Phantom: An Alex Hawke Novel (5 page)

He felt a hot clench in the muscles of his throat and was afraid he could not go on.

“Alex, please, you’re very upset. Let me try to—”

Hawke waved him away and took a moment to regain his composure. He returned to the chair opposite Kuragin and stared into his eyes for a long time before speaking.

“Nikolai, I heard a rumor. I’m sure it cannot possibly be true. But I have lived with the knowledge that I killed the woman I loved for a very long time now. It’s unbearable. I returned to Jasna Polana solely because I was told that Anastasia is still alive. I was told that she was held prisoner here. I’ve absolutely no reason to believe this is true. I still don’t believe it, as we sit here. But I simply could not go on living without knowing the truth. I’ve come to you to learn the truth. Please—please help me.”

“Anastasia is alive, Alex. She’s here. In this house. Now.”

Five

H
awke stared at Kuragin in disbelief for a brief moment, then, seeing the clear truth in his wise old eyes, put his face into his hands and leaned forward, giving full rein to his overwhelming emotions. The general stood up and placed his one good hand on Alex’s shoulder. “I’ll go and get the ‘prisoner’ now, Alex. I’m sure you two will want to be alone. I will send her to you here where you’ll be comfortable. Sit back now. Calm yourself. That decanter on my desk contains the purest Russian vodka dirty money can buy. I suggest you avail yourself of it.”

A
gentle tapping at the door. So soft an anxious Hawke nearly missed the sound above the crackle and hiss of the great fire in the hearth. He practically leaped from the chair, set his small glass of vodka on Kuragin’s massive desk, and raced across the large room to the door. His hand was shaking badly as he reached for the doorknob. His heart had taken on a life of its own, beating like some jungle drum warning of imminent danger.

Little did he know.

He pulled the heavy wooden door open, slowly, terrified of what he might or might not see beyond it.

Anastasia.

He saw her upturned face, morning light spilling down from a high window, afire in her golden hair.

Her luminous green eyes shining with tears.

Her lower lip trembling.

Her tentative hand, reaching out, coming to a trembling rest against his wild heart, as she spoke his name, barely above a whisper.

“Alex.”

“It is you,” he said softly, almost breathless.

Hawke unfastened his eyes from hers with strained difficulty, as though they had become entangled. He felt if he lost contact with them he’d sink without a trace. He opened his arms and she fell into them, pressing her cheek against his chest, clinging tightly to him. He enfolded her, cradling her head, the two of them seemingly on a pitching deck, holding on to each other for dear life.

“It is me, Alex,” she said, her voice breaking, a single tear coursing down her cheek. Hawke looked down and gently brushed it away as he spoke softly to her.

“I thought—I thought I’d lost you . . . all this time, all these years, I’ve been broken inside . . . I’ve been so lost, so—”

She put a finger to his lips and said,

“I have to—sit down, I’m afraid. Where shall we—?” She looked around the room as if seeing it for the first time.

He took her hand and led her over to the yellow satin divan beneath the tall leaded-glass windows. She sat and arranged her emerald silk skirt around her, looking up at him, smiling through her tears. “Oh, Alex, my darling boy, I can’t believe I’m sitting here looking up at you. I gave you up so long ago. When I saw you lying there in the snow below my window. So
still
. All that bright red blood soaking into the snow. My father said, ‘There’s your hero. Do you still think he can save you? Do you, you lying bitch?’ And I didn’t, my love; I didn’t think I would ever see your face again. I was so sure you were dead. And now . . .”

Hawke had dropped to his knees at her feet, resting his head upon her lap, weeping, trying to hold on to himself, keep everything inside from flying apart. She ran her slender fingers through his wild black hair, whispering words of comfort to him as if he were a small boy, a child who’d lost his way and had now found his way home at last.

He looked up at her and finally found the courage to speak without a tremolo in his voice. He said, “But now I am here, aren’t I? We’re both young and alive. We’re together. That’s all that matters, isn’t it?”

Her forced laughter was like the sound of glass breaking.

“Yes. For now, my darling.”

“I still don’t understand what happened. I saw you. I saw the stretcher, watched them putting you aboard the airship. I don’t see how you can be here. It’s impossible. Eyes don’t lie.”

“It wasn’t me, Alex. I never left the house. Until I was arrested by the KGB the following day.”

“I saw your arm drop, your ermine sleeve, it fell from beneath the blanket when they lifted you up to. . . .”

“It wasn’t me, dear Alex. It was Katerina. Katerina Arnborg, my father’s Swedish housekeeper. She came into my room and found me on the stretcher, waiting for the airship to depart. I was drugged, couldn’t move or speak. He did that to me. My own father. When I woke up, I was in a linen closet, hidden under the dirty linen. The stretcher was gone. The airship was gone. Everyone was gone, everything. Except the red-stained snow below when I looked out my window.”

“This Katerina, she took your place on the stretcher? Under the blanket.”

Anastasia nodded. “It’s the only possible explanation.”

“But why? Why did she do it?”

“She’d heard things in that terrible house. Over the years. She knew things. Evil things. Terrible secrets.”

“Tell me.”

“No. It is not for you. Not anymore. The past is dead and buried. Katerina was a good woman. I think in the end she wanted to save me from him. And in the end she gave her life for me.”

“She saved you. For me.”

“And who saved you?”

“No one. I just wasn’t ready to die. It was only afterward, after I killed your father, that I wanted to die. In the worst way.”

“Because you thought you had killed me, too.”

“Yes. I was sure of it.”

“Alex. Please. End this. For both of us. It’s unbearable, really, these horrible memories. We should be happy. We
are
both alive, as you said. And we have a child together. The most beautiful little boy in all the world. He looks exactly like you, my darling. He even smiles like you, which will of course get him into no end of trouble when he learns how to use it.”

Hawke lifted his head and smiled, really smiled, for the first time in memory. “What did you call him?”

“Alexei.”

“Alexei. It’s perfect.”

“I thought so, too.” She looked down, gazing at him with her perfect smile, and for a moment he lived once more in the bright green worlds of her eyes.

“How old is he now?”

“Almost three. His birthday is tomorrow. We’ll have a little birthday party.”

“Where is he? May I see him?”

“Of course. He is up in the nursery playing with his toy soldiers. I’ve told him that his father was here to see him. He’s very excited. He asked me what a father was and I told him.”

“What did you say?”

“I said a father is a tall, handsome man. Very strong and very brave. A good man, true and full of life and beauty.”

Hawke got to his feet and held out his hand. “It’s all a miracle. Let’s go and see him now.”

“He’s coming here. Nurse is bringing him. I’ve only to call.”

Hawke smiled as she picked up the receiver next to the divan and spoke a few brief words in Russian.

A
lexei and his English nurse appeared at the library door a few minutes later. When the door swung open, the little dark-haired boy peeked out from behind his nurse’s skirts and stared wide-eyed at Alex for a few long moments, then ran to his mother’s arms, hiding his face in the folds of her skirt. He was dressed like a little prince, which, in some respects, he was. The late Tsar’s grandson wore a suit of dark blue velvet, with a ruffled white collar at the neck. His shoes were black patent leather with small black satin bows.

“Good morning, sir,” the attractive young nurse said, with a slight curtsy and a very proper British accent.

Anastasia gestured at Hawke as she said to the child, “Alexei, that is your father standing over there beside the fire. He’s come a very long way just to see you. You must be on your very best behavior. Show him what good manners you have. Can you say hello?”

The child peeked out at Hawke for a second or two, then hid his face once more in the folds on his mother’s skirts. Hawke went to him and dropped to a knee on the floor beside his son.

“Alexei?” he said softly, placing a gentle hand on his shoulder. “Alexei?”

The boy responded to the voice and touch and turned to stare silently at Hawke, seemingly memorizing every curve and plane of his face. Alexei’s eyes were big and blue and lively. He seemed totally unafraid of the tall stranger now. Hawke was shocked to see a very small version of himself. It was the face he’d seen in scrapbooks his own mother had kept, little Alex building castles by the sea, little Alex on his pony, little Alex reading a picture book.

“Does he speak English?” Hawke asked, his eyes never leaving his son.

“Almost as well as he speaks Russian. We’ve been teaching him both since he first learned to talk,” the young English nurse said, and then she slipped silently from the room.

“Hello,” Hawke said, reaching up and lightly stroking the boy’s plump cheek, lit to a lovely flame, the flush on the face of a child after a warm bath on a cold evening. Alexei turned to hide his eyes again, then, seeing his nurse gone, turned back to stare openly at this person called a “father.”

“Say hello, Alexei,” Anastasia said. “Say hello to your father. Wherever have you put your manners?”

“Hello,” the child chirped. “Hello, hello, hello.”

“How old are you?” his father asked.

He looked shyly at Hawke for a moment, then raised his chubby pink hand, holding up three fingers.

“Good for you! And how many is that, Alexei?”

“Free?”

“Three, that’s right. Do you want to know a secret?”

Alexei nodded his head vigorously, already a great lover of secrets. His father said, “When I was three, I was exactly your age. Isn’t that something?”

The boy nodded again, instinctively knowing he was expected to agree, and his mother watched father and son together, finding a lovely peace wash over her.

Alex said, “You’re a very big boy for three, Alexei. Will you give your father a wee hug? I would like that very much.”

Anastasia bent down and whispered in the child’s ear. Alexei looked at Hawke’s open arms for a moment, unsure of himself, but then stepped into his embrace. Hawke held him closely, looking up at Anastasia, his eyes gleaming with unchecked emotion. He saw her look away, overwhelmed perhaps, and he suddenly felt as if all the molecules in the room had risen up and then rearranged themselves before settling down into a strange new pattern.

He had found his life at last. The life he’d been meant to live.

“Our baby boy,” he said. “Our beautiful, beautiful baby boy.”

His mother turned her noble head slowly so that her eyes rested with overwhelming tenderness and affection on the man and the boy.

“Will you give him a kiss before he goes back upstairs, Alex? It’s past time for his nap, I’m afraid.”

Hawke bent forward and kissed his son on the forehead, then ruffled his curly dark hair, and stood back up. The nurse reentered the room and picked Alexei up in her arms. As he was carried away, looking back over her shoulder, unbidden, Alexei waved at his father and smiled, his blue eyes alight.

Hawke stood mute, staring at the door long after the nurse had pulled it closed behind her.

“Alex?” Anastasia said, stirring him out of his reverie.

“Yes?”

“Would you like to go for a walk along the lake? The snow has stopped and the light is lovely.”

“Yes. Fresh air would be good.”

“We can skate on the pond if you wish. The ice is perfect.”

“I’ve never learned. But I’d love to watch you.”

“Your coat is hanging in the entrance hall. I’ll run upstairs and get my skates and meet you at the door in ten minutes. All right?”

“Perfect.”

W
atching Anastasia glide with such simple grace and style across the ice, Hawke could almost hear Tchaikovsky on the wind in the trees. He found himself remembering their evening together in Moscow at the Bolshoi, alone in the darkness of her father’s private box. The ballet had been
Swan Lake,
each member of the corps of ballerinas a perfect white swan, each one lovelier than the next, creating a rhapsodic fantasy in the air above the frozen wintry pond.

That night, in that privileged cocoon of privacy, with the music filling him up, she had told him she was pregnant with his child. She had been afraid it would make him run; he told her she had made him happier than he had ever been. It was true. That small moment would always be one he would treasure, the moment when the woman he loved told him she was carrying his child, his son.

Little did he realize then how that brief interlude would soon come to haunt his every waking moment.

J
ust how long he sat there on that wooden bench, beneath a stand of bare trees beside the frozen pond, wrapped within his ridiculous bearskin coat, enraptured by the mere sight of Asia’s flashing silver skates, he would not remember. He would only remember what followed.

She flew toward him, her arms outstretched like slender white wings, one leg extended perfectly behind her. Suddenly she spun and stopped, her silver skates creating a small cloud of glittering ice around her. Then she was beside him on the wooden bench, bundled up in her long white mink fur, the hood pulled up, hiding her dark gold hair. Her eyes were big and shining, her cheeks aflame, her radiant beauty piped to the surface of her with the cold.

“I love you,” he said simply. “I always will.”

“And I shall always love you,” she said, resting her head on his shoulder. “Until my last breath.”

He put his arm around her and drew her near.

“I will find a way, you know. I will find a way.”

“Yes?”

“Yes.”

“What do you mean? Find a way?”

“A way for us all to be together. The three of us. A way out of here. This prison, this frozen fortress. To go somewhere no one can find us. Ever. I will build a fortress around us. I will shelter you and Alexei. I will protect you from any harm. We will begin again. To love each other. To love our child. To raise him to become the—”

He felt her stiffen. And then convulse, her shoulders heaving. He heard her sobs from inside the cowl of white mink.

“What, darling?” he said, pulling her closer. “What is it?”

“It cannot be, Alex. It cannot ever be.”

“What cannot be?”

“What you want. Your beautiful dream. It is not possible.”