The King's Commisar Read online

  The paper was Trud, I remember, and the item said Nicholas Romanov had been shot by Red Army men in a train as he was leaving Ekaterinburg.

  'You're sure it's untrue?' I asked.

  'We'll know soon for certain,' he said. 'The papers are full of these irresponsibilities. We'll have to learn to control the Press.'

  An hour and a half later a message was brought in and placed upon his desk. Sverdlov read it and laughed. 'Here you are.' He handed it to me.

  Military Telegram, to Moscow CEC from Ekaterinburg HQ.

  Have visited Romanov family in detention this city. All are in good health. Premises secure, medical supervision available, rations more than adequate.

  Jan Berzin, general, Red Army

  'Satisfied?' said Sverdlov.

  'They're not my affair. All I want is my document.'

  'You should have made him sign it, my friend.'

  'Made him?'

  'A pistol at the head achieves miracles, I assure you.'

  I said, is that how you made him endorse the Brest-Litovsk treaty?'

  'Nicholas didn't endorse -' he glanced at me, and then laughed yet again. 'All right, all right. But I have no time, not now. Just be assured: nothing will change for a while. If the Romanovs are brought to Moscow, you will be given access. Fair?'

  I nodded and he picked up a bell on his desk and rang it. A secretary entered, a woman, attractive and dressed in sober black. He told her: 'This is an Englishman, Nadezh-da. I can't even pronounce his name. Make arrangements to keep him informed on the Romanov question.'

  'Yes, Comrade Minister.'

  He rose and offered me his land. 'Why did Nicholas not sign?'

  I think he is wary,’ I said.

  'Not soon enough,' said Yankel Sverdlov. "He should have been wary long ago. Of Kaiser Viinelm, of Rasputin, of his wife. Goodbye, Comrade.' He held out his hand.

  'Goodbye, sir.'

  'Not "sir". Say "comrade".'

  'I'm English. We address our superiors as "sir".'

  'Superior?' he said. 'To an Englishman! None of you will ever believe it!' He gave me an amiable clap on the shoulder and I left.

  'Now,' the woman's voice«aid crisply beside me, 'as to the arrangements. Do you require a report daily?'

  'I don't require it, though it would be useful.'

  She nodded. 'Very well. Here is my office. You should come to it as necessary.'

  I thanked her and left. It was an extraordinary situation. If the Tsar had the paper, then from Sverdlov's own point of view, all that was necessary was to send me back to the Urals with instructions to General Berzin that I was to be admitted to the royal presence. Berzin apparently did not have difficulties. That way, assuming the recommended pistol-at-the-head method to be successful, I could be back in Moscow in a week with the key to releasing to the Soviets a vast quantity of arms, all of which must be sorely needed.

  Why, then, was I being held in waiting? Personal kindness and daily information from one of his secretaries - it appeared to be generous, but in reality gave nothing. If his aim was to keep me quietly in Moscow, he would achieve it - and lose the chance of the arms. Didn't they want them? Could a new regime, embattled on many fronts, really afford to ignore a mountain of available war material? Or, I thought suddenly, was something else more important?

  The Germans, for instance. For their army was in easy striking distance of Moscow!

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Visit to a Black Widow

  Malory's tame Oxford historian had produced, at Sir Horace's request, and upon two sheets of foolscap, a kind of timetable of known events concerning the Romanov family and the city of Ekaterinburg in May, June and July of 1918. Coming to the end of Dikeston's narrative, with its reference to the Germans, Malory reached for the foolscap list and ran his eye down it. 'Germans, bloody Germans

  . . .?' he murmured quietly to himself. They'd be there, they always were. What was it Churchill had said: They're either at your feet or at your throat. He smiled in quiet private malice and then saw the reference:

  'Throughout the months of May and June a German train is reported to have been standing, with all blinds drawn, at the station in Ekaterinburg. Source of information: Baroness Buxhoeveden, the Tsarina's l ady-in-waiting, who was in the city throughout this period, in her book Left Behind.' Dikeston, thought Malory as he pushed the list aside, was a fox. The narrative showed him to be something of a clown, and a pompous one at that, but he yet contrived to be everywhere of importance; not an easy matter to achieve, as Malory well knew. A fox then. A fox with a secret he had kept for six decades. A fox who knew where everything and everybody was, during one of the century's more mysterious episodes. He asked Mrs Frobisher to take Dikeston's narrative to Pilgrim's office. It was an hour before Pilgrim responded. Then the intercom buzzed beside Malory. 'Got a minute, Horace?'

  Entering the room, Malory noted the satisfaction that was in Pilgrim's expression. It was well-contained, even suppressed, but there.

  'Interesting about the Germans, wouldn't you say?' Malory mumbled. "Morning, Graves,' he added, for Graves stood at Pilgrim's shoulder. 'Been busy, have you?'

  'At work in the vaults, Sir Horace.'

  'Oh?'

  'And,' said Pilgrim, 'old Jacques has found pay dirt.'

  'Pay dirt, eh?'

  'I got the idea,' Pilgrim said, 'of going through the old books to see if there were any references to Zaharoff's pensioners. Jacques has been down there hunting for three days. He found one or two things.'

  'Do go on, dear boy.'

  Pilgrim was smiling. 'Actually he found three. All dated from the First World War, or from the very early

  'twenties. The way Zaharoff did it was to deposit enough straight cash to buy an annuity and cross-refer it back to Senior Partner's notes.'

  'He would. Done it myself,' said Malory. 'Which company?'

  'Condor Planet Mutual. In Senior Partner's Notes it simply says "Authorized, ZZ." '

  'Who was he paying?'

  'Widow of a French politician.'

  'Briand?'

  'That's the one. Then there was some guy in the Balkans.'

  'In Bulgaria,' said Graves.

  'Who's dead,' Pilgrim said.

  'Which leaves one, I think?' Malory's eyebrows lifted interrogatively. "Who is that?'

  Pilgrim grinned. 'You're right about the "is", Horace. It's an old lady. Lives in Nice. Name of Bronard.'

  'Bronard, eh?'

  'Yup. Paid since - guess, Horace.'

  'I would suspect nineteen-eighteen.'

  'You'd be wrong. Nineteen-twenty.'

  'And is the lady unfortunate enough to be a widow?' Malory asked.

  'I don't know.'

  Malory looked at Graves, who said, 'I don't know, either. But I'm on my way to Nice on the afternoon plane to find out.'

  Pilgrim rubbed his hands. 'We're really gonna crack it, Horace! That name Bronard - it has to be the same one, huh?'

  'I would imagine so.'

  'Sure it does. We're gonna get the whole thing. No more Turners, no more goddam Georgian houses. The whole thing, Horace!'

  Malory smiled, I do hope so,' he said.

  'Oh, sure, Horace. Dikeston's had his fun. Here's where we get the answers he keeps holding back from us.

  It was hot in the town of Nice, and had been so for weeks. So, as always in the summer there, the day's heat came not only from the sun overhead: it came from stones which had long been absorbing it, from paving baking beneath the feet, from asphalt cracking like dermatitic skin to reveal tar shiny beneath. Graves toiled up the steep narrow alleyways of the old town. His jacket was off and slung by a finger over his shoulder, his tie loose at his throat, and sweat made wide wet patches on his back and beneath his arms. He was where the taxi-drivers would not go, for the narrow alleys with their rough projecting stones unfailingly made expensive scrapes on bodywork.

  Graves swore as he climbed. The rule still held, that apparently inalienable rule he had note
d after Dikeston's first appearance in his life: the rule that said - you will encounter discomfort. You. Not Pilgrim, not that old bastard Malory, but you, Graves.

  If he turned and looked back, the blue Mediterranean glittered with invitation no great distance away. In a quarter of an hour he could be in the water, all this behind him, encompassed by a profound feeling of comfort. Pretty girls to look at, long drinks to sip.

  He cursed again, and climbed on.

  The square was tiny, barely meriting the name; really it was no more than a place where alleys met. In it there was nothing of what the world understands when the name of Nice is mentioned: there was no sunshine, no palms, no sand, no beauty, no self-indulgent luxury. But then, the richest cities always have places for the poor.

  Graves, glancing round him, understood that at once. A few feet above, an ancient olive tree thrust its gnarled trunk from a wall and darker shade lay in an inviting pool beneath it. He stepped into its comfort and lit a cigarette, and he stood very still as sweat ran down his body. Five minutes passed. He saw a tin sign half-fastened to a wall opposite. Byrrh it said. An open doorway stood beside it, the room beyond very dark. He levered his moist body off the wall and took the few paces that were enough to cross the little square. It was cool inside the tiny bar. There was a zinc counter, a sink, a few bottles, and water dripping. The woman was in black and her face was much lined from the sun.

  'Une bi ère, madame, s'il vous plaît. '

  'Pas de bi ère. '

  Anything cold would do.

  'Pas de glace. '

  In Nice! he thought. No ice, in Nice.

  He took a glass of white wine, far from cold, and it was sour on his palate. The woman kept her eyes on him.

  He finished the wine in a gulp. 'I am looking for Madame Bronard.'

  No answer.

  'She lives close by?'

  Just the black eyes on him. He tried again. Once. 'She must be very old now, Madame Bronard. You know her, madame?'

  -A shake of the head.

  He walked out into the heat. A man sat on a rock that jutted from a wall. Graves went over to him. 'I am looking-'

  'For Madame Bronard. Oui. I heard.'

  'You know her?'

  'Oh yes.' The man looked at him with a strange expression. 'But do you?'

  'No. But I want to see her.'

  The man began to roll a cigarette in thick, stiff fingers. After a moment of concentration he looked up again. 'She is very old.'

  'I know.'

  'Also hostile to strangers.'

  'Nevertheless. . .'

  A shrug. A thick finger pointing. There was a doorway at the mouth of the second alley; its door stood open to admit air. 'The house there, m'sieu. Third floor. She's-she's not easy, well, to . . .'

  Thank you.' Grave's smile was answered with another shrug.

  He found stairs of worn stone, uncarpeted, and began to climb. It was refreshingly cool in the house, and there was a draught of sorts down the stairway. Poor old soul, Graves thought, all these stairs to climb!

  The door was old, oaken and blackened. Spidery handwriting on a grubby card said 'Bronard'. He knocked, and something scraped at the far side of the door. An ancient voice said, 'Who knocks?'

  He saw that a little grille had moved, and tried to look through it. 'My name is Graves, madame, Jacques Graves.'

  'What do you want?' A harsh tone now in the weak voice.

  'To talk to you. On business.'

  'Business?' Shrill and surprised. 'I have no business.'

  'I'm from London.'

  Silence. He said it again, slowly. 'Did you hear, madame? I'm from London. From England.'

  'Oh, I heard. My pension. It's about my pension?'

  'Well, yes.' He heard movements inside, beyond the door; the click of a bolt withdrawn. A full minute passed, then the cracked voice said, 'You can come forward.'

  Graves raised the iron lever and stepped inside. There was no hall, no passage. He was at once in the little room, and it was clear this was where she lived. A bed stood against one wall; there was one small table, one chair, a small chipped stone sink.

  Madame Bronard sat in a wheelchair on the far side of the room. Behind her were narrow floor-to-ceiling french windows, flung wide, and a tiny iron-railed balcony. She was little more than a silhouette against the shadowed light outside, and moreover was dressed head to foot in black. On her knee was a bag of black canvas which Graves's imagination first told him must be a black cat. Macbeth, he thought: Act One, Scene One. You can find a blasted heath anywhere. She said, 'My pension. You are from the company, hein?'

  'From a company, madame.'

  'Pffft. The people who pay. With the so foolish name.'

  'Condor Planet Mutual. No, madame, I am not.'

  'Then who?'

  'I must explain. May I sit down?' He took a step towards the solitary chair.

  'No.' Her hands moved incessantly, like big trembling white insects on the black bag. She said, 'Three pounds English, you understand? Enough when it began.'

  He suddenly understood the bitterness.

  'But not for years. I have had half a century of grinding poverty. You hear me, m'sieu from Londres?'

  Graves said. 'It was never increased?' and cursed himself for failing to think about how much interest the principal would produce, for not asking Condor Planet Mutual for details.

  'Increased? Never! I wrote. I begged. They stopped answering. Just the few scus, every month. Who are you from?'

  Graves made his tone emollient. It was a weapon in his armoury: his voice could be made very soothing, and it rarely failed.

  'A bank,' he said. 'I may be able to help you.'

  'Bank?' she said. The cracked voice had an edge like a saw. 'Which bank?'

  'I doubt if you'd know -'

  'Which bank, m'sieu?' She was the secret, black and midnight hag incarnate, every inch, and growing more agitated by the instant.

  'Hillyard, Cleef,' Graves said gently. 'It's a kind of private -'

  She said, 'Zaharoff's - it's Zaharoff's bank?'

  Graves smiled. 'Not for a very long time, madame. Sir Basil Zaharoff died in nineteen-thirty-six. I believe your late husband worked for Sir B-'

  She said, 'I have been waiting.’ The hands never stopped moving on the bag. 'All these years I have waited. So you, m'sieu, are Zaharoff's man?'

  Graves laughed gently. 'Well, no, madame. As I told you, he died long ago.'

  'Like my pension,' she said, and cackled.

  Something made a shiver run down Graves's back - the cool after the heat, he thought.

  'Well, we can try -'

  She interrupted again, head shaking. 'It's too late. Fifty years too late. If my man had been dead it would be three times more, but there was no proof that he was dead, hein? So old Zaharoff didn't pay me, hein?’

  'I'm sure -'

  'So am I, m'sieu. Very sure.' He now saw that the apparently aimless movement of the old hands had achieved something. The bag was open at the neck and her hand was inside. 'But I saved something, m'sieu,' she said, 'as you will see -' and there was an ancient pistol in her hand, a massive, monstrous thing; her hands shook with its weight - 'for Zaharoff. He is dead, so - for his agent.'

  Graves said, in astonishment, 'But -' Her forefinger was tightening, and the wavering pistol was enormous.

  She fired.

  'Just there,' said the man in the square to the agent-de-ville. 'I was sitting on that stone, smoking a cigarette. Heard this loud bang and looked up, and she came flying backwards over the balcony, wheelchair and all. My wife went to her and I ran upstairs, but the man was dead. My God, but there was a hell of a hole in him, did you see it?'

  'I'm not surprised. Kill an elephant with that gun - God knows where she got it. They're rare, guns like that,' said the agent-de-ville. 'You'll come down and make a statement?'

  'Naturally.'

  'What a way to go, eh? Surprising, isn't it,' said the agent, musing, 'what fate has in sto
re? An old lady what was she? Eighty-six - an old lady actually flying off to Heaven!'

  The man chuckled. 'To Hell,' he said. 'And I never doubted she'd fly there.'

  The agent looked puzzled. 'No?'

  'Yes - on her broomstick!'

  In the height of the dog days, it made a very pleasing story: Mystery of the Banker and the Crone - that was the way most of the English papers played it. The French press had more fun: 'Was it an assignation?' asked Nice-Matin. There was an inside page feature on the celebrated strange tastes of the British. Zaharoff was not mentioned, of course, since Mme Bronard, who would gladly have yelled curses on his name from the rooftops, was silent in refrigeration, and nobody else who was willing to talk knew about him. But Hillyard, Cleef were in the papers again. Senior executives of private banks are not shot every day by old ladies wielding revolvers so powerful that the recoil hurled the firer to her death!

  And this was, in any case, one of the men, and certainly the banking house, which had figured so recently and so much in the still-extant controversy over Turner's great painting.

  'Lousy goddam jokes!' Pilgrim complained. 'They have this great reputation for wit, the English, but there are no laughs, just sniggers.'

  'Usually,' Malory agreed.

  'I was at a Bank of England lunch.'

  'Luncheon, yes.'

  It was the Governor, too. Some discussion on spelling. He said -' Pilgrim attempted an Old Etonian languor-'he believed everybody at Hillyard's could spell necrophilia.'

  Malory frowned. 'Naughty.' He paused. 'We will live it down, Laurence.'

  'I'm not so sure. You may. I won't.'

  'Rubbish.'

  'Rubbish it's not, Horace. Maybe it's something in the air here. I never goofed in my life before. Here I goof all the time. Who set this ball rolling? I did. Who got Graves shot? Who had to be saved from Pepe Robizo? Every time, the answer's Pilgrim.'

  Malory said with a kind of gruffness: 'My fault really, m'dear boy. I insisted on following through.'

  Pilgrim shook his head. 'So I'm going,' he said harshly.

  'Where to?'

  'Back to the States. I tell you, Horace, on Wall Street I feel safe, my feet are on rock, my head's clear. Here I make mistakes. I don't feel I have a foothold. I'm going back where I can operate!'