Romanov Succession (40 page)

A fifty-five burst well ahead of him and quite a distance to the right. He steered a course toward it because they'd be correcting their aim and moving left with the next ones. He heard Sergei's grunt when one fluttered overhead. It blew up a quarter acre of ice to the left and now he had to guide the speeding ambulance between the two holes before the ramifying cracks broke up the surface between them. He could see the fissures spreading: they moved that fast.

When the ambulance skittered across the frozen isthmus the ice was breaking up underneath and it wobbled badly, one rear wheel sinking into stuff that had gone soft as pablum. But the momentum carried it over the slush. Two fifty-five-millimeter salvos smashed up the lake behind them and he crabbed the ambulance to the left as quickly as he could without losing traction.

, They had two field guns in play as far as he could tell; both had an open field of fire as long as he remained within range. They didn't have to hit him. All they had to do was punch a hole in the ice ahead of him—close enough so he couldn't evade without skidding. The only answer to it was to keep doglegging—chasing salvos, trying to outwit the spotters.

Speed was his advantage and his hazard at the same time. On the ice every notch of speed meant that much less maneuverability. He was putting nearly a mile behind them with every full minute that elapsed but those guns could reach out six or seven miles and they still had plenty of time to stop him. Four minutes was an eternity in a race like this.

Ice lies thinnest along the bank. Out over deep water it was thickest and could absorb great impacts without shattering. The guns were firing a random mixture of armor-piercings and high explosives but now the armor-piercings simply drilled straight through, leaving holes no bigger than the fist-sized diameter of the shells that punched them; and the HEs dug powdery craters in the surface but no longer broke them through to the water beneath. When a shell exploded dead ahead of him Alex knew he didn't have time to turn and he trusted to chance and the strength of the ice: he accelerated right into the blinding rain of crystals. The ambulance slammed violently through the crater and bounded up over the far lip of it; came crashing down on all four wheels and kept right on going with slush oiling down the windscreen. Sergei reached up and cranked the wipers back and forth to clear it. Alex caught the old man's defiant grin.

Too many of those and she could break an axle but they had a chance now. The guns were elevating steadily: the next one hit well out ahead of him and slightly to the right. He bent his course to veer around the far-right-hand side of the crater while the next salvo of HEs blew geysers in the ice considerably to the left. He steered straight this time because they'd expect him to chase back to the left and they'd be waiting for that. The next two drilled holes to his left again but still he didn't change course. He waited until the next salvo—a neat bracket, one on either side and a bit behind him—and then he jinked to the left: a random move on impulse. It threw them off again and now the shells were falling behind. going wide; six miles and the spotters couldn't see him very well. The ambulance was a small white object moving very fast against a blinding white background: at best they only had him in sight intermittently.

One at a time the two field guns gave it up. Sergei sat up and mischievously poked a finger through a hole torn in his coat sleeve by a Bolshevik bullet. “Magnificently done, my general.”

Maybe thirty miles in an arc across the ice now: they'd be at the Finland shore. He began to let himself relax. Another mile to be sure they were out of range and he'd stop and check the back for casualties.

It came without warning. He hadn't thought to check the sky. He didn't know the plane was there until the strafing tracers rattled a stitched line across the ice, walking the bullets right up to the speeding ambulance. He tried to take evasive action but it was much too late. He heard the diving whine of the aircraft. He felt it when the fifty-calibers shredded a rear tire; the ambulance dropped down on the rim and began to circle blindly like a half-crushed beetle. The jacketed bulletstore into the body of the ambulance and they were screaming in the back compartment and then the other tire blew and something broke apart and she was skidding to a stop, mangled and dead on the ice.

Sergei had taken a bullet and there was blood all over his coat—it looked like an arm wound; he showed his teeth. Alex heard the plane whining and when he looked up through the windscreen it was at the top of its turn, coming back for another pass: diving for the kill.

12.

She stood on the tarmac watching the main gate. The wind was cruel—dry and frigid; puffs of powder snow blew across the runway. The only sounds were the footfalls of the Finnish sentries as they moved back and forth to keep warm and the growl of the diesel generator behind the control tower.

Prince Leon came to her from the building behind her. He leaned heavily on his cane; his face was deeply trenched by exhaustion and the emptiness of defeat. “We shall have to go soon.”

“Go where?”

“I do not know, Irina. Back to Spain I suppose, where else can we go? You will catch a chill out here, you must come inside.”

She could see out past the main gate, past the sentries and their rifles—a long way down the ribbon of road that ran straight between the trees. No one was on the road. She put her back to it reluctantly and put her hand on the old prince's arm and helped him back into the building; he had trouble with the step.

The rest of them sat in the pilots' Ready Room, their faces as grey as the sky outside. Her father looked up when she entered the room but his mask of authority had sagged away to nothing and his eyes were lacquered as if with fever. Baron Oleg tried to put life in his face but it was tremble-lipped, white, ghastly. But for one traitor they'd have been in Moscow by now. Colonel Buckner leaned in the far doorway, forehead against the wood, putting some of his weight on his hand which gripped the doorknob—he looked as if he'd been kicked in the stomach. Brigadier Cosgrove raised his one hand a few inches to acknowledge Irina's presence but then he withdrew into himself to brood. Absurdly, General Savinov and the venerable Prince Michael sat facing each other pushing checkers across a board.

It had been twenty-four hours since they'd heard the news.

Cramps of hunger prevented her from sleeping and finally sometime in the small morning hours she went down in search of food; she hadn't eaten anything all day. She found General Spaight there; he gave a quick startled smile. “You've caught me. Raiding the larder.”

She found cheese and bread and made a meal of that. “What time is it, do you know?”

“After seven I think.”

“I didn't realize it was that late.”

“The sun won't be up for two hours yet.”

She sat down to eat; Spaight said, “The water's boiling for coffee. Would you like a cup?”

“Avidly.”

“He'll get out, you know. I've soldiered with Alex a long time,” he said. “He's not the sort of man who gets captured.”

“Or killed?”

“If they'd killed him we'd have heard about it.” He was spooning coffee into the pot. “They were pretty explicit in the broadcast about the ones they'd killed or caught and identified. Alex wasn't among them and neither was Sergei.”

“But they're nearly twenty-four hours overdue.”

He brought his plate to the table and sat down facing her. “He'll get out, Irina.”

“I don't need false reassurance. Don't patronize me.”

“It's myself I'm reassuring. He's too good a man—too good a friend to lose.”

They ate in silence, watching the coffeepot. When it was ready Spaight poured and brought the cups to the table. “You're a remarkable woman, Irina. He's a lucky man.”

“I'd rather not think that far ahead.”

“I'm sorry.”

“No—never apologize.”

He said, “It was someone in this camp who betrayed us.”

“What?”

“I found a radio transceiver in the parts room at the back of the repair hangar—shortly after Felix took off. It was still warm. Someone had just got done using it. I turned on the receiver to find out what band he'd set it to. It was the Russian Secret Service frequency. I didn't understand any of it of course, they broadcast in code. But I know their call signs.”

“You didn't tell anyone?”

“No. I've spent nearly every hour since then watching the hangar—I thought maybe he'd go back for it. But I gradually came to the conclusion he never would. He's done with it now, isn't he—it's served its purpose.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Because you're the only one I trust on this base right now. You wouldn't have betrayed Alex.”

“I'm grateful for your trust. It means a great deal just now.”

“Maybe you can explain something to me then. Why would the traitor wait until after the mission was beyond recall? Why not sabotage the mission before? It doesn't make any sense.”

She shook her head numbly. She tasted the coffee; it was strong and bitter—like the anger rising in her. “I've no idea at all. You're right—it's senseless.”

The sun was hardly a diameter above the horizon and the clouds writhed with a red conflagration. The window was open a crack to feed the coal fire and her hair was blowing gently in the draft from it; she had kept vigil at the window since the first moment of dawn.

At the hangar she saw Pappy Johnson and Calhoun talking about something with expressive gestures; there had been some trouble with one of the De Havillands yesterday.

Baron Oleg arrived in the Ready Room, nodded to Spaight and crossed the room to peer out over Irina's shoulder. The gate was still closed, the sentries walked their posts, the road beyond was empty.

Oleg said, “The Finnish government is not prepared to have us camp here for the duration of the war. If Alex is safe he will find his way to us. We cannot wait here forever for him. We are an acute embarrassment to the Finns now.”

She put her back to him and resumed her watch on the road. “I'm not leaving, Oleg.”

“You will have to.”

“He expects us to wait for him. He may be wounded. He can't come here exhausted and perhaps badly hurt and find this place deserted—no one could be expected to take that much.”

Her father came downstairs; she heard his tread and recognized it. Oleg said to him, “She refuses to come with us. You must talk to her.”

She turned, ready to defy her father; but he only shook his head. “If Irina has made up her mind it is no good my arguing with her.”

“Thank you,” she said.

“I only wish the rest of us had as much room for hope as you seem to have, my daughter.”

But it was only the hem of hope to which she clung; reason quarreled with instinct and it was only by force of will that she enabled instinct to prevail. She saw the men carrying the luggage out to the aircraft—the suitcases that contained their preciously preserved Imperial uniforms, the documents of a Liberation that was not to be, the mocking relics of their failure. Still she did not stir from her post by the window.

A eleven o'clock her father came downstairs again, treading heavily; she saw he carried her own valises.

“I packed for you. In case you should change your mind. It is not meant as an inducement.”

He looked strange. It struck her it was the first time in her life she'd ever seen him carrying suitcases. There had always been servants.

He put them down near the door and rammed his hands in his pockets; he looked uncertain. She said, “What now, father?”

“For me? Nothing. Our lives are over. We have had our chance and lost it. We shall go back to our neutral villas and play at our meaningless pastimes. There is nothing else.”

At eleven-fifteen there was a report somewhere in the building—a crash or perhaps a gunshot—and Spaight ran from the room in alarm to seek its source. He returned shortly thereafter.

“It's Baron Zimovoi. He's shot himself.”

Prince Leon shot upright in his chair. “My God. Is there a doctor?”

“There's no need for a doctor,” Spaight said quietly. His puzzled eyes rode around to Irina and she read the question in them:
Was it because he was the traitor? Did he kill himself out of guilt?

The takeoff was delayed—fifteen minutes, then a half hour, then more—while they disputed the disposition of Oleg's body. Finally it was Spaight who decided it:

“We'll take him with us in the cargo compartment of one of the planes. We'll have to. The ground is frozen here—he can't be buried.” Lame inanities and gruesome horrors were the subjects their tongues touched but these were in keeping with the day; Oleg's suicide seemed fitting.

13.

She watched them trail dispiritedly toward the waiting De Havillands. Her father took his leave of her. Prince Michael hobbled out ahead and some of the others waited to help him into the airplane. Cosgrove went blindly along behind—he seemed even more benumbed than the others by the sudden collapse of the enterprise.

The two Americans were last out of the building. They stopped, flanking her, and Buckner looked out toward the empty road while Spaight put his kind eyes on her face and reached out to squeeze her hand.

Buckner said, “It was a fine dream while it lasted.”

“It was more than a dream for a while,” Spaight said.

“Maybe. But that's all it'll be from now on—a badly remembered one.”

That was when she saw the faintest movement in the mists far out along the road.

It was a Finnish ambulance. The breath caught in her sucking throat like a handsaw jamming in wet wood.

The ambulance halted at the gate and there was the tedious ritual of idents and clearances and then the gate swung open and the white van rolled forward. She tried to see through the windshield.