The Lost Throne

by Chris Kuzneski

  Grizzly snatched Payne’s papers then studied them intently, searching for anything that might be missing or incorrect. Meanwhile, the other two soldiers ogled Allison as though she were dancing on stage at a local strip club. They whispered obscene remarks to each other, describing what they would like to do with her if they ever got her alone. One even made a slurping sound. Neither Payne nor Allison could understand Russian, but they had a pretty good idea what the soldiers were saying and who they were talking about.

  And it sure as hell wasn’t Payne.

  Remarkably, he managed to keep his cool. If the same situation had presented itself in an anonymous tavern, Payne would have fought the soldiers and anyone who tried to intervene. And the odds were pretty good that Payne would have won. His fighting skills were that extraordinary. But as things stood, he had nothing to gain by being aggressive. The last thing he wanted to do was bring any attention to himself, so he casually put his arm around Allison’s waist and pulled her close. It was his way of marking his territory.

  “You no look Canada,” Grizzly declared without lifting his gaze from Payne’s paperwork. His accent was thick and slurred. His face was scarred. “You look Poland.”

  Payne’s paternal ancestors were actually from a small town outside Warsaw. When his great-grandfather came to America, the guards at Ellis Island had been unable to pronounce his surname, which was Paynewski. So they gave him two choices: either shorten his name to Payne or get back on the boat and return to Europe. His family name had been Payne ever since.

  But he wasn’t going to tell Grizzly that. The less the Russian knew, the better.

  “Canadian, born and raised,” Payne claimed.

  “What city?”

  “Toronto.”

  Grizzly glanced at Payne. He studied his face as intently as he had studied his paperwork. The two of them were roughly the same height, so Grizzly was able to look Payne directly in the eye. Man to man. After an uncomfortable silence, he asked, “You like the hockey?”

  Payne nodded. “I’m Canadian. I love hockey.”

  “You know Evgeni Malkin?”

  “Of course I do. He’s a great NHL player. He’s Russian, right?”

  “Da.” Grizzly paused for a moment, still holding Payne’s documents in his meaty grip. Then, with a hint of bravado, he claimed, “I play Malkin in Magnitogorsk.”

  “Really? You must be pretty good. How did you do?”

  Grizzly sneered, crinkling his oversized brow. “He win.”

  “Sorry to hear that.”

  He handed the papers back to Payne, then turned his attention to Allison. “Who is this?”

  “That’s my girlfriend,” he said, trying to talk for her as much as possible. “She’s a big fan of history, so I wanted her to see Saint Petersburg. She loves the place.”

  Grizzly stared at her with lust in his eyes. Starting with her legs, he slowly moved his gaze upward, lingering in all the inappropriate places, until he finally stopped on her face. “She does not look smart to me.”

  Allison’s cheeks turned a light shade of pink.

  “But she is,” Payne claimed. “At least most of the time. She thinks this horse monument is made of bronze.”

  Grizzly looked at the horse and grinned. “Da.”

  “Really?” Payne said. “I guess I was wrong. I could’ve sworn it was made of brass.”

  Allison managed a smile but said nothing in return. Not even a friendly retort.

  And Grizzly found that unusual. Especially for a couple on vacation. “Papers.”

  The order frazzled Allison; she wasn’t used to this type of deceit.

  Payne encouraged her by patting her on her hip. “Give him your papers, honey.”

  She did as she was told but still said nothing. Too scared to speak.

  Grizzly flipped through her passport and visa, studying all the signatures. Finally, after several anxious seconds, he said, “You no look Canada. You look California.”

  Whoosh! Allison’s face turned bright red. Somehow the Russian had figured out where she was from. Instantly, her heart started throbbing twice as hard. She could feel it pounding in her rib cage like someone playing a bass drum. And Payne felt it, too. His arm was draped around her back, but he felt the intense thumping in her chest. Panic was setting in.

  In a flash, he knew he had to cover for her.

  “Look!” he said as he pointed at her cheeks. “You made her blush! She always gets that way when people compare her to a beach bunny. I tease her all the time. It’s hilarious.”

  “She no talk? Why she no talk?”

  Payne shrugged. “She’s just a little shy. That’s all.”

  “I no like shy when I ask question.”

  Grizzly stepped forward, invading her personal space. Standing close, he loomed over her the way the monument loomed over the square, only the Russian seemed much more dangerous.

  Threatened by the soldier’s proximity, Allison reached her arm around Payne and clung to him for support. As she did, she felt the handgun tucked in the rear of his belt. Until that moment, she had completely forgotten about Payne’s weapon and the threat of violence, but the cold touch of his gun made her flash back to the Peterhof. It made her remember the pink mist when Richard’s brains were splattered into the fountain. It made her think of death.

  Grizzly glared at her. “He say you like history. Say something smart.”

  “Smart?” she asked, meekly. It was her first word since he started questioning them.

  “Tell me about city. Something I not know.”

  Allison racked her brain, trying to remember one of the stories she had learned about Saint Petersburg since her arrival. For the past hour, she hadn’t been able to keep her mouth shut, spouting random facts like a knowledgeable tour guide. But now that she needed one to save her life, she was drawing a complete blank. Which made her even more anxious.

  Payne noticed the fear in her eyes and started to speak for her again. “We went drinking last night, and she told me—”

  Grizzly interrupted him. “I no care what she say then. I care what she say now.”

  “Tell him, honey.”

  As luck would have it, Payne’s comment about drinking actually helped her remember one of the best stories she had heard about the city’s history. That wasn’t his intent—she hadn’t shared the story in their time together—but it triggered her memory.

  “Did you know,” she said, her voice cracking, “that Peter the Great opened the first museum in Saint Petersburg?” She took a deep breath, trying to maintain her composure as the soldiers continued staring at her. “He wanted to bring culture to the city that he created and figured a museum would be a great way to start. Once it was built, though, he was worried that no one would use it, so he promised everyone a free shot of vodka when they reached the museum’s exit. To this day, the residents of Saint Petersburg love their culture almost as much as free vodka.”

  Grizzly’s English wasn’t great, but he knew enough to grasp the meaning of her words. Handing back her passport, he said, “This is good story.”

  “Thanks,” she said, relieved. “I’m glad you liked it.”

  He stepped back and patted Payne on his shoulder. “You are correct. She is smart beach bunny. You are lucky man.”

  Payne nodded. “I know.”

  “Keep eye on her. Other soldiers not friendly like me.”

  With that, Grizzly walked away, followed closely by the other two soldiers. They cut across the busy square, conducting more random searches in the heart of the city.

  Payne waited a few seconds as Allison trembled against him. Then he asked, “Are you all right? I thought you were going to have a stroke.”

  “I still might,” she mumbled, burying her face against his chest.

  Payne smiled. He thought back to the video of her at the Peterhof. She had broken down for about a minute, and then found the courage to sneak away. “I have to admit, you started out shitty, but you finished strong. You�
�re tougher than you think.”

  “Well, I think I’m going to vomit.”

  Payne laughed. Early in his career, he had often felt the same way at the end of a mission. “If you have to puke, do it on the giant horse. Not me.”

  40

  Alexei Kozlov used to work for the Federal Security Service (FSB) of the Russian Federation, the organization that has handled domestic security in Russia since the KGB was disbanded in 1995. Over the years, several FSB officers had been removed from service because of criminal misconduct—mostly extortion, human-rights violations, and payoffs from the Russian Mafia.

  Kozlov had been fired for all three. And more.

  Nowadays, he used the skills he had learned and the connections he had made while in the FSB to become one of the best-paid assassins in Russia.

  Not only was he highly trained, he also had a taste for blood.

  His latest victim was a man named Richard Byrd. An American entrepreneur. Kozlov had put a bullet in his brain at the Peterhof, and then casually slipped away.

  Normally, that would have been the end of things. The contract would have been complete, and Kozlov could have gone home. But in this case, he still had more work to do.

  When Kozlov was hired, his employer didn’t know where Byrd was headed but guessed he would surface in Moscow or Saint Petersburg. Probably at one of the major museums. Other than that, Kozlov wasn’t given much information. He was told to locate Byrd, determine what he was looking for, and then kill him before he had a chance to leave the country.

  It sounded simple enough for a man like Kozlov.

  Since he lived in Moscow, he had started his search there, staking out the Pushkin State Museum and the cultural facilities near Red Square. His employer wanted him to keep his manhunt highly confidential, which meant he wasn’t able to show Byrd’s picture around the city or hire additional personnel to locate the target. Instead, he used the FSB database to search hotel reservations, track credit card purchases, and monitor phone logs.

  For someone with little experience in countersurveillance, Byrd did a remarkable job of staying off the grid. He used cash and fake IDs, and he never called his family or friends in California. After wasting several days in Moscow—on foot and online—Kozlov switched his operations to Saint Petersburg, a place he rarely visited.

  As in the capital city, many of the museums in Saint Petersburg had been built in a central location. Kozlov set up shop near one of the rivers. It allowed him to watch the Hermitage, the Academy of Fine Arts, the Marble Palace, and the smaller art collections scattered in cathedrals and buildings near Nevsky Prospekt. Occasionally he strayed to other parts of the sprawling city, yet he spent most of his time near the Winter Palace, scanning faces in the crowd.

  His hard work paid off on May 18. He was keeping watch on the Hermitage, as he had done several times before, when he bumped into Byrd in the main entrance. Literally bumped into him, as he was leaving through the same door that Kozlov was entering. Kozlov tried to play it off as an accident—which, of course, it was—but the look of recognition in his eyes could not be concealed. He stared at Byrd like he was a winning lottery ticket.

  And Byrd picked up on it.

  Over the next several hours, they played an elaborate game of cat-and-mouse in a city that neither of them had mastered. A game that would have ended in less than a minute if Kozlov’s mission was to assassinate Byrd. But that wasn’t the task that he had been given. He was told to find Byrd, figure out what he was searching for, and then kill him. That required a lot more tact than going up to Byrd in a crowded plaza and slicing his throat.

  Instead, Kozlov was forced to lie back, to track him from a distance, to make him feel safe. He needed Byrd to think he had somehow managed to escape. That he was too smart to be caught or cornered. It was the only way Byrd would feel secure enough to go back to his hotel or wherever he was staying. From there, Kozlov could follow him day after day, tracing his path through the city, trying to figure out what the American was looking for.

  And then, when Byrd was finally ready to leave the country, Kozlov would make sure it was in a coffin.

  As the soldiers walked away from Payne and Allison, Jones closed the bathroom window and breathed a sigh of relief. He had watched their confrontation from his vantage point at the Astoria Hotel. Now that he knew they were all right, he could get back to the business at hand.

  Allison had told him about Byrd’s most important papers. They were kept in a room safe that was bolted to the floor inside his bedroom closet. But Jones wasn’t concerned. She had described the safe to him in very specific terms, and he knew he could crack the lock. With lock picks in hand, he opened the closet door and studied his opponent. It was just as she had described. The safe was guarded by a simple warded lock, one of the easiest types to manipulate.

  “Piece of cake,” he said to himself.

  And Jones was correct. It took less than a minute to open the safe.

  Inside he found a number of documents in an expandable binder. There was also a small pouch filled with fake IDs, foreign currency, and credit cards registered to several phony names. It explained why no one had found his hotel room. Byrd must have paid a fortune to preserve his anonymity. That meant whatever Byrd’s mission had been, he didn’t want to be followed.

  But Byrd had been followed. For several hours on Sunday, he ducked in and out of buildings, trying to lose Kozlov in the tourist-filled crowds. On more than one occasion, Byrd thought he had slipped away, only to spot the cagey Russian in the distance.

  This forced Byrd into a direction he didn’t want to go.

  He needed to leave Saint Petersburg at once.

  While riding in a taxi, Byrd called Allison and told her to get to the Peterhof as quickly as possible. He said something was wrong and they needed to leave the country. Don’t pack. Don’t check out. Just run. The fastest way to get there was on a boat called the Meteor. It was docked on the Neva River behind the Winter Palace. In the meantime, he would figure out how to cross the border. Just look for him on the rear patio of the Peterhof, and they would escape together.

  Unfortunately, it was the last time they spoke to each other.

  Kozlov didn’t want to kill Byrd at the Peterhof. But he didn’t have much choice.

  There was no doubt in his mind that Byrd was fleeing the country. The Summer Palace was on the Gulf of Finland, an extension of the Baltic Sea. If Byrd had a boat, there was no way that Kozlov could follow him. The bastard would get away and wouldn’t come back.

  That wasn’t the sort of thing Kozlov wanted on his résumé.

  So he made a gutsy choice. Instead of doing things as ordered, he decided to shoot Byrd before he had a chance to get away. That meant, no matter what, Kozlov had fulfilled two requirements of his contract: he had found Byrd and killed him before he left Russia.

  The last step, figuring out why Byrd was there, would have to be postmortem.

  Jones gathered the documents from Byrd’s safe and put them in a bag by the door. Then he returned to the bedroom to make sure he wasn’t missing anything important.

  He searched under the bed, in the nightstand, in the dresser, even in the air-conditioning vents. Then he continued with Byrd’s belongings. He checked clothes and shoes, suitcases and toiletries, and a stack of books that sat in the corner of the room. From there, he moved his search to the other parts of the suite. There weren’t a lot of hiding places, and considering Byrd’s paranoia, Jones figured he wouldn’t find anything of value sitting out in the open.

  And he was right. After several minutes of searching, Jones was ready to pack up.

  It took two days for Kozlov to pick up Byrd’s scent. Two days of sitting on his ass in his hotel room, sifting through mountains of information in the FSB’s database. Two days of crunching numbers and making educated guesses before he noticed a pattern.

  Of course, there is always a pattern. People are creatures of habit.

  By studying old credit card
statements, Kozlov determined that Byrd, a man of great wealth, always went first-class when he ventured around the globe. At least he did when he traveled as Richard Byrd. And since old habits were difficult to break, Kozlov predicted that Byrd would follow the same pattern when he was traveling under an alias.

  The best hotels, the best restaurants, the best of everything.

  In a city as large as Saint Petersburg, Kozlov knew he had to limit the scope of his search, so he decided to concentrate on one thing: luxury hotels. Particularly those close to Nevsky Prospekt. Not only was it the ritziest part of the city, but the avenue ran past several museums, including the Hermitage, which was where he had bumped into his target to begin with.

  So that’s where Kozlov started—back at the Hermitage.

  Armed with a gun, an old NCB badge, and a photograph of Byrd, Kozlov planned to visit every hotel on Nevsky Prospekt. He was going to flash his badge at every front desk and ask about the man in the picture. Now that Byrd was dead, he wasn’t nearly as worried about keeping things quiet. He was more concerned about finding information as quickly as possible.

  And he would start at the hotel that was next to the museum.

  The same hotel that David Jones was leaving.

  41

  Spárti, Greece (location of Ancient Sparta)

  George Pappas was looking forward to this day. Even though he had been an NCB agent for twenty-one years, this was the first time he had ever been given an assignment from Interpol Headquarters. Not only that, but his orders came straight from the top. Nick Dial, the head of the Homicide Division, needed help with a multiple homicide at Metéora. He believed the killers might be from the mountain towns near Spárti, because of video evidence at the scene.

  Normally, Pappas, a small-town cop, spent most of his time dealing with the tourists who flooded Greece during the summer months. He worked full-time for the local municipality, which was the administrative capital of Laconia, but also received a stipend for his NCB duties, which were usually limited to entering crime statistics into Interpol’s criminal database.