City of Shadows Read Online Free Page A

Bolshevik army had instilled in him a passion for German food at its weightiest. With his wealthier clients and his fancy women, he ate French food at the Eden or the Adlon; with her he fell on pork and potatoes.
    “You’re not going to be difficult, are you?” he said.
    “She’s not Anastasia.”
    “Why isn’t she?” he said. “Pass the salt. Right size, right eyes, hair, everything. I tell you, kid, she shook me. You notice her ears?”
    No, Esther said, she hadn’t noticed Unbekkant’s ears.
    “Exact same shape as Anastasia’s in the photograph. You can’t fool around with ears.”
    “She’s not Anastasia,” Esther said.
    “By the time I’m finished with her, she will be. Empress Granny will fall on her neck: ‘Vnushka, my long-lost little one. Here are the jewels of the Romanovs.’ And I happen to know”—he tapped his nose— “there’s a fortune the czar put for safekeeping in the Bank of England. You leaving that herring?”
    She leaned forward and wiped food from his chin with her napkin. “She’ll have relatives who know who she really is.”
    “Oh, yeah.” He liked Americanisms. “Esther, she’s been there two years, and nobody’s so much as sent her a card—I asked. Two years. And in the hospital before that—the police fished her out of the Landwehr Canal in 1920. Nobody wants to know who she is.” He chewed reflectively. “Except me.”
    “Was she? Fished out of a canal?”
    “That’s what it says on her record.”
    So she’s been where I’ve been, Esther thought. She’s stared down into the waters and wondered how long it took before they delivered oblivion. Only she decided to find out. Does that make her more cow ardly than me? Or braver?
    “All right, she’s mad,” Nick said. He shrugged. “But who ain’t?” He held that the whole world was insane, a conviction Esther agreed with. “But suppose she is Anastasia .. . . ” His eyes widened. He stopped shoveling food from her plate onto his. “Holy Martyr, I think she is. I completely think she is.”
    Alarmed, Esther saw him reassessing his evidence. “Holy Martyr,” he said again. “I’ve found Anastasia.”
    “You are appalling,” she said.
    “What? See, all right, I got this tip-off. There was an unknown woman in Dalldorf, and one of the patients in there shouting around it was Grand Duchess Tatiana.”
    “And you thought Tatiana plus Romanov equals czarist treasure.”
    “Nothing wrong with that,” he said, injured. “There’s a fortune in Ro manov jewels still floating around that didn’t all disappear. Grandma Dowager Czarina took a king’s ransom in precious stones with her when she escaped. She’s an old woman. Who’s going to get them when she curls up her toes? The Bolsheviks want them, say they’re state prop erty. The king of England says he’ll distribute them around the family, but his old lady . . . what’s her name?”
    “Queen Mary.”
    “She’s got a keen eye for a trinket, that one, so she won’t let them go once they’re in her claws.” He poked the fork at her, like a stabbing tri dent. “And I’ll tell you this, Esther, I’d see them go to the Reds before I let the fucking English get them.”
    “Very patriotic of you.” King George V, the czar’s first cousin, had ensured the death of the Romanovs by refusing them asylum in En gland. It had not endeared him to White Russians, high or low.
    She said, “So the Bank of England and various Romanovs are going to say how nice, Prince Potrovskov, thank you for bringing the grand duchess Tatiana and/or Anastasia back from the dead, and here’s our millions. I should have left you in Dalldorf.”
    “Yeah, but see, Esther, I’m beginning to think she truly is. Okay, maybe I was considering making my own grand duchess when I started out, but now . . . It fits. Think back to that kid we’ve just seen in that bed .. . . ”
    She thought back. There’d been intelligence, even craftiness, in those eyes. But mostly