From behind, a female voice whispered, "Whoever you are, I"m the tender of this exhibit. I would strongly suggest you stand perfectly still."
"I can a.s.sure you, I"m not moving," he said in his own low voice.
The ape"s gaze stayed tight, the head c.o.c.ked at a curious angle.
"I"m inside the rock wall. Beyond the open gate," the disembodied voice said. "They come in here for the night. But they won"t bother until all the food"s gone. You"ve got King Arthur there. He"s not overly friendly. I"ll try to distract him while you make your way inside."
"My friend out here has her own problems," he said.
"I see that. But we"ll take it one at a time."
King Arthur slowly backed away, toward the travel bag. Lord could not leave without the bag. He eased toward it. The ape rushed forward and screeched, as if commanding him to stay still.
He obeyed.
"Don"t challenge him," the voice said.
The gorilla bared his canines. Lord harbored no desire to feel their effects. He watched as Akilina and the female ape vied with each other through the branches. Akilina did not appear to be in any danger, staying outside the reach of the animal, winding herself up, then down over a thick branch, landing square on the ground. The female tried to mimic the action, but her great bulk drew her downward in a swinging arc and she slammed to the earth. Akilina used the moment to rush into the portal.
Now it was his turn.
King Arthur jerked up the travel bag and fumbled with it in an attempt to see what was inside. Lord moved to grab it, hoping he might be quick enough to s.n.a.t.c.h the satchel and make it into the opening. But King Arthur was quick, too. The ape"s arm swept up and a hand grabbed a bundle of his sweater. The gorilla now had him in his grasp and he tried to fall back. The ape, though, did not relinquish his grip and the sweater slowly tore from his chest. King Arthur stood with the travel bag in one hand, sweater in the other.
Lord did not move.
The gorilla tossed the sweater aside and returned to rummaging the bag.
"You need to come on," the woman said.
"Not without that bag."
The ape tugged and pulled at the st.i.tching, several times sinking long teeth into the exterior. The stiff green cloth held firm and, in obvious frustration, the gorilla slung the bag hard against the rock wall. Rushing over, King Arthur again flung the bundle into the stone.
Lord winced.
The Faberge egg could not withstand such abuse. Without thinking, he lunged forward as the bag fell to the ground from a third throw. King Arthur came with him, but Lord reached the bag first and s.n.a.t.c.hed up the bundle. The female dashed over and moved between him and the male, reaching for the bag herself, but King Arthur wrenched her neck hair, eliciting a belch and grunt from the smaller gorilla. The male pulled her away, and Lord used the moment to dart for the open gateway.
But King Arthur cut him off only a few steps from safety.
The big ape stood not five feet away, his body odor nauseating. An intense stare accompanied a low growl. The animal"s upper lip flared, displaying incisors as long as Lord"s fingers. The gorilla slowly reached out and fingered the travel bag, caressing the cloth exterior.
Lord stood still.
The ape poked his right index finger into Lord"s chest. Not enough to hurt, just enough to test the skin beneath his shirt. It was an almost human gesture, and for a moment Lord"s fear abated. He stared deep into the animal"s glowing eyes and sensed an acknowledgment that he was in no danger.
King Arthur withdrew his finger and stepped back.
The female had likewise withdrawn after her rebuke.
The big male continued to inch away until the path into the portal was clear. Lord crept inside and the iron gate closed after him.
"I"ve never seen King Arthur react like that before," said the woman, who locked the gate shut. "He"s an aggressive ape."
Lord stared through the bars at the gorilla, who continued to watch him, the sweater now back in hand. Finally, the animal lost interest and headed for the pile of food.
"Now you want to tell me what you were doing in there?" the woman asked.
"Is there a way out?"
"Not so fast. We"re going to wait for the police."
He could not do that. No telling how far the reach of those after him extended. He spied a closed exit door with a hallway beyond visible through wire-reinforced gla.s.s. He grabbed Akilina and headed that way.
The uniformed woman intercepted him. "I said we"re going to wait for the police."
"Look, I"ve had a rough day. There are men trying to kill us and I just stared down a three-hundred-pound gorilla. I"m not in the mood to argue, if you get my meaning."
The attendant hesitated, then stepped out of the way.
"Good choice. Now, where"s the key for that door?"
The woman reached into her pocket and tossed him a ring with a single key. He and Akilina left the chamber, and he closed and locked the door behind them.
They quickly found an exit that led beyond the public viewing areas, toward two large sheds filled with equipment. Farther on was an empty parking lot. A sign noted that the s.p.a.ce was for employees only. He knew they could not return to the main entrance, so he headed toward the ocean and a road that paralleled the sh.o.r.e. He wanted to get out of the area immediately and was relieved when a cab appeared. He flagged the vehicle down and they climbed inside, the driver depositing them at Golden Gate Park ten minutes later.
He and Akilina walked inside the park.
A darkened soccer field spread before them, a small pond to the right. The grounds extended for miles in all directions, trees and meadows nothing but featureless shadows. They stopped at a bench and sat down. His nerves were shot, and he wondered how much more he could take. Akilina put her arm around him, then laid her head on his shoulder.
"That was amazing what you did with the ape," he said. "You"re a h.e.l.l of a climber."
"I don"t think the animal would have hurt me."
"I know what you mean. The male could have attacked, but he didn"t. He even prevented the female from charging."
He thought about the travel bag slamming into the rock wall. He lifted the bag from the damp gra.s.s. An overhead streetlight gave off an orange radiance. No one else was in sight. The air was chilly and he wished he still wore his sweater.
He unzipped the bag.
"When King Arthur slammed this thing, all I could think about was the egg."
He withdrew the velvet sack and slipped the egg out. Three of the legs were broken and many of the diamonds were loose. Akilina quickly cradled her hands underneath and caught the precious debris. The egg was cracked down the center of its oval, laid open like a grapefruit.
"It"s ruined," he said. "That thing was priceless. Not to mention it may spell the end of our search."
He studied the gaping slit in the masterpiece, a sick feeling grew in his stomach. He dropped the velvet bag and, with his finger, gently probed what was inside the egg. White and fibrous. Like some sort of packing material. He squeezed a pinch and discovered it was cotton, stuffed so dense it was difficult to loosen even a sample. He continued to probe, expecting at some point to find the mechanism that controlled the rising of the three tiny portraits, but instead he struck something else.
The tip of his finger explored farther.
Definitely something hard.
And smooth.
He moved close to the ambient glow from the overhead light and continued to bore with his finger.
He caught a glint of gold with something etched on it.
Writing.
He grasped the sides of the egg with both hands and parted the divide, opening up the thin gold exterior as if it were a ripe pomegranate.
PART THREE.
FORTY.
Hayes watched as Orleg and Droopy exited the zoo"s main gate and hustled for the car. He and Khrushchev had been waiting patiently in the parking lot for the past ten minutes. The tracking device Hayes had placed on Lord had worked, a tiny dot no larger than a b.u.t.ton. The consulate possessed a quant.i.ty of such equipment, holdovers from the Cold War when San Francisco was central to Soviet intelligence gathering in the important computer- and defense-oriented California region.
They"d allowed Lord to escape as a means of finding Akilina Petrovna, whom Hayes believed possessed whatever it was Lord found in Kolya Maks"s grave and in the safe-deposit box. The ability to covertly track their prey had allowed them to stay back a discreet distance as Lord wove his way through evening traffic. He thought the meeting place odd, but reasoned that Lord had wanted a public locale. Public attention was one thing Hayes did not need.
"I don"t like the looks on their faces," Khrushchev said.
Hayes didn"t, either, but said nothing. He was still comforted by the fact the LCD screen before them beeped, signifying a lock on Lord. He pushed a b.u.t.ton and the rear window of the Lincoln whined down. Orleg and Droopy stopped outside.
"He jumped into the gorilla pit," Orleg said. "We tried to follow, but one of the f.u.c.king beasts stopped us. I didn"t think you wanted a lot of show, so we came out. We"ll just track him again."
"That was wise," he said. "We still have a strong signal." He turned to Zubarev. "Shall we?" He opened the door and they climbed out into the night. Orleg grabbed the handheld LCD display and they all moved forward. In the distance, sirens could be heard approaching.
"Someone has called the police. We need to end this fast," he said. "This is not Moscow. The police here ask lots of questions."
The zoo"s front gate was unattended and they quickly darted inside. A crowd had gathered at the gorilla expo. The tracking device Orleg carried continued to signify Lord"s presence nearby. "Put that thing under your jacket," he said to Orleg, not wanting any questions from the curious.
They approached the primate exhibit and Hayes asked what was going on. A woman told him that a black man and a white woman had jumped over the moat and the gorillas had gone after them. They eventually slipped into an open gate in the rock wall and disappeared. He moved back to Orleg and learned the signal was still active. But when he focused out into the lit habitat he immediately saw what a large silver-back gorilla held in his clenched hand.
A dark green sweater.
The same sweater into which the tracking device had been sewn. He shook his head and suddenly recalled what Rasputin had predicted to Alexandra. The innocence of beasts will guard and lead the way, being the final arbitor of success. The innocence of beasts will guard and lead the way, being the final arbitor of success.
"The ape has the sweater," he told Zubarev, who moved close to the retaining wall and saw for himself.
The look on the wiry Russian"s face conveyed that he, too, remembered the starets starets"s prediction. "The beast certainly guarded the way. I wonder if he led it, as well."
"Good question," Hayes said.
[image]
Lord peeled back the golden edges of the egg. Diamonds popped off like drops of juice from a split orange. A small golden lump fell to the damp gra.s.s. Akilina reached down and lifted the object.
A bell.
The exterior shone bright in the glow from the lamp above, surely the first time that this gold had touched fresh air in decades. She stepped closer to the light and he spied tiny words etched on the bell"s exterior.
"It"s written in Cyrillic," she said, the bell close to her eyes.
"Can you read it?"
" "To where the Princess tree grows and Genesis, a Thorn awaits. Use the words that brought you here. Success comes if your names are spoken and the bell is formed." "
He was tiring of riddles. "What does that mean?
He grabbed the bell and studied it in detail. It was no more than three inches high and a couple of inches wide. No clapper hung inside. Its weight suggested that it was solid gold. Other than the etched letters encircling the outside, there were no words or symbols. Apparently, this was Yussoupov"s last message.
He retreated to the bench and sat down.
Akilina followed.
He looked at the destroyed Faberge egg. For the better part of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first, descendants of Nicholas II had apparently survived. While communist premiers dominated the Russian people, heirs to the Romanov throne lived on, in obscurity, where the Princess tree grows where the Princess tree grows-wherever that was. He wanted to find those descendants. Actually, he needed to find them. Stefan Baklanov was not the rightful heir to the Russian throne, and perhaps the reemergence of a direct Romanov might galvanize the Russian people in a way nothing else could. But at the moment he was too tired to do any more. He"d originally planned to leave town tonight, but now he decided against that. "Let"s go back to the hotel you found and get some sleep. Maybe this will be clearer in the morning."
"Could we get something to eat along the way? I have not eaten since breakfast."
He looked at her, then reached up and lightly caressed her cheek. "You did good today," he said in Russian.
"I was wondering if I"d ever see you again."
"You weren"t the only one."
Her hand came up to his. "I did not like the thought of that."
Nor did he.
He gently kissed her lips, then took her in his arms. They sat for a few minutes in the darkness, savoring the solitude. Finally he stuffed what was left of the egg back into its velvet sack, along with the bell. He shouldered the travel bag and they walked from the park to the boulevard beyond.
Ten minutes later a cab appeared and he told the driver the name of the hotel Akilina had selected. They sat together in the backseat as the cab made its way into the city. He was thinking about what was inscribed on h.e.l.l"s Bell.
To where the Princess tree grows and Genesis, a Thorn awaits. Use the words that brought you here. Success comes if your names are spoken and the bell is formed.
Apparently another cryptic direction-enough to lead the way if you knew what to look for, but not enough to be a divining rod for intruders. Trouble was, he didn"t know what they were looking for. Those words had been scripted sometime after 1918, when the imperial family was murdered, and before 1924, when Faberge himself had died. Perhaps their meaning was clearer then, time clouding what was once an unambiguous message. Through the cab"s dingy windows he studied the parade of cafes and restaurants that rolled by. He recalled Akilina"s request for food and, though he did not want to be exposed for long, he, too, was hungry.
A thought occurred to him.
He told the driver what he wanted and the man nodded in recognition, finding the appropriate establishment a few minutes later.