? What did they hope to gain?”

“Maybe they thought the scheme would die with him.”

“Presupposing they knew a great deal about the scheme. But if they knew that much would they not have known it was too big to be destroyed by one man's death?”