Winter Palace (38 page)

The result was visible everywhere. A surgeon became a doorman at a restaurant catering to foreigners. An avionics engineer became a hotel bartender. Bars and restaurants and nightclubs sprouted leather luxury, were guarded by former KGB officers dressed in evening wear, and over their door bore the single word
Valuta
. It was a world within a world, open only to those who found a means of obtaining
green money
.

A
valutnaya
, a currency girl, earned four years' average earnings in one night. A black-market tout gained eighteen months' salary with each scalped ticket to the Kirov or Bolshoi. Taxi drivers shunned anyone who did not dress in Western style. Eyes on the street hunted out wandering tourists
and hungered for the immeasurable wealth they carried in their pockets.

Yussef opened the restaurant's back door, spoke in most respectful tones, asked if he might have one word with a friend about a most urgent matter. Then he waited, the scar-faced back-door bouncer watching him with eyes the color of a very dark pool.

His friend blanched when Yussef came into view, recovered quickly, came forward with hand outstretched, and said loudly, “Yussef, so kind of you to bring word personally. How is my brother?”

Yussef allowed the man to guide him back outside into the alley. He answered quietly, “Your brother the bishop needs your help. Badly.”

“So badly that he would wish to see me dead?” The man hissed his words through teeth clenched in fear. “What is it that could not wait for a more private meeting?”

“I tried your apartment,” Yussef replied. “I was told you had moved, and I knew nowhere else to go.”

“This is true,” the man subsided slightly, but his eyes continued to dance their nervous gait up and down the narrow way. “Business has been good. The pay is nothing, but the tips are sometimes in dollars. I have been able to take a larger flat.”

“I am happy for you,” Yussef replied, and lowered his voice even more. “The Tombek clan. They come here still?”

At the name the man's face turned the color of old bone. “Do not ask, Yussef.”

“I must.”

“Horrid things happen to people who ask about such as them. Things from your worst nightmares.”

“Still, I must. Have you ever heard mention of a winter palace? It would be a place where things are stored.”

The man wiped a face damp from more than just the day's gathering heat. “I waited on them three nights this week. Enough to make me wish for a government job that paid in
rubles. I hold my breath and pray unceasingly whenever I approach their table.”

“And you heard something,” Yussef said, tensing in anticipation.

“It is a place on the Fontanka,” he replied, the effort of forcing air through over-tensed muscles causing his whispers to rise and fall in power. “Near the old royal stables.”

Yussef jerked as though slapped. Hard. “It can't be.”

“People like that can't be,” the man hissed. “But they are. Now go. If the walls have ears, my children will starve.”

Chapter 39

Jeffrey was out the door, his hand raised to flag a taxi, when he realized what it was that had kept nagging at him. He dropped his arm, turned, and raced back into the hotel.

Sergei was less than excited to see him again. His eyes resembled eggs fried for several hours on a very hot stove. But Ivona was nowhere to be found, and Jeffrey knew no one else to translate. So he grabbed the young man by the shirtsleeve and dragged him complaining to where his grandmother sat knitting by the little parlor fireplace.

“What, what,” Sergei complained, then raised a hand to the side of his head. “Ah, too loud. I speak too loud. What you want, Sinclair?”

“Your grandmother,” Jeffrey puffed, suddenly out of breath. “She said something last night about a cellar in the Markov palace.”

With a martyr's long-suffering expression, Sergei translated, listened to her reply, told Jeffrey, “She say, of course there is cellar. What you do in that house for so long?”

“How big a cellar,” Jeffrey demanded.

“Size of whole house,” he translated, as puzzled as the old lady. “Bigger. Run back under garden.”

Jeffrey smacked the table beside him. “It's there,” he breathed. “It's been there all along.”

“Of course it's there,” Sergei replied, misunderstanding. “Big house like that, have cellar for food, wine, heat, maybe treasure room. How you miss such a thing, my grandmother wants to know.”

But Jeffrey was already moving. He ripped a sheet from the note pad by the telephone, scribbled furiously, flung it at Sergei. As he raced for the door, he shouted over his shoulder, “Give this to Ivona or Yussef, whoever shows up first. Tell
them to meet me there as soon as they come in. Tell them I think I know!”

The architect was bent over his blueprints when Jeffrey arrived. He had made a trestle table by taking a door off its hinges and laying it across two sawhorses. The entire front hall was awash in partially uncoiled drawings. Jeffrey flung a greeting toward the bespectacled man as he raced on past.

First the kitchen, just to be sure. He tore through the main scullery, scrambled down the feeble stairs, carefully searched the cramped storage room. The walls were filthy with the dirt of ages. If anyone had erected a false barrier it was impossible to tell. Tapping on the walls yielded nothing but a shower of dust.

Back up the stairs, down the hall connecting to the ground-floor parlors, scrambling over the pipes and steel sheeting and rod-iron, thinking all the while how easy it would be to disguise a former cellar entrance under all this junk. Just as Yussef had said about hiding contraband in his own car; it was all too heavy to lift unless there was a very good reason.

Through the smaller private parlor, the one formerly belonging to the young prince, Vladimir Markov's father. Through the dust-blanketed study, his footsteps skidding as he took the turning into the hallway leading to the bath and the bedroom and the dressing salon. And the wardrobes.

There were six of them, lining both sides of a chamber made into a hallway by their size. They rose from floor to distant ceiling, each door a full four feet wide. Jeffrey opened each door in turn, the massive hardwood frames groaning with disuse but swinging easily, testifying to the quality of their original workmanship. Even through the heavy whitewash, it was possible to trace the wood's grain, to see where the full-length mirrors had hung, to see how the drawers had been fitted and the shelves made to swing out so that even the item farthest back could be easily retrieved. It was also easy to see where the framed paintings had been placed.

Jeffrey searched each of the small shadow-frames in turn, his heart beating a frantic pace. Not until he had worked his way past the first wardrobe did he realize that in order to have a box behind it, the painting Sergei's grandmother had spoken of would have to be set upon something other than a door.

There were four painting-shells not on the doors themselves, two set at either end of the long chamber. Jeffrey struck gold on the third try. At his gentle pressure the wooden block squeaked aside on hidden hinges, revealing a hiding space perhaps a foot square. His hand scrabbled in and back, his lungs chuffing like an ancient locomotive as he found the knob. And pressed. And felt the wall beside him tremble as something unseen gave way.

He pulled his hand out, looked into the closet next to him, and saw that the back section had swung out and away. Leading down into the gloom was a set of ancient stairs.

A shout from the front hallway made him jump two feet in the air. Carefully he sealed the little box, then spent a frantic minute trying to figure out how to close a door that had no handle. The shouting continued unabated as he settled on a hairsbreadth of breathing space, sealed all the closet doors, and raced back to the front hall.

Sergei was dancing a full-throated, panic-stricken two-step when Jeffrey appeared. “They come! They come! My grandmother, she speak with them. I escape through kitchen! They know your name! They come for you!”

Jeffrey fought for meager breath, asked, “Who has?”

“They! They! Who needs a name for terror?”

His heart tripped into a higher beat than he thought possible. “You mean the mafia?”

“Mafia, KGB, who knows the name these days? They seek you, Sinclair. That is all you need to know.”

His mind froze, unable to move beyond the point of, I've found it! “But what for?”

Sergei turned, exasperated. “What do you think for, to dance? They come to make you disappear!”

His legs grew weak. “What do I do?”

“You wish to live? Yes? Good. Then leave, Sinclair. Go to consulate. Run. Fly. Go now.”

A car scrunched on the gravel lining the main entryway. Sergei swung around at the sound, backed away from the door, groaned, “My head hurts too much to die.”

Jeffrey's mind raced into high gear. He turned to the panic-stricken architect. “Tell them this. You let yourself in with your own keys, as usual. You were here alone. You haven't seen me since yesterday.”

The architect yammered in fear, “But I—”

Sergei hissed a soft scream at him in Russian. Footsteps sounded along the drive.

Jeffrey grabbed his friend's arm, pulled him back through the main hall and into Markov's private salon. Jeffrey moved in frantic haste as Sergei scrambled and drew short chopping breaths. Together they raced back through the private rooms. Sergei stopped at the dressing chamber, saw a bathroom with barred walls, a shuttered bedroom, moaned, “We shall soon be corpses.”

“Not yet,” Jeffrey urged. He flung open the closet, pushed out the back wall, asked, “Do you have any matches?”

“What?”

“Never mind. Come on, come on, down the stairs.”

Sergei took in the secret doorway and the darkened depths beyond with eyes the size of dinner plates. “What this is?”

“Compliments of your grandmother. Down the stairs.”

Jeffrey followed him in, pulled the closet door closed behind him, stepped down three stairs he could not see, fumbled and pushed the back wall-door shut on muffled voices.

As quietly as they could in utter blackness, they hustled down the stairs. When they stepped off onto cold concrete flooring, Jeffrey heard Sergei fumble about. There was a click, a spark, and a small flame pushed the gloom back three paces. What stood revealed was enough to rob Jeffrey of his last remaining breath.

Treasure.

****

A lifetime's experience had trained Yussef for this moment.

The instant he spotted the car outside the guesthouse's front entrance, Yussef hunched his shoulders and continued steadily around the corner. There he parked his car, weighed his choices, and decided he had no alternative but to see if there were any chance, any chance at all.

He made his way through the interconnecting
dvurr
—the cramped apartment-lined courtyards—until he arrived at the back of the guesthouse. He glanced through a ground-floor window and was both reassured and mightily worried. The guesthouse kitchen was empty save for the old lady, who sat in a chair by the unlit stove and wailed a constant note of wordless pain.

Yussef glanced about, tapped softly, then raised the glass farther and stepped through. “The American. Where is he?”

“Gone,” she keened. “First I tell him where to dig his grave. Then I send my grandson to join him.”

“Where? Where did they go, old woman?”

“The palace, the palace,” she moaned. “Had I never opened my mouth, oh, my beloved grandson.”

“Markov's palace?” Yussef resisted the urge to shake her. “He's been working there for more than a week. What could you tell him that he did not already know?”

But the old woman would say no more. She simply held out an arthritic fist, which clutched a crumpled, tear-streaked paper. Yussef pried open the fingers, saw the writing was English. He shoved it in his pocket.

Quietly Yussef moved forward at a crouch, peered through the doorway, saw nothing, no one. This was a guesthouse for citizens of the former Soviet empire. They could smell such trouble a world away and knew precisely when to be away. Anywhere would do. Just away.

He raced through the lobby and up the stairs, then stood
at the landing, wishing he had thought to ask which was her room. “Ivona,” he hissed. Then louder, “Ivona!”

A door opened to reveal a rumpled Ivona, a cold compress applied to her forehead. “What is it?”

“A day for pain,” he replied, grabbing her arm. “You have on shoes? Good. We go. Now.”

“What? Why?” But something in his tone and tension made her follow without question.

Straighten up here, now, yes, calmly reaching the landing and walking past the window that looked out over the idling car where two hard-faced killers waited, waited, like carnivores tracking their prey. Back through the kitchen, pause for a word of comfort to the old woman, a pat on her shoulder, a promise he hoped he could fulfill. Open the window and help Ivona through, then himself. Now straighten and hurry and hope that ever-curious eyes would just this once be searching elsewhere.

When they were back in his car and underway and both were able to breathe again, Ivona said, “Tell me.”

“First read this.” Yussef plucked the note from his pocket and handed it to Ivona, who translated, “It is all in the palace. I know where. Jeffrey.”

She looked at him askance, demanded, “He has found the treasure?”

“And perhaps his own death. We must hurry.”

She repeated, “Tell me.”

He did, in the fewest possible words. “I will drop you by a taxi stand. Go to the bishop. Tell him our only hope is to gather at the palace.”

“Who should gather?”

“Everyone. Any call that can be made must be made. Any friend who is near must come.
Must
come. Our only hope, our only safety, is in numbers.”