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by Frederick Forsyth

  Where the Chechen leader got them from, Monk never asked. But they looked good. They bore the photograph of Monk with his short-cropped blond hair and identified him as a police colonel on the personal staff of the First Deputy Head, Organized Crime Control Directorate, Federal Interior Ministry. As such he would not be personally known to Petrovsky, but would be a colleague from the federal police.

  One of the things that did not change after the fall of Communism was the Russian habit of setting aside entire apartment blocks for senior officers in the same profession. While in the West politicians, civil servants, and senior officers usually live in their own private homes scattered through the suburbs, the tendency in Moscow is to live rent-free in groups in state-owned apartment houses.

  This is mainly because the post—Communist state simply took over these apartments from the old Central Committee and created rent-free residences. Many of these buildings were, and remain, strung along the north side of Kutuzovsky Prospekt where Brezhnev and most of the Politburo once lived. Petrovsky lived on the eighth floor, just below the top floor of a building on Kutuzovsky Prospekt. A dozen other senior police officers had apartments there too. There was at least one advantage to lumping all these men from the same profession into one building. Private citizens would have become exasperated by the security; police generals completely understood the need for it.

  The car that Monk drove that evening, miraculously acquired or “borrowed” by Gunayev, was a genuine MVD militia black Chaika, which came to a stop at the barrier leading to the inner courtyard of the apartment building. One OMON guard gestured for the rear window to come down, while a second covered the car with his submachine gun.

  Monk offered his ID and his destination, and held his breath. The guard studied the pass, nodded, and retired to his booth to make a phone call. Then he returned.

  “General Petrovsky asks what your business concerns.”

  “Tell the general I have papers from General Chebotaryov, a matter of urgency,” said Monk. He had named the man who would have been his real superior. A second phone conversation took place. Then the OMON guard nodded to his colleague and the barrier came up. Monk parked in a vacant slot and walked inside.

  There was a guard on the ground floor reception desk who nodded him through, and two more outside the elevator on the eighth. They frisked him, checked his attaché case, and studied his ID papers. Then one spoke through an intercom. The door opened ten seconds later. Monk knew he had been studied through a peephole in the door.

  There was a manservant in a white jacket, whose build and demeanor indicated he could serve a lot more than canapés if the occasion required, and then the family atmosphere became clear. A small girl ran out of the living room, stared at him, and said, “This is my dolly.” She held up a flaxen-haired doll in a nightdress. Monk grinned.

  “She’s lovely. And what’s your name?”

  “Tatiana.”

  A woman in her late thirties appeared, smiled apologetically, and ushered the child away. From behind her a man emerged in his shirtsleeves, wiping his mouth, as any citizen interrupted at dinner.

  “Colonel Sorokin?”

  “Sir.”

  “Odd hour to call.”

  “I’m sorry. Things just came up in a rush. I can wait while you finish dinner.”

  “No need. Just finished. Anyway, it’s cartoon time on the telly now, so I’m well out of it. Come in here.”

  He led the way into a study off the hall. In the better light Monk could see that the crime buster was no older than he was and just as fit.

  Three times, with the Patriarch, the general, and the banker, he had begun by revealing that his identity-of-access was false and had just got away with it. This time he calculated he could well end up dead, with apologies later. He flipped open his attaché case. The guards outside had searched it, but seen only two files in Russian and had not read a word. Monk offered the gray file, the verification report.

  “It’s this, General. We take the view it is pretty disturbing.”

  “Can I read it later?”

  “It really could be an action-this-night affair.”

  “Oh, screw it. Do you drink?”

  “Not on duty, sir.”

  “Then they’re improving down at the MVD. Coffee?”

  “Love some, it’s been a long day.”

  General Petrovsky smiled.

  “When isn’t it?”

  He summoned the manservant and ordered coffee for two. Then he began to read. The valet came, delivered coffee, and left. Monk served himself. Finally General Petrovsky looked up.

  “Where the hell did this come from?”

  “British Intelligence.”

  “What?”

  “But it’s not a provokatsia. It’s been checked out. You could double-check in the morning. N. I. Akopov, the secretary who left the manifesto lying around, is dead. Ditto the old cleaner, Zaitsev. Ditto the British journalist, who actually knew nothing.”

  “I remember him,” said Petrovsky pensively. “It looked like a gang killing, but no motive. Not for a foreign reporter. You think it was Komarov’s Black Guards?”

  “Or Dolgoruki killers hired for the job.”

  “So where is this mysterious Black Manifesto?”

  “Here, General.”

  Monk tapped his briefcase.

  “You’ve got a copy? You brought it with you?”

  “Yes.”

  “But according to this it went to the British Embassy. Then to London. How did you get hold of it?”

  “I was given it.”

  General Petrovsky was staring at him with open suspicion.

  “And how the hell does the MVD get hold of a copy? … You’re not from the MVD. Who the hell are you from? SVR? FSB?”

  The two organizations he named were the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service and the Federal Security Service, successors to the First and Second Chief Directorates of the old KGB.

  “Neither, sir. I’m from America.”

  General Petrovsky showed no fear. He just stared at his visitor hard, looking for a trace of threat, for his family was next door and the man could be a paid assassin. But he could work out that the impostor carried no bomb or gun.

  Monk began to talk, explaining how the black-covered file in his case had come to the embassy, then London, then Washington. How it had been read by less than a hundred people in two governments. He made no mention of the Council of Lincoln; if General Petrovsky wished to believe Monk represented the U.S. government, it would do no harm.

  “What’s your real name?”

  “Jason Monk.”

  “You’re really American?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Well, your Russian’s damn good. So, what’s in this Black Manifesto?”

  “Among other things, Igor Komarov’s death sentence on you and most of your men.”

  In the silence Monk heard the words in Russian “That’s my boy” coming through the wall. Tom and Jerry on the television. Tatiana squealed with laughter. Petrovsky held out his hand.

  “Show,” he said.

  He spent thirty minutes reading the forty pages, divided into twenty subject headings. Then he tossed it back.

  “Bullshit.”

  “Why?”

  “He couldn’t get away with it.”

  “He has so far. A private army of Black Guards, all superbly equipped and paid for. A bigger but less well trained corps of Young Combatants. And enough money to drown in. The Dolgoruki godfathers struck their deal with him two years ago. A war chest of a quarter of a billion U.S. dollars to buy supreme power in this land.”

  “You have no proof.”

  “That manifesto is proof. The reference to rewarding the fund providers. The Dolgoruki will want their pound of flesh. All the turf of all their rivals. After the extermination of the Chechen and the banishment of the Armenians, Georgians, and Ukrainians, that won’t be a problem. But they’ll want more. Revenge against those who have pers
ecuted them. Starting with the Collegium of the anti-gang units.

  “They’ll need fodder for their new slave camps, to mine the gold, salt, and lead. Who better than the young men you command, the SOBR and the OMON? Of course, you won’t live to see that.”

  “He may not win.”

  “True, General, he may not. His star is falling. General Nikolayev denounced him a few days ago.”

  “I saw that. Damn surprising, I thought. Anything to do with you?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Smart.”

  “Now the commercial TV stations have stopped broadcasting him. His magazines have ceased production. The latest opinion polls put him at sixty percent, against seventy last month.”

  “So, his ratings are falling, Mr. Monk. He may not win.”

  “But if he does?”

  “I can’t go against the entire presidential election. I may be a general, but I’m still just a policeman. You should go to the acting president.”

  “Palsied by fear.”

  “I still can’t help.”

  “If he thinks he can’t win, he could strike at the state.”

  “If anyone strikes at the state, Mr. Monk, the state will defend itself.”

  “Have you ever heard of Sippenschaft, General?”

  “I don’t speak English.”

  “It’s German. May I have your private number here?”

  Petrovsky nodded at the nearby phone. Monk memorized it. He collected his files and put them in his case.

  “That German word. What does it mean?”

  “When parts of the German officer corps struck at Hitler, they were hanged by piano wire. Under the law of Sippenschaft their wives and children went to the camps.”

  “Not even the Communists did that,” snapped Petrovsky. “Families lost their apartments, their school places. But not the camps.”

  “He’s mad, you know. Behind the urbane facade, he’s not sane. But Grishin will do his bidding in all things. May I go now?”

  “You’d better get out of here before I arrest you.”

  Monk was at the door.

  “If I were you, I would make some precautionary dispositions. If he wins, or looks like losing, you may have to fight for that wife and child of yours.”

  Then he was gone.

  ¯

  DR. Probyn was like a small and excited schoolboy. Proudly he led Sir Nigel Irvine to a chart, three feet by three, pinned to one wall. He had obviously created it himself.

  “What do you think?” he said.

  Sir Nigel stared at it without comprehension. Names scores of names linked by vertical and horizontal lines.

  “The Mongolian Underground without the translation,” he suggested. Probyn chuckled.

  “Not bad. You’re looking at the interwoven parts of four European royal houses. Danish, Greek, British, and Russian. Two still in existence, one out of office, and one extinct.”

  “Explain,” begged Irvine. Dr. Probyn took large red, blue, and black markers.

  “Let’s start at the top. The Danes. They’re the key to it all.”

  “The Danes? Why the Danes?”

  “Let me tell you a true story, Sir Nigel. A hundred and sixty years ago there was a king of Denmark who had several children. Here they are.”

  He pointed to the top of the chart, where the King of Denmark was named, and, beneath his name in a horizontal line, those of his offspring.

  “Now, the oldest boy became crown prince and succeeded his father. No more interest to us. But the youngest one …”

  “Prince William was invited to become King George the First of Greece. You mentioned that the last time I was here.”

  “Splendid,” said Probyn. “What a memory. So here he is again; he’s shot off to Athens and becomes King of Greece. What does he do? He marries Grand Duchess Olga of Russia, and they produce Prince Nicholas, prince of Greece but ethnically half-Danish and half-Russian, that is, Romanov. Now, let’s leave Prince Nicholas on the back burner, still a bachelor.”

  He marked Nicholas in blue, for Greece, and pointed back to the Danes at the top.

  “The old king also had daughters, and two did pretty well for themselves. Dagmar went off to Moscow to become Empress of Russia, changed her name to Maria, converted to the Orthodox Church, and gave birth to Nicholas the Second of All the Russias.”

  “Murdered with his entire family at Yekaterinburg.”

  “Precisely. But look at the other one. Alexandra of Denmark came over here and married our prince, who became Edward the Seventh. They produced the eventual George the Fifth. See?”

  “So Czar Nicholas and King George were cousins.”

  “Exactly. Their mothers were sisters. So in the First World War the Czar of Russia and the King of England were cousins. When King George referred to the Czar as ‘cousin Nicky’ he was being completely accurate.”

  “Except that ended in 1917.”

  “It did indeed. But now look at the British line.”

  Dr. Probyn reached up and circled in red both King Edward and Queen Alexandra. His red pen ran down a generation to circle King George V.

  “Now, he had five sons. John died as a boy, the others grew up. Here they are: David, Albert, Henry, and George. It’s the last we’re interested in, Prince George.”

  The red pen ran down from George V to envelop his fourth son, Prince George of Windsor.

  “Now, he died in a plane crash in the Second World War, but he had two sons, both alive today. Here they are, but it’s the younger one we must concentrate on.”

  The red pen ran down to the bottom line to circle the second English prince.

  “Now follow the line back,” said Dr. Probyn. “His father was Prince George, his grandfather King George, but his great-grandma was the sister of the czar’s mum. Two Danish princesses, Dagmar and Alexandra. This man is linked to the House of Romanov by marriage.”

  “Mmmm. A long time back,” said Sir Nigel.

  “Ah, there’s more. Look at these.”

  He tossed on the desk two photographs. Two bearded, somber faces staring directly at the camera.

  “What do you think?”

  “They could be brothers.”

  “Well, they’re not. There’s eighty years between them. This one is the dead Czar Nicholas the Second; the other is the living English prince. Look at the faces, Sir Nigel. They’re not typically British faces—anyway the czar was half-Russian, half-Danish. They’re not typical Russian faces. They’re Danish faces; it’s the Danish blood coming through, from those two Danish sisters.”

  “That it? Linkage by marriage?”

  “Far from it. The best is yet to come. Remember Prince Nicholas?”

  “The one on the back burner? Prince of Greece, but actually half-Danish, half-Russian?”

  “That’s the one. Now, the Czar Nicholas had a cousin, Grand Duchess Elena. What did she do? Shot off to Athens and married Nicholas. So he’s half Romanov and she’s a hundred percent. Their offspring therefore is three-quarters Russian and Romanov. And she was Princess Marina.”

  “Who came over here …”

  “And married Prince George of Windsor. So these two living men, his sons, are three-eighths Romanov, and nowadays that’s about as near as you’ll get. That doesn’t mean there’s a linear claim—too many women in the way, which is banned by the Pauline Law. But the linkage by marriage is through the father line and by blood through the mother line.”

  “That applies to both brothers?”

  “Yes, and something else. Their mother, Marina, was a member of the Orthodox Church at the time of both births. That’s a crucial condition for acceptance by the Orthodox hierarchy, and there aren’t many others like that.”

  “That applies to both brothers?”

  “Yes, of course. And both served in the British Army, rising to the rank of major.”

  “Then what about the elder brother?”

  “Ah, you mentioned age, Sir Nigel. The elder is sixty-four, outside your
guideline. The younger was fifty-seven this year. That’s almost all you asked for. Born a prince of a reigning house, cousin of the queen, one marriage, a son of twenty, married to an Austrian countess, quite accustomed to all those ceremonies, still vigorous, a former army man. But the killer is, he was in the Intelligence Corps, did the full Russian course, and is damn near bilingual.”

  Dr. Probyn stood back from his multicolored chart beaming. Sir Nigel stared at the face in the photograph.

  “Where does he live?”

  “During the week, here in London. On weekends, at his place in the country. It’s listed in Debrett.”

  “Perhaps I should have a word,” mused Sir Nigel. “One last thing, Dr. Probyn. Is there any other man who fulfills all the qualifications so completely?”

  “Not on this planet,” said the herald.

  That weekend Sir Nigel Irvine, having obtained his appointment, drove to western England to see the younger of the two princes at his country house. He was courteously received and gravely listened to. Finally the prince escorted him to his car.

  “If half what you say is true, Sir Nigel, I find it perfectly extraordinary. Of course, I have followed events in Russia from the media. But this ... I shall have to consider carefully, consult my family extensively, and of course ask for a private meeting with Her Majesty.”

  “It may never happen, sir. There may never be a plebiscite. Or the people’s reply might be the reverse.”

  “Then, we shall have to wait until that day. Safe journey, Sir Nigel.”

  ¯

  ON the third floor of the Metropol Hotel is situated one of the finest traditional Russian restaurants of Moscow. The Boyarsky Zal, or Boyars’ Hall, is named after the body of aristocrats who once flanked the czar and, if he was weak, ruled in his place. It is vaulted, paneled, and decorated with superb ornamentation recalling a long-bygone age. Excellent wines vie with iced vodka, the trout, salmon, and sturgeon are from the rivers, the hare, deer, and boar from the steppes of Russia.

  It was here on the evening of December 12 that General Nikolai Nikolayev was taken by his sole living relative to celebrate his seventy-fourth birthday.

  Galina, the little sister he had once carried on his back through the burning streets of Smolensk, had grown up to be a teacher, and in 1956, aged twenty-five, she had married a fellow teacher called Andreev. Their son, Misha, was born late that same year.