she said. And she memorialized it. So you have a historically important document in your possession, Mr. Lord.”
He’d not considered the full implications of his discovery, but the professor was right.
“Do you intend to go to St. Petersburg?” Pashenko asked.
“I didn’t before. But I think I will now.”
“A good decision. Your credentials can gain you access to parts of the archives none of us have been able to see. Maybe there will be more to find, especially since now you know what to look for.”
“That’s the whole problem, Professor. I really don’t know what I’m looking for.”
The academician seemed unconcerned. “Not to worry. I have a feeling you will do just fine.”
THIRTEEN
ST. PETERSBURG
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 14
12:30 PM
Lord settled into the archive, located on the fourth floor of a post-revolutionary building that faced busy Nevsky Prospekt. He’d managed to book two seats on a nine AM Aeroflot shuttle from Moscow. The flight, though smooth, was nerve-racking, budget cuts and a lack of trained personnel taking their toll on the Russian national airline. But he was in a hurry and didn’t have time to drive or take the train for the eight-hundred-mile round trip.
Ilya Zivon had been waiting in the Volkhov’s lobby at seven AM as promised, ready for another day of escorting. The Russian had been surprised when Lord told him to drive to the airport and had wanted to call Taylor Hayes for instructions. But Lord informed him that Hayes was out of town and had left no telephone number. Unfortunately, the return flight for the afternoon was full, so he’d reserved two tickets on the overnight train from St. Petersburg back to Moscow.
Whereas Moscow projected an air of reality, with dirty streets and unimaginative structures, St. Petersburg was a fairy-tale city of baroque palaces, cathedrals, and canals. While the rest of the nation slept under a dull gray sameness, here pink granite and yellow and green stucco facades thrilled the eyes. He recalled how the Russian novelist Nikolai Gogol had described the city:
Everything in it breathed falsehood.
Then and now the city seemed busy with itself, its great architects all Italian, the layout reflecting a distinctive European air. It had served as the capital until the communists took over in 1917, and there was serious discussion of moving the center of power back once the new tsar was coronated.
The traffic from the airport south of town had been light for a weekday morning in a city of five million. His commission credentials had at first been questioned, but a call to Moscow had verified his identity, and he was given access to the archive’s entire collection, including the Protective Papers.
The St. Petersburg depository, though small, contained a wealth of firsthand writings from Nicholas, Alexandra, and Lenin. And just as Semyon Pashenko had said, the tsar and tsarina’s diaries and letters were all there, taken from Tsarskoe Selo and Yekaterinburg after the royal family was murdered.
What sprang from the pages was a portrait of two people clearly in love. Alexandra wrote with the flair of a romantic poet, her writings strewn with expressions of physical passion. Lord spent two hours thumbing through boxes of her correspondence, more to get a feel as to how this complex and intense woman composed her thoughts than to find anything.
It was midafternoon when he came across a set of diaries from 1916. The bound volumes were stuffed into a musty cardboard container labeled N & A . He was always amazed at how Russians stored records. So meticulous about their creation, yet so careless in their preservation. The diaries were stacked in chronological order, inscriptions in the front of each clothbound book revealing most to be gifts from Alexandra’s daughters. A few had swastikas embroidered on the cover. A little strange to see the image, but he knew that before Hitler adopted the design it was an ancient mark of well-being that
He’d not considered the full implications of his discovery, but the professor was right.
“Do you intend to go to St. Petersburg?” Pashenko asked.
“I didn’t before. But I think I will now.”
“A good decision. Your credentials can gain you access to parts of the archives none of us have been able to see. Maybe there will be more to find, especially since now you know what to look for.”
“That’s the whole problem, Professor. I really don’t know what I’m looking for.”
The academician seemed unconcerned. “Not to worry. I have a feeling you will do just fine.”
THIRTEEN
ST. PETERSBURG
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 14
12:30 PM
Lord settled into the archive, located on the fourth floor of a post-revolutionary building that faced busy Nevsky Prospekt. He’d managed to book two seats on a nine AM Aeroflot shuttle from Moscow. The flight, though smooth, was nerve-racking, budget cuts and a lack of trained personnel taking their toll on the Russian national airline. But he was in a hurry and didn’t have time to drive or take the train for the eight-hundred-mile round trip.
Ilya Zivon had been waiting in the Volkhov’s lobby at seven AM as promised, ready for another day of escorting. The Russian had been surprised when Lord told him to drive to the airport and had wanted to call Taylor Hayes for instructions. But Lord informed him that Hayes was out of town and had left no telephone number. Unfortunately, the return flight for the afternoon was full, so he’d reserved two tickets on the overnight train from St. Petersburg back to Moscow.
Whereas Moscow projected an air of reality, with dirty streets and unimaginative structures, St. Petersburg was a fairy-tale city of baroque palaces, cathedrals, and canals. While the rest of the nation slept under a dull gray sameness, here pink granite and yellow and green stucco facades thrilled the eyes. He recalled how the Russian novelist Nikolai Gogol had described the city:
Everything in it breathed falsehood.
Then and now the city seemed busy with itself, its great architects all Italian, the layout reflecting a distinctive European air. It had served as the capital until the communists took over in 1917, and there was serious discussion of moving the center of power back once the new tsar was coronated.
The traffic from the airport south of town had been light for a weekday morning in a city of five million. His commission credentials had at first been questioned, but a call to Moscow had verified his identity, and he was given access to the archive’s entire collection, including the Protective Papers.
The St. Petersburg depository, though small, contained a wealth of firsthand writings from Nicholas, Alexandra, and Lenin. And just as Semyon Pashenko had said, the tsar and tsarina’s diaries and letters were all there, taken from Tsarskoe Selo and Yekaterinburg after the royal family was murdered.
What sprang from the pages was a portrait of two people clearly in love. Alexandra wrote with the flair of a romantic poet, her writings strewn with expressions of physical passion. Lord spent two hours thumbing through boxes of her correspondence, more to get a feel as to how this complex and intense woman composed her thoughts than to find anything.
It was midafternoon when he came across a set of diaries from 1916. The bound volumes were stuffed into a musty cardboard container labeled N & A . He was always amazed at how Russians stored records. So meticulous about their creation, yet so careless in their preservation. The diaries were stacked in chronological order, inscriptions in the front of each clothbound book revealing most to be gifts from Alexandra’s daughters. A few had swastikas embroidered on the cover. A little strange to see the image, but he knew that before Hitler adopted the design it was an ancient mark of well-being that
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