The Romanov Legacy Read Online Free

hellhole. 
    He had to choose his confidante wisely.  Men had been
buried for less. 
    “Don’t let anyone in,” he ordered, stumbling into his office
and closing the door. 
    The envelope was covered with his prints, but surely Valery
could do what they did on American TV shows: find trace elements of a rare
mineral that pinpointed the author’s location or build a profile based on word
choice and handwriting analysis.  Whoever this person was, he or she had
breached embassy security and must be prosecuted.  At least the
closed-circuit security cameras would have an image, something for Valery to go
on.
    He looked again at the letter.  The author claimed to
have an accomplice, an American professor prominent within her field whose
reputation for scholarly accuracy was impeccable.  It was meant to be a
threat, Mikhail knew.  A veiled warning that killing the author of the
note wouldn’t solve anything—there was someone else who had the information,
someone whose disappearance wouldn’t go unnoticed.  
    They both had to be silenced.  If what the author
claimed was true, a single person stood to become one of the richest, most
powerful people on the face of the earth:  a new Tsar.  It could
never be allowed. 
    He reached for the phone.

Chapter Five
    July 2012
    Moscow, Russia
     
    The phone rang with a shrill double beep, its red light
blinking furiously.  Vadim Primakov covered it with an open file folder
and kept working.  I don’t have time for this , he thought. 
The Kremlin wanted to cut his agency’s funding by another ten percent, putting
them back at a level he hadn’t seen since 1994.  That bastard Starinov
is reducing us to a footnote in history.
    Founded by Yeltsin to circumvent FSK infighting, the Public
Security Intelligence Bureau was meant to be an independent intelligence
service staffed with people Yeltsin could trust—people who had never worked for
the KGB, NKVD, or FSK.  Their mandate ran from counter-terrorism to
surveillance and action services.  But when Yeltsin handed the reins of
power to Vladimir Putin, a former FSB director, the bureau became an unwanted
stepchild.  Putin reduced the bureau’s agents to fact-checkers for FSB
journalists and escorts for foreign dignitaries.  Now, Prime Minister
Maxim Starinov was determined to finish what Putin began—he’d already begun
dismantling any bureaucratic entity not staffed with his own minions.
    The only way to save his funding was to attack someone
else’s, but wading through his stolen copy of the FSB budget would take
hours.  Nikulin had dropped it off at 6:00 p.m. and it had to be returned
by morning.  The paper was spectrally controlled, making it impossible to
photocopy or scan.  Eighty pages of densely populated spreadsheets
remained and it was already past 9:30 p.m.
    But the damn phone wouldn’t stop ringing.  Vadim
counted eight rings, then ten, then twelve.  He lifted the file folder to
check the LCD readout.  The caller’s ID and number were blocked, but the
bureau’s decryption software displayed the digits as it identified them. 
When he saw the country code for the United States pop up, he swore. 
    Problems in America never simply went away.
    He picked up the handset.  “Go away.  I’m busy.”
    “ Dobryi vyecher , Vadim Petrovich.  I am Mikhail
Vasilievich Kadyrov, Consul General in San Francisco.”
    “What the hell do you want?”
    “I need your help.”
    “Call your Ministry.  I don’t work for them.”
    “Valery said you were the one I should call.”
    Vadim swore.  The powerful Chairman of the
Investigative Committee had erased an embezzlement charge against his daughter,
making it possible for her to find work and take care of his granddaughter
again.  It was a small favor compared to what many others asked for;
still, he should have known Valery would keep score.  “What does he want?”
    “I received an anonymous letter here in San Francisco,”
Mikhail began.  “From