“Mountains,” Ilona said.

“But Vlados and Liliana had a son. L’aiglon, the French would say. The eaglet, the crown prince, the heir apparent.”

“The colt,” Weeks put in. “We called the old man the stallion, you see. Just among ourselves, mind you. He had that mouthful of horse teeth, and then he had retired to stud, hadn’t he? So that made his son the colt.”

“Todor was his name. Todor Vladov, because that’s how Anatrurian names work, with a Christian name and a patronym. His father was Vlados, so his last name was Vladov. Even as your name”-I nodded at Ilona-“is Ilona Markova. You father’s name would have been Marko.”

“Except for what?” Tiglath Rasmoulian demanded. “You say the man’s name would have been Marko. What prevented it from being Marko? And what was it in fact?”

“It is still Marko,” she said indignantly. “Marko Stoichkov. He has never changed it. He would never do such a thing.”

We got that straightened out, though you don’t want to know how, believe me.

“Todor Vladov was a toddler when his father accepted the Anatrurian crown. He was in his early thirties when the Bob and Charlie Show took up the cause of Anatrurian independence.”

“Time and tide, sir,” Tsarnoff said. “They wait for no man, and the bell tolls for us all.”

“What does he mean by that?” Rasmoulian snapped. “Why does he not speak that he may be understood?”

“If your cognitive ability had not been arrested along with your physical development,” the fat man said, “perhaps you might be able to follow a simple sentence.”

“You glutton,” Rasmoulian said. “You gross Circassian swine.”

“You rug-peddling justification for the Turkish genocide.”

“It is on such a rug that your mother lay with a camel when she got you.”

“Yours rolled in the dirt with a boar hog, sir, for her husband ran off with the rug to sell it.”

Then they both said several things I couldn’t make out. It sounded as though each was speaking a different language, and I don’t know that either could entirely understand what the other was saying. But they must have gotten the gist of it, because Rasmoulian’s hand went into his trench-coat pocket even as Tsarnoff’s gunsel was reaching inside his baseball jacket.

“Let’s hold it right there,” Ray said, and damned if he didn’t have a revolver in his hand, a big old Police Special. I couldn’t guess how long it had been since he’d heard a shot fired in anger, or even for practice, and the gun he was holding might very well blow up in his hand if he ever pulled the trigger, but they didn’t know that. Tiggy tossed his head and sank deeper into his trench coat, but withdrew his hand from its pocket. Wilfred also showed an empty hand, but otherwise stayed his endearingly expressionless self.

“Back to Anatruria,” I said quickly. “Old King Vlados may have given up dreams of a Balkan kingdom, but his son Todor found the idea intoxicating. Contacted by the American agents, he entered Anatruria surreptitiously and had a series of meetings with potential supporters. The stage was set for a popular uprising.”

“Never would have stood a chance,” Charlie Weeks mused. “Look what the Ivans did in Budapest and Prague, for Christ’s sake. But look what a black eye they got for their troubles in the world press.” He sighed. “That was all we were after. We were getting the Anatrurians to rise up just so the Russkies could cut them down.” He flashed a rueful smile at Ilona, who looked horrified by what he’d just said. “Sorry, Miss Markova, but that was the job they handed us. Stir something up, make some mischief, embarrass the comrades. Like Werner von Braun with his rockets. His job was to get them off the ground. Where they came down was somebody else’s department. He wrote an autobiography, I Aim for the Stars.” He winked. “Maybe so, Werner, but you sure hit London a lot.”

“The Anatrurian rising never did get off the ground,” I went on. “There was a betrayal.”

“The woodchuck’s doing,” Weeks said. “At least that was what we always thought.”

“The Americans scattered,” I said, “and left the country separately. Government authorities swooped down on the Anatrurians and took the heart of the movement into custody. There were some long prison sentences, a few summary executions. According to rumor, Todor Vladov got a bullet in the back of the neck and a secret burial in an unmarked grave. In point of fact he slipped through a border checkpoint just in time and never again returned to Anatruria.”

Ray wanted to know how old he’d be now.

“He’d be close to eighty,” I said, “but he died last fall.”

“And the treasury,” Tsarnoff said. “What becomes of the treasury upon Todor’s death?”

“The treasury?”

“The war chest,” Rasmoulian said, impatient. “The Anatrurian royal treasury.”

“Old Vlados’s backers were grabbing with both hands when the Austrian and Ottoman empires were falling apart,” Tsarnoff explained. “When they found themselves disappointed at Versailles, they packed their bags and hied themselves to Zurich, where they established a Swiss corporation and shunted everything they had into it. The corporation’s liquid assets went into a numbered account, everything else into a safe-deposit box.”

“Much must be worthless,” Rasmoulian said, from deep within the shelter of his trench coat. “Czarist bonds, deeds to property expropriated by dictatorships of the left and right. Shares of stock in defunct corporations.”

“The Assyrian is correct, sir. Much would indeed be worthless, but that which is not worthless could very well be priceless. Valid deeds, shares in firms which have thrived. And, while the bonds and currencies of fallen regimes would be of value only as curiosities, instruments of title to business and real property seized by the communists are worth another look now that communism has itself gone obsolete.”

“There is no telling what it’s all worth,” Rasmoulian said, his spots of color glowing.

“Indeed, sir. There is no telling what money remains in that numbered account, or what assets the corporation retains. What could old Vlados have drained off? And what about his son, of blessed memory? No one goes through capital like a pretender trying to maintain a pretense.”

“Vlados had an income,” Weeks said. “Remember, the people who chose him for the throne didn’t pick him off a dunghill. He was a shirttail cousin of the king of Sweden and claimed descent on his mother’s side from Maria Theresa of Austria. Queen Liliana was some kind of grandniece of Queen Victoria. They weren’t rich enough to buy the Congo from Leopold of Belgium, but Liliana never had to shop at Kmart either. They had an income and they lived within it.”

“And Todor?”

“Same story for the colt. We didn’t get him back to Anatruria by dangling some dough in front of him. He worked for a living, fronting an investment syndicate based in Luxembourg, but he was comfortable.” He grinned. “We hooked him by the ego. He figured he’d look good with a crown on his head.”

“He was a patriot,” Ilona said. “That is not ego, to go to the aid of your people. It is self-sacrifice.”

“How would you know so much about it, little lady? He was long gone from Anatruria before you were born.”

He didn’t sound as though he expected an answer, and she didn’t give him one. I said, “Let’s flash-forward to the present, okay? I’d like to tell you about a man named Hugo Candlemas. That’s an unusual name, and he was an unusual man, erudite and personable. Earlier this year he came to New York and took an apartment on the Upper East Side. And a matter of days ago he came into this store and introduced himself to me. He persuaded me to break into an apartment a few blocks away from his and steal a leather portfolio.”

“You, Bernie?” The question came from Mowgli, who may have been the only person in the room who didn’t know what I did when I wasn’t selling books. “Why would he think you’d be up for something like that?”