The Romanov Prophecy Page 0,39

try the restaurant. Two minutes later Hayes was on the line.

"Miles, where the hell are you?"

"Taylor, we have a big problem."

He told Hayes what had happened. A few times he let his gaze drift to the man tending his shelves, wondering if he could understand English, but the traffic noise spilling in from outside helped mask the conversation.

"They're afterme, Taylor. Not Bely or anybody else. Me."

"All right. Calm down."

"Calm down? That bodyguard you gave me is in with them."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean he joined up with the other two looking for me."

"I understand--"

"No, you don't, Taylor. Until you've been chased by Russian mobsters, you can't understand."

"Miles, listen to me. Panic is not going to get you out of this. Go to the nearest police."

"Shit, no. I don't trust anybody in this rat hole. The whole goddamn country is on the take. You got to help me, Taylor. You're the only one I trust."

"What did you go to St. Petersburg for? I told you to stay low."

He explained about Semyon Pashenko and what the older man had told him. "And he was right, Taylor. There was stuff there."

"Does it affect Baklanov's claim to throne?"

"It might."

"You're telling me Lenin thought some of the tsar's family survived the massacre at Yekaterinburg?"

"He was sure interested in the subject. There are enough written references to make you wonder."

"Jesus. Just what we need."

"Look, it's probably nothing at all. Come on, it's been almost a hundred years since Nicholas II was murdered. Surely somebody would have surfaced by now." At the mention of the tsar's name, the store

clerk perked up. He lowered his voice. "But that's not my real worry at the moment. Getting out of here alive is."

"Where are the papers?"

"On me."

"Okay. Find the subway and take a train to Red Square. Lenin's tomb--"

"Why not the hotel?"

"Could be watched. Let's stay public. The tomb will be opening shortly. There are army guards all over the place. You'll be safe there. They can't all be on the take."

Paranoia was taking over. But Hayes was right. Listen to him.

"Wait outside the tomb. I'll be there with the cavalry shortly. Understand?"

"Just hurry."

SIXTEEN

8:30 AM

LORD'S ENTRANCE TO THEMETRO WAS A STATION IN THE NORTHern part of town. The subway train was packed in a suffocating closeness with stinking commuters. He clung to a steel pole and felt the clatter of wheels to rail. At least no one seemed threatening. All of them appeared wary. Like himself.

He left the Metro at the Historical Museum and crossed a busy street, passing through Resurrection Gate. Red Square opened beyond. He marveled at the recently rebuilt gate, the original seventeenth-century white towers and redbrick archways having fallen victim to Stalin.

The compactness of Red Square had always struck him as odd. Communist television spectaculars had made the cobbled space look endless. In reality, it was only a third longer than a football field and less than half as wide. The imposing redbrick walls of the Kremlin stood to the southwest side. On the northeast rose the GUM department store, the massive baroque building resembling more a nineteenth-century train station than a bastion of capitalism. The north end was dominated by the Historical Museum and its white-tiled roof. A double-headed Romanov eagle now decorated the top of the building, the Red Star gone the way of the communists. At the south end stood St. Basil's Cathedral, an explosion of pinnacles, onion domes, and spade-shaped gables. Its collage of colors, flooded in arc light and splashed onto the blackness of a Moscow night, was the city's most recognizable symbol.

Steel barricades at either end prevented pedestrians from entering the square. Lord knew the area remained cordoned off every day until onePM, when Lenin's tomb closed.

And he saw that Hayes was right.

There were at least two dozen uniformedmilitsya in and around the boxlike tomb. A small queue of visitors had already formed in front of the granite mausoleum. The building sat on the highest point of the square, nestled close to the Kremlin wall, a row of towering silver firs standing guard on either side,

flanking the walls beyond.

He rounded the barricade and followed a tour group toward the tomb. He buttoned his jacket against the chill and wished he'd brought his wool coat, but it was back in the compartment of the Red Arrow he and Ilya Zenov had briefly shared. Bells chimed in the clock tower above the walls. Tourists wearing oversized down jackets and cameras milled about. Garish colors clearly tagged them. Most Russians seemed