Romanov Succession Read Free Page B

Cooper the movie star. “I’m not going to see you again. Am I?”
    â€œDo you want to?”
    She was eating, watching him. She made no direct answer to the question. She caught the counterman’s eye: “I’ll have another cup of that coffee if it’s handy.”
    Gene Autry was singing Tumbling Tumbleweeds. Carol Ann stirred a lump of sugar into the coffee and fanned herself with the paper napkin. “If you ever get down this way you come and see me, hear?”
    She was bony; he could see the tendons in her throat. The thin shirt hung from her shoulders and he felt sadness well up onto the back of his mouth. Her husband was a lieutenant with a construction battalion in Alaska. She lived in a drab quick-built apartment court north of El Paso near the river. She had two little girls, five and two. It was all he knew about her except that she was lonely and she was generous, giving fully of herself when it pleased her. It had been easy and quiet between them: neither of them wanted excitement. He hadn’t realized until now that it had been important enough to make him unhappy to end it.
    â€œWhere are they sending you?”
    â€œI don’t know.”
    â€œWell you’ll handle it all right, now.”
    He wasn’t sure. “I’m sorry I didn’t get a chance to fix the rocking chair.”
    â€œIt’s all right, Coop.”
    He paid the check and she drove him to the station. There was dust on his Oxfords and she insisted on treating him: the shoeshine boy slapped his cloth across Alex’s toes with the sound of distant artillery. Then it was time to tell her to go. He kissed her on the lips, gently. It was something he had never done with her in a public place before.
    She said, “I am going to miss you, Coop. You take care of yourself, hear?”
    After she left it occurred to him that neither of them had asked the other to write.
    He took a taxi to the airfield and waited around the hangars for the Air Corps formation to appear.

5.
    There were six planes—the new B-24 Liberator type, long-range and fromidable. They gave him a waist-gunner’s seat in the third plane and showed him how to use the intercom and oxygen apparatus.
    Everything he owned of any consequence was in the B-4 bag at his feet and except for the pistols none of it was of moment to him; he did not carry souvenirs of his life. It was one of the things that made him feel apart from the rest of his kind—the White Russian exiles with their passionate covetousness.
    It was cold in the night sky. Through the turret perspex he watched the other planes bobbing slightly in the intangible balance of their staggered formation. The drone was hypnotic and soporific; in his mind he ran back over the tense telephone conversation with General Deniken—searching for clues to the things Deniken had left unsaid:
    â€œAlexsander, you have been transferred to Washington. You’ve received your orders?”
    â€œI’ve received orders, yes sir. I’m not permitted to discuss them.”
    â€œI understand. Alexander, there is something you must do for me. I ask this in your brother’s name.”
    He bridled slightly. “Yes?”
    â€œYou must go immediately to New York and meet with someone. You must do this before you report to Washington.”
    â€œI don’t think there’s time for that, General.”
    â€œMake the time. This is a matter of the utmost importance—it is vital. The Plaza Hotel in New York, do you know it?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œYou must be there by tomorrow evening.”
    â€œWill you be there, General?”
    â€œNo, they’re sending someone from Feodor’s group in Spain. I don’t know which of them it is. It may be your brother. It may well be Prince Leon himself. The matter is that important. I beg of you be there within twenty-four hours. I ask this in Vassily’s name.”
    There was no way to