“I have communed with the wise water spirits of the loo,” he said. “Unfortunately they seem to be preoccupied with the outcome of Dominguez’s next bullfight.”
A fly alighted on the corrugated metal edge of the vast doorway, washed its legs and took off into the air. Felix’s hand flashed, cupped the fly and tossed it away over his shoulder. He said, “Outrunning the best in a motor race—I’m told that’s better than sex. It isn’t, but it’s probably better than prancing about in a bemedaled suit making puerile speeches to unwashed hordes.”
Irina strolled away, kicking pebbles, pretending an interest in the sparse row of light planes parked against their chocks outside the hangar. Felix’s was one of them.
Alex looked weary: his eyes were bleak. “You don’t need to like the idea.”
“I see. I’m expected to bow before the wisdom of a group of dreamers whose continued existence is nothing so much as proof that there’s life after death.” He made his voice lavish with scorn. “I’m expected to be dutiful and responsible—I’m expected to be grateful for having been born the son of a Grand Duke. I’m expected to live up to the family name no matter what my own pleasure may be.”
Alex said, “You’re too angry, aren’t you.” He said it gently with the suggestion of an American smile. “What were you fighting the Germans for in that race? Couldn’t have been Russian pride, could it?”
Felix threw up his hands. “What’s going to happen to my lifelong ambition to marry a rich widow with a bad cough?”
His exasperated tones melted away in the smoky clattering racket of a revving Curtiss Hawk. The biplane turned slowly against its rudder and bumped out toward the runway. Its propwash swayed around Irina, pasting the clothes to her body, unraveling her hair. She lifted one hand to shade her eyes and watch it take off.
Felix was a dialectical man and knew it; filled with contradictory moods. He said, “Suppose I accept this absurd proposition today and begin tomorrow to regret it for the rest of my life? I’ll try to be honest, Alex—I suppose I’ve got to for once. Look here, I’m the sort of chap who’s in demand at dinner parties because I’m good at charming the old ladies, but I will sometimes slip a dose of tartar emetic into some old fool’s claret. Now I’m sure Prince Leon can’t expect these qualities to disappear magically as soon as he hangs a mantle on me. My morals are a bit of a nervous tic, aren’t they—something I can’t help.”
“Are you worried about that? I’m not.”
“You’re very reassuring.” He watched the fine line of Irina’s profile turning to indicate her interest in the departing Curtiss. “Of course I’ll accept. I’m too vain not to. Emperor of Russia? The question is whether they’ve got any business offering it to me. I’m just not suitable for it, am I?”
“That decision’s already been made.”
“It can be unmade.”
“The timetable doesn’t allow for that.” Alex gave him a grave look. “They had good reasons for choosing you.”
“An accident of birth. They neglected to consider my character.”
“Don’t think so little of yourself.”
He shook his head dismally. A kind of desperation made him change the subject: “Let me understand this—what’s re quired of me?”
“I’ve told you that.”
“No. I mean immediately. What’s my part of this adventure of yours?”
“You’ll go in with us.”
“In battle?”
“They feel it’s important—politically, for the future.”
“To say I was one of the first, you mean.”
“To say you were the first. You’re to be the one who leads the liberation.”
“That’s absurd. I’ve got all the leadership qualities of a lemming. The truth would get out—then where’d we be?”
“What truth?”
“That I didn’t lead anything. That you were the real leader.”
“When the time comes you’ll be the one to give the order. That will be the final truth.”
He looked down at his hands as if they were unfamiliar objects. “It’s suicidal. We’ll all be captured. They’ll hang us from the highest gallows in Moscow.”
Alex shook his head gently. “You risk your life every time you drive on the racecourse.”
“That’s a different thing—it’s for my own amusement.”
Alex said in his slow spare way, “I know the way your juices shoot up when you’ve got your neck stuck out a mile. You’re alive because you’re in immediate danger of being dead. Stop fighting this—you’ll enjoy it.” He looked at his wristwatch and shot his cuff. “I’ve got a plane to catch. You’ll go back to the villa with Irina.”
“This instant? I had plans….” He realized the inanity of it but it was too late to recall it.
Alex said, “There’s a good deal to do. Prince Leon will lay it out for you.”
“Like jewels on a dark velvet cloth,” he said dubiously. “What do they expect me to contribute at this stage?”
“If you’re going to be the leader of a liberation movement you’ve got to start acting like one.”
Irina was staring at Alex; they were exchanging some sort of private signals with their eyes and the intensity of her expression astonished Felix: he was convinced that was exactly the way she’d look with a man on top of her.
Shaken by it he said lamely, “We’re all making a ridiculous mistake.”
PART THREE:
September 1941
1.
It was the same as before: the bustling uniformed messengers, the corridor, the sergeant rattling his typewriter outside the door, the sitting and waiting because Colonel Buckner once again was “at the White House” and late for the appointment.
“Look,” Buckner said when he finally appeared, “I don’t do it on purpose. While you’re waiting for me I’m up there cooling my heels waiting for an audience with him. He always runs two hours later than the appointments secretary figured. You know what it’s like to live in a small town that used to have four thousand people and now it’s got eighteen thousand but there’s still only one doctor in town? That doctor’s waiting room—that’s the White House.”
Buckner slid out of his black raincoat and hung it with his floppy fisherman’s hat on the standing rack just inside his door. Then he went to his desk and waved Alex to a seat.
“Next time I’ll remember to come at eleven for a nine o’clock meeting,” Alex said. He smiled to show he was joshing.
“Okay. Tell me about the red epaulets.”
Alex wore khakis with red tabs on the shoulder straps. He said, “They’ve put rank on me.”
“Three pips. Lieutenant General?”
“Major General,” he said. “The ranks are a little different.”
“Yeah,” Buckner said. “The Russian army still has third lieutenants too.”
It had been done that last morning at the villa: Prince Leon had brought out a velvet-lined box made of inlaid woods. The red epaulets were in it together with a collection of medals and yellow citations brittle at the edges. “They were Vassily’s father’s. We are settling a commission on you.”
“In the White Russian Army?”