The Romanov Legacy

by Jenni Wiltz

  It made so much sense. Of course that was how they would have encapsulated their lives. All their love, all their pain, all their suffering revolved around one thing and one thing only—and now she knew what it was.

  Chapter Fifty-Eight

  July 2012

  Moscow, Russia

  The tale had taken almost twenty minutes to tell, with interruptions on both sides to correct and clarify. “I don’t know how much time they have left,” Vadim said. “And I don’t know where else to turn.”

  It was the literal truth. His driver was circling aimlessly through Moscow, waiting to be given a destination. In the back of the sedan, Vadim clutched the phone in one hand and a cigarette in the other. On the other end of the line, Rockwell Marshall, the American ambassador in Moscow, sighed. “Jesus Christ, I wish you’d brought this to our attention sooner. It really pisses the big guy off when he’s the last to find out about these things.”

  “I don’t care if your president gets his feelings hurt! These people killed my granddaughter, and they’ll kill two of your citizens as soon as they have what they want.”

  “I could have done something if you’d told me while they were still on U.S. soil, but as of now, we’re fucked. You have no idea what kind of incident report this is going to generate.”

  “Are you listening to me?” Vadim snapped. “Maxim Starinov sent Vympel into the U.S. and killed two men, both U.S. citizens. Two more of your citizens will be dead if you don’t help me find a way to stop him!”

  “Mr. Primakov, if what you’re telling me is true, neither the Americans nor Starinov are still on Russian soil. That makes me a message bearer at best. I’m afraid there’s not a hell of a lot I can do for you.”

  “If you hang up on me, Mr. Rockwell, my next call will be to Atlanta and then to London. I’ll tell CNN and the BBC what’s happening. I doubt they will share your cavalier attitude.”

  “Jesus, buddy, don’t do that! Listen, the best I can do is call Gordo and tell him what’s going on. If they’re on British soil, I have no jurisdiction. Britain is our friend and friends don’t poke around in other friends’ garbage cans. We can relay the message and ask for cooperation, but I can’t even ask for any sort of rescue team to be sent in. They have to offer it.”

  “And if they don’t?”

  “Union Jack’s going to have a hell of a bad press day when the bodies are found.”

  “Your job, sir, is to avoid having any bodies in the first place!”

  Rockwell Marshall sighed. “Let me conference in Gordon Wilson, our ambassador in London. Maybe he can get us some traction.”

  The line went silent and Vadim sighed. He put his finger over the “disconnect” button, ready to hang up and dial Atlanta. Surely the free press would care more about innocent people about to be murdered than cold-hearted bureaucratic cogs whose only business was to sweep up murder, not prevent it. But even the American press couldn’t bring down a foreign prime minister, not single-handedly—his plan still needed the official channels in order to work.

  In his pocket, he caressed the glass that shielded Marya’s image from his fingerprints and his tears.

  Three minutes later, the line clicked back to life. The undersecretary to the American ambassador to Britain had managed to drag his boss out of a dinner meeting and slip a phone into his hand. “Rocko,” a deep voice boomed. “How’s the caviar?”

  Rockwell Marshall laughed. “Not bad, Gordo—a hell of a lot better than fish and chips. Listen, buddy, we have a problem. I’m on the line with Mr. Vadim Primakov, director of the Bureau of Classified Intelligence of the Russian Federation.”

  Gordon Wilson paused, leaving a palpable chill on the line. “Yes?”

  “Gordo, there’s a hostage situation in London. Maxim Starinov has two American women and one Russian man held prisoner. They’re under duress, traveling without passports.”

  Wilson gulped audibly. “Starinov’s here?”

  “He’s headed for the Bank of England. He’s after some old account, something hidden during World War I.”

  Vadim cleared his throat. “If I may add to that, sir, one of your citizens is being forced to divulge the account password. Maxim will kill her, and her sister, once he’s opened it.”

  “Holy hell,” Wilson said. “Rocko, this is serious. Who else knows about this?”

  “Mr. Primakov spoke to the governor of the Bank of England, but no one else.”

  “And did the bank’s governor speak to the British PM?”

  “How the hell do I know? I’m sitting here rotting in Moscow. That’s why we need you, Gordo.”

  Wilson exhaled. “Hold on. Let me see if I can get the prime minister on the line. If the governor of the bank did his job, Davies already knows everything.”

  Vadim sat through one more connection, waiting for the chance to plead his case. This time the wait was much shorter. The prime minister of Britain, Steven Davies, acknowledged him last, after cordially greeting the two American ambassadors. Londoners, Vadim knew, feared and resented the wealthy Russians who owned much of their city.

  “Good evening, Mr. Primakov,” Davies said in a cultured Eton accent. “I am indeed aware that you spoke with Algernon Perry, the governor of the Bank of England. You told him Prime Minister Starinov was coming to claim the Tsar’s account. This is an irregular form of diplomatic contact, to be sure, but not illegal.”

  Vadim took a deep breath and crossed himself. “I told you Starinov was coming, but I didn’t tell you he brought two kidnapped American citizens and one of my Russian agents. He’ll kill them when he has what he wants.”

  The line fell quiet for the space of a breath. “Are you sure he’ll do it on British soil?” Davies asked.

  Vadim clenched his fists, even though he knew no one could see him. “Is that all you care about? Who is responsible for cleaning up the mess? How about preventing the mess in the first place? Did that ever occur to you?”

  Davies sniffed. “You elected the man. What he does is not my business until he does it in my backyard.”

  “But he is in your backyard! He is going to murder three innocent people!”

  The British prime minister sighed. “Even if Starinov is traveling incognito, he is still a head of state. I cannot pull him over like a common criminal and risk an incident. Until he commits a crime on British soil that I can prove without a doubt, I’m afraid I can’t help you, gentlemen.”

  Chapter Fifty-Nine

  July 2012

  London, England

  “I think I know what it is,” Natalie said.

  “Nat, you’ve got that weird look in your eyes. Talk to us.”

  It was all coming together. Thoughts and images shot through her mind like fireworks, and it was all she could do to grasp their burning, sparkling essence before they vanished into the black.

  Alexei, Nicholas’s son and heir, was born in 1904. No little boy could have been more loved. To Alexandra, his birth was proof that God heard her prayers. The only thing most Russians expected of her as Tsarina was to produce an heir, and after ten years and four daughters, she finally fulfilled their expectations. The boy was cherished by his all-powerful father, fierce mother, and four adoring older sisters. They called him “God’s gift.”

  What the world didn’t know was that Alexei was ill. Every single day the boy lived and breathed was a gift, one that might not be repeated. He suffered from hemophilia—at that time, an incurable disease that doomed him to an early death. Nicholas, Alexandra, and the girls kept Alexei’s hemophilia a secret, so most of the Imperial court never knew how fragile the boy’s hold on life really was.

  Her brain began to thrum with the soft whir of a mental photo album—snapshots she remembered of Alexandra and Alexei. In most of them, Alexandra’s eyes were lifeless and helpless, staring back at the camera only because she didn’t have the energy to turn away and hide her pain. Hemophilia was a mother’s nightmare. How do you raise a healthy boy when everything that could make him
happy might kill him? Still, God had answered Alexandra’s prayers by putting Alexei on the earth in the first place. If there were anything the family would have wished to commemorate, Natalie knew it would have been their own private miracle.

  But nothing in Marie’s letter mentioned Alexei. Natalie remembered her references to each of the other sisters, but she said nothing about her only brother. Was that a sign in and of itself? The password is the only family member not mentioned? Too easy, she thought.

  Marie’s letter did mention running away to America with her soldier, but that seemed unusual. None of the girls had ever visited America. Was there a common factor linking Alexei and America?

  “Nat,” Beth said. “What’s going on?”

  “God’s gift,” she replied.

  “Bleeding Christ,” Viktor groaned. “I didn’t mean for the name to stick!”

  “Belial told me where to find the answer, Beth.” She reached out to touch her sister’s face. What had Belial intended her to see? Beth was older, wiser, more beautiful, more capable…everything she herself could never be. She saw specks of Marya’s blood on the ridge of Beth’s ear. On her cheek, four parallel scratches were in the process of healing. The unevenly spaced scabs looked like Morse code. “What happened here?” she asked.

  Beth reached up to her cheek and felt the scabs. “That was Roo. It’s nothing.”

  Natalie held four of her fingers over the scratches, mimicking the dog’s paw.

  The dog.

  Then her heart began to pound. Roosevelt had a Romanov connection. He’d brokered the peace deal between the Russians and the Japanese following the Russo-Japanese War. Embarrassed by a quick and unequivocal defeat, the Russians should have had their asses handed to them on a plate by the Japanese, but Roosevelt brokered a sweetheart deal that helped them save face. Marie’s letter even mentioned him, although not by name: Papa does so admire the American president and what he did for us.

  “Oh my God,” she said.

  Roosevelt’s first name was Theodore.

  In Greek, “theo” meant “god.” And “dore” meant “gift.”

  Of course the girls couldn’t tell their lovers the password was Alexei’s nickname. If the letters were intercepted, former servants or courtiers could be consulted to get that information. But how many of those people shared Alexandra’s religious fervor? How many would know the Greek origin of the American president’s name?

  “I know what it is,” she said.

  And in that instant, she knew what she had to do.

  Chapter Sixty

  July 2012

  Moscow, Russia

  Vadim gripped the phone so tightly he worried it might break and disconnect the call. Simple humanitarianism wasn’t working. It was time to try something more universal, more effective: greed. Without his daughter’s password-cracking abilities, he would never have found the necessary information. I thank God for you, Liliya, more than you know.

  “Your Excellency,” he said, addressing the British prime minister directly. “I don’t think you understand how serious this is. Have you stopped to consider that there might be more than money in this account?”

  Davies paused. “What else could there be?”

  Vadim pulled his copy of the Rumkowski file from his briefcase. Rumkowski’s infiltration of the Bank of England remained a secret in the intelligence community, but the lies would end here, with him. “Gentlemen, let me tell you a story.”

  One of the Americans on the line coughed to cover up a click. All the better, he thought. Let everyone hear the truth.

  “In 1921, a Cheka agent named Rumkowski recruited a small team to help him infiltrate a number of prominent European banks, including the Bank of England. Lenin himself authorized the mission, hoping they would be able to find what he had not—any remaining money belonging to the Tsar and millions of dollars of missing Tsarist gold.”

  “Gold?” snapped Rockwell Marshall. “Jesus, Primakov, you didn’t say anything about gold!”

  “I shouldn’t have had to. Tell your president to read J. Edgar Hoover’s file on Admiral Kolchak’s missing gold.”

  “Admiral Kit-Kat? What the hell are you talking about?”

  “Kolchak was a former Tsarist naval officer. He led the anti-Bolshevik resistance in Siberia from 1918 to early 1920. While this area was under his control, he seized the Tsarist gold reserve in Kazan, worth $332 million. He used some of the gold to finance his fight against the Bolsheviks, but he couldn’t hold the region. The Red Army closed in on him and he was eventually captured and executed. The counter-resistance fell apart and $120 million of the gold went missing. It vanished from a train headed to Irkutsk in December of 1919.”

  “Vanished?” Davies asked. “How can that much gold simply vanish?”

  “It can’t,” Vadim said. “And Rumkowski knew it. He tracked down two of the soldiers who’d seen it last—the ones who loaded the gold onto the train and traveled with Kolchak. He found them in a gulag, half-starved and near death. They told him the gold vanished on the night Kolchak heard the Red Army was near. Kolchak fled for his life and left the gold behind. These two men remained at their post with the gold, hoping to bribe their way to freedom when the Red Army found them. Before the Red Army got to them, however, a man dressed as a Tsarist officer came and offered them a hundred thousand rubles to sneak him onto the train and bring him a small list of items while on board. The soldiers accepted. They hid him in one of the cars and brought him what he asked for—black paint, white paint, and brushes.”

  “What the hell did he want with paint?”

  “I think I see where this is going,” Davies said.

  “The missing $120 million in gold was nailed into the only storage containers Kolchak had on hand—coffins. The soldiers painted the coffins black and the Tsarist officer labeled them with words in a language the soldiers couldn’t read. When they had finished, the officer shot all four of the men. Two survived, but they were unconscious while the Tsarist officer made off with the gold.”

  “Wait just a goddamned minute,” interrupted Rockwell Marshall. “How did one man lug that much gold off a train? And where did he put it?”

  “Obviously it wasn’t one man,” Vadim snapped. “Imagine a guerilla warfare scenario, under the cover of darkness, with multiple armies fleeing and fighting and no one truly in charge. It was chaos. It would have been easy for a small band of men to cart off as much gold as would fit into the available supply of coffins, load it into a few trucks, and make their getaway before the Red Army stormed the train.”

  “But if the soldiers who survived couldn’t read what went on the coffins, what did they tell Rumkowski about its destination? Why would Rumkowski assume the gold ended up in a bank instead of in the pockets of whoever took it?”

  “Where could someone have stored that many Tsarist gold bars without fear of them being stolen?” Vadim said. “Certainly not in Russia. They would have to go into a safe deposit box in a bank that could be trusted.”

  “More like a safe deposit room,” said Gordon Wilson. “How much space does it take to store $120 million worth of gold?”

  Vadim continued. “Russia’s allies in the war were France and England. Although Russia had signed a treaty with Germany and exited the war, anti-German sentiment remained high. Despite technically being at peace, Rumkowski guessed that no Russian would have put money in a German or Austrian bank.”

  “But how did he know the money was in England and not in France?”

  “He didn’t. He infiltrated Rothschilds and the Bank of France to rule them out.”

  Davies let out a long, low whistle.

  Vadim smiled, accepting the praise for his long-deceased countryman. “That’s not the last of it. Rumkowski’s team was able to place one operative inside the Bank of England, close to the governor, but he was never able to find evidence of a Tsarist account. There were no written records of it anywhere.”

  “That settles it, then,” Davies sai
d. “Any account opened at the Bank of England would have a proper file, all of which are scrupulously maintained. If Rumkowski’s agent didn’t find the file, it’s because it didn’t exist. The gold isn’t here, gentlemen, pure and simple.”

  Vadim set his trap. “Then why are you prepared to let Starinov murder three more people over a treasure trove that doesn’t exist?”

  Chapter Sixty-One

  July 2012

  London, England

  “Did I hear that correctly?” Starinov called. “Are you finally prepared to cooperate?” His black shoes clicked on the polished hardwood floor as he made his way towards her, followed by his last remaining guard. He pointed at Viktor and Constantine. “Get her up.”

  Constantine shoved Viktor away and picked her up so gently she felt like she was flying. Still, the change in position made her dizzy and she tried to remember the last time they’d eaten. Constantine’s cheeks looked dark and hollow and she felt a pang of guilt for what they’d all had to endure.

  Starinov flicked back his sleeve to look at his watch. “We’re behind schedule, my dear.” He held out his arm and aimed his pistol at Beth’s forehead. “Give me the password now or your sister dies.”

  Natalie looked up at the ceiling and did something she’d never done before. Please God, she prayed, let me be doing the right thing. “Roosevelt,” she said. “The password is Roosevelt.”

  Starinov blinked, his pale face frozen in disbelief. “Roosevelt?”

  She nodded. “Grand Duchess Marie’s letter mentions her father’s great respect for the American president after all he did for them at the end of the Russo-Japanese War. That was Roosevelt. The final peace negotiations were held at his estate, Sagamore Hill, in 1906. He even won a Nobel Peace Prize for it. The tsar always spoke fondly of Roosevelt and America. Where else would he send his children if things got bad?” She shrugged, as if she didn’t care anymore. “The password is Roosevelt.”