Текст книги "The Romanov Succession"

Автор книги: Brian Garfield

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5

There were six planes-the new B-24 Liberator type, long-range and fromidable. They gave him a waist-gunner’s seat in the third plane and showed him how to use the intercom and oxygen apparatus.

Everything he owned of any consequence was in the B-4 bag at his feet and except for the pistols none of it was of moment to him; he did not carry souvenirs of his life. It was one of the things that made him feel apart from the rest of his kind-the White Russian exiles with their passionate covetousness.

It was cold in the night sky. Through the turret perspex he watched the other planes bobbing slightly in the intangible balance of their staggered formation. The drone was hypnotic and soporific; in his mind he ran back over the tense telephone conversation with General Deniken-searching for clues to the things Deniken had left unsaid:

“Alexsander, you have been transferred to Washington. You’ve received your orders?”

“I’ve received orders, yes sir. I’m not permitted to discuss them.”

“I understand. Alexander, there is something you must do for me. I ask this in your brother’s name.”

He bridled slightly. “Yes?”

“You must go immediately to New York and meet with someone. You must do this before you report to Washington.”

“I don’t think there’s time for that, General.”

“Make the time. This is a matter of the utmost importance-it is vital. The Plaza Hotel in New York, do you know it?”

“Yes.”

“You must be there by tomorrow evening.”

“Will you be there, General?”

“No, they’re sending someone from Feodor’s group in Spain. I don’t know which of them it is. It may be your brother. It may well be Prince Leon himself. The matter is that important. I beg of you be there within twenty-four hours. I ask this in Vassily’s name.”

There was no way to refuse the old man. If the exiled shell of White Russia had a savior then A. I. Deniken was that man. He was the greatest White general of the Russian Civil War and he had been the last Supreme Ruler of All the Russias: to the White exiles and even to the surviving Romanov Pretenders like the Grand Duke Feodor he was the next thing to a Czar.

Put by Deniken it could not be refused.

In the early hours they took more than an hour to refuel at Wright Field in Ohio and then they were droning on through a dull summer morning, buffeting in the turbulence of the clouds. At three in the afternoon they came into McGuire Field. Captain Johnson walked back from the leading Liberator, a parachute pack trailing in his fist. “I’ve got to report in but I’m driving over to Philadelphia right away. If you want to hang around I’ll give you a lift to the Trenton station. It’s about an hour and a half on the train to New York.”

Alex waited for him in the PX canteen. Johnson collected him at three forty-five. He had a motor-pool Ford. Alex tossed his bag in the back seat and climbed in.

“My name’s Paul, Colonel. Most of them call me Papp-I’m four years older than the next oldest pilot in the Thirty-fifth”

Alex reached across his lap to shake hands. “I appreciate your trouble.”

“No trouble at all. Always bothers the taxpayer in me when we have to ferry those big jobs empty-seems like a hell of a waste of aviation gasoline.”

Johnson was a stocky man with blunt hands and short reddish hair and a square freckled face. He couldn’t have been much over thirty: “Pappy.” At thirty-four Alex felt old.

Johnson drove as if pursued, flashing along the narrow roads of the New Jersey pine barrens. It was hot under the sullen sky and they kept the windows wide open; Johnson shouted to make himself heard. “They got you aboard damn quick down at El Paso. You mind if I ask where you get your drag?”

“The base commander at Bliss is an old friend. We soldiered together in Finland.”

A sudden sidewise glance; Johnson’s face changed. “Danilov-sure. They had a piece on you in Colliers last year, right? ‘This man goes where the wars are’-something like that. Joined up over here to train ranger commandoes, wasn’t that it? Listen, you’ve seen those German planes in action. How do they really stack up?”

“They’re not as good as Goering and Goebbels want us to think. The Spitfires have been handing it to the Messerschmitts.”

“Weren’t you in China?”

Johnson’s professionalism was total: it was a characteristic of good airmen. Anticipating the question Alex said, “There isn’t a plane in the world that can match the Japanese Zero.”

“I’ll tell you something, Colonel, you give me a B-Seventeen Fort and I’ll take my chances against those peashooters. You ever seen a Fort up close?”

“No.”

“Sweetest airplane a man ever built. We had a flight of prototypes for tryouts last year. You think we’ll be in this war, Colonel? I don’t think it’s going to be decided by Messerschmitts or Zeroes or anybody else’s peashooters. I think it’s going to be dogfaces and carriers and long-range four-engine bombers. That’s the three things that will decide it-the rest is all window dressing. It takes carriers to open the sea-lanes. It takes heavy bombers to flatten the enemy’s communications and supply lines. Takes the infantry to root him out and finish him. That’s the whole story of this war we’re looking at.”

Johnson had the earmarks of a long-distance talker but Alex listened with respect because the pilot was a shrewd man and obviously it was a thing to which he’d given a great deal of thought.

Alex said, “I’d add one thing to that list. I’ve seen panzers in action.”

“I don’t agree. That’s only tactics. You can stop a tank easy if you’re ready for it. They’re sitting ducks. Too many ways you can hit a tank. Let me tell you something-I put my squadron through a little experiment last year. We mocked up twenty tanks on the ground out at Camp Hunter-Liggett in the Mohave Desert and then we took off. We made a regular war game out of it-phony flak, the works.

“We plastered hell out of them. On the scorecard it was Air Corps fifteen, Armor nothing.” Johnson flashed a glance at him. “Low-level precision bombing, Colonel. You’re right on top of your target-hell you can’t miss if your bombardiers know their jobs. You know how good a target a big fat tank makes from fifty feet altitude?”

“What if they’d been real tanks-taking evasive action?”

“Tanks can’t maneuver that fast. They turn like bull elephants-catch them on rough terrain even the best panther tank can’t make better than fifteen, eighteen miles an hour. They’re sitting ducks. But the War Department gave me that same line. Christ I felt like Billy Mitchell. They told me to take my ideas and shove them. Well I guess that’s all right-when the time comes maybe I can talk them into taking out that report of mine and dusting it off. We’re not into the war yet, a lot of things are likely to change.”

Johnson guided the Ford smoothly through the main street of a small town. On the outskirts he put it back up to fifty and went swaying through the bends. Light rain began to bead up on the windshield. Alex said, “You can really pinpoint a target as small as a tank, can you?”

“It takes training, Colonel. I never said it was easy. But one of these days it’s going to help win this war.”

6

The train was jammed; he had to stand. It was a commuter express with stops at Princeton Junction and New Brunswick and Newark; filled with businessmen in black fedoras and wide snap-brims. There were soldiers on furlough and vacationing college students in ribboned bonnets and white shoes, giggling their way to New York where you could drink liquor at eighteen. The placards advertised Rupert’s Beer and the Radio City Music Hall feature, Gary Cooper in Sergeant York. Ivory Soap was 99.44/100ths% pure and Lucky Strike meant fine tobacco and the 1941 Lincoln Zephyr was the fine car for everyman. On the commuters’ newspapers the headlines bannered F.D.R. TO NATIONALIZE PHILIPPINE ARMY-Moves in Response to Jap Occupation of Indo-China. Mac-Arthur to Command.

Pushing through the crowd he carried his bag through throngs of redcap porters up the stairs and the long Penn Station ramp past the Savarin restaurant where middle-aged women sat in flowered hats watching the big railroad clocks.

Like battling stags two black Fords had locked bumpers in the center of Seventh Avenue and the boulevard was a tangle of hooting cars. He went through the station’s immense stone columns and made his way two blocks uptown to get out of the jam.

It was a five-minute wait and then he was riding uptown in a taxi with his B-4 bag on the seat beside him and his hand in the strap-loop: New York traffic always terrified him. Along Seventh Avenue the menials of the Garment District pushed their heavy clothes-hanger dollies through the tangle of trucks and cars and horsecarts.

The traffic in Times Square was intense and the big illuminated signs flashed at him painfully– I’d Walk a Mile for a Camel; Seagram’s for the Man of Distinction. Leather-throated newsboys hawked the Mirror and the Trib and tourists gawked at the enormous Paramount cinema palace.

The taxi had the peculiar De Soto smell of old leather and cigar ash. It decanted him in the semicircular drive before the Plaza and he hauled his bag into the oak-and-marble lobby. At the mail desk he identified himself and was handed a note on the hotel’s embossed stationery, neatly handwritten in the Cyrillic characters of the Russian alphabet:

“Alex– You are booked in. Come around at eight o’clock to #917.-I.”

He puzzled it momentarily before he pocketed it and moved on to the reception desk. A clerk gave his uniform a glance of utter contempt. “May I help you?”

“Colonel Danilov. There’s a reservation for me, I think.”

“I’m not sure there’s-oh yes, here you are. Room Nine-nineteen.” Not troubling to conceal his disapproval the clerk struck his palm down on the counter-top bell. “Front!”

The bellboy had the red muscular face of an experienced Irish drinker. He regarded Alex’s single soft bag with displeasure, heaved it under his arm and took the key from the clerk. “This way sir if you please.”

On the ninth floor the middle-aged boy led Alex along the deep-carpeted hall to the northeast corner of the building and into a luxuriously spacious chamber that gave him a view of the whole of Central Park and across Fifth Avenue to the lights of the Pierre and the Savoy Plaza and the Sherry Netherland. The bellboy examined Alex’s twenty-five cent piece as if he suspected its worth and backed out of the room with a stiff bow.

Alex took his dop kit into the marble-tiled bathroom; washed and shaved and combed and emerged rereading the note. “I” could be Ivan or Igor or Ilya: there were numerous men with those names among his acquaintances in the White Russian exile organizations and families. It annoyed him a little: the passion for unnecessary conspiratorial secrecy.

A bottle of Polish vodka lay canted in a champagne bucket filled with ice. He lifted it out and brooded at the straw of buffalo grass that lay inside the sealed clear bottle. Someone knew his taste. He poured the two-ounce bartender’s glass full and downed it; replaced the bottle and settled into a chair, and waited. He neither smoked nor drank again; he only waited.

At eight he went out, turned to Room 917 next door in the hall and knocked.

“Yes?” A woman. “Who is it?”

His host had company then. Alex contained his impatience-made his face blank. “Colonel Danilov.”

He heard soft footfalls on a carpet. A key turned in the lock and the door pivoted to disclose a stunning dark-haired woman in red.

His face changed. “Irina.”

Irina Markova smiled. “Come in, Alex, don’t stand there looking like a stunned schoolboy with his hat in his hand.”

He entered the room warily; behind him the door clicked shut and Irina said in her low liquid Russian, “There’s no need to clench your teeth. Vassily’s not with me. We’re alone.”

He turned, feeling odd.

“Just you and I.” She smiled again. “How romantic.”

All the old passions slid back into place entirely against his will. A spiral of heat rose from his stomach: he felt tricked. “What’s this meant to be, Irina?”

“They need you, Alex. It’s supposed to be a seduction.”

7

There was a sense of mystery about Irina that ramified from her like a spreading fog of intoxicating perfume. She was clearly aware of it; she did nothing to dispel it.

The natural shape of her blue eyes was slightly mournful-Eurasian. Her hair was gypsy-black and long. The fashionably broad shoulders and fitted long taut waist of her red dress made her seem tall although she was not unusually so. Everything seemed to amuse her as if her point of vantage over the human tribe were a bit Olympian; she seemed to have the knack of surviving the shocks of her explosive life without ever being touched by them.

It was a luxurious two-room suite, larger than his own. She moved languidly away from him. “I’ve sherry or vodka.”

“Sherry.” He’d need a clear head. He settled into a chair.

“I’ve ordered dinner sent up at nine.”

“Have you.”

“We’re having a tryst, aren’t we? It wouldn’t look quite right if we went out and mingled.”

Her mouth curved into a posture of wry self-mockery. She brought him a glass of sherry and then slid back into the couch that faced his chair across the low glass coffee table. She smoothed her skirt under her thighs-the gesture had a strong sensuality. “You look awfully drab in that uniform.”

“Why don’t you tell me what game we’re meant to be playing?”

“So matter-of-fact. Where’s your dash?” She tucked one foot up under her on the couch.

“I’d rather you didn’t try to be coquettish. It doesn’t suit you.”

“Oh dear.” She tossed her hair back, full of subtle mischief. “Now you’ve crushed me. Have I quite lost all my charms?” When she sipped the pale sherry her eyes mocked him over the rim of the glass.

“No.” It was an admission.

“I’m sorry-I wasn’t really fishing for that.” But her eyes went on glittering with amusement; then she said in a different voice, “Very well. They want to see you.”

“They?”

“Your brother. My father. Prince Leon. All of them.”

“Do they.”

“Is that all you can say?”

He watched the way her muscles moved when she set her glass down. “What do you want me to say, Irina?”

“I don’t know. I’ve no feverish desire to put words in your mouth. But some reaction-some hint of feeling. What will it take to provoke an emotion in you?”

“The fact that I don’t parade my feelings doesn’t mean that I don’t have them.”

“You used to burst with fires. That great Russian joie de vivre.”

“We were all children, weren’t we? And it was a different world.”

“You got fed up with seeing us all go on living in international luxury as if nothing had changed. The same old servants and horse races and hunts and chemin-de-fer– all our silly aristocratic posturings while Europe is falling down around our ankles. Isn’t that what you told Prince Leon the last time you saw him?”

“Something like that.”

She uttered a bawdy bark of laughter. “Oh really, Alex. Sometimes you act like one of those grim dedicated adolescents who hang on Oleg Zimovoi’s Socialist coattails.”

He had a disoriented sensation because the silent conversation between their eyes was separate and wholly different from the words: their voices spoke in dispute and accusation; their mute colloquy spoke of passions, regrets, remembered love.

“You’re a Russian. You were born in Kiev-you spent your childhood in St. Petersburg.” She spoke with surprising earnestness and heat: “You can’t deny yourself, Alex. You can’t put that behind you.”

“I have.”

“Your father died fighting for your country.” Her eyes challenged him.

“It was a long time ago,”

His father had been a Marquis, a brigadier with Wrangel in the Ukraine in 1919 and the Red artillery had destroyed the bunker with five of them in it. Alex was twelve years old and the news broke him apart.

They were living near Kiev just then, he and his mother in a rented dacha with only four servants.

The day after the news reached them Alex ran away to Kiev and enlisted in a White recruiting office; he claimed he was sixteen. He was in training barracks resplendent in his new uniform when his mother’s emissaries found him and dragged him home.

They found themselves under General Devenko’s protection when the terrible White retreat began after the collapse of Kolchak’s White armies. Ilya Devenko was a high staff officer in Deniken’s headquarters; he kept the mother and son from perishing in the chaotic horde of refugees fleeing south ahead of Trotsky’s relentless Bolshevik advance. Alex had clear recollection of the packed trains, the endless throngs trudging across the frozen mud of the Ukraine.

General Ilya Devenko had been a very tall man with a voice like lumps of coal crashing down a metal chute. Alex had known him as long as he could remember: the General had been a classmate of Alex’s father, a regular if not frenquent visitor at Danilov soirees before the war. The General’s son Vassily was twice Alex’s age in 1920 and at twenty-six was a full colonel of infantry with an outstanding record of gallantry in the field against the First Red Army.

General Devenko’s wife had died of spotted typhus in the Kuban campaigns of 1918 and perhaps it was inevitable that the widower general should marry Alex’s mother who was a general’s widow. The ceremony took place in Sebastopol in 1921, in the Orthodox Cathedral with Alex giving his mother away and Vassily carrying the ring for his father.

It made Vassily a stepbrother to Alex. Immediately after the wedding Vassily returned to the line to hold the Reds back so that the city could be evacuated aboard ships of the French navy. Alex went aboard a transport reluctantly; they spent his mother’s wedding night in the crowded salon listening to the crashing of the guns. She did not see her new husband again until three weeks later when they were reunited in Istanbul: the newlywed Devenkos, General Deniken, Alex and his stepbrother Vassily, the hero of Sebastopol. With a force which at the end numbered fewer than four hundred men Vassily had kept the Bolsheviks back for a vital eighteen hours while tens of thousands of refugees had been hurried on board the French ships and taken away onto the safety of the Black Sea.

Irina said, “It wasn’t so long ago you can have forgotten it.”

“No.” Twenty years but he could still see the horizon lit by the night barrages; he could feel the sucking mud around his feet and taste the brass of terror on his tongue and he could smell the cold sweat of the refugee mobs clawing at the passing trains. The empty-eyed faces of the soldiers slogging back toward the front; the gnash of Renault ambulances and Daimler-Benz staff cars beating through the cobbled streets, scattering pedestrians; the screams of agony, the stink of suppurating death along the rows of old buildings taken over for hospitals; the taste of dog meat and metallic boiled water; the incongruity-he’d never been able to exorcise it from memory-of a piano heard in a rubbled Sebastopol street while dust hung rancid in the city and 75 mm shells rumbled against the quays. He hadn’t been able to hear Tchaikovsky’s first Piano Concerto since then without nausea.

“No-I haven’t forgotten.”

“You’ve an obligation.”

“To a gang of baccarat and croquet players? To a pack of foolish Romanov Pretenders spending their pointless lives at each other’s throats to claim a throne that doesn’t exist any more?”

“To your brother for one.”

“Vassily Ilyavitch is not my brother.”

“There was a time when you were proud to think he was.”

“That’s an empty refrain, isn’t it? The past doesn’t exist now-not for any of us. There’s no St. Petersburg, there’s only Leningrad.”

An obsequious knock: the boy wheeled in the cart, fussed a while, backed his way out.

Irina lifted the steel domes off the dinner plates. He saw chilled grey Beluga caviar in a bowl at the center. Irina said, “They claim it’s beef stroganoff but I shouldn’t expect too much.”

“I’m used to the Bachelor Officers’ mess hall.”

“How awful.”

He drew up two chairs and when he seated her there was an electric contact where her hair brushed his hand. He went around the table and sat-watching her.

She didn’t chatter; she fell upon the meal. She had always been hearty about everything she did.

She was his own age-thirty-four-almost to the month; but you couldn’t know that by looking at her. Her stunning beauty was in the bones more than the complexion and objectively there would be no way to tell whether she was twenty-five or forty-five.

She was the most exquisitely beautiful woman he had ever known.

She said, “Is there some particular part of my face that fascinates you?”

“All of it.”

“You’re still a devastatingly attractive man yourself. You’ve improved with age. Those sprigs of grey around the ears– tres distingue. And you’ve never looked so fit.”

“It must be a product of the spartan life.”

“Now you’re being silly.” She had a rakish look-mischievous. “That American woman was quite right. You put one in mind of Gary Cooper.”

It startled him and she laughed at him. “In one of your letters to Prince Leon. He repeated it to me with great amusement.”

“How is he?”

“I think the leg bothers him more than it used to. He’s not young you know-he’s sixty-four, a year older than the Grand Duke. He hasn’t spoken your name in my presence. He’s taken it for granted you and I didn’t want to be reminded of each other.”

He let it slip by because he wasn’t ready to confront it quite yet. He finished the entree, hardly having tasted it; he took a breath. “And Vassily? I suppose I should ask.”

She said, “I haven’t seen Vassily in several years. Not since the last time you saw us together.”

He was amazed and did not try to hide it.

Irina said, “Vassily wants a passionate peasant woman-he wants devotion, not questions. I’m far to abrasive for him, I don’t fit his conception of what a soldier’s woman should be.”

She pushed her plate aside. “It wasn’t very good, was it? The stroganoff. I did warn you. The coffee’s still warm-would you like a cup?”

He waited until she had poured; they took their cups back to the stuffed chairs at the coffee table. Then he said, “It’s time you came to the point. You’ve implied you’re acting as an emissary from Vassily and now you tell me you haven’t seen him in years. It’s time you sorted it out.”

“I suppose it is. They want you to come back. They need you-they need your skills. As a soldier.”

“What the devil for?”

“They’re planning a war.”

Finally he said, “You’d better tell me about it.”

“I can’t.” She spread her hands. The half-smile was directed against herself. “I’m only a messenger. They don’t let women into their councils.”

“Then why send you if you can’t explain it to me?”

“I’m only here to ask you to come back to Spain and talk to them-listen to them.”

“They could have asked me that in a letter.”

“Would you have gone?”

“I’m a soldier, Irina. I can’t just pick up and leave my duty post.”

“There, you see? That’s why they sent me. To seduce you into trailing along with me back to Spain. Baron Oleg-you know him well enough. Something convinced him that I need only drop a handkerchief and any man in sight will become my adoring slave.”

“You haven’t dropped a handkerchief, really. Have you?”

“No.”

“Did you tell Oleg you would?”

“I suppose I was evasive. I didn’t promise anything-but he drew his own conclusions when I agreed to come.”

“Why did you?”

“I wanted to see you.” She finished her coffee and put the cup down in the saucer. “Don’t stiffen up. That’s not a handkerchief. I’m being as honest as I’m able. I’m trying not to mislead you.”

“I’m puzzled, Irina. Who is it you’re betraying-Oleg or me?”

“Neither. I’ve brought you his message. I urge you to go to Spain.”

He said, “Oleg’s always tended to be more devious than necessary. He’s been infatuated with you for years.”

“I know.” She said it indifferently. “I’m afraid I don’t feel it puts me under an obligation to him. I’m not responsible for Oleg’s emotional foolishness.”

“But you came.”

“To see you.”

“What’s Vassily’s place in this?”

“They’ve coalesced-the factions. Oleg’s Socialists, the old-line liberal aristocracy, the reactionaries, even the partisans of each of the Pretenders. They’ve formed a consortium. It’s the first time they’ve ever worked together. Even during the Civil War they were always at loggerheads-Prince Leon insists that’s why we lost Russia to the Bolsheviks.”

“What’s that got to do with Vassily?”

“They’re planning something military. Vassily’s been selected to command it.”

“Command what? There’s no White Russian army-only a scattered pack of old-time exiles.”

“I can’t say, Alex. I do know that Vassily’s at the center of it.”

“Whatever their scheme is-is it his idea?”

“No; they brought him into it recently. He’s been in England you know-he’s still got a commission with the Free Poles.”

“Where is he now?”

“I don’t know. He’s in hiding. There’ve been threats on his life-someone’s tried to kill him.”

His belly churned. After a moment he said. “Why?”

“We’re not sure. Apparently Vassily wants to believe it’s someone from the past-someone with a grudge. It’s plausible, isn’t it? His arrogance must have made him a good many enemies.”

“But you don’t believe it’s that.”

“I’m not certain-Prince Leon thinks it must be someone who’s trying to stop them by assassinating Vassily. He’s the key to it all-he’s the leader they’ve chosen to command it. Without Vassily the rest of them might not know how to proceed.”

He thought of Prince Leon, kindly and craggy, the best of the lot of them.

“Will you come with me?”

“I’ve got orders. I’m not a free agent.”

“It’s been arranged for you.”

He shot her a sharp glance. “You just keep chucking stones in the pond, don’t you? How do you mean that?”

“With your War Department. Don’t look so dubious, Alex. There’s an American colonel at Fort McNair who will arrange everything for you.”

He was working at the puzzle in his mind. “Is it their idea to throw in with Germany against the Bolsheviks?”

“No.”

“You said that very fast.”

Her eyes flickered. “Would Prince Leon have anything to do with the Hitler gang? Would Oleg? Alex, I’ve told you all I can. What have you to lose? I’ve made no conditions.”

Her eyes glinted in the lamplight. She reached for the Du Mauriers on the coffee table and leaned forward to accept a light from his match. She held his glance; he felt ripples of flame. “You’ll come, won’t you?”

But he made no immediate answer. He watched her throw her head back to sigh smoke toward the ceiling: he watched the long curve of her throat. She said, “It’s Vassily of course. You don’t want to have to work with him. What happened between you in Finland?”

“Didn’t he tell you?”

“No. I only know it cost him his command. He said it was between the two of you. It’s turned him bitter, you know.”

“It was his own fault.”

“What was it?”

“Maybe I’ll tell you-when we trust each other more than we do now.”

“What a sad thing to say.” She squinted in the curling smoke. “We used to trust each other with everything.”

“Yes.”

She sat back; it was a gesture of regretful withdrawal. They had been on the point of intimacy but it was gone. She said, “You’d be under Vassily’s command but you wouldn’t be working closely with him. You’d be continents apart. Does that make a difference?”

“Not particularly. It would still be his orders.”

“You hate him that much.”

“No. But I think they’ve picked the wrong commander.”

“No matter what the scheme is?”

“He’ll make a mistake-the kind you can’t patch up.”

“The others don’t feel that way, Alex. Are you that much wiser than the rest of them?”

“The rest of them weren’t in Finland.”

“It must have been something extraordinary for you to find it so unforgivable.” Then abruptly she said, “If you have that much reason to distrust Vassily don’t you owe it to Prince Leon and the others to warn them? At least give them the facts and let them decide.”

“You can’t destroy their heroes without injuring their self-respect-and God knows they’ve got damn little left as it is.”

“This is too important for that, Alex. You can’t be decided by those considerations when their lives may be at stake.”

“Their lives?”

“All of them. Prince Leon, Oleg, my father, Felix-the whole lot. They’re putting everything on the line. Everything they’ve got-everything.”

“You didn’t say that before.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I’m not sure you are. It was your heaviest shot. You saved it for last.”

“Neatly trapped. Am I so transparent? I surrender, dear. You always were a match for me.” Irina stubbed her cigarette out. “Then it’s settled. Good.” She rose from her seat. “Help me push this ghastly mess out in the hall, would you dear?”

He rolled the tray out through the foyer and when he turned away from it she was in the doorway looking at him in a way he could not mistake.

“Thank you, darling.” It wasn’t clear whether she meant the tray or his capitulation. “There’s a fair Courvoisier.”

“All right.” He had his hand on the room key in his pocket; but her face drew him back into the suite.

She brought the cognac to the couch. The two hotel glasses looked strange in her hand: it was made for crystal goblets. “I feel nervous with you. Isn’t it absurd? But you’re like a caged predator tonight.”

The cognac spread warmth down his throat. He wanted to gather her against him but too many demons stood between them.

Then Irina said, “Felix is racing his motorcar at Estoril this week.”

“He’s still doing that, is he?”

“Cars and airplanes. It’s all he thinks of.” She had another Du Maurier. “It must be wonderful to have life so simply arranged.”

“He’s never grown up.”

“I wish none of us had.” She went suddenly from that to what was really on her mind: “I was infatuated with Vassily-it was his raw power. But even then I began to think of you-I began to wish it was you. But I’d made the mistake and I suppose I was too proud to try to change back-perhaps I didn’t want to face the chance that you’d hate me.”

She bent her shoulders and brooded into the cognac. “Do you see what I’m doing now? It isn’t like me-I’m asking your forgiveness.”

Then she looked up: the light fell across her face in harsh shadows. “Perhaps I am dropping a handkerchief. But it’s not tangled up in this other thing. We had to settle that first.”