The Romanov Conspiracy (21 page)

Boyle removed his overcoat and hung it on a stand by the door, along with his hat, before he crossed to a liquor cabinet. “Only because it’s so lousy. Having said that, there’s many a day when you can witness all the seasons in a single hour. Drink? I could certainly do with one.”

“Wine would be good.”

Boyle poured her a red wine and a Bushmills whiskey for himself, then joined her by the fire. She seemed tired and anxious that evening. Her black pencil dress complemented her figure and she wore little jewelry, just a plain gold ring and a simple necklace from which hung the Russian eight-point cross.

Boyle handed across her glass, sipped his whiskey, and sighed. “I’d
propose a toast except the news isn’t good. She’s going to need time to recover.”

“How much time?”

Boyle sighed. “I’m not sure. I’ve arranged to talk to her doctor tomorrow. It’s an accursed nuisance. Lydia Ryan was perfect, had every qualification for the job. It’s going to be impossible to find a replacement so late in the game.”

Hanna put down her wine. “There’s no one else?”

Boyle swallowed his whiskey. “Not unless you count a female clerk who worked in the tsar’s private office, and the elderly wife of a royalist officer. I don’t think either would be up to the job. Only someone like Ryan has the kind of nerve to pull off what we intend.”

Hanna Volkov crossed to the window that overlooked Sackville Street, as two trucks manned with Lewis guns and British troops trundled past in the rain. “How long do we have?”

“No more than seven days to send our couple in, if they’re to have any hope of reaching Ekaterinburg in time.”

A hint of despair crept into Hanna’s voice. “Tell me it will work, Joe.”

Boyle ran a hand over his face. “I promised you I’d do my utmost, and I’ll keep to that. But we’re running into trouble. Even if Ryan agrees to help and is in the full of her health, she’ll face a perilous journey.”

Outside in the streets came the distant crackle of gunfire. Boyle moved back to the liquor cabinet and splashed more Bushmills into his glass. “After six hundred years of failed rebellions, this time the Irish are really going at it with a vengeance.”

“By the way, you upset our friends in London. They phoned to suggest you keep that gun of yours firmly in its holster. They said this country’s already like the Wild West without your adding to it by maiming one of their own.”

Boyle yanked shut the curtains. “Jackson deserved it. His stupidity’s messed up our plans.”

“What about Uri Andrev?”

Boyle turned to a metal travel chest with a padlock in the corner of the room. He opened the lock with a key from his waistcoat and
removed a paper file. “He’s still our best choice for lots of reasons. He once served in the tsar’s bodyguard and knows the royal family by sight. He knows that part of Siberia—the camp he escaped from wasn’t far from Ekaterinburg. He’s also used to getting himself out of tricky situations.”

Hanna said, “If there’s one thing I learned working on the stage it’s that every character has a flaw. What’s his?”

Boyle consulted the file. “Only one, and not so much a flaw as a gap in our knowledge. When he arrived in London he was interviewed by a White liaison officer working with His Majesty’s immigration. Andrev told him he escaped from a Red prison camp and eventually made it back to St. Petersburg and briefly reunited with his family. But what happened soon after that, we’re not really sure, except that he went on the run.”

“What do you mean?”

“Something happened to him in St. Petersburg, some kind of confrontation with the Reds. It seems he barely escaped with his life and had to abandon his wife and son. The officer who interviewed him said Andrev appeared to have been deeply traumatized but refused to talk about it. The question is, will he be prepared to risk his life and go back?”

Boyle tossed the file on the coffee table. “Tomorrow ought to provide us with the answer. Speaking of which, you better get some sleep. You’ve got a seven a.m. start if you want to catch the mail boat to Holyhead.”

Hanna picked up her purse. “Good night, Joe.”

Boyle led her to the door, her own suite just across the hall, and he took her hand and kissed it. “Have a safe crossing, and good luck convincing Andrev in London.”

She hesitated at the door, concern in her eyes, uncertainty in her voice. “Do you honestly believe we can save them, Joe?”

“We have to. The last thing we want on our conscience is the deaths of five innocent children.”

22

LONDON

The bedsit in Whitechapel was in a terrace of butter-brick Georgian houses. Uri Andrev heard the knocking on his door and came awake with a headache, raised himself from the bed and groaned.

The window in the bedroom was closed but beyond the curtains streaked sunshine, the din of voices, and the hooting of traffic. He heard Madame Bizenko’s footsteps retreat down the stairs, then he climbed out of bed, stretched his arms, and examined himself in the mirror. His eyes were swollen and bloodshot and with good reason. He’d been drinking vodka in one of London’s rowdy Russian émigré clubs and the night had lasted until one a.m.

Andrev shaved, washed with cold water and a flannel cloth, and toweled himself dry. There were thick welts in his skin where his wounds had healed. Then he dressed in an open-collar shirt, a dark suit of coarse cloth, and a peaked cap. When he went downstairs Madame Bizenko was in the kitchen making tea. She was a cheerful, gray-haired Jewish woman from Minsk with a high-pitched, girlish laugh. She had a fondness for playing both the violin and poker. Thick cuts of bread were stacked on a plate, next to a dish of butter and a bowl of hardboiled eggs.

“Good morning, Mr. Andrev. You look a bit under the weather this morning. Like you were dragged backward through a hedge, if you don’t mind me saying so.”

Andrev smiled. “Too much vodka last night, I’m afraid.”

“The curse of the Russians, but there’s always the antidote—strong black tea.”

There was a small garden out the back with a table and chairs and
as it was a pleasant spring day, he said he’d have his breakfast out there. He went out to the patio, taking his tea, a cut of bread, and two hard-boiled eggs.

The boardinghouse in Whitechapel in London’s East End was run by Madame Bizenko and her husband, a small nervous Londoner who chain-smoked and always deferred to his wife. The neighborhood was a teeming mass of immigrants: Russians, Balts, Slavs, and Irish, tough men who worked as laborers in the factories and warehouses or on road construction. Andrev shared the digs with four other men.

The two he shared a room with, an Irishman and a Scot, worked shifts in an armaments factory so he hardly saw them. The other two were Russians and he was convinced that at least one of them was an anarchist.

Despite Madame Bizenko’s cheerful nature the house had a soulless air, with faded wallpaper and peeling paint, but he was glad to call it home. For the first month in England he was penniless and had to sleep rough on park benches and in alleyways, with only a filthy gray blanket for warmth. For food, he scavenged among the bins of hotels and restaurants, or stood in line at the charity soup kitchens run by the émigré clubs.

But he was lucky to find work in a printing works and now Andrev had a steady job, the relative comfort of Madame Bizenko’s digs, and the luxury of two meals a day.

Last night, his boss, Ivan Shaskov, told him to take the morning off, telling him he’d been working far too hard lately—until ten most nights—and afterward Andrev visited one of the émigré clubs. He didn’t make a habit of frequenting the clubs in the evenings but he was starved for news from home and the boisterous clubs were hives of gossip.

Andrev sat in the sunshine and found a day-old newspaper someone had left on the table. As he sipped his tea and ate his bread, he read the pages.

The news confirmed the rumors he had heard last night. Lenin was desperately trying to cling to power. He may have signed a treaty with the Germans at Brest-Litovsk, but German troops were already within
firing distance of St. Petersburg. The treaty had cost Russia a third of her population, 61 million, and one-quarter of her territory. Japan had invaded in the Far East, and the Russian defenses everywhere had all but collapsed.

Andrev tossed aside the paper in dismay. The futility of it all sickened him.

“Good news, Mr. Andrev?” The landlady came out to clean away the plates.

“They’re still killing each other. This stupid, endless war goes on.”

Madame Bizenko shook her head. “Idiots, all of them. Maybe when they’re tired of shooting at each other they’ll eventually get sense and stop.”

“I wouldn’t hold my breath.” Andrev drained his tea and stood. He didn’t want to be too late for work.

As Andrev rode his bicycle through Whitechapel’s busy streets, the sidewalks were crowded with shoppers and soldiers in uniform; the crush of bodies and the smell of engine fumes were almost overwhelming. The worn black Raleigh bicycle was a gift from his boss and he was glad of it.

He was surprised that London was so international. Aside from tens of thousands of troops, Britain’s capital was host to every nationality: White and Red Russians, French, Belgians, Serbs, and Italians, to name but a few.

Hundreds of thousands of foreign refugees had crowded into the city since war began. Many of them were unable to return home because of the hostilities, and the sidewalks were a babble of languages. The restaurants and bars, cafés and lodging houses, all seemed full to overflowing.

As Andrev cycled toward the center of Whitechapel he saw the blackened ruins of buildings, scorched by fire and explosions.

Despite the war and fuel being rationed, merchant shops thronged and market stalls were laden down with fresh food and vegetables. Street vendors sold chestnuts roasted over charcoal embers, while Italian-run fish-and-chips shops did a brisk business. For four pence,
you could have a good meal of fish and thick-cut chips, wrapped in old newspaper.

Yet there were still deprived backstreets full of barefoot urchins. The war put many to work but poverty prevailed in the gaunt faces inhabiting London’s tenements, rampant with prostitution.

As he cycled on a footpath that cut through Hyde Park, Andrev dismounted. A brass band was playing on a covered rostrum. It reminded him of the military bands that played in St. Petersburg’s parks in summer. It was over four months since his escape from the camp, but it seemed like another life. So much had happened to him in between.

The brass medley ended and the air filled with the lively strains of a waltz.

It was music Nina loved and at once made him think of her and their son. His eyes welled up and he closed them tightly. A flood of questions troubled him.
How are you coping, Nina and Sergey? What are you doing? Are you safe and well?

Then a dark wave swept in and memories flooded his mind—of Stanislas’s brutal death. That image never left him. Or the horror of those days after he escaped and made his way to St. Petersburg to find Nina and Sergey, pursued at every step. It pained him to think that Leonid Yakov would believe he killed Stanislas. As he stood trying to shake off his anguish, he saw a young mother stroll through the park, a small boy with blond curls clutching her hand.

Andrev stared at the mother and child until they disappeared along a path. His heart swelled. He felt overwhelmed, completely and utterly alone. A crushing memory troubled him, of the last time he saw Nina and Sergey—alone in a cold, dilapidated St. Petersburg slum, trying to stay warm with his old army coat draped over them.

Andrev forced back his tears. This pain couldn’t go on forever, he told himself. Sooner or later, he had to get a grip.

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