Steve Berry - The Romanov Prophecy

"Are you sure the box still exists?"

"I pay the rental every year."

"Did you pay the rental in San Francisco?"

Thorn nodded. "Both are paid from automatic withdrawals on accounts that were opened decades ago under fictitious names. I don't mind telling you we had a problem when the law changed and Social Security numbers had to be attached to every account. But I managed to use a couple of deceased clients' names and numbers. I was concerned about a trail, but I never considered my position dangerous. That is, until last night."

"I can assure you, Michael, the threat is real. But Taylor Hayes will provide protection. You'll be okay. Only he knows where we are. That much I can assure you."

Hayes climbed from the car and thanked the Pridgen amp; Woodworth associate who'd been waiting at the Atlanta airport. He'd called ahead and told his secretary to have somebody there, and with three dozen lawyers in his division, and that many and more in paralegals to choose from, the task should not have been difficult.

Droopy and Orleg had traveled with him from California and they, too, stepped out into a foggy morning. Neither of the Russians had uttered a word since the airport.

Hayes's house was a stone-and-brick Tudor monstrosity that sat on three wooded acres in north Atlanta. He had no wife. The divorce had come a decade ago. Luckily, there'd been no children. And there would be no more wives. He harbored no desire to share anything he possessed with anyone, much less a greedy woman who'd want a respectable percentage of his assets as compensation for the privilege of having lived with her.

He'd called from the car and told his housekeeper to have food prepared. He wanted to clean up, eat, and get on the road. There was business waiting a few hours north in the North Carolina mountains. The kind of business that would shape his future. Serious men were depending on him. Men he did not want to disappoint. Khrushchev had wanted to come with him, but he'd vetoed the idea. Bad enough he was strapped with two burly Russians who could use personality lessons.

He led Droopy and Orleg through a wrought-iron gate. Leaves slid across the brick pavers, riding a wet morning breeze. Inside the house, he saw that his housekeeper had followed directions and prepared an early lunch of cold cuts, cheese, and bread.

While his two Russian associates gorged themselves in the kitchen, he stepped into his trophy room and unlocked one of several gun cases that lined the paneled walls. He selected two high-powered rifles and three handguns. Both rifles were equipped with sound suppressors-usually used for hunting in heavy snow to avoid avalanches. He unbolted the clips and peered down the barrels. He checked the scopes and sites. All seemed in order. The handguns were loaded with ten shots each. All three were Glock 17L Competition pistols. He'd bought them on a hunting trip in Austria a few years back. Droopy and Orleg had certainly never been privileged enough to handle weapons like these.

He gathered spare ammunition from the locked closet on the other side of the room, then walked back to the kitchen. The two Russians were still eating. He noticed open beer cans. "We'll leave here in an hour. Easy on the alcohol. Drinking has limits here."

"How far away is this place?" Orleg asked through a mouthful of sandwich.

"About a four-hour drive. That will put us there by midafternoon. Let me make myself clear. This isn't Moscow. We do this my way. Understand?"

Neither Russian said a word.

"Is it necessary I call Moscow? Perhaps more instructions could be given to you by phone."

Orleg swallowed his food. "We understand, lawyer. Just get us there and tell us what you want us to do."

GENESIS, NORTH CAROLINA 4:25 PM

Lord was impressed with where Michael Thorn lived. IT was a lovely neighborhood of older homes with forested lots and deep lawns. Ranch style was the description he recalled appended to the design, most of the houses single-story brick structures with gabled roofs and chimneys.

They'd driven over so Thorn could tend to his dogs. The lawyer's wooded backyard was dotted with pens and Lord immediately recognized the breed. The males were noticeably larger and all of the animals, about a dozen, varied in color from sable red to tan and black. The heads were long and narrow and slightly domed. The shoulders sloped, the chests narrowed. They stood about three feet tall, each animal a hundred pounds or so, and muscular, the fur long and silky.

They were in the sight hound family and their name, borzoi, meant "swift." Lord smiled at Thorn's choice of breed. These were Russian wolfhounds, bred by nobility for the demands of coursing wild game through open terrain. Tsars since the 1650s had raised them.

This one apparently no exception.

"I've loved these dogs for years," Thorn said as he walked about the pens, filling water bowls with a hose. "I read about them years ago and finally bought one. They're like chocolate-chip cookies, though. Can't have just one. I ended up breeding them."

"They're beautiful," Akilina said. She stood close to the cages. The borzois stared back at her through oblique brown eyes encased by black rims. "My grandmother cared for one. She found him in the woods. He was a fine animal."

Thorn opened one of the cages and dumped scoops of dry food into a bowl. The dogs did not move and had yet to bark. The animals' gazes followed Thorn's movements, but they did not otherwise advance toward the meal. The lawyer then motioned with his forefinger to where the food bowls lay.

The dogs pounced.

"Well trained," Lord said.

"No sense having beasts like these unless they obey. This breed trains well."

Lord noticed that the scene was repeated in the other cages. Not one of the dogs challenged Thorn or disobeyed a command. He knelt in front of one of the cages. "Do you sell them?"

"By next spring this litter will be gone, and I'll have puppies again. Each time I breed the best of the lot. Only those two, there, stay continually."

Lord stared at two dogs in the pen closest to the back porch. A male and female, both sable red, coats like silk. Their pen was larger than the others and included a wooden enclosure.

"The best of a litter from six years ago," Thorn said, pride in his voice. "Alexie and Anastasia."

Lord grinned. "Interesting choice of names."

"They're my purebred show dogs. And my friends."

Thorn moved toward the cage, unlocked the gate, and gestured. The two animals immediately smothered him with affection.

Lord watched his host. Thorn appeared levelheaded and genuinely in awe of his ancestral responsibilities. Nothing like Stefan Baklanov. He'd heard Hayes speak of Baklanov's arrogance and the fear that Baklanov was far more interested in the title than actually ruling. Michael Thorn seemed quite different.

They returned to the house and Lord examined Thorn's library. The shelves were filled with treatises on Russian history. There were biographies of various Romanovs, many from nineteenth-century historians. Most of the titles he recognized from his own reading.

"You have quite a collection," he said.

"You'd be surprised what you can find at secondhand bookstores and library sales."

"Nobody ever questioned the interest?"

Thorn shook his head. "I'm a long-standing member of our historical society, and everyone knows my love of Russian history."

On one shelf he spied a book he was quite familiar with. Felix Yussoupov's Rasputin: His Malignant Influence and Assassination. Yussoupov had published the account in 1927, a scathing attack on Rasputin that repeatedly tried to justify the murder. Beside the volume rested the two memoirs Yussoupov published in the 1950s, Lost Splendor and En Exil. Vain attempts at raising money, if Lord recalled what later biographers had concluded. He motioned to the shelf. "Yussoupov's writings were anything but flattering to the imperial family and Rasputin. If I remember, he particularly attacked Alexandra."