Romanov Succession Part 18

"Did they capture him?"

"No."

"Of course it's the same ones who murdered Va.s.sily."

"Possibly."

"You sound dubious."

"It was hardly a hundred yards. He'd have killed me if he'd meant to."

"Then you're convinced he wasn't shooting to kill?"

"I'm not convinced of anything-but there wasn't much wind and he had an absolutely clear shot. You can kill a man at five times that distance with a good rifle."

"Perhaps his sights had been pushed out of alignment somehow."

"It's possible," he conceded. "I think he'd have had time to correct his aim and fire again."

"Wasn't there any trace of him? Didn't you see him?"

"No to both questions. If we knew who he was we'd know why he did it."

"They may try it again-someone better with a rifle."

"I know," he said. "I've taken certain precautions. Talking about it won't clear it up-let's have a look at your package from Oleg."

It was a brief letter folded into a book-Clausewitz's On War, a very old volume, the second Russian edition; published in St. Petersburg in 1903. He riffled the pages but there were no underlinings or marginal notations.

Oleg's letter was written spa.r.s.ely in a formal Russian free of post-Revolutionary innovations.

Barcelona 24 August 1941 My Dear Alexsander, I honor our agreement. V. is in possession of a copy of Clausewitz identical with the enclosed. The pagination of this edition is unique; it was not printed from the same plates as the first or third editions.

Because of the need to involve no intermediaries it has been necessary to keep the code rudimentary. In order to encode a message, you must first find the word you require in the Clausewitz. Write first the number of the page, always in three digits (page 72 must be written as 072, page 3 must be written as 003). Then the number of the paragraph, in two digits (the first paragraph is 01). Then the number of the line within the paragraph, in two digits. Then the number of the word within the line, in two digits.

Each word thus becomes a nine-digit cl.u.s.ter-for example the word "headquarters," found near the middle of the fifth page of the Clausewitz, reduces to 005020703. If it is necessary to repeat a word in the same message, try to find the word again on another page rather than use the same numerical designation.

Once you have coded the message in the sequence of nine-digit numbers, reverse the entire message. (The above-mentioned "headquarters" thus becomes 307020500. The word that preceded it now follows it: the entire message must be reversed as a unit.) Finally you must break the message into cl.u.s.ters of five, rather than nine, digits. The divisions become arbitrary and the s.p.a.ce after each fifth digit is filled with the letter "X" for transmission.

Transmission of course will be in standard Morse key.

Wavelength is to be 5.62 megacycles on the shortwave wireless band. Hours of transmission must necessarily be limited to nighttime when reception is possible at long range. V. will identify himself by the codeword "Kollin" (found on page 361 of the Clausewitz). You will identify yourself with the codeword "Condottieri" (found on page 237).

It is arranged that V. will make his first transmission at 0135 hours (Greenwich time) on 16th September. He will transmit only the codeword "Kollin," repeating it three times. This will indicate to you that V. is ready for reception. You will then broadcast your coded questions and/or orders to V. At the end of your transmission you are to switch over to Receive and you should receive acknowledgement from V. in the form of the single codeword "Kollin" followed by the single word "Carnegie" (found on page 87). You are not to respond to this; the codeword "Carnegie" used by either of you indicates "end of message."

Twenty-five hours later (0235 hours 17th September) V. will broadcast his reply to you. At this time you must make your own arrangements between yourselves for the scheduling of subsequent communications.

I antic.i.p.ate your objection that since I am in possession of the code I shall be in a position to eavesdrop on your communications with V. Unfortunately there was no rapid means of communications which I could establish which would not have raised the same objection.

I should warn you that V. agreed to this only with the utmost reluctance. His position, as I have a.s.sured you previously, is both fragile and dangerous. I beg of you do not exploit V.'s vulnerability more than you must.

The specific plan must be kept secret at all costs. I think Prince Leon and I have been able to persuade most of the others that they must not inquire too closely into the details of your plan, but Anatol Markov-for reasons which he regards as cogent and sensible-pesters us night and day for the details of the proposed campaign. We have put him off with the truth-that we do not know the plan-but our appeals grow thin with repet.i.tion; you must be on your guard-Anatol will not be above trying to slip his spies into your confidence. He is an ambitious man.

My wishes for success in your mighty and holy endeavor.

With best personal regards,

Oleg, Baron Zimovoi

The last part of it was pure Oleg-the gratuitous needle jabbed into his old foe, Irina's father. Alex tore the last page off and pa.s.sed it to Irina.

She uttered a bawdy bray of laughter and gave it back to him. "Doesn't he realize how transparent he is?"

"Oleg sees enemies behind every tree. It's his stock in trade. Part of the way he keeps his following together-he convinces them they're being persecuted."

She c.o.c.ked her head and squinted at him. "I never saw you take such a sly interest in politics before."

"I've got to take an interest in these people when they've got it in their power to cripple my plans."

Irina pressed it. "What do you want, then?"

"To do this job. Do it well."

"And then what? Afterward."

"I suppose they'll find a place for me in the new setup."

"And that's all?"

"I'm a soldier. It's what I do."

"To justify your existence?"

"Is that wrong?"

"It's too simple." She showed him her impatience. "Alex, it's no good. You keep yourself so hidden-I wish you'd give me something more to go on."

Things stirred in him; he stood up and moved around the little parlor. Finally he said, "Do you know why I took this job?"

"Tell me then." She c.o.c.ked her head, smiling as if she'd won a point. "It's all tied up in what happened between you and Va.s.sily."

"We were holding a section of the Finnish left. It was cold-my G.o.d, the snow. The Reds had no stomach for it. They were surrendering in groups-platoons of them, whole companies. All they wanted was to be put away in a warm place where n.o.body was shooting at them. We must have had a thousand of them in the prison compound.... It's something you have to know," he said in a different voice. "I still feel Va.s.sily standing between us."

Irina lowered her face; the fall of her hair hid it from him. "Poor Alex."

"Moscow kept throwing new divisions in and we'd give ground for a while-draw them into it, tire them out; then we'd spit them out again and move back to where we'd been before.

"It was the biggest army in the world and we were whipping them. We were feeling reckless and invincible. If you've been like that you can understand how the Germans expect to conquer the world.

"We weren't sure how many people Stalin was willing to sacrifice to prove his point up there. We were all filled with success and the general feeling was that Stalin couldn't afford to squander too much against a second-rate power like Finland when he had Hitler to think about. We had a few contacts in Russia, we knew pretty much the extent of the purges there and we knew Stalin had wiped out millions of his best fighting men. He still had unlimited manpower to draw on but it was rabble-civilians who didn't have much stomach for fighting. Va.s.sily kept harping on that. But I kept realizing Stalin still could afford to lose twenty for every one of ours. I was inclined to set up entrapments, make it expensive for them and minimize our own casualties. It didn't make sense to me to go on the attack. Not in those circ.u.mstances."

"And Va.s.sily wanted to attack, was that it?"

"Well he kept attacking them whenever he had a chance to. I couldn't prevent that; but that wasn't what blew it up. A few times he ordered me out to chase a retreating Red column and I argued the point with him. Sometimes he'd win the argument, sometimes he'd let me win it. We had different theories but we worked well enough together-he needed me around to steady him."

"Then what went wrong?"

He chose his words. "We were on the border-right on the border. We'd pushed them back to it again, I think it was the fourth time in five or six weeks. It was the third time we'd used the same patch of forest for a headquarters. We were on fairly high ground there, we could see right down into Russia. From that corner of Finland it's about thirty miles to Leningrad."

He heard the breath catch in her throat. Her eyes were wide with a tension that was almost erotic.

"He wanted to take two of our battalions out of the lines. Dress them in Red prisoners' uniforms and march right into Leningrad. He wanted to wage guerrilla war there-blow up installations, sabotage industries, wipe out commissars."

Irina sat back slowly; her hands wrenched at each other. "How like him. How gallant-how adventurous."

"How stupid," Alex said. "It would have been suicide. We'd have been hanged for spies. But that wasn't the point I tried to get across to him."

"No," she said. "You'd have been more concerned about the Finns."

"That was it. As soon as Stalin got wind of what we were up to he'd have had the excuse to commit the Red Air Force and a ma.s.sive army to the border campaign. He'd have overrun the whole of Finland in a matter of weeks. That was what Va.s.sily wouldn't see."

"How did you stop him?"

"I told him if he didn't give it up I'd inform Helsinki of his plans. They'd have pulled us out of there overnight and he knew it. He never forgave me for that-it made me an informer."

"You had to do it."

"I had to do a lot of things over the years to keep Va.s.sily from plunging into one thing or another. Out in China he wanted to turn his back on the j.a.panese and go after the Chinese Communists in the mountains. He'd have left a thousand square miles wide open to the j.a.panese. I reasoned him out of it that time. This time I had to threaten him with exposure. He couldn't stand that."

"You hated him-didn't you."

He drew a breath. "I spent half my life protecting him from his wild impulses. Up there on the Finland border I used up my tolerance and charity."

"Because you knew you were a better man than Va.s.sily."

"A better soldier at any rate."

"And that's why you've taken this job."

"I'm guilty of the sin of pride." He stood unmoving, watching her face. "He couldn't have brought this thing off, Irina. He'd have gone for glory instead of reality-he'd have blown it. I'm going to succeed where Va.s.sily would have failed. All right, I'm an ambitious fool. There it is."

After the longest time she palmed the hair back from her temples. "Darling, take me to bed and hold me in your arms. I don't want to talk any more tonight."

In the morning she was watching him with a drowsy expression that told him she wasn't quite awake enough to be sure whether she wanted him to make love to her. But she was enjoying the way his eyes traced the contours of her nakedness.

"I don't suppose you realize what time it is."

"Quarter to seven," he said. "The men have been up for two hours."

"How inexcusably uncivilized." She yawned and stretched and sat up; she looked somehow bruised by the daylight when he threw the curtains back. He stood to one side in the shadows and swept the Scottish scrub with an alert scrutiny. Two sentries stirred at the gate and a solitary guard marched along the fence farther down. Beyond the bleak military buildings the highlands lifted in faint craggy tiers into a mist the color of the North Sea. A pale disc of sun rode low above the headlands in a grey overcast and he saw gulls beating their way toward the glint of food. A low haze covered the green-grey earth and the tufts of weedy bushes were indistinct along the flatlands tilting toward the sea. The air had that heavy sweetness that landsmen called the smell of the sea and sailors called the smell of land.

If there was a gunman he was well hidden and in any case it was a poor light for shooting. Nevertheless he closed the curtains before he turned back to Irina and bent over the bed. She gave him a soft-lipped kiss and when he straightened he watched for her quick slanting glance of mockery which was the next thing to a smile but she was looking at the bandage on his thigh. Then she tipped her head back and searched his eyes with an odd intensity.

He began to get into his fatigues. Irina propped both pillows behind her, drew her knees up and leaned forward. She was hunching her shoulders together, pressing her b.r.e.a.s.t.s against each other as if to suffocate something.

He sat on the edge of the bed to pull on his socks; he felt her hand on his arm. "What?"

"Nothing. I only wanted to touch you."

"You've got such a strange look on your face, Irina."

She wet her lips with the tip of her tongue. "May I stay, Alex? Is there something useful I can do here?"

"It would be better if you went back."

"Why?"

"The rest of them are confined to barracks and the training areas. They'd resent it."

"Is that the only reason?"

"I'd want to spend the evenings with you-the nights."

"Yes."

"There isn't time for it."

"Doesn't it help, knowing you've got someone who cares what happens to you?"

"Of course it does."

"I want to be here, Alex. I want to watch it take shape. I've got a stake in this."

He threaded his belt through the loops, waiting for her to come out with it.

She said. "There were a lot of Free Poles in the brigade. Auchinleck was putting together a great deal of human flotsam to hold back the Afrika Korps. The Poles volunteered to fight in North Africa. Va.s.sily didn't like desert warfare-he was toying with some silly idea of taking the rest of the regiment back to China. Then Leon told him about this project and naturally it galvanized him-he forgot about China. But this scheme wasn't Va.s.sily's idea. And it wasn't Leon's."

It hit him and he turned slowly, adjusting to it, absorbing it.

Bitterness bubbled to the surface and Irina said, "I couldn't trust anyone but Leon to listen to me. The rest of them-even my father-I knew they'd turn me aside. They're not in the habit of listening to a woman's ideas,"