The a.s.sa.s.sin didn't put much credence in anything beyond the five senses but the woman disturbed him. He knew who she was; he'd seen her photographs. But he'd never been face-to-face with her. There was no way she could have known him from any other complete stranger. Yet in her eyes at the foot of the stair there'd been knowledge. More than suspicion; certainty. It was there as if she could read him like cold type.

He drifted into the hunt room and took a gla.s.s of sherry from a servant's tray and walked through the crowd carrying it-not drinking. He overheard s.n.a.t.c.hes of talk-the weather at Marbella, the rationing under Vichy-and he put on a pleasant face but spoke to no one.

He took his sherry back along to the ballroom and saw the woman in red dancing with an old gentleman. He turned away, not so quickly as to bring attention to himself, and retreated from her sight. He argued with himself: there was no mystery to it, it had been coincidence; she was the sort of woman whose face could create imagined trouble-as if her inscrutable beauty were meant to be invested with whatever you chose to read into it. He had to dismiss her from his concentrations.

But he couldn't. It stayed in the back of his mind that the woman could spoil it.

Alex's host was awaiting him at the Grand Duke's door when he emerged from the bedchamber: craggy old Prince Leon on whom the entire retinue-in-exile depended so much.

"Glad to see you here, Alex. Very glad," he murmured in his slow splendid deep voice. Genuine feeling trembled in it; he gripped both Alex's shoulders and gave his grave paternal nod, the next thing to a smile; and limped back toward the others. His hair had thinned and gone silver; the lameness of his battle-shattered leg had grown worse; but his eyebrows remained thick and black over the obsidian eyes and he was very much in command of it all. The name at the head of the family was that of the Grand Duke Feodor but it was Leon who had kept them all together in their endless gypsy exile.

Alex waited for Va.s.sily Devenko to reappear; the Grand Duke was still pressing his dream of restoration.

Count Anatol Markov had returned to his seat-in the circle yet apart from it, quietly drinking vodka from a chilled gla.s.s. He watched Alex as he might watch an inanimate object.

Alex had been a long time seeking clues to Count Anatol's composition; it was very hard to understand the chemistries that had produced Irina out of Anatol's genes. He was dry, distant, epicene in disposition; cynical and suspiciously skeptical of everyone. He was thin as a sapling, the hair lying across his neat little cannonball head in lonely strands. His face was pale and his mouth in repose looked like a surgeon's wound.

Tragedy seemed to have hovered around him for decades. At Ekaterinburg in 1918 a Bolshevik fanatic named Jacob Sverdlov had engineered the a.s.sa.s.sinations of Czar Nicholas and the Empress Alexandra and their children. A month after the brutal murders Jacob Sverdlov had been found beaten to death in a Moscow street; systematically bludgeoned out of existence, every bone in his body shattered. It was fairly well accepted by a good number of the White exiles that it had been Count Ahatol who had thus avenged the Royal Family. It was said that it was the first and last time in his life that Anatol had shown pa.s.sion; but surely Irina Anatovna was not the product of an emotionless conception.

Of the seven men in the room-Va.s.sily would make the eighth-one was not a Russian.

Prince Leon said, "Our American representative, Colonel Alexsander Danilov. Alex, I am sure you know General Sir Edward Muir."

He'd seen the old photographs; now he made the connection. The Scotsman nodded to Alex, neither rising nor offering a hand. He was a very tall old man, n.o.ble and grand with a white military mustache stained to amber by cigar smoke. His longevity appeared to fall little short of immortality: he'd commanded the British Expeditionary Force in the Crimea in 1919 and he'd been on the verge of retirement age even then.

Prince Leon said, "Sir Edward is here to represent the viewpoint of the British crown."

"Unofficially of course." The Scotsman spoke in a Russian that was fast and without hesitation but thickly accented with an Edinburgh burr. He wore grey evening clothes well-cut to his long gaunt frame but too heavy for the Mediterranean climate; there was a sheen of perspiration on his smooth ruddy face.

Alex moved toward the chair beside Prince Leon's. "Am I here as an American army officer or as a White Russian?"

"Decide that for yourself," Count Anatol said coolly. "After you have heard our plans."

"Here is General Devenko," Prince Leon said. "We can begin now, I think."

"About b.l.o.o.d.y time," said Baron Oleg Zimovoi in his harsh peasant Russian.

Before Va.s.sily sat down he gave each man in turn a studied scrutiny. Alex saw him nod his head half an inch to the British general; Sir Edward cracked a sliver of a smile. It was the extent of their greeting-two men who'd soldiered against a common enemy in the bleeding Crimea of twenty years ago.

Va.s.sily's face was ungiving: he looked like a man who knew better than to expect too much. "What is it to be then-action or only more debate?"

"The decision will be made tonight," Prince Leon said. "Every man here has made a.s.surances of that."

Va.s.sily's intolerant gaze swept their faces, lingering briefly on Anatol's and Baron Oleg Zimovoi's. "I remind you all-Hitler is not standing still while you dispute politics."

Anatol's eyes narrowed to slits in the pale flesh. "You doubt our word, Va.s.sily?"

"Only your willingness to keep it if it means the sacrifice of some petty political objective." Va.s.sily snapped it; clearly his nerves were on a raw edge.

Prince Leon said, "We must put Sir Edward and Alexsander in the picture before the decisions are taken."

Va.s.sily leaned his head back against the top of the chair. He crossed his legs and closed his eyes. "Let us get at it then."

"We are eight here," Prince Leon said, "but some of us represent the proxies, so to speak, of large blocs of interest. I have commitments from General Deniken and his group, and of course I speak for the house of the Grand Duke Feodor. Prince Michael"-he inclined his head toward the old man in the chair beyond Va.s.sily's-"is here to speak for the house of the Grand Duke Dmitri. Baron Oleg Zimovoi has undertakings from his followers to honor the decisions we make here."

The council's spectrum was remarkably full-Oleg on the far left with his following of thousands of White Russian Socialists, the rest of them scattered across the center toward the right where Anatol the monarchist held the extreme position. They'd found a unanimity for which Alex could find no parallel in his experience.

It would have made a singular group portrait. Nearest the door sat Va.s.sily-stern and arrogant, a political man only in his virulent old-fashioned hatred for Bolshevism. Then Count Anatol, the icy conservative with bored contempt in his eyes. Sir Edward Muir, who shared the firsthand memories of a brutal civil war that had seared and scarred them all. Prince Leon at the focal point beside him, his bad leg stretched out. Alex next: the youngest man in the group. Then there was General Anton Savinov-genial and rotund, a middle-aged Muscovite with a big-boned phlegmatic face and an easygoing chuckle-it had been some years before Alex had realized he was slightly drunk all the time. He'd been a hero-Wrangel's right arm in the Kuban in 1919. That was the penultimate experience of these men's lifetimes; the final experience had been the talking about it, the judging of everything else in the light of it.

At the edge of the circle sat the venerable Prince Michael Rodzianko-royal first cousin to the Grand Duke Dmitri who lived on a vast lakefront estate in Switzerland.

And finally Baron Oleg Zimovoi. There was no one who pretended to be fond of Oleg: he was everyone's enemy, everyone's scapegoat. He was a hard man, physically and morally tough, an old Socialist who had battled his way through life conceding nothing: physically an a.s.sembly of cubes and blocks in testimony to his stolid Byelorussian ancestry. His energies had been dissipated for years in the attempt to persuade the monarchist factions that there was a valid distinction between his brand of democratic Socialism and the Bolshevik brand of despotic Communism. It was a distinction the conservative White Russian wings did not choose to take seriously; Oleg had been regarded for years as a misguided pest, an intellectual fool or even a potential traitor. He was tolerated because of his lineage and because he spoke for thousands of Socialists among the White Russian exiles. He maintained a flat in Barcelona, churning pamphlets out of his typewriter and speaking out recklessly against Hitler, Stalin, Franco and the rest of his political demons. At any time there might be the measured tramp of Guardia Civil jackboots in his hall, the rap of a nightstick against his door.

They were a dramatically dissimilar lot. But they had one extraordinary thing in common. Each of them had enjoyed great power and had lost it. The remembrance of that power-now twenty years gone-remained in their bearings and their souls. The twenty lonely years had weeded out all the weak blunderers who had made a travesty of Imperial Russia's last years; only this hard brilliant cadre remained, waiting for a sign that they were needed once more.

Prince Leon said, "The first thing we must do is dismiss every wishful fantasy. We have got to speak realistically-it is no good dismissing the facts out of hand."

Va.s.sily Devenko opened his eyes briefly. "The Bolsheviks have made suicidal blunders. That is fact-not wishful fantasy."

Prince Leon paused as if that remark had taken him by surprise; it was merely a rhetorical trick and then he addressed himself to Alex: "You saw their army in Finland. How do you view them?"

"It couldn't be poorer," Alex said. "Their army's got no morale at all. Unless you count fear."

"Yes. The entire population's disaffected."

Sir Edward Muir said, "Are you quite sure you're not seeing what you wish to see? I've gathered that Joe Stalin is in very firm control."

"No," Baron Oleg Zimovoi said-very quiet, very firm. "A year ago that was true. Today, no."

Count Anatol Markov's voice came into it with the dryness of a mistral soughing in autumn leaves. "A totalitarian system survives only so long as it can hold the monopoly of power. Communications, the means of indoctrinating the people, the ability to browbeat everybody into collaboration-so that if you refuse to betray your neighbor you will be arrested right along with him. That is Stalin's leverage-fear, the threat of the Siberian camps. As long as he maintains it he stays in power. But he is not maintaining it. It's crumbling."

Prince Leon resumed: "The weaknesses of this kind of regime show up in a crisis. It is a crisis right now-the worst they have ever had, the worst they are ever likely to have. The Germans are taking Soviet Russia at a rate of eleven miles a day. Stalin has lost an incredible area of territory-including the heavy industries of the Ukraine. Nearly a quarter of the Russian population is presently beyond his reach."

Alex felt the weight of his meaning. It slowed his breathing and made his palms damp.

"He has lost hundreds of thousands of troops," Prince Leon continued-resonant, soft-voiced, relentless. "Possibly more than a million. What is left of the Red Army is hanging by its fingernails-fighting the Germans only because they know they will be shot by their own commissars if they try to retreat."

His face turned. "Oleg is in daily communication with Moscow. Oleg?"

The Socialist baron showed his teeth: more a rictus than a smile. "It is teeming with anti-Communist partisans. They are a.s.sa.s.sinating commissars by the hundreds. Sabotaging the Red Army, collaborating with the Germans. The villages have been welcoming the Wehrmacht with open arms-gifts of food and flowers and women. There is not one Soviet soldier in twenty who's loyal to Stalin by choice."

Va.s.sily Devenko came into it. "If Hitler takes the Soviet Union he will have all the manpower and industry he will ever need-he will throw all of it against England and the neutrals in Europe and after that he will move across the Atlantic." His sharp creased face came around toward Alex: "Is the American army prepared for that?"

"Right now the United States has a standing army no bigger than Sweden's."

"Yes. Exactly."

Prince Leon said, "Hitler's goal is world empire. If he can take Russia and hold it the rest is inevitable."

Baron Oleg Zimovoi said, "Entire battalions are deserting the Red Army-defecting. They would rather be German prisoners than Red soldiers."

"Because it is not even their own land they are fighting for," Anatol said. "It is Stalin's. He has nationalized every plot of land in the Soviet Union."

Prince Leon addressed himself to the old Scots general: "Can you see those people stopping the tide, Sir Edward?"

"My government want Russia to hold. Not to defeat the n.a.z.is-that may be too much to ask. But to hold, to buy the Allies time to build up." His glance, almost accusing, came to Alex: "Time for Roosevelt to persuade his people that they can't keep ignoring the European war. He must convince his Congress."

Count Anatol spoke again: "The Russian people need something to fight for-it comes down to that. Give them back their land-give them back their own country, and then they won't be so d.a.m.nably eager to see German jackboots trampling it. Give them back their pride as individuals. That is our purpose. To give them something to fight for."

Prince Leon was watching Alex. "Do you understand us now, Alexsander? Do you understand what we're saying?"

"You want to overthrow Joseph Stalin," Alex said.

The evening was warm; the s.p.a.cious rooms were heavy with smoky body heat and a growing number of guests took their refreshment in wicker Madeira chairs in the garden. Irina drifted through it in an uneasy search.

The shadows beyond the villa were deep; around the lamps moths jazzed and Irina felt the day's heat begin to lift. The manicured hedges made an exact circle and the lawn was a green disc with a round bed of vivid flowers at its axis.

She didn't find what she sought; she went on inside the villa-still looking for the bald man in the rumpled suit. It had become a serious quest now because somewhere in the past half hour she had realized what it was that had alarmed her about the man.

It was the slight dent in the skirt of his coat that could have been made by the handle of a pistol in his belt.

1O.

"The proposal is before this council to organize the overthrow of the Bolshevik government in Russia.

"We must act now with great care," Prince Leon continued. "We have been powerless exiles for half our lives, trumpeting p.r.o.nouncements that have no meaning. We have learned how to be harmless. Tonight suddenly our decisions can affect hundreds of millions of people. Once we go beyond this point it will be the first time since Kolchak that our political directives will have real significance.

"Obviously that is one reason why we have got to set aside our own differences. We cannot allow this thing to be sabotaged by our own conflicting aims. In this room tonight we cannot try to resolve the political debates of centuries-but we must find a way to neutralize these differences at the outset."

Va.s.sily Devenko's face contorted with pained disbelief. "You can't be serious."

"I a.s.sure you I am."

"You could be five years in this room talking it through. In the name of G.o.d we have no time for political quibbling."

Count Anatol's cold voice cut in. "Even you ought to see that we cannot simply a.s.sa.s.sinate the Soviet leaders and sit back to quarrel among ourselves afterward. You cannot kill Bolshevism simply by eliminating its leaders. We must provide something that takes the place of the Bolshevik apparatus-otherwise a new Stalin will take over and then what will we have gained?"

Sir Edward Muir said, "You've got to present a united movement to the eyes of the Allies. My government are prepared to deal with you as a unified group but you can hardly expect Whitehall to go very far with a loose collection of bickering factions. If you do not settle your differences before you begin, I'm afraid there will be little hope of receiving the support you will need to have when you go into the field."

Va.s.sily curbed his tongue but Alex knew that expression.

Old Prince Michael stirred and sat upright. "The common enemy is Stalinism. Leon is correct-we must not lose sight of that. Whatever our differences we must all recognize the evil of this monster and the vicious proletarian ideology he pretends to represent. What have the ma.s.ses ever created? Group intelligence is always far inferior-yes-a civilization achieves its level of greatness in proportion to the amount of significance it gives the individual and his dignity. Yet these heathen atheists glorify the ma.s.s spirit, the mind of the mob, as their greatest achievement."

He stopped to clear his throat and no one interrupted: they gave him their respect because of his birth and the royal house he represented. The Grand Duke Dmitri was one of the three legitimate Pretenders alive; the second was Feodor, infirm and abed in the next room. So long as the houses of these two Grand Dukes spoke with a common voice the weight of the Romanov dynasty supported that voice. But if the two houses divided then the pivotal authority would devolve onto the Grand Duke Mikhail-the only one of the three not represented here because Mikhail lived in Munich and was an ardent n.a.z.i.

Therefore there was no question of curtailing old Prince Michael's discourse. Having cleared his throat he went steadfastly on: "The madman has persuaded many of them that they have made great collective strides forward. Give him another ten years and it will be too late to save our country at all-the rot will have gone too deep. So I must say to you that I feel Leon is quite right-it is a cancer consuming Mother Russia and we must destroy it before it is too late."

The old man paused to examine his audience and Anatol chose the opportunity to speak. "Let us not underestimate the old tribal barbarities of our country. Russia has always been a nation in which a small number of leaders have controlled all policy. Stalin did not invent that-it is the nature of Russia. If we upset Stalin it will be to no avail at all if we do not replace his regime with powerful leadership of our own. Otherwise another Stalin will emerge and that will be that."

Baron Oleg was scowling. "So we should forestall the rise of a new Stalin by subst.i.tuting our own Stalin for him. You reactionaries never fail to amaze me. You would negate everything we want to achieve. The idea is to free our country-not replace one tyrant with another!"

"Please." It was Prince Leon: he said it softly, for emphasis, and eyes swiveled to him.

Leon put both hands on the arms of his chair as if to rise; but he kept his seat when he spoke.

"I believe there is a solution you all may find acceptable."

Alex watched him. Leon had spent a lifetime holding them all together, preventing the factions from splintering. It was natural and inevitable that Leon would have devised a scheme to catalyze them now.

"I think we agree our immediate goal is to depose Stalin and annihilate the system by which informers are forced to produce names, and the secret police make lists, and ma.s.s arrests take place in the night.

"I believe we all agree also that the very first step in any new government in Russia must be to return the farms to the farmers.

"It is a primary rule for any successful revolutionary leader to destroy the forces that brought him to power. Lenin did this by forcing out Trotsky and many others but he made the mistake of keeping Stalin too close. When Stalin took it on he did what Lenin should have done. He wiped out virtually all of the 'Old Bolsheviks.' But it has weakened the hierarchy and it makes him vulnerable now.

"We know he has nothing left but a few key people and a horde of nondescript mediocrities. He is afraid to surround himself with capable people-they might prove too dangerous. His sycophants follow him like craven beggars. I think it is clear they go on supporting him because they can count on salvation only so long as he prevails.

"There is a small number who are loyal to him out of conviction-Beria, Malenkov, just a few. Stalin and this handful must be killed but the rest may be brought into the new system. Offer amnesty to the lower echelon of bureaucrats and I do not see much danger of a post-Stalinist Bolshevik revival."

Prince Leon stopped momentarily. His eyes held them: he wanted their attention now. "Very well. What we must provide is a cadre, a top echelon of power. What I propose is a compromise I believe we all can accept regardless of our ideological leanings. I propose a Union of Russian Republics to be proclaimed under a figurehead Czar."

Anatol snorted. "A const.i.tutional monarchy. I suspected as much."

"Yes." Leon's firm expression challenged him. "A prime minister system not unlike the British. No, Anatol, please let me finish. I propose that we replace the Bolshevik junta with a new Supreme Ruler of All the Russias.

"The new Czar must be connected by blood to the royal line because these things are still important to the Russian soul, even today. That is one reason why we must reject the thought of putting the mantle on General Deniken, our last Supreme Ruler. Deniken is old. He may be a hero to us in exile but to the Russian people he has the name of an enemy tainted with defeat. And he smacks of the old system, the White Armies with their weaknesses and corruptions.

"The Czar must be a new face but with a name people will recognize. And he ought to be a figurehead of some charm and dash rather than iron-fisted strength. Having this Georgian beast in the Kremlin has been a trauma to the Russian spirit-I believe they will respond best to a leader who is more to be liked than feared.

"The Czar will be the head of state only ceremonially and this must be made clear from the beginning. The real power shall reside in a cabinet of ministers led by a prime minister.

"At the beginning we shall have to provide interim ministries until there has been time to establish a const.i.tution and arrange for elections. Very likely that will have to wait until the end of the war with Germany but we cannot allow postponement to become an excuse for self-perpetuation. There will be free elections in all the Russian republics and it is essential that we show the people proof of this by beginning to set up the apparatus.

"We must earn the goodwill of the people and the bureaucracy, and we must do it quickly. This is one reason we must have as our figurehead a man of overwhelming charm-a man who won't intimidate the people. He must be a young man, too young to be held responsible for any of the horrors of nineteen-seventeen. He must have presence and speak well in public and he must be able to relax with the people."

Count Anatol said acidulously, "You do not want a Czar, Leon. You want a cinema star."

Baron Oleg Zimovoi exhaled a ball of pipe smoke and spoke through it. "You are talking about a specific man, aren't you? You have someone in mind."

"Of course I do. Can't you guess, Oleg?"

"I am afraid to."

Anatol's eyes lay uncomfortably against Alex. Then they turned back to Prince Leon. "Are you putting Alex Danilov's name into the drawing?"

Alex sat bolt upright in alarm.

Prince Leon said, "I admire many of Alex's excellences but political charm is not among them. No. I have in mind a great-grandson of Nicholas the First-the son of the Grand Duke Mikhail Andreivitch."