The Diamond Secret (6 page)

She looked over at Ivan across the way, his eyes shut and his head hung down, arms crossed and long legs stretched out on the empty seat beside him. There was no denying that he was very handsome--in a ragged, unkempt way, of course. If he wasn't so rude and off-putting, she might even be attracted to him.

Don't even think it!
she scolded herself.
To fall for Ivan would be the worst mistake you could make.
At the tavern she'd seen plenty of young women involved with men who treated them rudely--it was painful to watch.

Leaning closer to the window, Nadya gazed out. The train rocked gently while the sunlight threw a blanket of warmth over her. Soon Nadya's temple rested on the glass as her eyes drifted shut.

The dreams that crowded her sleeping mind were erratic. One moment she was swirling at a grand ball, and in the next she was learning to speak French. Nadya would awaken, look out as the snowy landscape moved past, shift in her seat, and fall back to sleep, only to plunge once again into the shadowy world of elusive dreams.

Nadya awoke once to see a hazy sunset over the mountains. Sergei was talking quietly to a conductor. "My friend is sleeping on a coat containing our tickets," he said, pointing to the slumbering Ivan across from her. "He's exhausted. Can we let him sleep a while longer?"

As the conductor consented to this, Nadya shifted once more, dimly aware of the conversation, and then returned to her dreams.

Nadya is still in the train compartment, but it has somehow grown more lavish, with ornate gold trim on both the walls and seats. They are going around a mountainside. Below them is a very dark sea. "Is the ocean filled with ink?" she asks a regal man in a military uniform who comes into the compartment. He has a big mustache and is very, very tall. But then Nadya realizes that he is not as tall as she'd first thought. It is she who has grown smaller.

She vaguely recognizes that the man is Czar Nicholas, the ruler of Russia.

"The sea is not filled with ink," he says kindly. "You have been sleeping since St. Petersburg. We will soon be to Livadia."

"I have a mouse in my pocket," she tells him. "I scared Mrs. Zolokov with it. Are you proud of me?"

Czar Nicholas pets her hair.
"Shvizbik,"
he says fondly.

Nadya looks out the window again and sees a train that is an exact duplicate of the one they are on. "Why are there two trains?" she asks.

"To fool anyone who would try to hurt us," the tall man replies.

"Who would want to hurt us?" she asks. But before he can answer she hears gunfire! Bullets crash through the window.

She screams as loudly as she can. If she can scream
55
louder than the noise, she won't have to hear it!

"Nadya! Nadya! Wake up!" Sergei was shaking her awake.

"What's the matter with her?" Ivan demanded. "Make her stop screaming!"

"Shh! Shh!" Sergei hushed her urgently. "Nadya! Snap out of it!"

"Those gunshots! Who shot at us?" she asked frantically as she came awake. Nadya was back in the simple coach compartment.

"I was dreaming again," she realized. "One of my nightmares."

"Tell us about it," Sergei urged.

"It was strange. The czar of Russia, Nicholas, was there. I know him from photos, but in the dream it seemed perfectly natural that I could speak with him."

"That's dreams for you," Ivan remarked.

Nadya nodded. "We were in a train passing by a sea filled with black ink."

"The Black Sea!" Sergei cried excitedly. "I have read books by a psychologist named Freud. He believes that our dreams are not always direct, but instead they speak to us in a complex language of symbols and word games."

"So you think that a sea of black ink is the Black Sea?" Ivan questioned.

"Of course it is," Sergei insisted. "Nadya, can you recall ever being there?"

"I told you, I can't remember. Right now I'm not even sure where the Black Sea is."

"Many wealthy Russians had summer homes in the mountains of the Crimea, overlooking the Black Sea," Sergei explained. "The Imperial Family even had a place there. See? This is proof that your family was aristocratic."

Ivan looked at him doubtfully. "A dream about ink isn't proof of anything," he disagreed.

"I thought you believed I really could be this girl you are looking for," Nadya said, challenging him with an edge of annoyance in her voice. "Have you changed your mind about me?"

"What I believe won't matter if we can't convince the countess that you are her lost granddaughter," he replied.

"Convince her?" Nadya asked. "Won't she recognize me?"

"You were younger when she last saw you," Sergei reminded Nadya. "I'm sure you've changed a great deal. She may question whether we've found the right girl."

"How can we convince her?" Nadya asked. "I've told you I have no memory."

Sergei sat down beside her. "We will give you memories based on what we know of this girl's life."

"What was my name?" Nadya wanted to know.

Ivan and Sergei exchanged questioning glances. Nadya noticed and felt confused. What was going on? Didn't they know her name? And if not, why not?

"Anna," Ivan said.

"Anna what?"

Again, Nadya sensed their discomfort. They looked at one another uneasily but did not answer.

"What is it you are not telling me?" Nadya demanded. "I may have no memory, but I'm not stupid. Something's going on. Why won't you tell me the girl's name?"

Sergei took hold of Nadya's hand and gazed into her eyes. Nadya shifted away from him a bit. A feeling of ominous dread welled within her. Whatever information he was about to impart had filled him with a new solemnity, and it frightened her. "What?" She pressed him to speak.

Ivan leaned in. "Nadya, we believe you may be the grand duchess Anastasia Romanov."

Wide-eyed, Nadya looked incredulously from one to the other. Then she got it. "He's joking, correct?" She checked with Sergei, suddenly sure Ivan had to be mocking her.

Sergei shook his head. "We're very serious."

A wild bark of laughter rose from inside her. "And they say
I'm
insane!" she cried. "You two are totally out of your minds!"

This was awful--she'd run off with two lunatics! Though if it had been happening to someone else, she'd think it was hilarious.

Agitated, she got up and began to pace. "I should have known this was too good to be true. I must have been the biggest idiot on earth to have thought that you two were going to whisk me out of my miserable existence into some fairy tale. And now, here I am in a worse predicament than I had been in back at The Happy Comrades."

It was all just ridiculous, really, and she began to laugh so hard that she fell over onto the empty seat beside Ivan and let a hysterical fit of giggles rock her.

"Nadya, stop," Ivan implored. "Stop and listen."

"I can't stop," she insisted through outbursts of laughter. "It's all too funny. If I'm Anastasia, who are you? Napoleon?" She pointed to Sergei. "I suppose he's Peter the Great!"

Sergei took hold of each of her hands. The gentle but firm gesture calmed her to a breathless panting. "Surely you see how funny all this is," she said.

"Why
couldn't
you be Anastasia?" Sergei asked without any hint of levity.

"Because she's dead, for one thing."

"Her grandmother doesn't think so," Ivan countered. "She may have received reports that we don't know about. She's still well-connected throughout Russia."

"Is that so?" Nadya questioned skeptically. "Her Imperial Highness, the Dowager Grand Empress Marie Feodorovna Romanov,
personally
sought out you two to find Anastasia?"

"No, not personally," Sergei admitted sheepishly. "But we received information that--"

"I saw it in the newspaper too," she shouted, cutting Sergei off as the memory came roaring back to her. "Mrs. Zolokov had me use the article as a fire starter."

Clutching her forehead, she closed her eyes in a futile attempt to block out everything. Oh, what giant mess had she gotten herself into?

"Mrs. Zolokov doesn't have the inside information that I have," Ivan said seriously.

The earnest sincerity of his tone caught Nadya by surprise. It was a note she hadn't heard from him before. But she refused to let on that he had her attention, and she kept her eyes clenched shut.

"Look at me, Nadya. I'm telling you the truth," Ivan insisted. "We have inside information."

Nadya opened one eye just a little. "Oh yes?" she said. "And what information is that?"

CHAPTER SEVEN
   

Fast Thinking

"I served as a stable boy at the Peterhof Palace," Ivan lied with a certainty he hoped was convincing. "I drove along with my father, the head coachman to the Imperial Family."

There was an element of truth in this fabrication. In reality he'd
visited
the grand palace, with its many fountains and statues built by Peter the Great. He'd gone with his father, who had sharpened kitchen utensils and repaired broken blades and handles. Though he never laid eyes on any member of the Imperial Family back then, he had once bumped into the czarina Alexandra's sinister adviser, the supposed "holy man" Father Grigory Rasputin.

Rasputin was a big, powerfully built figure with a long, ragged black beard. He often dressed in a dirty black cassock. Ivan vividly recalled his revulsion at the bad energy, not to mention the foul odor--a mix of garlic and days-old sweat--emanating from him.

"Anastasia and I were friends." Ivan went on lying. "We played together."

He paused to see how she accepted this news. Her eyes were narrowed suspiciously. He would have to progress with care. Nadya reminded him of a deer whose ears were tuned to the footfall of hunters in the forest. One misstep along the path and she'd be on to him.

Ivan was now having doubts about the wisdom of lying to her. Why not tell her they planned to swindle the old dame out of her money by providing a plausible substitute for her dead granddaughter? Maybe Nadya would go for it and play along willingly. What would she have to lose?

But Ivan always lived by his instincts, and they were telling him that this girl wouldn't be part of a scam, no matter how advantageous it might prove to her. Despite Nadya's rough appearance and all the hard knocks she must have taken, there was something intrinsically fresh and straightforward about her. The only way this was going to work was if she believed it. There was so much to be gained for everyone if Nadya only would believe she was Anastasia Romanov: for her, it was a family member to take her in and love her, not to mention a life of luxury; for Sergei and Ivan, it was the reward money; for the grand duchess, it was the return of her granddaughter. It was a worthy enterprise, a good deed, but it had to be done carefully.

"Anastasia and I were friends, and so that is why I have made it my cause to search for her," he continued. "If I can find her and restore the lost duchess to her rightful place, that is a debt I owe to our friendship, and I am glad to do it."

Those squinting eyes still bore into him. "You and I were friends?"

"Dear friends," he confirmed.

"Just why are you so certain I am your dear friend? Why don't you accept that she is dead when soldiers have sworn that they shot her?"

"I have met people who have said they saw Anastasia wandering in the Ural Mountains days after the assassination." This was true. These rumors had circulated for the last year, though they were based on unsubstantiated sightings. Anastasia had not been an unusual-looking girl: blond, very pretty, of medium height and build. Certainly there were many other fair-haired, attractive girls in Russia who could have been mistaken for the youngest grand duchess.

The silhouette of a conductor appeared behind the frosted glass of the compartment door. "Pretend you're asleep!" Sergei hissed to Ivan and Nadya in a whisper. "Now!"

They all slumped back in their seats. Ivan feigned a low snore as the conductor opened the door and called for tickets. Usually the conductor went away, giving them time to move to another compartment or, if none was available, to change trains at the next stop.

Instead, the conductor opened their compartment door and called more insistently, "Tickets."

Sergei shushed him, pretending to awaken suddenly. "My sister is very sick and has just now fallen asleep."

"Sorry," the conductor replied in a whisper. "Tickets, please."

Sergei patted his pockets as if searching for something. "I was sure I had them in here. Er...in my overcoat, perhaps...now I
just
saw that overcoat...."

With his eyes still shut, Ivan struggled to come up with a plan to aid the stammering Sergei.

Nadya suddenly gave a strangled cry that made Ivan's eyes snap. She flailed her arms like a person drowning. "Air! I can't breathe! My throat--it's closing!"

She staggered across the compartment, and then collapsed heavily onto the conductor, who jumped back. "Sir, your sister! What's wrong with her?"