The Romanov Legacy (7 page)

He rocked back on his heels, still holding the girl’s
arm.  He’d killed dozens of people in his years working for Stealth and
then the bureau, but never had he felt the urge to turn his weapons on
himself.  What made people do it?  And if they failed, as both Lana
and this girl had done, did that make them feel better or worse?  Was it
possible to realize life had more value than they realized, or did they just
keep trying until they succeeded?  For Lana, it appeared to be the
latter. 

“Why did you do it?” he whispered, tracing the girl’s lines
with the tip of his index finger.  “I don’t understand.” 

A low moan rumbled up from her throat in response.  Her
legs twitched in the water, splashing him lightly.  “You heard that,
didn’t you?” he asked. 

She mumbled incoherently but it was good enough for
him.  He lifted her out of the tub, laid her on the bed and began to dry
her with a towel.  When he came to her face, he patted her cheeks gently
but they were wet with tears a moment later.  “What’s wrong?”

“It hurts,” she moaned.

“Tell me what I can do.”  He tossed aside the towel and
sat on the edge of the bed.  The girl moved slowly, crawling into his lap
and clutching fistfuls of his sweater in small white-knuckled hands.  She
pressed her head deep beneath his arm, as if she could burrow into his
side.  He tried to pull her up but she resisted, clinging to him until he
let her be. 

Her eyes leaked tears in wordless sobs as the pain worked
its way through her.  It came in waves, like a pregnant woman’s
contractions, except that each one left her with more and more time to breathe
before the next one seized her.  Over the course of an hour, they left her
exhausted and weak, fingers cramped into curls where they clutched at
him.  He had never felt more helpless in his life.  When at last she
lay quiet in his arms, he bent his head to her ear and whispered softly, “Is it
over?”

The girl nodded, unable to open her cracked lips.

“What do you need?  Do you want some water?” 

She nodded again and he extricated himself from the tangle
of her arms and found a glass in the kitchen cabinet.  He rinsed it and
filled it with tap water.  “Here,” he said, holding it for her as she
swallowed greedily.

When she finished, she looked up at him with fire-bright
eyes.  Her skin was pale and shiny with oil and sweat.  “Thank you,”
she said. 

He shook his head.  “That’s the first thing you can think
of to say?”

“You could have left me.” 

Constantine thought of Lana, discovered by a night watchman
after Lazovsky and his men left her unconscious and bleeding on the pavement
outside a warehouse.  There was no honor in a man who left a woman to die
on the street.  “No,” he said.  “I couldn’t.” 

Her lips moved outward, trying to replicate a smile. 
“You’ve made that choice before.”

“Yes.”

“For a woman?”

“Yes.”

She kept the empty glass clutched in her fingers.  “Who
is she?”

“I think she’s like you.”

“Like me,” she repeated.  “Do the doctors tell her
she’s crazy, too?”

“Yes.”

“Do you believe them?”

“Something bad happened to her and she can’t find her way
past it.  Is that what happened to you?”

“No.  One day, he just appeared.”

“Who appeared?”

“An angel named Belial.  He lives in my head. 
Sometimes he tries to get out—that’s what you just saw.”  She closed her
eyes and sighed.  “I suppose it could be worse.  It could be Lucifer,
right?”

Constantine gulped.  “I think you need more
water.”  He took her glass and refilled it at the kitchen sink until water
ran over the top and spilled down the sides. 
Lucifer?
he
thought. 
What the hell is she talking about?
 Lana never
talked about abstract things like angels and demons.  But Lana wasn’t
there—and he wouldn’t get to see her again until he finished this job. 
Focus
,
he told himself. 
Do what you were trained to do.
 

When he brought the glass back to the girl, he held it an
inch beyond her fingertips.  “What’s your name?”

“Natalie.”

“Natalie, what does your sister know about Tsar Nicholas’s
money?”

“That’s what I was trying to tell you.”  She leaned
forward and took the glass.  “Beth doesn’t know anything about it. 
She doesn’t believe it exists.”

“How can you be sure?”

“Because I tried to convince her two days ago and we haven’t
spoken since.”

“The blackmailer mentioned your sister by name.  Why?”

“She just published a biography of Nicholas.  Someone
probably saw her name attached to the subject and bluffed.”

“People who break into an embassy and blackmail the
ambassador don’t bluff about things like that.”

“I wouldn’t know.”  She paused.  “Do you have any
more vodka?”    

“Are you crazy?”  Then he realized what he’d said and
felt his cheeks redden slightly. 

Natalie shrugged.  “Alcohol is the only thing that
helps when Belial acts up.  It slows him down so I can out-think him.”

Constantine blinked and swallowed heavily.  “You said
you tried to convince your sister the Tsar’s money is there.  How do you
know?”

“Belial told me.”  She drew her legs up to her chest
and wrapped her arms around them, blue-white eyes sparkling dangerously. 
“You mentioned a password.  I’ve only seen one source in the whole world
that talks about a password.  Either your blackmailer found that source
and is using it to bluff, or he’s telling the truth.”

He watched the color flood back into her cheeks and it
frightened him.  “Try to stay calm,” he said.  “I don’t want you to
faint again.”

“But what if we can solve a mystery that’s almost a hundred
years old?”

“Not
we
,” he said, shaking his head.  “You
wouldn’t even be involved in this if it weren’t for me.” 

Natalie swung her feet off the bed and planted them on the
floor.  He jumped up beside her, ready to catch her if she fell. 
“I’m fine now,” she said, standing slowly.  “See?”

“All the same.”   He put an arm around her waist
to steady her, resting it above the soft curve of her hip.  Drops of water
from the tips of her still-wet hair fell onto his sleeves.  Although she’d
lost the sudden fever, her body remained hot to the touch.

“The men in my apartment,” she said.  “Do they also
think I’m Beth?”

He nodded.  “They must have followed me straight to
you.”

“So she’s safe as long as you don’t tell anyone you made a
mistake?”

“Yes.”

“I want to keep it that way.”  

“You would take her place against a Vympel death squad?”

“I’d take her place in hell.”

Constantine looked down at her, pale skin glowing like a
candle flame.  He realized the blue tone beneath its surface came from
iron or steel.  “I believe you,” he said. 

“You have to promise me nothing will happen to her.”

“I can’t.”

“If you want my help, you have to.”  She grabbed his
wrists and held on tightly.  “Belial told me the money is there. 
I’ll help you find it, but only if you promise me those men won’t hurt
Beth.” 

He opened his mouth to tell her that no one in his line of
work could promise anything.  If a small-time gangster like Lazovsky would
destroy his sister just to get to him, what would Vympel do if they believed
Natalie and her sister had information they needed to complete their
mission?  He stared at her face, trying to find a way to explain how
dangerous this all was.  As he looked at her, his brain kept replaying
images of Natalie in the bathtub, sodden clothes clinging to every curve. 
God damn it
, he thought. 
I don’t need this.

“Excuse me,” he said quickly, releasing her abruptly and
escaping into the bathroom.  “I’ll find you some dry clothes,” he called
as he slammed the door behind him.

He sagged against it, staring at his reflection in the
mirror. 
Fucking Christ
, he thought,
what are you doing? 
She’s an ordinary informant…treat her like one.  Stop pretending she’s
like Lana and stop thinking about her in her underwear.
 

He closed his eyes and pressed his hands to his head, but
all he could see was Natalie Brandon’s eerie blue gaze.  What was it she
believed lived behind her eyes?  An angel?  Maybe that wasn’t so
strange, he thought.  The women who knelt before the icons in the
Arkhangelsky Sobor believed a divine essence inhabited a painted piece of wood. 
Why shouldn’t it inhabit a person, too? 

He bent down and rummaged in the under-sink cabinet. 
Tucked in a small wicker basket, he found a pair of men’s Levi’s and a white
t-shirt.  He carried them back out to her.  “This is all I can find,”
he said, shaking them out.  “They’re a little dirty.”

“I like things that are dirty,” she said.  “Didn’t you
see my apartment?”  

He smiled then turned his back while she dressed, listening
to the sound of the scratchy denim sliding up over her hips.  He tried to keep
his mind from replaying images of her in the tub.  It didn’t work.
 “Okay,” she said.  “You can turn around now.”

The t-shirt hung loosely over her breasts, dark nipples
visible through the thin cotton.  He gulped.  Natalie glared at him
and pressed her scarred forearms to her chest.  “Why are you staring at my
arms?  Isn’t there something else I can wear?”

Arms?
he thought.
 Does she really think I’m
staring at her arms?

 
“There’s nothing wrong with you or your arms,”
he said, guiding her back to the bed and sitting beside her.  “I know
someone who has scars, too, remember?”

Her eyes remained wary but she tilted her head, as if she
were interested in spite of herself.  “Why did she do it?”

“I don’t know.”

“Why not?”

“She won’t talk to me.  Can you tell me how you got
yours?”

“Why the hell would you want to hear about that?”

He touched one of her scars and felt the soft, puffy
skin.  “It might help me understand why she did it.”

“I guarantee you, it won’t.”

“I’d really like to know.”

“Are you going to shoot me if I don’t tell you?”

He smiled.  “Of course not.  I wasn’t going to
shoot you earlier, either.”

“I didn’t think so,” she said softly.  “But it wasn’t
even my fault.  It was Dante’s.”

“Dante?”

She nodded matter-of-factly.  “Belial brought him to me
in a dream.  Dante said he needed me to transcribe a message for
him.  He said it had to be in blood or the devil would see it.  I
guess they do things differently where he is.”

“Right,” Constantine said slowly, trying to hold his facial
expression steady.  “Why didn’t you say no?”

She looked straight at him and then frowned.  “When
Italy’s greatest poet tells you to do something, you do it.”

“Of course,” he replied, as if her answer were the only
logical one.  “So what did you do?”

“I went into the kitchen, picked up a knife, and held it
across my wrist like a violin bow.  But then Dante said I was doing it
wrong and corrected me, like this.”  She held an imaginary blade parallel
with her ulna.  “I sliced away and used the blood for ink, writing every
word he said on my kitchen wall.”

Constantine pointed at her right arm.  “What happened
to that one?”

“Canto XXXII.  That fucker is long.”

He bit his tongue until tears came to his eyes.

“I wrote down everything he said, which turned out to be the
eighth circle of the Inferno.”  She shook her head.  “The bastard
could have just told me to look it up.  I almost ran out of ink.”

“Ink,” he repeated.   
She calls it ink.
 
“But someone must have saved you.”

“Beth had been calling me for an hour straight and when I
didn’t answer, she called 911 and took a cab to St. Luke’s.  When I woke
up, I asked her to go read Dante’s message.  She compared what I’d written
to the real thing and found one line of verse that didn’t belong.  It said
not to believe the German, that cowardly hearts sought salvation with a pen
instead of a prayer.” 

“I don’t understand.”

“We didn’t either.  But Beth found out that a
German-owned manuscript copy of the Divine Comedy had come up for auction at
Sotheby’s, theoretically penned by Dante himself.  They’d authenticated it
with lasers and Raman spectroscopy, and the starting bid was set at $15
million.”

“What did that have to do with your dream?”

“The man who owned the manuscript was named Feigling.”

“I don’t follow.”

“It means ‘coward’ in German.”

He felt the blood drain from his cheeks.  “You’re
kidding.”

“I never kid about medieval poetry.  Beth raised hell
at Sotheby’s, telling them they had a forgery on their hands.  They asked
the seller for another round of tests and he cracked.  He said he’d paid a
forger in Berlin.”

“Christ, I remember that case.  The forger was a former
East German.  We flagged him when he faked exit visas for several members
of the Bolshoi.”  He shook his head, staring at her with begrudging respect. 
“He got caught because of
you
?  How did you know the manuscript was
a fake?”

“I didn’t.”

“You must have known something about it.  Something
that triggered your dream.”

“I didn’t know the fucking thing existed.  Did your
file say anything about me?”

“Just that Elizabeth Brandon has a sister who’d been in and
out of sanitariums as a child.  How did this all start?”

“Belial showed up and put me in a coma when I was
nine.  When I came out of it, I asked the doctors if I could see him on
the x-ray.  That’s when they shipped me off to the funny farm for
kids.  Someone decided I was schizophrenic and it stuck.”

“Did they give you any medication?”

“They gave me all of it.  I barely knew my own name for
five years.”