“Stokely, honey, you don’t look so good. Is something wrong?”
“Yes, baby. Something is wrong.”
“How wrong?”
“Really wrong. Bad wrong.”
“You’re not going with me.”
“No, honey, I’m not. I can’t.”
She turned around and went back inside the bathroom and closed the door. Didn’t slam it. Just closed it. And locked it.
Stoke picked up his unpacked suitcase and rapped softly on the bathroom door.
“Fancha? I’m sorry, baby. Let me explain.”
No response. He pressed his forehead against the door and spoke softly.
“Baby? I’m so sorry. Let me just kiss you good-bye. Okay? Please.”
Nothing.
“It’s business, honey. National security. What am I supposed to do?”
He could hear her in there, sobbing.
He left the stateroom without another word, pulling the door closed behind him, seriously disgruntled.
War isn’t hell, he thought to himself, charging angrily down the corridor to the airship’s aft elevators.
Hell, no.
Sometimes it was much, much worse.
43
Korsakov’s winter palace was plainly visible now, countless lighted windows winking through the dark, snow-laden forests. The blisteringly fast troika flew across an arched wooden bridge spanning the frozen river. The sleigh went airborne for a long moment at the top, and Hawke found the speed, the fierce cold, the ringing sleigh bells, and the snow-spangled forests sparkling in the starlight exhilarating.
He glanced at Anastasia, sliding his cold hand under the fur throw and placing it on her warm thigh. She slid closer to him, never taking her eyes off the hindquarters of the three flying horses. She watched their every movement, like a pilot casting her eye over her instrument panel, and whispered corrections as they flew over the landscape at impossible speeds. Hawke was mesmerized by her art, her precise skills at something he’d never known existed.
“How much of this enchanted forest is Korsakov property?” Hawke asked. For the last half-hour or so, there had been endless miles of dry-stacked stone walls and small cottages in neatly fenced fields. Now a high yellow wall lined the left side of the snowy lane.
Asia laughed. “Alex, you were on Korsakov land two hours before your train arrived at Tvas station.”
“Ah. Sizable holdings.”
She cast a quick smile in reply and flicked the reins.
“Not really. We used to control all of Siberia-Storm! What’s gotten into you? Pay attention! Lightning, get along with you! Turn! Turn! We’re home at last!”
Nothing had prepared Hawke for the sheer grandeur of the Korsakov winter palace.
The troika suddenly careened off the snowbound country road and raced under a great arch of stone and wrought iron, the entrance a heavily filigreed black arch surmounted by golden two-headed eagles. The horses, now in sight of their stables, surged ahead beneath the snow-packed
The sense of power and opulence only grew as they got closer. It seemed too vast to be practicable as any kind of home. Hawke couldn’t even guess at how many rooms, but it dwarfed a European’s notion of parliaments and museums. And every window was ablaze with light.
“A party?” Hawke asked. “Just for me?”
“A dinner and concert,” Anastasia said. “Five hundred guests.”
“Only five hundred? Cozy.”
“Half of Moscow is here.”
“Really? Which half?”
“The half that counts. The half holding the reins of power. My father means something to this country, Alex. He stands for the New Russia. Strong, powerful, fearless. They revere him here, Alex. He’s like a-a god. Like a-”
“Tsar?”
“That’s not as far-fetched as you might think.”
Hawke looked at her a moment and decided to let that one pass. “Are you as hungry as I am? Near starvation?”
“We’re too late for the Christmas feast, but we can enjoy some of the concert, perhaps. And no, the party is definitely not for you. We’re celebrating Papa’s Nobel award and the coming debut of his new symphony.”
The sleigh careened into a large snowy courtyard, and Anastasia reigned in her three chargers. The trio swerved to a stop at the foot of a wide set of steps, the runners throwing up a great shower of glistening snow. A host of liveried footmen instantly surrounded them, helping both Anastasia and Hawke to step down from the ice- encrusted sleigh and whisking Hawke’s luggage away. Considering its contents, he would have preferred to carry it himself, but it was too late.
Hawke stood for a moment, stomping his boots on the hard-packed snow, trying to get some feeling back into his feet.
Anastasia stood stroking Storm’s mane as grooms covered the other two horses with blankets and led them away to the stables. She was quietly giving orders to a tall bearded fellow, obviously the man in charge. Once they were alone again, mounting the broad stone staircase to the main entrance, she whispered, “I instructed Anatoly to put you in the Delft Suite on the third floor. It adjoins my own rooms with a connecting door. I hope you don’t find that too forward of me.”
“Forward, certainly, but perhaps not too forward.”
She took his hand and hurried him up the steps. Crimson-uniformed servants with gold braid and bright brass buttons swung the double doors open wide. Hawke saw a massive illuminated Christmas tree standing at the center of the gilded and white-marbled entrance hall. The ceiling vaulted four stories above it, upheld by fluted columns the size of grain silos. Two curving marble staircases led to the second and third stories, where piano music tinkled, mixed with the muted laughter of hundreds of guests.
HAWKE ENTERED HIS own room and found it surprisingly and refreshingly small. The walls were entirely covered in blue and white Dutch tiles. Peter the Great, Hawke knew, had been a huge admirer of all things Dutch. Hawke’s room was, so Anastasia had informed him, the very room in which Tsar Peter slept whenever he was a guest of the Korsakovs. A cozy fire had been lit in the tiled Dutch oven in the corner. He removed his ice-coated black greatcoat and quickly shed all of his sour-smelling travel attire, washed himself with hot water from a bedside jug, and dressed.
He’d found a set of perfectly tailored evening clothes laid out on his four-poster bed, and to his amazement, the shirt, trousers, and waistcoat, everything, fit perfectly. Nestled at the foot of the bed was a pair of black velvet evening slippers with the Korsakov coat of arms embroidered in gold thread. Unsurprisingly, they fit.
He saw his Gladstone bag on a settee in a darkened corner. He crossed the room and checked to see that the combination locks were intact and that the bag containing his weapons had not been tampered with. It seemed that it had not; at least, the number combination he always left the two locks set at had not been altered: 222, February 22, his late parents’ anniversary date.
He was, he assumed, an honored guest of this great household. But then again, this was still Russia.
Suddenly bone tired, he kicked off the slippers and stretched out fully dressed on the vast down-filled bed. The flickering firelight cast cartoon shadows on the underside of the bed’s canopy. It had been a long, uncomfortable
