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no member of the extremely wealthy Orlov family (Asher spelled and pronounced it Orloff) had been anywhere near Chicago that the police knew about – and the movements of the near-royal Orlovs were well known. ‘Knew it,’ growled Asher, and he gave the rest of his report to the bored functionary with just enough impatience, condescension, and arrogance not to get himself arrested as well: a good defense, he had found, against recognition by those who might have last encountered him as the self-effacing Professor Leyden.
    In a major capital, in a time of increasingly murderous international affairs, the Auswärtiges Amt was likely to send in its most experienced men. One couldn’t be too careful.
    That done, he took a cab across the river to the Kirov Islands and inquired, of the footman in powdered wig and blue-and-burgundy livery who answered the door of a particularly splendid palace, if Prince Razumovsky was in town at this season. The footman replied in impeccable French that this was in fact the case, contracted (for two roubles) to take up M’sieu Plummer’s card and inquire if His Excellency was, in fact, at home, and left Asher in a drawing room that made the Lady Irene Eaton’s town house look like an East End tenement. Returning, the footman implied that it was a shame that his master would lower himself to speak to an American, particularly at this hour of the morning (it was one in the afternoon), but that he would. Please come this way, M’sieu.
    The Prince looked up from his desk as Asher was shown in, without the faintest trace of recognition. As soon as the door shut behind the footman, Asher removed his pince-nez, relaxed from his American strut into his usual posture, and said, ‘Your Excellency?’ in his normal voice.
    The golden giant’s face transformed. ‘ Jamie ?’
    Asher put a finger to his lips. Prince Razumovsky had a voice like an operatic basso.
    ‘Good God, man!’ The Prince came around the desk, grabbed Asher by the shoulders, and kissed him on both cheeks. ‘Where is it that you’ve sprung from, eh? I thought you had—’
    ‘I have,’ said Asher, holding up a warning finger. ‘I’m in Petersburg on a private matter, Your Highness. Not even my own Department knows I’m here.’
    ‘And your beautiful lady—’
    ‘Is at home.’
    ‘Just as well.’ Razumovsky shook his head. ‘Lent in St Petersburg . . .’ He shuddered theatrically. ‘I couldn’t interest you in coming to the Theosophical Society’s charity ball at the Winter Palace tonight, could I? The two Princesses of Montenegro are trying to catch the final contributions before everyone makes their escape for the Crimea . . . It will be a horrific crush – every charlatan in the city, and everyone in the city who wishes to be on the good side of their Highnesses.’ The Prince stroked his splendid mustache. By everyone , Asher knew he meant the two or three thousand (out of a population of a million and a half) who were fashionable in their professions, or in the highest levels of the government bureaucracy.
    ‘I should be honored, Your Excellency.’ Asher inclined his head, glad that he had thought to pack evening clothes. He had first encountered Razumovsky not in Petersburg, but in Berlin, when the Prince had been in charge of collecting the day-to-day information of the Foreign Bureau agents there: the clerks in the defense ministry who had blotted their copybooks; the officer on the Kaiser’s staff who was living beyond his means and wasn’t averse to having his gambling debts paid, no questions asked. The tiny details of which nine-tenths of good intelligence work consisted. While he would never have expected the aristocratic diplomat to assist him in anything against the interests of the Russian Empire, he knew he could trust the man as a friend.
    There were few in his own Department in Petersburg that he knew to that extent.
    ‘Excellent! Wunderbar !’ The Prince waved him to a chair beside