With the occupying forces, he had no trouble at all. To don the cloak of the NKVD was to armor himself in layers of fear and loathing. Even the larger combined patrols of People’s Polizia and Red Army overseers went out of their way to avoid him. Nobody wanted the lidless eye of the Great Satan turning on them. Once or twice he saw others of “his” kind-dark-suited men, inevitably wrapped in long trench coats, often with wide-brimmed black hats pulled down somewhat theatrically to hide their eyes. Just as mere mortals steered well clear of him, Ivanov was vigilant in avoiding encounters with any actual agents of the Soviet secret police. Nor did they seek him out. The purpose of their spectral presence on the streets of the enslaved capital was to intimidate. These figures, all cloaked in black, suddenly appearing on the street in front of one’s home or place of work, helped to maintain a constant, low-grade current of fear among the population of North Rome. “Stalkers” Franco had called them. One more small, broken piece of meaning from the future.
Only once did Ivanov slip up, later in the evening, well after the 11.30 curfew, when the streets were entirely deserted save for the presence of security patrols. He was walking east along Via Rodi, intending to turn north and head back toward Sobeskaia’s hotel when he judged it prudent. A man emerged unexpectedly, almost on top of him, from behind a marble column.
“A word, comrade,” he said, startling Ivanov.
Before he could suppress his reaction, he had turned to face the interloper, a man dressed much like him, stiffening his fingers into a spear hand and …
Then he opened a small gate in his mind, somewhere deep down inside the ancient reptilian brain centers, and allowed his tension to sluice out.
“I startled you,” said the NKVD man. “My apologies.”
“It is the Romans,” Ivanov replied. “I feel them watching me all the time. You know how it is.”
His “colleague” stepped down onto the footpath and nodded. “I do,” he said. “But I believe the idea is for us to watch them all the time.”
Ivanov felt ridiculously naked without a hat to obscure his face like this cheap, comic thug. He turned away from his gaze, pretending to search the street as he spoke. No sense letting the man get a good look at him. His picture was all over the USSR; it was probably just the darkness and a lack of context that was protecting him from being outed as one of Beria’s most wanted targets right now.
“Kuznetzov says they would not dare harm one of us,” the OSS operative said, invoking the name of the NKVD station chief in Rome. “But they seem to take polizia and stupid, farmboy soldiers with impunity.” He pointed off in the direction of the Vatican. “I heard of another corpse in the Tiber tonight. From a patrol I passed earlier.”
The other man bristled. “Such talk is not helpful, comrade,” he warned. “You should know that. It is defeatist.”
“It is,” sighed Ivanov, getting into character, but looking all the time for a way to escape this encounter.
A few moments passed with neither man speaking.
“I do not believe we have met before, comrade,” the other said at last. “It is odd. I know all the Commissariat men in this district. Are you from Borchov’s detail?”
“Of course you do not know me,” said Ivanov. “This is not my district. I am carrying a safe-hand message from Colonel-General Skarov for the station chief himself.”
“On foot, through this part of the city?” The man seemed incredulous at the thought. “Why not dispatch a rider? Is it not urgent?”
“There are no riders, comrade. Do you not know of what is happening by the Wall-or are you so out of touch in District 3? The colonel-general fights a great battle under the city, with the Americans’ hired gangsters from La Cosa Nostra. All our resources are being poured into that fight.”
The man stared at him. Saying nothing.
Ivanov felt the meaning of the world shift, just a little, as recognition finally bloomed in the secret policeman’s eyes.
“You! Ivano-”
The former Spetsnaz officer drove an open-handed strike into his throat in one blurred motion. His victim choked out a dying gasp as Pavel Ivanov’s hand closed around his chin and the back of his head, snapping it free of the spinal column with one quick and savage twisting movement. The NKVD goon was dead before Ivanov realized he’d killed him.
He swore quietly, unaware of just how tense he had been up until that moment.
A quick check up and down the street, as he lowered the body onto the footpath, revealed no witnesses. Or none that cared. During his time with Franco, he’d come to appreciate that many eyes could follow one’s progress through the occupied city.
Now he looked about for somewhere to dispose of the body.
10
South Rome (Allied sector)
“Inappropriate and off topic, I know,” said Harry, as the agent led him away from the angry Russians at the reception, “but would you be …?”
“Plunkett,” replied the David Gower look-alike. “David Plunkett.”
“David …?”
“Gower was, would have been, my nephew. By way of my sister. But he’s not been born yet, of course. Perhaps never will be. Does the head in, doesn’t it, Your Highness?”
“Please. Just Harry. I’m not nearly so high-and-mighty as I once was. The line of succession took a long detour around me in ’49.” Having touched on the issue of his own father’s birth and where that left him, Harry steered the conversation back to the Plunkett family tree. “Don’t you find it a bit difficult in this line of work, having a famous unborn nephew? A doppelganger, really. You could be his twin.”
They had pushed far enough into Babington’s to have left behind the protests and shouts of Beria’s men but were not yet into the crush and roar of the party proper. A few guests turned and, recognizing Harry, raised their drinks and smiled. Some of the men dipped their heads and a few of the women even curtsied, which wasn’t at all necessary-in fact, it was a breach of protocol, strictly speaking. The Act of Succession that removed him, or rather clarified his irrelevance to the royal line in this world, had made all such ceremony redundant. Harry didn’t mind his redundancy one little bit.
“I’m a declared asset,” said Plunkett. “MI6 liaison to the host government. Wouldn’t have worked out that way originally, from what I’ve been told. But we play the cards as they are dealt.”
“Or each ball on its own merits.”
“Indeed,” the not-so-secret agent agreed with a smile. “Her Majesty’s government had already invested considerable time and money in my early training when the penny dropped. Would have been a terrible waste to just let me go when I could play at being the most dangerous concierge in Europe.”
“Right then, I suppose we’d best not arse around,” said Harry.
The atmosphere in the restaurant was strange. The waitstaff were under orders to bring out as much alcohol as quickly as they could, especially to any Russians in need of a drink. Nobody offered the prince or Agent Plunkett as much as a shandy, and he doubted they would give him a drink even if he had asked. The Russians too, he noted, in defiance of national character, were remaining resolutely dry.
“How many of these cheeky fuckers do we have in here?” Harry asked.
“The Smedlovs? Nine that we are aware of. That’s nine hitters. Half an NKVD snatch squad that got in before we could stop them, and a couple of ring-ins from their embassy’s undeclared-asset list. Plus another five guests here legitimately, from the trade delegation to the conference.”
Plunkett led him through the heaving press of the crowd. Harry followed close at heel.
“Can we expect any trouble from the trade-ministry people, Mr. Plunkett?” he asked.