The Romanov Conspiracy Read Free Page A

stared again at the remains of the two bodies and I felt stunned, filled with excitement. I looked up toward the gaping mouth of the shaft. The blue light that shone down at me that moment felt like an epiphany. I clutched the locket. My heart raced.
    Roy must have seen the excitement in my face and said, “What’s wrong?”
    I crossed back to the harness and strapped myself in. “Someone get me photos of the body. I want them from every angle. And get a hair sample; we need to carry out a DNA test. I want to know if this woman could be a Romanov, or a blood relative.” I pressed the motor control switch and the seat began to ascend.
    “Hey, where are you going, baby?” Roy asked, confused.
    “To book a flight. And don’t ask me to where. You’d never believe me.”

    Some events in our lives are so huge in their impact upon us that they are almost impossible to take in. The birth of your first child. Or a hand slipping away from yours as you sit by a loved one’s deathbed. The mystery of the bodies in the permafrost was on the same seismic scale. For the next eighteen hours my mind was a blur and I hardly slept. What I do remember is that after flying from Ekaterinburg to Moscow it was the afternoon of the following day when I landed at London’s Heathrow airport.
    The first thing I did was check the phone number written in my diary and I called it again from my cell phone. The number rang out. I tried again six more times, but with the same result. A generic voice asked me to leave a message. It was my sixth since that morning.
    I felt exhausted but I hoped that the answer to the enigma of the Ekaterinburg bodies was another short flight away.
    Dublin is barely a sixty-minute skip out over the Irish Sea and asmy Aer Lingus plane began its descent, I saw the bright green Irish coast, spattered with huge dark patches of rain cloud.
    By the time I’d hired a car and consulted a map, another hour passed. I drove north through relentless heavy rain showers, eager to reach my destination.
    Sullen bands of charcoal clouds did their best to keep the sun at bay, but soon after I passed a huge modern bridge near a town called Drogheda, the sunlight burst from behind the cloud. Farther on I saw the Irish coastline and the rugged Mountains of Mourne, a striking patchwork of intense green shades, the colors so vivid my eyes ached.
    All I had to do now was find the village I was looking for and the man I hoped would help solve the mystery.

    The signpost said Collon. I pulled my rented Ford into a village square. It was deserted, neat, and tidy, with hanging baskets of flowers. It looked quaintly Victorian, an old blacksmith’s premises with a horseshoe-shaped entrance dominating the square.
    I crossed the street to a local grocery store and asked for directions and found the red granite Presbyterian church and graveyard at the southern end of the town. Below the bell tower was chiseled in stone the year it was built: 1813.
    The burial ground looked even older, the church magnificent, the stained glass windows works of art. I wandered between the grave sites, some of them hidden by undergrowth and wild bramble. I glimpsed a rusted metal cross with an inscription dated 1875— Elizabeth, aged three and Caroline aged six, their sweet and gentle presence never forgotten, they have gone to lie in the arms of the Lord . My heart felt the haunting echo of a long dead grief.
    As I moved on, my cell phone rang and the harsh jangle of music seemed to violate the silence. I answered my phone, half-expecting a call back from the number I’d tried to ring. “Laura?” It was Roy, the line clear despite our distance. “Where are you?”
    “Ireland.”
    “Ireland?”
    “It’s a long story. I don’t want you to think I’m crazy dashing out on you, but I may be on to something. It has to do with the bodies and the locket. If it pans out, I’ll let you know.”
    “Baby, you’ve got me interested. And if it doesn’t?”
    “This