As for our financial resources, including all stocks, savings accounts, bonds of any sort, etc…”
“I can’t wait,” said Kate, her smile as broad as ever.
A few more pleasantries passed amongst them, and then Kate escaped, passing from the elegant dining room into the gilded marble lobby of the hotel itself. The past three years had been nothing but a whirlwind, beginning with the death of her grandparents and the revelation of the Romanov fortune stashed in Misha’s office. There’d been so much publicity – Dateline, Larry King Live, and others – followed by the exhibit The Secret Jewels of Nicholas & Alexandra at the Art Institute of Chicago. And now this, the opening of the permanent exhibit of the gems in a hall specially renovated in the Winter Palace.
As she neared the front entrance, she was tempted to bolt right then and there. It was, however, the sight outside of the limousine and bodyguard assigned to her that stopped her dead cold. If she went out there, they’d not only insist on driving and accompanying her, but they’d also make a full report to her host, Dr. Kostrovsky. And she couldn’t risk that. She’d have to sneak out a side door. But first she had to change, get out of her navy linen dress and fine leather heels.
Entering the small elevator near the front desk, she rode the lift to the fifth floor, the top. Her room was the best in the hotel, arranged by Dr. Kostrovsky himself, and consisted of a suite with an entry hall, living room, spacious bedroom, and an enormous bathroom, all of it filled with antiques, all of it overlooking Cathedral Square. Before the revolution this chamber had been used by various princes and counts; later Hitler himself had planned to stay in this very corner suite after his victory over Russia, which had never materialized.
Kate was a beautiful woman of thirty-five, five foot eight inches tall, and noticeably thin. She wasted no time changing from her fine clothes into her typical garb of well-worn jeans, brown leather clogs, and a beige cotton twinset. She had rich, thick brown hair, brown eyes, and a nose that she could and did scrunch up at a moment’s notice. Her upper lip was straight, even flat, just like her grandfather’s, and she grabbed a tissue and blotted off most of her lipstick. Wearing only a simple pair of sterling hoop earrings, her gold wedding band, and the gold bracelet always worn by her grandmother, she headed out, convinced that she looked less like an heiress and philanthropist – she’d inherited well over $100 million – and more like a student. Well, she granted as she slung her black purse over her shoulder, maybe a graduate student.
Rather than return to the main lobby and risk running into Mark and the others, not to mention the bodyguard, Kate wove through a series of corridors. She passed into the adjoining Hotel d’Angleterre, and a few minutes later emerged onto a side street that jutted off from the enormous St. Isaac’s Cathedral. Flagging down one of the small, pale-green taxis took but moments.
“Vam kooda?” Where to? said the burly, baby-faced driver.
“Vot zdes addres.” Here’s the address, replied Kate, handing him a slip of paper.
He glanced in the rearview mirror. “Vyi otkooda?” Where are you from?
“Ya Amerikanka.” I’m American.
For the next ten minutes Kate carried on a reasonable conversation in Russian, which she’d learned not only from her grandparents but in a series of college courses. And while she spoke little more than excellent kitchen Russian, her accent was nearly perfect, or so said the driver two or three times.
Bouncing around in the small taxi, Kate was driven down Nevsky Prospekt, the city’s main avenue. The sky was clear and blue, the sun bright through its rays soft in the northern sky, and Kate kept her eyes on the apple green Winter Palace and ensuing Hermitage as they drove around the front of the extensive, regal complex. Passing neighboring palace after palace – once the glittering homes of the richest of the grand dukes but now housing such centers as The House of Scientists – the driver turned left across the Troitsky Bridge. As they reached the other side of the Neva River, Kate’s eyes focused on the Peter and Paul Fortress, where Nicholas and Alexandra had been reburied nearly three years earlier. Dear God, she thought. I have to go there. I have to visit and pray and light a candle. Or was there already an official ceremony planned? Yes, if she remembered correctly the patriarch of the Orthodox Church was coming from Moscow to lead a service to commemorate the wondrous deeds of Kate’s grandparents.
The driver swerved over some tram tracks, around a park, past the city’s only mosque and its pair of towering minarets, then crossed Kamennoostrovsky Boulevard and turned into the dumpy courtyard of a building. Puddles and broken bricks littered the space, two children played on a pile of dirt.
“Priyekhali?” We’ve arrived? asked Kate.
“Da,” replied the driver, pointing to the door.
Kate paid in dollars, which the driver was only too glad to accept, and climbed out. This was the real reason she’d come to Russia, not the opening of the exhibit, not all the grand celebrations, but this, perhaps her very last chance to peel away the final layer of the many truths and mistruths fed to her.
The half-rotted door to the crumbling apartment building flapped open, though it was obviously meant to be bolted. Kate pushed it back, proceeding into a dingy lobby of sorts that was lit by a single, naked bulb. A row of heavy wooden mailboxes hung on one side, and she checked. Yes, the name was there. Dear God, thought Kate, she’d been so scared, so frightened that she might be too late.
Kate swatted a mosquito from her neck – she’d read somewhere that they bred year-round in the water-logged basements of these two-hundred-year-old buildings – and headed up the worn stone steps, which were low and easy. The cast-iron railing was half-broken away, the window at the top punched with a hole, and she mounted the second flight and came to the first door. Once again Kate looked at the address, and then pressed a buzzer, which rang so loudly she could hear it inside. As if in reply Kate heard a television inside being turned down. When there was no further sound, Kate pressed the buzzer again, and a moment later heard shuffling feet. A few moments passed before the inner door was opened with obvious difficulty. The outer door, however, remain solidly locked.
Finally a frail woman’s voice inside, said, “Kto tam?” Who’s there?
Kate was about to reply in Russian, but stopped herself. If it were really her, she would understand English.
“A friend from America.”
For the longest time there was nothing, no reply, virtually no sound of movement from within. Kate, finally sure that this was all a folly, was about to call out in Russian, when finally she heard a heavy bolt unlatched. The thick, padded door swung open, revealing a hunched-over woman, her gray hair skewing this way and that. Her eyes, foggy with age, studied Kate for a long, suspicious moment. Finally the old woman’s eyes bloomed with tears and she reached out and grasped Kate’s hand with every bit of her pitiful strength.
Oh, dear God, thought Kate, her eyes likewise filling with tears, it’s her, it’s really her. “Perhaps you don’t realize who I am, but-”
In hesitant but excellent English, the old woman said, “I know who you are, dear Katya. Of course I do, and not just from what they write of you in these newspaper stories, either. Da, nyet.” Of course not. “No, you should not have come… but I prayed with all my heart that we would somehow meet, which of course, was so very selfish of me.” She shook her head in disbelief. “Yes, it’s really you, and yet… yet how did you even think to come looking for me.”