he provided seating instructions to Andrey and slid the Book back. As a final piece of business, the Bishop alerted the maître d’ to the fact that the flowers in the dining room’s centerpiece had begun to wilt.
“I noted that as well,” said Andrey. “But I am afraid our flower shop has not been carrying the inventory necessary to ensure a frequent refreshing of the arrangement.”
“If you cannot secure flowers of sufficient freshness from Florist Eisenberg, then perhaps it is time to switch to a silk arrangement. That would obviate the necessity for refreshing the arrangement and should have the added benefit of proving more economical.”
“I shall speak with Florist Eisenberg today,” said Andrey.
“Of course.”
Once the Bishop had concluded the meeting and Emile had gone off grumbling in search of his bushel of beets, the Count accompanied Andrey to the main staircase.
“À tout à l’heure,” said the maître d’, as he headed down to the flower shop.
“À bientôt,” said the Count as he headed up to his rooms.
But as soon as Andrey had disappeared from sight, the Count was back on the second-floor landing. Spying around the corner to confirm that his friend was gone, the Count hurried to the Boyarsky. Having locked the door behind him, he peeked into the kitchen to confirm that Emile and his staff were otherwise engaged. Only then did he approach the maître d’s podium, open the drawer, cross himself twice, and pull out the 1954 edition of the Book.
Within minutes he had reviewed all the reservations in January and February. He paused at one event scheduled for the Yellow Room in March and at another scheduled for the Red Room in April, but neither would do. As he moved further into the future, the pages of the Book became increasingly bare. Whole weeks passed without a single entry. The Count began flipping the pages with a quicker pace, and even a hint of desperation—that is, until he landed on the eleventh of June. Having studied the marginal notes written in Andrey’s delicate script, the Count tapped the entry twice. A combined dinner of the Presidium and the Council of Ministers—two of the most powerful bodies in the Soviet Union.
Returning the Book to its drawer, the Count climbed the stairs to his bedroom, pushed his chair aside, sat on the floor, and for the first time in almost thirty years opened one of the hidden doors in the legs of the Grand Duke’s desk. For while the Count may have resolved to take action on the night of Katerina’s visit six months before, it was only with news of the Conservatory’s goodwill tour that the clock had begun to tick.
When the Count arrived at the Shalyapin at six o’clock that night, the denizens of the bar were celebrating the misadventures of “Pudgy” Webster, a gregarious if somewhat hapless American who had recently arrived in the capital. Twenty-nine years old and still suffering from that affliction for which he had been nicknamed as a boy, Pudgy had been sent to Russia by his father—the owner of the American Vending Machine Company of Montclair, New Jersey—with strict instructions that he not come home until he had sold a thousand machines. After three weeks, he had finally secured his first meeting with a Party official (the assistant to the manager of the skating rink in Gorky Park), and had thus been convinced by several journalists to sponsor a round of champagne.
Taking a stool at the other end of the bar, the Count accepted a flute from Audrius with a grateful nod and the smile of one who has his own cause for celebration. The designs of men are notoriously subservient to happenstance, hesitation, and haste; but had the Count been given the power to engineer an optimal course of events, he could not have done a better job than Fate was doing on its own. So with a smile on his lips, he raised his glass.
But to toast Fate is to tempt Fate; and sure enough, even as the Count set his flute down on the bar, a gust of frozen air brushed against the nape of his neck, followed by an urgent whisper.
“Your Excellency!”
Turning on his stool, the Count was surprised to find Viktor Stepanovich standing behind him with frost on his shoulders and snow on his cap. A few months before, Viktor had joined a chamber orchestra and thus was rarely at the hotel in the evening. What’s more, he was panting as if he