month after the brutal murders Jacob Sverdlov had been found beaten to death in a Moscow street; systematically bludgeoned out of existence, every bone in his body shattered. It was fairly well accepted by a good number of the White exiles that it had been Count Ahatol who had thus avenged the Royal Family. It was said that it was the first and last time in his life that Anatol had shown passion; but surely Irina Anatovna was not the product of an emotionless conception.
Of the seven men in the room-Vassily would make the eighth-one was not a Russian.
Prince Leon said, “Our American representative, Colonel Alexsander Danilov. Alex, I am sure you know General Sir Edward Muir.”
He’d seen the old photographs; now he made the connection. The Scotsman nodded to Alex, neither rising nor offering a hand. He was a very tall old man, noble and grand with a white military mustache stained to amber by cigar smoke. His longevity appeared to fall little short of immortality: he’d commanded the British Expeditionary Force in the Crimea in 1919 and he’d been on the verge of retirement age even then.
Prince Leon said, “Sir Edward is here to represent the viewpoint of the British crown.”
“Unofficially of course.” The Scotsman spoke in a Russian that was fast and without hesitation but thickly accented with an Edinburgh burr. He wore grey evening clothes well-cut to his long gaunt frame but too heavy for the Mediterranean climate; there was a sheen of perspiration on his smooth ruddy face.
Alex moved toward the chair beside Prince Leon’s. “Am I here as an American army officer or as a White Russian?”
“Decide that for yourself,” Count Anatol said coolly. “After you have heard our plans.”
“Here is General Devenko,” Prince Leon said. “We can begin now, I think.”
“About bloody time,” said Baron Oleg Zimovoi in his harsh peasant Russian.
Before Vassily sat down he gave each man in turn a studied scrutiny. Alex saw him nod his head half an inch to the British general; Sir Edward cracked a sliver of a smile. It was the extent of their greeting-two men who’d soldiered against a common enemy in the bleeding Crimea of twenty years ago.
Vassily’s face was ungiving: he looked like a man who knew better than to expect too much. “What is it to be then-action or only more debate?”
“The decision will be made tonight,” Prince Leon said. “Every man here has made assurances of that.”
Vassily’s intolerant gaze swept their faces, lingering briefly on Anatol’s and Baron Oleg Zimovoi’s. “I remind you all-Hitler is not standing still while you dispute politics.”
Anatol’s eyes narrowed to slits in the pale flesh. “You doubt our word, Vassily?”
“Only your willingness to keep it if it means the sacrifice of some petty political objective.” Vassily snapped it; clearly his nerves were on a raw edge.
Prince Leon said, “We must put Sir Edward and Alexsander in the picture before the decisions are taken.”
Vassily leaned his head back against the top of the chair. He crossed his legs and closed his eyes. “Let us get at it then.”
“We are eight here,” Prince Leon said, “but some of us represent the proxies, so to speak, of large blocs of interest. I have commitments from General Deniken and his group, and of course I speak for the house of the Grand Duke Feodor. Prince Michael”-he inclined his head toward the old man in the chair beyond Vassily’s-“is here to speak for the house of the Grand Duke Dmitri. Baron Oleg Zimovoi has undertakings from his followers to honor the decisions we make here.”
The council’s spectrum was remarkably full-Oleg on the far left with his following of thousands of White Russian Socialists, the rest of them scattered across the center toward the right where Anatol the monarchist held the extreme position. They’d found a unanimity for which Alex could find no parallel in his experience.
It would have made a singular group portrait. Nearest the door sat Vassily-stern and arrogant, a political man only in his virulent old-fashioned hatred for Bolshevism. Then Count Anatol, the icy conservative with bored contempt in his eyes. Sir Edward Muir, who shared the firsthand memories of a brutal civil war that had seared and scarred them all. Prince Leon at the focal point beside him, his bad leg stretched out. Alex next: the youngest man in the group. Then there was General Anton Savinov-genial and rotund, a middle-aged Muscovite with a big-boned phlegmatic face and an easygoing chuckle-it had been some years before Alex had realized he was slightly drunk all the time. He’d been a hero-Wrangel’s right arm in the Kuban in 1919. That was the penultimate experience of these men’s lifetimes; the final experience had been the talking about it, the judging of everything else in the light of it.
At the edge of the circle sat the venerable Prince Michael Rodzianko-royal first cousin to the Grand Duke Dmitri who lived on a vast lakefront estate in Switzerland.
And finally Baron Oleg Zimovoi. There was no one who pretended to be fond of Oleg: he was everyone’s enemy, everyone’s scapegoat. He was a hard man, physically and morally tough, an old Socialist who had battled his way through life conceding nothing: physically an assembly of cubes and blocks in testimony to his stolid Byelorussian ancestry. His energies had been dissipated for years in the attempt to persuade the monarchist factions that there was a valid distinction between his brand of democratic Socialism and the Bolshevik brand of despotic Communism. It was a distinction the conservative White Russian wings did not choose to take seriously; Oleg had been regarded for years as a misguided pest, an intellectual fool or even a potential traitor. He was tolerated because of his lineage and because he spoke for thousands of Socialists among the White Russian exiles. He maintained a flat in Barcelona, churning pamphlets out of his typewriter and speaking out recklessly against Hitler, Stalin, Franco and the rest of his political demons. At any time there might be the measured tramp of Guardia Civil jackboots in his hall, the rap of a nightstick against his door.
They were a dramatically dissimilar lot. But they had one extraordinary thing in common. Each of them had enjoyed great power and had lost it. The remembrance of that power-now twenty years gone-remained in their bearings and their souls. The twenty lonely years had weeded out all the weak blunderers who had made a travesty of Imperial Russia’s last years; only this hard brilliant cadre remained, waiting for a sign that they were needed once more.
Prince Leon said, “The first thing we must do is dismiss every wishful fantasy. We have got to speak realistically-it is no good dismissing the facts out of hand.”
Vassily Devenko opened his eyes briefly. “The Bolsheviks have made suicidal blunders. That is fact-not wishful fantasy.”
Prince Leon paused as if that remark had taken him by surprise; it was merely a rhetorical trick and then he addressed himself to Alex: “You saw their army in Finland. How do you view them?”
“It couldn’t be poorer,” Alex said. “Their army’s got no morale at all. Unless you count fear.”
“Yes. The entire population’s disaffected.”
Sir Edward Muir said, “Are you quite sure you’re not seeing what you wish to see? I’ve gathered that Joe Stalin is in very firm control.”
“No,” Baron Oleg Zimovoi said-very quiet, very firm. “A year ago that was true. Today, no.”
Count Anatol Markov’s voice came into it with the dryness of a mistral soughing in autumn leaves. “A totalitarian system survives only so long as it can hold the monopoly of power. Communications, the means of indoctrinating the people, the ability to browbeat everybody into collaboration-so that if you refuse to betray your neighbor you will be arrested right along with him. That is Stalin’s leverage-fear, the threat of the Siberian camps. As long as he maintains it he stays in power. But he is not maintaining it. It’s crumbling.”
Prince Leon resumed:
“The weaknesses of this kind of regime show up in a crisis. It is a crisis right now-the worst they have ever had, the worst they are ever likely to have. The Germans are taking Soviet Russia at a rate of eleven miles a day. Stalin has lost an incredible area of territory-including the heavy industries of the Ukraine. Nearly a quarter of the Russian population is presently beyond his reach.”
Alex felt the weight of his meaning. It slowed his breathing and made his palms damp.
“He has lost hundreds of thousands of troops,” Prince Leon continued-resonant, soft-voiced, relentless. “Possibly more than a million. What is left of the Red Army is hanging by its fingernails-fighting the Germans only because they know they will be shot by their own commissars if they try to retreat.”
His face turned. “Oleg is in daily communication with Moscow. Oleg?”
The Socialist baron showed his teeth: more a rictus than a smile. “It is teeming with anti-Communist partisans. They are assassinating commissars by the hundreds. Sabotaging the Red Army, collaborating with the
