He found himself in a narrow corridor that ran through the interior darkness of the villa. A turning brought him to a junction and he made an unhesitating turn to the right. The hall was narrow and plain—an access for the serving staff. It took him to the foot of a flight of unadorned wooden stairs: he climbed quietly on the balls of his feet into the housemaids’ wing of the building.
It made for a long and circuitous approach and it was not the route he would use for his escape; he had rehearsed the timing in his mind and it was based on a judgment of several factors, not least of which was the age and decrepitude of Devenko’s companions in the drawing-room conference. The room was architecturally the front sitting-room of a suite which contained the Grand Duke’s bedroom and two smaller bedrooms which presently were occupied by a doctor and two nurses. The doctor was at dinner in the dining hall below; the nurses would be no trouble.
The escape path he’d chosen was the fastest and most direct means of exit from the villa: down the portrait-gallery corridor, down the main staircase and across the foyer and out. From there it was a few strides into the deep shadows of the trees that encroached on the building; once in those trees at night he would be free to move at will. The Packard was parked half a kilometer along the road; he would be well away before a search could be organized effectively or the police brought in.
The assassination would be clean and simple because that was the approach that guaranteed success. If the door was locked he had prepared a ruse to induce them to open it—a “telegram from London for the General Devenko”—a tired-familiar gambit but as effective as any and more disarming than most.
One of them would open the door—perhaps carelessly, perhaps cautiously. In either case it was a matter of slamming the door fully open, finding Devenko, taking his shots and then making his run for it. They were old men in that room, all but the one who was Devenko’s brother and who therefore would react first by crouching at the victim’s side in concern. Even if any of them gave chase there was no cause for fear because he had the advantage of the interval during which they would be stunned and bewildered. And he had the gun.
He left the maids’ wing and went along the narrow hall to the front of the upper story; let himself out into the gallery and walked slowly past the head of the great stair, looking down into the foyer. It was quite unoccupied—every servant in the house had been called into the busy platoon in the dining hall.
He moved without sound along the rank of Romanov portraits. Midway along the gallery stood a small table supporting a half life-size bust of Peter the Great; he debated moving the table across the corridor but decided against it—there would be time to dodge around it. He went on to the drawing room door and stopped to listen: heard voices within but not the words. The oak was thick and sturdy.
He looked both ways along the corridor and lifted the Luger from his belt, testing the silencer to be sure it was screwed tight; locked his grip, flicked off the safety and lifted his left hand to knock.
14.
Irina had not been able to single out the bald man in the dining hall until he called attention to himself by rising from a table across the room and walking toward the door behind him. She watched him talk to one of the waiters and she saw the waiter’s gestures; when the bald man nodded his thanks and went on through the door she settled back in her chair in relief.
It occurred to her a moment later that he would have behaved just that way if he had been trying to allay suspicion. And she remembered the dent in his jacket again.
Abruptly she excused herself from the table and hurried across the room. She went through the door into the corridor beyond it—but he had gone.
The nearest bathroom was just beyond the corner. She knocked and when there was no reply she tried the knob. The room was empty. Now her alarm was real and she was running toward the front of the villa. The end of the servants’ hall admitted her to the ballroom and a dozen surprised musicians stopped chewing their dinners to watch her run across the corner of the great room to the door beyond—the front gallery, past the statuary and across the foyer to the villa’s main entrance.
Sergei Bulygin stood just outside the door smoking a black Spanish cigarette. He came to attention when Irina appeared.
“Come along Sergei, I think there’s trouble upstairs.”
They had crossed half the length of the foyer when she heard the shouts above, the pound of running footsteps.
15.
It had come without warning. They’d been getting down to details: Anatol had said, “Oleg, you must uncover your mysterious contact in the Kremlin.”
“I cannot. I have given him my word. His position is fragile there.”
Alex had suspected there had to be someone like that. Oleg had been tossing out bits of information that could only have come from a source inside the Soviet government.
Vassily said, “I will have to know who the man is—I have to be in touch with him.”
“I will not divulge it here. If you do not know his name you cannot drop it accidentally in the wrong places,” Oleg said and that was when there was a knock at the door.
Anatol was nearest and more agile than old Prince Michael; he went to the door and opened it unsuspectingly—you couldn’t talk through those doors without shouting—and then suddenly the door slammed back and Anatol was thrown off his feet and Alex saw the man with the gun.
All the old instincts sent him diving across the rug toward Vassily: “Down!”
But Vassily was tired, his reactions had slowed and he didn’t understand the threat quickly enough—he hadn’t been facing the door.
Alex wasn’t across half the distance when the pistol chugged, muttering twice through its silencer.
The bullets hammered Vassily Devenko, spun him to one side in the chair; there was a gush of blood the color of death where the two slugs had torn into the heart.
He saw disbelief and anger in Vassily’s face. Rage drove him half to his feet and then the splendid body failed him and Vassily stumbled and fell back across the chair.
Alex exploded with an unthinking wrath. The doorway had emptied: the assassin hadn’t waited to see the results of his work. Alex leaped over Anatol and careened into the gallery and saw the assassin running toward the head of the stairs. There was a small stone bust on a stand: Alex scooped it up and hurled it and ran after, uncaring of the gun in the fugitive’s fist.
The stone bust caught the running man in the small of the back. It pitched him forward off balance and he caromed off the heavy bannister rail onto the stairs: he pitched out of sight, tumbling, legs flying and Alex had the angry satisfaction of hearing the pistol clatter loosely down the stairs. He ran full out….
He reached the head of the sweeping stair and checked himself against the rail and had a momentary tableau impression: the assassin lying awry across the steps, one foot high in the air; Irina staring in shock from the foyer below; huge old Sergei Bulygin reaching for the fallen pistol.
The assassin’s leg pivoted and he collapsed motionless against the bannister posts, his neck twisted at an acute angle.
Alex said to Sergei, “You won’t need that.”
He walked down the stairs stiffly to the sprawled figure. Sergei met him there. Irina watched from the marble floor of the foyer—expectant, intent.
“Yes,” Sergei said, bending over the assassin. “This one is dead.”
“God damn it.”
“What?”
He’d spoken it in English; he only shook his head. “He can’t tell us anything now, can he?”