Read Online Romanov Succession by Brian Garfield - Free Book Online Page A

left a small grey smear on the window, obscuring his view of Devenko’s left eye.
    â€œIt’s your own fault again, blast you. If you’d told me I’d have worked a way around it.”
    â€œAround what?”
    â€œIt’s bulletproof glass in that Bentley.”

    So this time he’d do it his own way. He turned into the passage behind the villa’s dining hall and let himself into a walk-in cleaning cupboard. It took a moment to find the light switch. He screwed a stubby silencer onto the Luger and then checked the loads and worked the jack-leg-action to seat the top cartridge so that he wouldn’t need to thrash around cocking it when the time came. He set the safety and slid the pistol down between his belt and his trouser-band against his left ribs under the formal jacket; unobtrusive but instantly available to his right hand. There were flatter automatics than the Luger but the flat ones didn’t fit his hand as well: didn’t point as naturally. The 7.62 bullets were small, the equivalent of .32 caliber, but he’d loaded them himself with the maximum charge of smokeless powder and at close range he had no qualms about their stopping power: the bullets were perforated into quarters and designed to expand violently on contact.
    He had a pocket mirror and he inspected his disguise. The coat and slacks were cut very generously to make him look heavy; the dress Oxfords had five-centimeter lifts in them. They’d remember him as a man of substantial bulk and height when in fact he was five-feet-nine and weighed just over 150 pounds.
    The rest of it was more traditionally stagy. He had a partial skullcap spirit-gummed over his forehead to hide the widow’s peak of his natural hairline; they’d remember him as half bald. He’d darkened the rest of his red-brown hair with a dye-pomade designed to cover grey; it gave him a Mediterranean cast he had confirmed with a pencil-thin divided mustache gummed to his upper lip. His features were unexceptional: he had always had the benefit of an anonymous appearance and he had learned long ago to eschew striking disguises.
    It was all nicely in place in the mirror. He switched off the light, adjusted the hang of his jacket over the Luger in his belt and eased the door open a crack.
    The hallway was empty of servants. He went toward the front of the villa, ready to smile, pleasant-faced, nerveless, almost jaunty with businesslike confidence because this time he knew the quarry.

5.
    Heads turned when Irina entered the ballroom. She hardly noticed; she was used to it.
    She smiled and gave her hand to a marquis; she presented her cheek for the tall marchioness’s ritual kiss and bussed the air two points to the starboard of her face. Voices rolled around her—hearty shouts in courtly French and Spanish and High German and the best St. Petersburg Russian; beneath them the orchestra played Chopin.
    The wheeling dancers cut across her view of the crowd but she had a glimpse of a large man with a bald spot and her curiosity was stimulated: some vague familiarity perhaps.
    Alex was approaching and she smiled when a dowager buttonholed him. Then a mutter ran through the crowd and the guests were turning in waves to stare toward the wide gallery doors. She heard the murmured name Devenko and felt several sudden glances whip toward her and slide away; then the doors parted and Vassily was there with his high austere eyes and stunning white mane. His handsome head dipped regally in acknowledgment of something someone said to him; he lifted one hard long hand as if in benediction to them all.
    He had aged. Not the hair; that had been white since his twenties. But she saw deep vertical lines between his eyebrows and he looked tired.
    She felt weight beside her. She didn’t have to look that way to know it was Alex. She found his arm and gripped it gently—pointedly.
    Vassily’s hard grey stare struck her. He blinked, looked