The Romanov Prophecy Page 0,19

his jacket pocket and withdrew a card. On it was written a telephone number. "There are men waiting at that number. If you were to instruct that they plunge themselves into the Moskva River and never surface, they would. We suggest you use that loyalty wisely."

Chapter Four

EIGHT

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 13

LORD STARED THROUGH THEMERCEDES'S TINTED WINDOW AT THEKremlin's crimson walls. Bells in the clock tower high above pealed loud for eightAM. He and Taylor Hayes were being driven across Red Square. The driver was a bushy-headed Russian whom Lord might otherwise have found frightening, had Hayes not arranged the transportation himself.

Red Square was devoid of people. Out of respect to the communists, a few of whom still lingered in the Duma, the cobbled expanse remained cordoned off until onePM each day, when Lenin's tomb closed to visitors. He thought the gesture ridiculous, but it seemed enough to satisfy the egos of those who once dominated this nation of 150 million.

A uniformed guard reacted to a bright orange sticker on the car's windshield and waved the vehicle through Savior's Gate. He felt excitement at entering the Kremlin through this portal. The Spasskaya Tower above him had been erected in 1491 by Ivan III, part of his massive reconstruction of the Kremlin, and the gate had admitted every new tsar and

tsarina to the ancestral seat of power. Today it was designated the official entrance for the Tsarist

Commission and its staff.

He was still shaky. Thoughts of his chase yesterday not far from this site kept racing through his mind. Hayes had assured him over breakfast that no chances would be taken, his safety would be guaranteed, and he was relying on his boss to make good on that assurance. He trusted Hayes. Respected him. He desperately wanted to be a part of what was happening, but he wondered if perhaps he was being foolish.

What would his father say if he could see him now?

The Reverend Grover Lord didn't much care for lawyers. He liked to describe them aslocusts on the landscape of society. His father once visited the White House, part of a contingent of southern ministers invited for a photo op when the president signed off on a vain attempt at restoring prayer to the public schools. Less than a year later the Supreme Court struck down the law as unconstitutional.Godless locusts, his father had raved from the pulpit.

Grover Lord didn't approve of his son becoming a lawyer and demonstrated his disgust by not providing one dime for law school, though he could have easily paid the entire bill. That had forced Lord to finance his own way with student loans and night jobs. He'd earned good grades and graduated with honors. He'd secured an excellent job and risen through the ranks. Now he was about to witness history.

So screw Grover Lord, he thought.

The car motored into the Kremlin yard.

He admired what was once the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, a compact neoclassical rectangle. The red banner of the Bolsheviks no longer flew overhead. Instead, an imperial double-headed eagle flapped in the morning breeze. He also noticed the absence of Lenin's monument that had once sat off to the right, and remembered the uproar that had accompanied its removal. For once Yeltsin had ignored popular dissent and ordered the iron image melted for scrap.

He marveled at the construction that surrounded him. The Kremlin epitomized the Russian penchant for big things. They'd always been impressed with city squares that could accommodate missile launchers, bells so large they could never be hoisted into their towers, and rockets so powerful as to be uncontrollable. Bigger was not only better, it was glorious.

The car slowed and veered right.

The Cathedrals of the Archangel Michael and Annunciation rose to the left, those of the Dormition and Twelve Apostles to the right. More unnecessarily obese buildings. Ivan III had commissioned them all, an extravagance that earned him the label "Great." Lord

knew that many chapters in Russian history had opened and closed within those ancient edifices, each topped with gilded onion domes and elaborate Byzantine crosses. He'd visited them, but never dreamed that he'd be chauffeured into Cathedral Square in an official limousine, part of a national effort to restore the Russian monarchy. Not bad for a South Carolina preacher's son.

"Some shit," Hayes said.

Lord smiled. "You got that right."

The car rolled to a stop.

They stepped out into a frosty morning, the sky bright blue and cloud-free, unusual for a Russian autumn. Perhaps an omen of good things, Lord hoped.

He'd