Romanov Succession Read Online Free Page B

handed a note on the hotel’s embossed stationery, neatly handwritten in the Cyrillic characters of the Russian alphabet:

    â€œAlex—
    You are booked in. Come around at eight o’clock to #917.—I.”

    He puzzled it momentarily before he pocketed it and moved on to the reception desk. A clerk gave his uniform a glance of utter contempt. “May I help you?”
    â€œColonel Danilov. There’s a reservation for me, I think.”
    â€œI’m not sure there’s—oh yes, here you are. Room Nine-nineteen.” Not troubling to conceal his disapproval the clerk struck his palm down on the counter-top bell. “Front!”
    The bellboy had the red muscular face of an experienced Irish drinker. He regarded Alex’s single soft bag with displeasure, heaved it under his arm and took the key from the clerk. “This way sir if you please.”
    On the ninth floor the middle-aged boy led Alex along the deep-carpeted hall to the northeast corner of the building and into a luxuriously spacious chamber that gave him a view of the whole of Central Park and across Fifth Avenue to the lights of the Pierre and the Savoy Plaza and the Sherry Netherland. The bellboy examined Alex’s twenty-five cent piece as if he suspected its worth and backed out of the room with a stiff bow.
    Alex took his dop kit into the marble-tiled bathroom; washed and shaved and combed and emerged rereading the note. “I” could be Ivan or Igor or Ilya: there were numerous men with those names among his acquaintances in the White Russian exile organizations and families. It annoyed him a little: the passion for unnecessary conspiratorial secrecy.
    A bottle of Polish vodka lay canted in a champagne bucket filled with ice. He lifted it out and brooded at the straw of buffalo grass that lay inside the sealed clear bottle. Someone knew his taste. He poured the two-ounce bartender’s glass full and downed it; replaced the bottle and settled into a chair, and waited. He neither smoked nor drank again; he only waited.
    At eight he went out, turned to Room 917 next door in the hall and knocked.
    â€œYes?” A woman. “Who is it?”
    His host had company then. Alex contained his impatience—made his face blank. “Colonel Danilov.”
    He heard soft footfalls on a carpet. A key turned in the lock and the door pivoted to disclose a stunning dark-haired woman in red.
    His face changed. “Irina.”
    Irina Markova smiled. “Come in, Alex, don’t stand there looking like a stunned schoolboy with his hat in his hand.”
    He entered the room warily; behind him the door clicked shut and Irina said in her low liquid Russian, “There’s no need to clench your teeth. Vassily’s not with me. We’re alone.”
    He turned, feeling odd.
    â€œJust you and I.” She smiled again. “How romantic.”
    All the old passions slid back into place entirely against his will. A spiral of heat rose from his stomach: he felt tricked. “What’s this meant to be, Irina?”
    â€œThey need you, Alex. It’s supposed to be a seduction.”

7.
    There was a sense of mystery about Irina that ramified from her like a spreading fog of intoxicating perfume. She was clearly aware of it; she did nothing to dispel it.
    The natural shape of her blue eyes was slightly mournful—Eurasian. Her hair was gypsy-black and long. The fashionably broad shoulders and fitted long taut waist of her red dress made her seem tall although she was not unusually so. Everything seemed to amuse her as if her point of vantage over the human tribe were a bit Olympian; she seemed to have the knack of surviving the shocks of her explosive life without ever being touched by them.
    It was a luxurious two-room suite, larger than his own. She moved languidly away from him. “I’ve sherry or vodka.”
    â€œSherry.” He’d need a clear head. He settled into a