The Romanov Conspiracy (9 page)

Such sumptuous events attracted the usual crowd—dukes, duchesses, princes of royal blood, ambassadors and diplomatic staff, wealthy businessmen with muttonchop whiskers, and the idle champagne set—including the sinister monk, Rasputin.

Sorg spotted him swanning around drunkenly with a bunch of titled married women in tow. The monk’s bad teeth, long greasy hair, and coarse laugh didn’t seem to deter the ladies’ fascination.

As he passed a room Sorg heard the sound of music and stepped in. A young woman was seated at a gleaming Steinway, playing the opening movement from Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto.

Dark auburn hair trailed down her back in waves, her pale classical beauty complemented by the modest, pastel blue silk dress she wore. A lush figure seemed ready to blossom beneath the silk’s sheen. She looked ravishing. Sorg guessed that she was no more than sixteen or seventeen, but with her high cheekbones and determined mouth, she had a self-assured look.

She played with such joyful intensity that Sorg felt himself captivated. She must have sensed his presence, for she stopped and turned to face him. Sorg put his glass down and clapped.

The young woman eyed him uncertainly and fingered a simple pearl choker around her neck. “I can’t believe that deserved applause. Do you like Tchaikovsky?”

Sorg said, “If you’d asked me five minutes ago, I would have said no. But I think you’ve made me a convert.”

Her eyes were striking, cornflower blue. He was never good with the opposite sex, always found them a challenge, but for some strange reason this young woman made him feel at ease. Maybe it was the spark of mischief he saw in her eyes.

She swung round on the piano stool and smiled. “You’re far too kind. Conrad says I need to practice more.”

“Conrad?”

“My piano tutor, but he’s an idiot. He’s threatening to leave Russia, says it’s getting far too dangerous with all the rioting.”

Sorg joined her at the piano, making a deliberate effort to mask his gait. “He could have a point.”

The young woman considered. “He also says that the tsar may soon be a prisoner in his own palace while the Reds and the Whites fight it out in the streets. Would you agree?”

“I’m afraid I wouldn’t know. Does such a thought worry you?”

“It’s certainly troubling. Do you
really
think I played well?”

“Yes, but you could always do better. Try a little more
allegro con spirito
. You can’t do Tchaikovsky justice without as much passion as possible.”

A spark glinted in the young woman’s eyes but vanished just as quickly, as if she was amused by the slim young man in front of her who walked with a cocky swagger. “You’re an expert, are you?”

“That’s debatable. May I?” Sorg leaned across and played the same movement with a flourish, his fingers moving deftly over the keys, before he ended the piece with remarkable vigor. He looked down at the young woman and smiled. “Why don’t you try playing it that way?”

His face was close to hers and he could smell her lavender fragrance. She looked impressed. “H—how on earth did you ever learn to play like
that
?”

Sorg picked up his wine and sipped. “Lessons from the age of four helped.”

“Can you give me any other advice?”

He smiled. “Always make sure that the lid over the keyboard is open before you start to play.”

She giggled. “Now you’re being funny.”

“My father used to say that.”

“Was he a musician?”

He nodded. “Most of my family, too. Poor ones, though. They worked the music halls of Moscow and St. Petersburg.”

“That must have been interesting. But four seems awfully young.”

“I think we try to make up for our shortcomings in different ways. Maybe I wanted to impress.”

“Pardon?”

“I’m just prattling. I was invited to join an orchestra after music college. I managed to stay a year until it taught me a valuable lesson.”

“What was that?”

Sorg smiled. “That living the rest of my life as a member of an orchestra would bore me to tears. So business replaced the piano, I’m afraid. It’s a lot more interesting.”

The young woman stood and put a hand gently on his arm. He felt a stab of electricity at her touch.

“What a shame, it was obviously music’s loss. Could you teach me how to play like that?”

As their eyes met, Sorg felt a flash of attraction. It was absurd. He
was at least ten years her senior but felt captivated. With her auburn hair, blue eyes, and vivacious personality, he thought she was the loveliest creature he had ever seen.

“Why not? But you’d have to put in the effort.”

“Don’t worry about that. My sisters say that I’m the wild one in the family and do everything with a passion. By the way, your Russian is excellent, but is that a slight accent I detect?”

“I’m an American citizen. My mother and I left Russia when I was a child.”

“My papa says the Americans are going to be the most powerful nation in the world someday. What’s your name?”

“Philip Sorg.”

“I insist on hearing you play again, Mr. Sorg. In fact, seeing as my tutor’s lost his nerve and thinks Russia is doomed, I want you to teach me how to play as well as you did, assuming you’d consider giving lessons.”

“I’d consider it an honor.”

She noticed the silver ring on his finger. “Are you a married man, Mr. Sorg?”

“No, a bachelor.”

A door opened and a young woman stepped into the room. Sorg saw a striking family resemblance—the same lush hair and porcelain features. The woman said, “There you are, you imp! Mama says you’re to return at once to the ball. People are asking for you.”

“Tell her I’ll be there soon.”

The older girl offered Sorg an exasperated grin. “Whoever you are, sir, will you promise me that you’ll make sure my sister returns to the ball at once?”

“I promise to do my best.”

“Just remember, or Mama will get cross.” The sister left.

The young woman smoothed her dress. “Don’t mind Olga, she’s a bossy boots. Still, I better be getting back. May I have your business card, Mr. Sorg?”

Sorg rummaged in his waistcoat pocket. “Won’t you have to ask your parents’ permission to allow me to tutor you?”

“They’ll give it once I tell them what a brilliant pianist you are. But first they’ll have your credentials investigated.”

“Investigated?”

Mischief flickered in her eyes. “Tell me if you have done any bad things or that you are wanted by the police or suchlike, Mr. Sorg.”

“Not that I know of.” He handed over a handwritten copperplate business card.

The young woman studied it and moved to the door. “It says your address is the Hotel Crimea and that your business is import and export?”

“Mostly in precious metals, but I deal in anything that turns a profit. May I ask your name?”

The young woman’s smile broadened. She looked lovely when she smiled. “Call me Anastasia,” and with a flourish she was gone, racing down the hall.

6

Sorg snapped out of his daydream. Four armed guards stepped out through a pair of French doors onto the snowy palace lawns.

He tensed, watching through the telescope. Behind the guards came the Romanov family. Sorg’s heart twitched, as if someone slipped a dagger between his ribs.

The last to appear was Anastasia. She clutched the family’s black-and-white pet dog, Jimmy, before she let it down to romp in the snow. Her hair fell about her shoulders, a white scarf bundled at her neck. Sorg should have recognized her that day from royal photographs he’d seen but she seemed so much older: the girl in the images looked like a child. Up close, Anastasia looked like a young woman.

Her piano tutor Conrad’s prediction had come true. Within months, the tsar abdicated and his family was placed under armed guard, confined to the Alexander Palace at Tsarskoye Selo, while Kerensky’s government clung to power by a thread, embattled on all sides: socialists, Mensheviks, and Reds jostling to seize control as the country veered toward bloody civil war.

Sorg watched now as Anastasia and her elder sister, Olga, made snowballs and threw them at their sisters, Tatiana and Maria. Anastasia wore what looked like one of her father’s coats. It was at least several sizes too big for her and it made her look vulnerable.

Sorg tore away his gaze as the former tsarina and her husband strolled toward a bench and sat. As usual the ex-tsar carried his thirteen-year-old invalid son, Alexei, in his arms. He settled the child on his knees, holding him close.

Anastasia told Sorg once that her family was in constant fear of Alexei bleeding to death. Her family—except her father—believed
that Rasputin miraculously helped lessen Alexei’s blood disease. Sorg found it impossible to accept that the mad, drunken monk at the ball could help anyone.

But Rasputin was dead now, poisoned and shot by his enemies, and then dumped in the Neva River.

Sorg watched Nicholas tenderly stroke his son’s hair. The man seemed such a contradiction. Sorg could never forget the newspaper photographs his father showed him of Jewish children, infants among them, butchered during the tsars’ pogroms. Sorg’s own relatives were victims. Was it hardly surprising that the revolution was led mostly by Jews, Lenin included?

Sorg shifted his focus back to Anastasia. She and her sisters playfully cavorted in the snow.
It’s so absurd
, Sorg reminded himself. He was a grown man of twenty-six, a cynical Brooklyn Jew who scoffed at love. Anastasia Romanov was sixteen, a deposed Romanov princess. Was it wrong for him—a grown man—to care for someone so young? But even if he despised everything her father stood for, this young woman aroused in him the warmest of feelings.

As he watched her, he thought:
I didn’t foresee this happening. I didn’t foresee falling helplessly in love. I never thought that I would need your company, long to kiss you; ache for you to come and lie beside me at night. I never imagined that I would be terrified of never seeing you again
.

It troubled him to think what his own father would say. A man who hated royalty with a vehemence.

Yet Sorg recalled that after each of his piano lessons, he found himself more and more looking forward to his palace visits.

It didn’t matter that he used the visits as much to gather intelligence information as for his own pleasure. Sorg convinced himself that much more than a glimmer of attraction passed between him and Anastasia during their first meeting. And as much of a tomboy as she was, he sensed her vulnerability.

As if despite her privileged upbringing—or because of it—she didn’t fit in anywhere. That weakness made him want to protect her.

Sorg came alert as the guards ushered the Romanovs toward the palace.

Their exercise period was over. The last to enter the French doors was Anastasia. For a moment she hesitated, as if she was searching for something in the grounds but wasn’t quite sure what, and then with a turn of her pretty head she moved back inside the palace doors and was gone.

Sorg’s heart sank like an anchor, as it always did whenever he lost sight of her. He tore his gaze from the telescope. What kept his spirits up was his hope of rescuing Anastasia; that was his mission. He cared nothing for her father. In truth he loathed the tsar, but he had a job to do and it included the ex-tsar and all his family.

He wrote up his notes, recording the time and the family’s general appearance along with his impressions. He would wire his encoded report to Helsinki. In due course, via the undersea cable from London to New York, his message would be telegraphed to Washington.

Sorg put away his notebook and pencil and began to disassemble the telescope. He heard a faint sound like a creaking floorboard and turned.

The landlord, Mr. Ravich, stood in the doorway. He wandered in with his crooked grin, removing his gloves, finger by finger. “Ah, Mr. Carlson, I just came to check if everything’s all right with the plumbing?”

Sorg asked hoarsely, “How long have you been standing there?”

Ravich tucked his gloves into his pocket. In an instant he replaced them with a revolver that he pointed at Sorg.