Blood of the Czars

by Kilian, Michael;

  The Princess Irina. Throughout her flight she had been comparing herself to the grand duchesses when it should have been to Mathilde’s cousin, the Princess Irina, the ballet dancer who had tried to escape the 1917 terror by reaching Poland, and had failed. Peasants had found her naked, bullet-ridden body in the river. Where would they find Tatty’s?

  She lay down upon the cot, pulling the towel down to cover her hips. She would sleep. For now, it was almost as good as death.

  A deafening burst of gunfire snapped her awake. Into her mind flickered the image of the Romanovs meeting their end in the Ekaterinburg cellar, and her eyes opened in full expectation of seeing men there with pistols, shooting her.

  But they opened to an empty cell. The gunfire was elsewhere in the police station, and outside. Then it abruptly ceased, leaving a silence as overwhelming as had been the shattering noise. There came shouts, running footsteps, and someone barking orders. A moment later, her cell door opened and a man in a black overcoat and hat stepped in, carrying her clothes. He set them down beside her on the cot, then said, “Get dressed. Is necessary you hurry.”

  The police station had become a charnel house. Everyone she remembered being in it was dead, their bodies flung and splayed grotesquely among overturned furniture, bullet holes and blood everywhere. Outside lay the body of the truck driver Kolshov. He had been shot in many places, but also the face. She went to the wall and vomited. The czar and his family must have died like that. That could have been the Grand Duchess Tatiana’s face.

  When she recovered, another man in a dark overcoat was settling a still-smoking automatic into Kolshov’s arms. There were two others in civilian clothes moving around the yard, and two civilian cars parked on the gravel. The man who had released her from the cell now pulled her arm, firmly but gently. He took her to one of the cars and opened the trunk.

  “Get in, pozhaluista.” She did so without question, with his assistance. “You are comfortable?”

  “Yes.” It was a horrible lie.

  He slammed down the trunk lid. A moment later, the car was speeding away. They drove a considerable distance, stopped in one place for perhaps fifteen minutes with the engine running, roared off again following a route with many turns, passed near a railroad, and then accelerated onto a highway or country road that enabled them to drive very fast. In the darkness, all she could see was the giant’s face. When they stopped this time, the driver opened the trunk immediately. The light came as a blessing.

  “You are to do exactly as I say,” he said, as she stepped onto the ground. “Nothing else. Do not try to run away. Only safety for you is in doing exactly as I say.”

  She nodded. The man did not have a friendly face. In a few minutes, she could be dead.

  “Go through trees.” He pointed east, to where the morning sun had risen into a broken overcast, its rays lighting individual trunks and branches among the forest of stark silhouettes. “Go directly across for half a kilometer until you come to a road. You will see two black cars, small one in front, large one in back, stopped on road. If there is no other traffic in view, run to large black car and get in. Take this with you and give to person in car.”

  He handed her a briefcase with a combination lock. She clutched it to her chest as a schoolgirl might her books.

  “Go now. Hurry!”

  She wanted to run, but hadn’t the strength. Slipping and sliding in the snow, she moved as quickly as she could, not even pausing to look back as she heard the car drive away behind her. For all his helpfulness, he was not a man she wished to ever see again.

  Though she had tried to keep the rays of sunlight coming from the same portion of the sky, her clumsy progress took her obliquely askew. She emerged from the woods some distance from the cars, which were parked on the shoulder with engines running. As she at last drew near them, she saw that the long one in back had dark curtains drawn across the side windows in the rear, rather like a hearse. Pausing to take a deep breath, as she might before attempting a high dive or some other risky stunt, she darted to the car’s side and snapped open the door, climbing hurriedly within. For a startling moment the limousine’s lone passenger looked to be Griuchinov.

  He was not, of course. He was merely of Griuchinov’s age and hair coloring, and shared the dead man’s fondness for the color black. His coat was extremely expensive-looking, but black. His suit and vest were the same hue, as was his tie, and he wore a black homburg, a hat she’d not seen except in old photographs. His face was thin and his features most un-Russian, as were the metal-framed eyeglasses set on his long, thin nose. He smoked an American cigarette in a holder and wore a shirt with a collar too large for his thin neck, a style doubtless copied from Andropov. He did not speak, but the moment she closed the door behind her both cars sped away.

  “General Badim?”

  “Do not speak my name. Not again.”

  Frightened, she said nothing.

  They moved at great speed even as they entered Brest. Both cars had special red flags flying from their front fenders and they occasioned much respect. Peeking out through an opening of the curtain, Tatty saw a militiaman on the street corner snap to attention as they passed.

  “Nyet,” said the man, with a gesture at the curtain.

  She dropped her hand at once, and turned to him, but he said nothing more. Smoking in silence again, he stared straight ahead.

  Hurrying through the little city, they came to a sizable array of railroad tracks, crossing them by means of a high bridge. A short ways farther, they turned to follow a large barge canal, crossing it on a lower span with a drawbridge at the center. A short stretch of open countryside followed, on the other side of which was a high tower and what proved to be a military checkpoint. She could see only out the front windshield, but there appeared to be many soldiers. She lifted her head to see better.

  “Down.” He spoke softly but harshly. She obeyed, dropping down onto the seat just as she saw the barrier gate fly up. The two cars approached without slowing and sped through, the first car honking irritably as though dissatisfied with the barrier operator’s slow response.

  “You may sit up now,” said the man in the homburg. “Now you are in Poland.”

  She pushed herself upright. Sure enough. A roadside sign flashed by and it was in Polish.

  “Are you going to kill me?”

  He switched to English. His grammar was slightly off, but his pronunciation was beautiful.

  “I was friend of Griuchinov,” he said. She looked startled, and then afraid.

  “No, dochka. Be calm. I know what happened in apartments of Council of Ministers. All that happened.”

  “How did you know I was in the police station?”

  “Dochka. I have known where you were from very beginning.”

  He took the briefcase from her and removed his glove to work the combination. When it opened, he pulled on the glove again, then reached inside and removed her pistol. He took out the clip, checking to see that the chamber was clear, then handed both parts to her.

  “This must stay with you,” he said. She put the two pieces into separate pockets as he reached again and took out Jack Spencer’s press card, shaking his head somewhat sadly. Next he handed her the red and gold czarist pin.

  “You offended many people with this,” he said. “An antique design but manufacture is very new.” He frowned. “I do not know who would want to manufacture something so odious nowadays. This, however, is very old.” He held up the grand duke’s emerald ring that the military police had nearly broken her finger in taking off. “Also very Russian. If it belongs to nobility, should be in Soviet museum. If belong to you, you are fortunate and wealthy woman.”

  She accepted it without comment. He reached for the last time, taking out a thick fold of currency and closing the briefcase. He counted out her American dollars carefully, placing the small stack in her hand, and then counted out the rubles, but put those in his pocket. Taking out a large black leather wallet, he pulled anoth
er kind of currency from its folds, handing her a carefully calculated amount.

  “Polish zlotys,” he said. “Is illegal to take rubles out of Soviet Union.”

  “You’re going to set me free?”

  They left the highway they’d been traveling, bouncing onto a side road that led into another and much thicker forest.

  “Yes, of course. But you must go. You have friends in Poland.” He said it as much as statement as question.

  “I know of some.”

  “They can adequately assist you, arrange for your departure?”

  “That’s what I’ve been told.”

  “Say nothing more of them.”

  Slowing, they turned from the country road onto a rough logging trail, bouncing to a halt deep within the trees. A small brown van was parked a few yards away. He looked at his watch, a handsome silver one of Western manufacture.

  “Will be quiet in Poland, very stable in Poland, for at least forty-eight hours. You understand? Will be especially quiet in Gdansk. Very unusual for Gdansk. You know my meaning?”

  “I’m very grateful.”

  He looked at his watch again. “Driver in van will take you where you must go. Is less than two hundred kilometers to Warsaw. Find your friends. Avoid all soldiers, Polish or Soviet. Go now.” He reached across her to open her door.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  He smiled, grimly. “Go now. Find refuge. Do not ever come back. You may never return to Russia. Good-bye.”

  As she stepped outside and turned to shut the door, she saw that he was staring ahead again, wreathed in cigarette smoke and his own thoughts. As she started to climb into the rear of the brown van, the two black cars, wheels spinning, accelerated out of the logging cut in reverse, swerved back up on the country road, and were gone. A bird flew across the cut, calling shrilly. The van driver closed the rear door in her face, locking it.

  She gave the van driver only the name of the street she wanted in Warsaw, not the number. He drove to within a block of it, having waited until darkness fell to do so, pulling into an ancient alleyway traversed by arches. In the shadows of one, he set her free.

  The address Spencer had given her was that of a small, narrow house. He would doubtless be amazed that she had lived to use it. She was surprised that it was a house instead of an apartment building. Jack’s friend must be of some consequence.

  The van driver had warned her of the curfew. She could not stand out in the doorway for long. She rapped the iron knocker twice, somewhat timidly, then chided herself. In Poland, that was no way to get a door to open. She began pounding on it with great thuds, ignoring the pain it brought to her battered hand.

  It opened a bit, revealing the face of a small dark-haired woman with a lovely mouth and a sharp nose.

  “Waldemar Jozef Rodnieski!” Tatty said.

  The dark-haired woman’s eyes widened, but she still said nothing.

  “I come from Jack Spencer,” Tatty said, more softly. “I need help.”

  The woman stepped back half a pace, but without invitation.

  “Jack Spencer,” Tatty said, lowering her voice. “American newspaperman. John A. Spencer. John August Spencer.”

  A hand reached from behind the door, opening it and pulling her inside with great force. Losing her balance, she crashed back against the hallway wall, hurting her shoulder. The man who had been standing behind the door slammed it shut, and shoved home the lock bolt. He looked at her intently. He was her height, or perhaps a bit shorter, handsome in an elfin way that belied his years, which were more than forty. He was slender, but muscular. He had a small face, too narrow for his mouth. A long, drooping mustache masked deep lines. His eyes, exactly the color of his dark brown, too long hair, were quick and intelligent, almost merry beneath quizzical eyebrows that resembled inverted Vs.

  “You have come to the most watched house in all Warsaw, woman,” he said in English. Not thinking, she had addressed them in Russian.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, speaking English now herself. She pulled Spencer’s press ID from her pocket and gave it to him. “Jack said you …” Her voice trailed off. She glanced at the dark-haired woman, whose eyes were much more friendly now.

  Rodnieski studied the press card with great care, then returned it. “From where do you come, woman?”

  “From Moscow. I am in trouble. I need to get to the West.”

  “How did you get here?”

  “Money. I bought friends. I bought rides. I walked. I ran.” She gestured at her dirty, tattered clothing.

  “How did you cross the border?”

  “In a car. A man who took all my rubles. I still have money.” She took out her roll of Polish notes. “I can give you Polish money.”

  He put his hand over hers and gently pushed it away.

  “For Jack Spencer,” he said, “I would do anything.” He studied her face. “You are girlfriend?”

  “I am his sister-in-law.”

  His seriousness vanished. He took her in his arms and hugged her tightly, reminding her suddenly of a diminutive Polish writer who had pursued her for a summer in the Hamptons.

  “We will help you, sister of Jack Spencer. It is very difficult now in Poland, but we are getting people out. We will get you out.” He grinned. “But first we must give you thorough cleaning. You smell too much of Russia. Sabina will draw you a bath. You are in Poland now.”

  Before stepping into the tub, steeling herself, she turned to the bathroom mirror, sadly transfixed by what she saw. Her face was mottled with bruises, dirt, and dried blood. Her lips were chapped and bleeding, her hair a filthy tangle. No wonder Rodnieski’s wife had looked at her so strangely.

  There were bruises on her side and her breast, and long scratches on both thighs. She possibly had broken a rib. Lowering herself painfully into the hot bath, she leaned back and closed her eyes. It would take a very long time for the hatred to dissipate that she felt toward so many men, though one of them, through some act of generosity to these Polish people, had made it possible for her now to survive. She wondered what a man like Jack Spencer could possibly have done to warrant the fierce loyalty the Rodnieskis displayed. Perhaps he had just given them money.

  She sat up and began to scrub almost savagely at the dirt, as though she could wash away with it the last few weeks of her life, wash away all her memories of John A. Spencer. Ramsey Saylor she would remember.

  12

  Waldemar Jozef Rodnieski got it all wrong. She tried to impress upon him the need for haste. She talked of Gdansk as though a godlike Jack Spencer had commanded her to go there. She intimated a knowledge of great and secret matters beyond his ken though not too forcefully, fearing he might respond with a line of inquisition that would lead to the old man in the black homburg.

  He would have none of her wishes. He talked volubly, angrily, endlessly of Jaruzelski’s suppressions, of mass arrests, of crackdowns in Gdansk. He said she must remain in his house for several days, until the situation was exactly right. He liked her suggestion about trying an Icelandic ship. The Russians tended to treat them as innocents, he said. Iceland, though a member of NATO, had a strong Communist Party, so he could get her aboard an Icelandic boat easy—though she might have to go back into the Soviet Union.

  He visited her several times a day, twice suggesting that they sleep together. She declined with strong references to her familial relationship with Spencer. When he waved those aside, she cited her injuries. He accepted that. He made her accept an elaborate escape scheme, which included her traveling within a crate two hundred and sixty kilometers to Kaliningrad. Rodnieski said he had a Polish girlfriend whose Russian husband was a port official at Kaliningrad, which was just the other side of the Polish border due north of Warsaw. Difficulties could be eased. The money she had would help, though he himself would not take a zloty.

  No. All he wanted was her flesh. She wondered if he was so loyal to Spencer only because Jack had provided him with women. But he was a very nice man, a
nd an important one. People from both the defunct Solidarity and the Polish government came to the house and treated him with great deference.

  She remained in his house eight days. As she feared, when the forty-eight hours passed, security tightened throughout Poland, especially along the Soviet border. Rodnieski told of widespread arrests in Gdansk, Warsaw, and Cracow. Word came of a massacre at a police station near Brest. It was blamed on black marketeers, but Jaruzelski’s security police took the view that the Polish underground, such as it was, might be involved. They shot a man in Lublin, Rodnieski said.

  Tatty said nothing of what she knew. She concentrated on getting well and feigning continued infirmity. It became apparent she had not broken a rib but she pretended that she had. He made no more advances upon her, but clearly found her refusal very frustrating. Because of this, not to speak of boredom and the paranoia bred by remaining behind the Iron Curtain, she longed to be gone.

  He came to agree. An Icelandic refrigeration ship that had been in dangerous Gdansk was now in less dangerous Kaliningrad. The police crackdown in Poland was intensifying. Having kept her in his home for her own safety, Rodnieski now wanted her out for the sake of his. Arrangements were made, arrangements that required most of her remaining money. The Icelandic captain agreed, though with some reservation, to take her aboard as a cabin boy whose name had inadvertently been left off the ship’s manifest; he had been relieved to hear she was very blond and had blue-gray eyes, and could easily pass for Icelandic.

  All this Rodnieski told her when he came home one night and informed her they would have to leave within the hour. He provided her with workman’s clothes and a floppy fisherman’s cap in which to hide her hair.

  Rodnieski, posing as a driver’s helper, accompanied her on the journey, in the beginning riding with her in the back of the truck with all the crates. Room had been made in one for her, but, once clear of Warsaw, it seemed safe enough for her to ride outside of it until they neared the border.