The Romanov Conspiracy (4 page)

The signpost said Collon. I pulled my rented Ford into a village square. It was deserted, neat, and tidy, with hanging baskets of flowers. It looked quaintly Victorian, an old blacksmith’s premises with a horseshoe-shaped entrance dominating the square.

I crossed the street to a local grocery store and asked for directions and found the red granite Presbyterian church and graveyard at the southern end of the town. Below the bell tower was chiseled in stone the year it was built: 1813.

The burial ground looked even older, the church magnificent, the stained glass windows works of art. I wandered between the grave sites, some of them hidden by undergrowth and wild bramble. I glimpsed a rusted metal cross with an inscription dated 1875—
Elizabeth, aged three and Caroline aged six, their sweet and gentle presence never forgotten, they have gone to lie in the arms of the Lord
. My heart felt the haunting echo of a long dead grief.

As I moved on, my cell phone rang and the harsh jangle of music seemed to violate the silence. I answered my phone, half-expecting a call back from the number I’d tried to ring. “Laura?” It was Roy, the line clear despite our distance. “Where are you?”

“Ireland.”

“Ireland?”

“It’s a long story. I don’t want you to think I’m crazy dashing out on you, but I may be on to something. It has to do with the bodies and the locket. If it pans out, I’ll let you know.”

“Baby, you’ve got me interested. And if it doesn’t?”

“This could be an enormous waste of time and money. What about the DNA?”

Roy wasn’t getting all the answers he wanted and I could hear his frustrated sigh. “They’re working on it. I can tell you from the preliminary forensics it’s likely that the woman was Caucasian, between seventeen and twenty-five. We haven’t even got to the second body yet, we’ve been too busy with the first.”

“Anything else?”

“She hasn’t thawed out enough to tell what trauma she might have suffered, but remember the coins we found? The latest was 1916. We think we’re dealing with roughly the same period, give or take a few years. The woman’s dental work suggests she was reasonably well-to-do. So we’re in the right ballpark for the Romanovs. Any luck with the inscription?”

With great care I plucked the locket from my purse and turned it over in my palm. I’d spent most of the last nine hours of flying time studying it and managed to clean away more of the dirt. But the rest of the inscription was eaten with corrosion and stubbornly defied deciphering. “I still can’t make out what it says.”

A cautious tone crept into Roy’s voice. “The Russians aren’t going to be happy. They’re already asking where you’ve gone. I told them some urgent family business came up and you had to leave.
Gee
, Laura, taking a piece of their history could be construed as theft. I don’t even like talking about it over the phone. What if they throw you in prison when you get back?”

I carefully slipped the locket into my purse. “Don’t worry, the locket will be returned. I’ve only borrowed it in the hope that I can identify its origin.”

“How?”

“We’ll talk again.”

“Hey, baby, don’t keep me in suspense.”

“Sorry, I’ve got to go. And don’t worry about the Russians, I’ll handle them. Call me as soon as you have anything.”

I flipped off my phone as I saw an old man come toward me among the graves.

He halted near a cluster of tombstones. I noticed that they were Russian-style crosses with double crossbeams and Cyrillic inscriptions, and they looked odd among a landscape of Anglo-Christian and Celtic crosses.

The man waited by one of the graves. I could make out the name inscribed in Russian on the polished granite stone: Uri Andrev.

The man stood studying me as he rested his right hand on a blackthorn walking cane. His skin was a jaundiced yellow and looked thin as crepe paper. He stood tall and dignified but with a slight stoop, and he spoke English but I thought I detected a Russian accent. “So, you came at last. It’s Dr. Pavlov, isn’t it?”

I stared back at him. “How did you know?”

“I finally got your phone messages. I never carry a cell phone, as you Americans call it. Forgive me, but I’ve been a hospital patient these last few days.”

“Nothing serious, I hope?”

He offered a faint smile. “The usual problems of old age, I’m afraid. Forgive me, I didn’t call you back but your message said you’d meet me at the church. I had my housekeeper drive me and saw you from the road. I recognized you from your photograph in the professional journals. You’re an outstanding scientist, Dr. Pavlov.”

“You’re too kind.”

The man offered his hand, the backs of his palms freckled with liver spots. “Michael Yakov. It seems we share an obsession, doctor.”

“Pardon?”

“The Romanov era. I’ve long been interested in your work.”

“And I’m suddenly very interested in yours.”

“I believe your message said you found the woman?”

“Yes, Mr. Yakov. We found her. Just as you predicted. There may be other bodies, including what could be a child, but at this stage I can’t tell you any more than that.”

Yakov sucked in a breath, as if my confirmation had struck a nerve. “I very much hoped that you’d find her. You dug in an area where I believed she might be buried.”

As I stood there listening to this old man talk, I couldn’t help but think how absurd all of this was.

I had never met Michael Yakov, but he wrote to me constantly over a period of about a year. In fact, for a time I started to think he was stalking me. His letters came every few months, inquiring after my work in Ekaterinburg. And now here I was, hoping he’d solve my mystery.

“Mr. Yakov, ever since it became public knowledge that I intended to work at Ekaterinburg, you’ve written to me at least a dozen times. In almost every letter you suggested that I might find the remains of a young woman in the sectors where I was digging, and if I did, to contact you. You seemed particularly anxious to mention the woman.”

He nodded. “Yes, I did.”

I looked him in the eyes. “You even mentioned the possibility of finding the locket in your correspondence. But you never once offered to explain the woman’s identity. And when I wrote to inquire why you were so interested in this dig, and why you seemed so convinced that I might locate the bodies, I received no reply. To tell you the truth, I had you down as a crackpot. Which is why I stopped answering your mail months ago.

“Until yesterday. Yesterday, when we found the woman, I began to wonder if you were a clairvoyant. Do you mind telling me what’s going on?”

Yakov let out a sigh that almost sounded like a cry of pain and his eyes watered. “It’s a very personal story, Dr. Pavlov. One that was told to me by my father.”

“It’s personal for me, too. You’ve involved me.”

Yakov didn’t reply as he reached out to touch the polished headstone. His fingers caressed the granite, then he blessed himself with a sign of the cross, as if paying his respects to the dead.

I said, “It seems a strange place for a Russian to be buried—among Celtic crosses.”

“Do you know this country?”

“I’ve visited Celtic sites here on several occasions.”

Yakov glanced around the cemetery, as if he was familiar with every stone and plot, every overgrown bush and blade of grass. “Quite a number of Russians are buried in this region, which is not as strange as you might think, Dr. Pavlov.”

“Why?”

“There was once a strong commercial trade between Russia and Ireland, in flax and horse-breeding. Many Russian families came to live here after the revolution, some of them in this area, about the same time as the Irish fought for their independence from the British. They went straight from the frying pan into the fire, so to speak.”

“I never knew. Was this man one of them? Did you know him?”

Yakov’s fingers caressed the grave’s smooth granite. “You could say that. I met him shortly before he died. Uri Andrev was a truly remarkable man, Dr. Pavlov. Someone who changed history. What’s even more remarkable is that hardly anyone knows of him. His name is lost in the fog of time.”

“I don’t get it. What’s it all got to do with the remains of the woman?”

Yakov looked back at me and his watery eyes blazed with a sudden zeal. “It has everything to do with it. In fact, perhaps it’s fitting that we should begin our meeting here, in this very graveyard, Dr. Pavlov.”

“Why?”

“Because we are standing among secrets and lies, and all of them need explaining.”

Briar Cottage faced the distant sea and must have been well over a hundred years old. An oval-shaped metal sign on the wall by the front door was painted black, the name inscribed in decorative white lettering.

The cottage was obviously once part of a large country estate, for to get to it we passed through a pair of ancient granite pillars, each topped with a carved stone lion, their limestone features weathered by the elements.

Across some fields I noticed the ruins of a huge manor house and
the crumbling stone walls of what looked like an orchard. We drove along a gravel road that wound through a meadow dotted with massive oaks before we finally arrived at the whitewashed cottage.

It all looked very quaint, with a blue-painted door bordered by a trellis of roses. It commanded a view of the countryside and was protected from the sea winds by rolling hills, rich with the fragrant coconut scent of thick yellow gorse.

It started to rain again as I parked my rented Ford on the gravel outside, next to a dated blue Toyota sedan. A few straw remnants of the cottage’s original thatch stuck out from under the black slate, looking like a roughly fitted wig.

I followed Yakov to the door. He was surprisingly agile for his age but I could see the years were taking their toll, his hips giving him trouble. The door was split into an upper and lower stile, as you still sometimes see in parts of rural Europe, and he fumbled with the lock and led me inside.

The cottage was unexpectedly large, with a beamed ceiling and a breathtaking view of the Mountains of Mourne sloping to the sea.

The place looked in disarray. Books, newspapers, and magazines were strewn everywhere, some scattered on a large coffee table in front of the limestone fire mantel, stained black by the years.

Wooden shelves lined the walls, filled with books and stuffed with collections of yellowed newspapers tied together with string. A selection of briar walking sticks were stashed in an umbrella stand in a corner, two ancient armchairs either side of the fireplace; on one of them the fabric on the arms looked paper-thin from wear. A wicker basket was piled high with logs and turf.

The room was a bit cold but a fire was still going. Yakov removed the screen, rattled the sparking embers with a fire iron. He tossed on a few logs and some chunks of turf, replaced the screen, and rubbed his hands.

“The older you get, the more you appreciate a little warmth. Sometimes a summer’s day here can be a touch chilly.”

“How long have you lived here?”

Yakov went to boil an electric kettle with fresh water. “Over three
decades. At first I rented the cottage, then I bought it when the owner died. A nice lady comes by to cook and clean for me.” His smile widened, good-humoredly. “We have an arrangement. She cleans my clutter, and when she’s gone I make a mess again. Tea?”

“Tea’s fine.” I noticed black-and-white photographs on the walls. Judging by the clothes worn by the men and women in the images, I guessed the era to be about the time of the First World War, or soon after.

One of the photographs was of a couple. I stepped closer to examine it. A handsome, Slavic-looking man wearing a cloth cap and a striking young woman with long dark hair. They looked happy. The woman’s arm linked the man’s and they struck a casual pose as they relaxed, smiling, outside a whitewashed property.

At the bottom of the photograph was written in blue ink:
Uri and Lydia, taken by Joe Boyle at Collon, July 2nd, 1918
. My eyes were drawn to the white-painted property behind the couple. The photograph could have been taken anywhere, but then I noticed its half door and a rose bush trellis and I recognized the property I was standing in, Briar Cottage.

Yakov measured three spoonfuls of dried tea leaves into a ceramic pot and blended in the steaming water; a rich aroma filled the room. “In case you’re wondering, the cottage was once part of an estate owned by a Russian businessman and his wife, a well-known stage actress from St. Petersburg who found fame before the First World War. Her name was Hanna Volkov—perhaps you’ve heard of her?”

“I’m afraid not.”

“Do you mind if I ask where you got your interest in Russia, Dr. Pavlov? It seems very strong and personal.”

“My grandmother came from Ekaterinburg, so I grew up hearing stories about her homeland. Every time she watched the movie
Doctor Zhivago
she’d cry for a week afterwards, if that explains anything?”

Yakov offered a faint smile. “I’ve heard it can have that effect. Beneath what can seem like an icy exterior, Russians are a deeply emotional people.”

“She always said that Lenin’s revolution was a fight for the soul of
Russia. That it was a battle between good and evil, between God and the devil, and that for a time the devil won.”