The Final Fabergé Read Online Free Page B

shaken. “It belongs to them. I promised my wife they could have it when the war was over, when it would be worth something again.”
    â€œHurry,” Pavlenko said, watching impatiently. He edged toward the table.
    Karsalov took the last of the paper away. “Don’t take it, please, I don’t want your damned food.”
    Pavlenko said, “Open it.”

    Karsalov opened the box and took out the Imperial egg. He glanced at Pavlenko, then put it on the table and stepped back.
    Pavlenko came forward, the revolver in his right hand, his left reaching out to take hold of the Imperial egg. He turned to Karsalov, “Show me how it opens, I—”
    He twisted his body sharply, trying to become a small target, desperately bringing up the gun he had failed to keep trained on Karsalov. But too late. Karsalov shot twice, putting two bullets through Pavlenko’s magnificent coat and into his chest. It was Felix Yusupov’s pocket Browning, the pistol that had failed to kill Rasputin. Karsalov had resurrected it after his wife had been ambushed and killed. He had cleaned it and put new shells in the cartridge and had been carrying it with him, tucked under his belt.
    Later, Karsalov draped Pavlenko’s arm over his shoulder, then, half carrying, half dragging, took the body onto the street and lay it in the doorway of a bombed-out apartment building. Pavlenko’s death was likely to go unnoticed, remembered only by a survivor if indeed there was one to notice he was missing. Karsalov wrapped himself in the warm, heavy coat. In one of the pockets he found an envelope stuffed with food ration cards. He took two of them. They would replace the cards that had been stolen when Marie had been murdered.
    No question about it. In the agony of old Petersburg’s starvation, Pavlenko had gone into the food business.

Chapter 3
    TALLINN, ESTONIA, NOVEMBER 23, 1963
    A n early morning wind rushed in from the Gulf of Finland, blowing icy gales over the capital, auguring a day of sleet and supreme darkness in a city the sun would not visit frequently until April. But to Vasily Karsalov, the bleak weather could not spoil his high spirits, and he walked briskly from his post at the naval station to the hospital and to the maternity ward, where at the fourth partition along the outer, windowed wall, he pulled away the curtain and found his wife nestling their hours-old son, born a few minutes past midnight, exactly two hours after the sensational announcement that John F. Kennedy had been assassinated. Vasily bent over his wife and kissed her, then knelt to better see the tiny infant that he had decided on his walk to the hospital would be named Mikhail.
    â€œHe’ll be handsome, like you,” Anna Karsalov whispered. She was no more than twenty, her skin soft as the babe’s, her hair a pale yellow, her pretty face in happy repose. Vasily Karsalov kissed her again, his breath hot and strong from too much celebration brandy. Anna was right, her husband was handsome, with light brown hair, a wide, strong face, determined mouth, and eyes that no matter how magnificently blue they were, were set a trifle too close to each other.
    â€œI want to call him Mikhail,” he said. “You like the name, remember?”
    â€œNot Nikolai, for your father?”
    â€œI carry my father’s name, that is enough.” He rubbed the baby’s cheek, and said, as if to end the discussion, “Let Mikhail Vasilyovich Karsalov start fresh.”
    â€œWhat was all the excitement last night?” Anna asked. “I don’t remember much . . . just the pain, then this one came. The nurse must have given me something.”

    Vasily smiled. “They killed President Kennedy. In Texas, I think.”
    â€œThat’s funny?”
    â€œKennedy wasn’t our friend. Last year when I was with the fleet in Cuba, we were forced to back away.” He shook his head. “That wasn’t good for