Steve Berry - The Romanov Prophecy

"Go. Now."

Akilina turned the key and slammed the gear into first. Tires spun as she maneuvered the front end left and straightened back out on the narrow road.

She floored the accelerator and they shot off into the dark.

They found the main highway and drove south. An hour passed with both of them quiet, the excitement of the moment ebbing with the realization that two men had just died.

It started to rain. Even the sky seemed to share their sorrow.

"I can't believe this is happening," Lord said, more to himself than to Akilina.

"What Professor Pashenko said must be true."

Not what he wanted to hear. "Pull over. Up there."

There was nothing around but dark fields and dense woods. He hadn't seen a house for miles. No cars had appeared behind them, and they'd passed only three going the opposite direction.

Akilina whipped the wheel left. "What are we doing?"

He reached for the metal box lying in the backseat. "Finding out if this was worth it."

He cradled the muddy box in his lap. The lock had shattered from the shovel blows and the bottom was dented from the blow to Droopy. He wrenched the hasp free, slowly opened the lid, and shone the flashlight inside.

The first thing he saw was the shimmer of gold.

He lifted out the ingot, about the size of a Hershey's chocolate bar. Thirty years underground had not diminished its glimmer. Stamped into the top was a number and the letters NR, a double-headed eagle between them. The mark of Nicholas II. He'd seen photographs of the symbol many times. The ingot was heavy, perhaps five pounds. Worth right now about thirty thousand dollars, if he correctly recalled the current price of an ounce of gold.

"It's from the royal treasury," he said.

"How do you know?"

"I know."

A small cloth bag that had deteriorated lay beneath. He fingered the outside and determined that it had once been velvet. In the weak beam of the flashlight it appeared a dark blue or maybe purple. He pressed down on the exterior. There was something hard inside, and something smaller. He handed the flashlight to Akilina and used both hands to peel back the rotting cloth.

A gold sheet covered in etched words appeared, as did a brass key. On the key was inscribed C.M.B. 716. The words on the sheet were written in Cyrillic. He read the inscription out loud:

The gold is for your use. Funds may be necessary and your tsar understood his duty. This sheet should also be melted and converted to currency. Use the key to access the next portal. Its location should already be clear. If not, then your path ends here, as it should. Only Hell's Bell can point the way beyond. To the Raven and Eagle, good luck and Godspeed. To any intruder, may the devil be your eternal companion.

"But we don't know where the next portal is," Akilina said.

"Maybe we do."

She stared at him.

He could still hear the words Vassily Maks had screamed before dying.

Russian Hill.

His mind quickly reviewed what he'd read through the years. During the Russian civil war that raged from 1918 to 1920, White Army forces were heavily financed by American, British, and Japanese interests. The Red Bolsheviks were deemed a great danger, so gold, munitions, and other supplies were funneled to the Russian mainland through the frontier town of Vladivostok on the Pacific coast. Maks had told them earlier that the two Romanov children were herded east, away from the Red Army. The easternmost point was Vladivostok. Thousands of Russian refuges had taken the same route, some fleeing the Soviets, some seeking a fresh start, others just on the run. The American West Coast became a magnet not only for refugees, but also for the funding of the beleaguered White Army, which eventually was defeated by Lenin and the Reds.

He heard Vassily Maks scream once more.

North Beach lay to the east, Nob Hill to the south. Beautiful old houses, cafes, and offbeat retail stores dotted the summit and slope. It was a trendy part of a trendy city. But in the early 1800s it was where a group of Russian fur traders had been buried. Then, the rocky shore and steep terrain were populated only by Miwok and Ohlone tribes. It would be decades before white men dominated. The legend of the graves gave the spot its name.

Russian Hill.

San Francisco, California.

America.

That was where the two Romanovs had been taken.

He told Akilina what he thought. "It makes perfect sense. The United States is a big place. Easy to lose two teenagers there, and no one would have any idea who they were. Americans knew little about the Russian imperial family. Nobody really gave a damn. If Yussoupov is as smart as he's beginning to appear, that would be the percentage play." He held up the key and stared at the initials etched into it. C.M.B. 716. "My guess? This is the key to a safe deposit box in a San Francisco bank. We'll just have to find out which one when we get there, and hope it still exists."

"Could it?"

Lord shrugged. "San Francisco has an old financial district. There's a good chance. Even if the bank's gone, the boxes may have been left with a successor institution. It's a common practice." He paused. "Vassily told us that he had one other piece of information to give us after we got back from the cemetery. I'm betting that San Francisco was the next leg of the journey."

"He said he didn't know where the children were taken."

"We can't assume that was the truth. Just more deception until we retrieved the box. Our job now is to find Hell's Bell, whatever that is." He lifted the gold ingot. "Unfortunately, this is useless. We'd never get it out through customs. Not too many people nowadays would have imperial gold in their possession. I think you're right, Akilina. What Professor Pashenko said must be true. No Russian peasant would keep something like this and not melt it down a long time ago, unless it was more precious to him in its original form. Kolya Maks apparently took this seriously. As did Vassily and Iosif. They both died for it."

He stared out the darkened windshield. A wave of resolution shot through him. "You know where we are?"

She nodded. "Near the Ukraine border, almost out of Russia. This highway goes to Kiev."

"How far?"

"Four hundred kilometers. Maybe less."

He recalled reading State Department briefings before leaving for Moscow that noted the lack of border checks between Russia and Ukraine. It had proven simply too expensive to staff all the checkpoints, and with so many Russians living in Ukraine it was deemed an unnecessary bother.

He glanced through the rear windshield. An hour behind were Droopy, Cro-Magnon, and Felix Orleg. Ahead was open.

"Let's go. We can catch a plane out of Kiev."

MOSCOW MONDAY, OCTOBER 18 2:00 AM

Hayes studied the five faces gathered in the paneled room. It was the same room they'd used for the past seven weeks. Stalin, Lenin, Brezhnev, and Khrushchev were there, along with the priest whom Patriarch Adrian had assigned as his personal envoy. He was a short man with a frizzled beard the texture of steel wool and rheumy green eyes. The envoy had exercised enough foresight to dress in a simple suit and tie, showing no outward signs of association with the church. The man had been unceremoniously dubbed by the others Rasputin, a name the priest did not like.

All of the men had been summoned from a sound sleep and told to be present within the hour. Too much was at stake to wait until morning. Hayes was glad food and drink had been prepared. There were platters of sliced fish and salami, globs of red and black caviar heaped onto boiled eggs, cognac, vodka, and coffee.

He'd taken the past few minutes to explain what had happened the day before in Starodug. Two dead Makses, but no information. Both had stubbornly refused to say anything. Iosif Maks had merely pointed the way to Vassily, the old man leading them to the grave. Yet he'd said nothing, save for a shout to the raven.