Winter Palace (39 page)

“But we know nothing for certain.” Softly. Without the strength to truly protest. “And he has been working there
for over a week. How could he have missed something so important until now?”

“This I feel in my gut to be the place and the time,” Yussef said, pulling up to a rank of taxis. He turned to Ivona. “I have no answers to your questions, no way to be sure except to go back and ask the men sitting out before the guesthouse. Shall I do that, Ivona Aristonova? Shall I?”

Ivona remained silent.

“No, I thought not. Go. Tell the bishop. For the life of my new friend, tell him to hurry.”

Ivona climbed from the car, asked, “And you?”

Yussef put the car into gear, spoke through the open window, “Do you remember if Jeffrey said the American Consul General speaks Russian?”

****

Stacked from floor to an arched ceiling lost in darkness were boxes and sacks spilling treasure. Piled in careless heaps. Tied in frantic bundles. Wrapped in packing blankets and sealed with tape. Spilling from overstuffed crates. Jeffrey and Sergei did a dual open-mouth spin of the room until the lighter heated up enough to burn Sergei's finger. Then a stifled curse, a clatter, and darkness.

“You dropped it,” Jeffrey moaned, immediately on his knees and fumbling in the utter black.

“Here, I have.” A rustling, tearing sound, then light once more, with Sergei's hand protected by a segment of his shirt. Jeffrey looked about, spotted the remnants of several candles, plucked them from the jutting stone shelf. He held the longest shred up for Sergei to light.

“What now?” Sergei asked.

“Your grandmother said something about another exit at the back of the garden,” Jeffrey said, concentrating as he struggled to get his bearings, then pointing down a shadowy passage that mawed before them.

Sergei hung back. “That was long ago, Sinclair. Seventy, eighty years.”

“So what would you rather do?” Jeffrey was growing frantic. Now was not the time for debate. “Sit around until we're hungry enough to eat gold? Maybe form a two-man reception committee for the next crew that comes down here?”

Sergei nodded. “You are right. We go.”

They made their slow way through chamber after treasure-strewn chamber. Jeffrey struggled against his professional training, managed not to spend too much time cataloguing what he was passing. But he couldn't help giving out the occasional gasp or groan, yearning to pick up and carry along. Now it was Sergei's single-minded scramble that urged them along. The man knew much better than he what loomed behind them.

The long passage finally narrowed, then narrowed once more, until they left the treasure behind and moved into a dank, foul-smelling tunnel lined with the slime of ages. The tunnel then dead-ended, the solid rock wall before them offering no clue, no hope. To the right was a small door with an ancient iron clasp rusted shut. To the left a second door, this one bearing a newer padlock.

A thought struck Jeffrey hard enough to overcome any natural logic. His heart in his throat, he knocked softly on the left-hand door.

Behind him Sergei hissed a question, warning, and curse all in one.

“Hello,” Jeffrey called softly, sweating heavily. Then he waited.

From behind the door a very small, frightened female voice said in English, “Who's there?”

****

Yussef had no idea whatsoever how to address a man of the Consul General's rank. So he chose to rely upon haste.

“Jeffrey Sinclair is my friend.” Or was, if he was too late.
In which case there remained no harm in hurrying for the treasure's sake.

“I would like to call him a friend as well,” the Consul General of the United States replied solemnly in good Russian. “He has spoken of his friends from the Ukraine as good people, people upon whom I would be confident to rely.”

Yussef nodded, taking the measure of the man's tone, deciding now was the time to go with the feelings of his friend. “Jeffrey Sinclair is in danger.”

“Ah.”

“Possibly worse.” In a few words Yussef related what had transpired that day. The Consul General stood alongside a tall, lanky, blond-haired young man who listened with singular intensity. When Yussef had finished, the Consul General turned and spoke in quick, sharp bursts to the man, who was already dialing furiously on the security desk's telephone.

Yussef felt himself draw his first full breath since driving by the guesthouse. The Americans reacted with the speed and precision of which he had heard. Here indeed was hope.

The Consul General turned back to Yussef. “I must return to my office for a moment and give instructions to my staff. We will try to call in further assistance. I must ask you to wait here. There is a strict policy of not allowing nonscreened personnel beyond this point. You wish for something?”

“Go,” Yussef urged. “I have a lifetime to drink and eat. My friend has perhaps only a few moments.”

****

It was indeed the strangest gathering in Yussef's entire existence. But he would be forced to wait several days before realizing fully what awaited him and the Consul General as they drove into the Markov palace's main gates, followed by two carloads of marines. Taking all but one of the consulate's contingent of soldiers off duty and into civilian clothes was why they had been slightly delayed in arriving.

Standing on the palace's front steps was an Orthodox priest
in flowing black robes and long, gray-flecked beard; a gray-haired gentleman in Western suit with a small gold cross in his lapel, and Ivona with Bishop Michael Denisov. Below this group was a phalanx of hard-faced men, some in uniforms, others not. Yussef stiffened at the sight, suddenly terrified for all concerned, but was stilled by the Consul General's calm explanation, “Some of these are friends of mine from the KGB. We called and asked for their assistance. The others I do not know.”

“Friends and allies,” Yussef replied, knowing a flood of relief as more and more familiar faces came into view. Crawling around the house's vast perimeter, leaning from upper-story windows, calling out to others unseen, were a number of allies, Ukrainians all. Those along the perimeter had armed themselves with short iron rods taken from the warehouse collection. They watched all who arrived with dangerous eyes. But there was no sign of Jeffrey Sinclair.

The Consul General climbed the stairs alongside Yussef, made brief introductions, heard the report from the architect, which confirmed both Jeffrey's arrival and the Chechen thugs' empty-handed departure. The KGB chief and the Ukrainians' appointed head man then reported that the house had been thoroughly searched. Numerous times. And nothing had been found. No sign at all.

An alarm sounded by watchmen at the front gates sent forth a score of running, shouting men. A pair of cars roared away on screeching tires, followed by racing figures, weapons held high. The KGB gathered at the base of the steps watched with evident approval, offered applause when the grinning men returned through the gates.

Yussef held out the crumbled note, said, “Jeffrey claimed to have found the treasure here in the palace.”

“Impossible,” the young KGB officer replied. “I have personally been all through the manor. The grounds as well.”

Yussef asked the officer, “Could your men escort me back to the guesthouse? There is an old woman who just might
know the answer. But there are men outside the doors who will wish to keep us forever apart.”

****

The rust-frozen old clasp was proving infinitely harder to pry open than the newer padlock.

Jeffrey's hands were slippery with sweat as he hacked at the stubborn bolt lock with a two-foot-long, jewel-studded Byzantine cross. The floor at his feet was flecked with gold chips and thumbnail-size rubies shed by the impromptu tool.

Behind him, Sergei held their last remaining candle stub aloft and nursed a serious gash on his other arm, the result of a misplaced blow. Farther down the passage, a violently shivering Leslie Ann Stevens, wrapped in a packing blanket taken from a group of late Renaissance silver goblets, sat on a chest holding a set of ornamental medieval daggers chased in solid gold. She was supposedly keeping guard, but Jeffrey guessed the young lady was so deep into shock and sheer exhaustion that she was scarcely aware of anything about her.

He was growing increasingly frantic. The hammering was proving both futile and extremely painful. His hands ached, his fingers were so lacerated by the sharp-edge jewels that his blood formed a sticky glue under his grip. And he was making no visible progress at all.

In anger and frustration, he slammed the cross down with all his might and broke it in half. He was almost glad to see it over and done with.

Then the last candle flickered and died.

Leslie Ann Stevens let out a low moan.

He was standing in the darkness, listening to Sergei fumble with his lighter and wondering what on earth they could do to get the blasted door open when a sound at the far end of the tunnel stopped his heart. Sergei hissed a Russian oath. Leslie Ann gasped a series of terrified oh-oh-ohs.

Jeffrey closed the cell's door, fumbled with numb fingers for the shattered padlock, set it in place as best he could.
Knowing it was futile. Knowing they were trapped in a dead end. Knowing they were facing death, but not knowing anything else to do. “Move back behind the bales. Quick. Sergei, give us light. Hurry.”

Then the ringing voice of hope and freedom. “Jeffrey! Jeffrey Sinclair! It's Stan Allbright! Are you down here, son?”

Chapter 40

Father Anatoli glanced at the floor and said quietly, “My brothers, we do not stand upon treasure.”

“What rests beneath us,” Bishop Michael agreed, “is a powder keg. A bomb ready to destroy us all.”

It had been the Consul General's idea. Why not, he had suggested, place the three churchmen as joint administrators over the task of storing and dividing the treasures? The other groups, he had continued, could take joint responsibility for guarding it.

The groups had agreed with an alacrity born upon relief. After all, they had experienced decades of enmity and distrust and bloodshed, and only a few hours of this new fragile peace. It was a peace, they realized, based upon a most urgent need. A stronger and more solid footing was required for so great a treasure.

“The truce that surrounds and protects us,” Father Anatoli said, “is more fragile than a single thread. It remains only because of the greater threat that still lurks outside. We must work to cement it while we still can. A quarrel between us would therefore be disastrous.”

The three of them—Father Anatoli of the Russian Orthodox Church, Bishop Michael of the Ukrainian Rites Catholic Church, and Reverend Evan Collins of the Saint Petersburg Gospel Fellowship—sat together on upturned packing crates in the upstairs formal parlor of the Markov winter palace. Their conference was lighted by a pair of naked bulbs set to either side of the great mahogany entranceway.

“If we cannot work in trust with one another,” Bishop Michael agreed, “how can we hope to stem the tide of conflict that will soon rise among the others?”

“And which already threatens the very life of this nation,” Reverend Collins added.

“It would be a horror,” Father Anatoli declared, “to see our returned fortune become the reason for further bloodshed. Better we had never found the treasure at all.”

“But we have found it,” Bishop Michael countered. “And with it has come a great responsibility.”

“But the risk. There is wealth enough to destroy us all if we cannot unite.”

“Or to heal many wounds,” Reverend Collins said, “if we can.”

“It is as you say,” Father Anatoli acceded. “Yet our churches are so different, and conflict so familiar.”

“Then let us look beyond the churches,” Bishop Michael urged, “and join as brothers in Christ.”

Down the hall from their own chamber, the moods of the other leaders were being shown in great bellows of argument and discussion as guard stations and duties and schedules were hammered out. The three church leaders sat in silence for a moment, listened to the shouting men and their strong oaths, and knew how easily the oaths could become curses, the words become blows.

“Too many of my people search for the salvation of a past that never was,” Father Anatoli declared. “Some want the monarchy, which they declare was benevolent and beloved by all the people. Others want the Communists back in power and say they really didn't do so badly after all. Others say the church must rise back to the power of old, be the
only
church and the soul of the Russian nation.” He sighed. “Such lies we tell ourselves. Such fables we feed our hopes upon.”

From outside the manor came watchmen's shouted reports, ringing around the yard every three or four minutes, echoed from within the palace by their fellow guards. And for now, within their chamber, all was quiet, all was honest, all was openhearted harmony.

“At times I feel that running a church here is like fishing in heaven,” Reverend Collins confessed. “Not a week passes
that I don't have at least a couple of people come in and ask, can you help us grow? Can you teach us more?”

“Yet how many of them come to you because of the Gospel,” Father Anatoli countered, “and how many because you are from the West?”

“I would be the first to admit,” Reverend Collins agreed, “that many of those entering our doors do so because they associate us with
success
. With
wealth
. They assume we Westerners have all the answers because we have made our system work while their own has failed. But that, too, is a problem. They see no wrong in our Western society. They accept the New Age cults and the get-rich ministries just as hungrily as they do the Gospel.”

“My people also drift very easily,” Bishop Michael confessed. “Today it is Mass, tomorrow a Protestant revival, the next day a liter of vodka.”