Like a deer smelling hunters on the wind, Salas took flight, leaping down from the dais to rush past Nina. The astonished audience rose with him and pushed for the doors. The bailiff ran over, weapon in hand. He pushed Stefan facedown on the table. Somehow he cuffed him, then pulled him up again by his shirt and joined the crowd pouring out the exit. Nina helped Klaus up, grabbing the crucial files. They were at the back of the crowd.

Paul pushed up until he was next to her. She took Klaus’s hand. They spilled outside, herded along with hundreds of other people.

The entire courthouse was cleared. Bewildered clerks clustered along the street at a safe distance from both the parking lot and buildings. People who had gone in to pay tickets, lawyers, and the family involved in the custody hearing next door all poured out. Police cars skidded up and uniformed cops jumped out and started directing the crowd.

Nina, Paul, and Klaus took up positions across the street. “I left my purse!” she said. She felt through her briefcase and, relieved, found her wallet there. Klaus, crimson-faced and bleary-eyed, was breathing too hard. “Should I call a doctor?” Nina asked.

He waved her away. “No, no. I’ll sit down.” Paul helped him to a spot under a tree.

Nina looked around. On the courthouse facade, the concrete faces looked stolidly down upon the chaos. Stefan had disappeared with the bailiff. Paul was scanning the street alertly. By now they were several hundred feet from the courthouse, watching, waiting for it to blow up. Their eyes strained as the fire trucks came down the street and bullhorns came out. “What’s happening?”

Paul squeezed her arm in a familiar gesture. “We’ll know soon.” He got on his cell phone.

Nina bent over Klaus. “Are you sure you’re okay? How are you feeling?”

“He never answered the question,” the old man said, stroking his beard as though he was still sitting at the counsel table.

Paul snapped his phone closed. “They got a phone-in bomb threat. That’s all anyone seems to know at this point. A bomb squad’s on the way.”

“Miss Reilly. Mr. van Wagoner.”

“What is it, Klaus?” Nina said.

“There’s no bomb. It’s perfectly safe. We can walk right back in there. Sit in Salas’s chair and render half-baked judgments on his behalf until the official all-clear comes and he skulks back.”

They stared at him.

“Don’t you see, they’re after Zhukovsky!”

“Who is after him?” Nina asked.

“The Russians? Possibly them. Possibly someone else.”

“I think I have some fresh water here somewhere,” Nina said, feeling around her briefcase for the bottle she thought she had put inside it that morning.

“Don’t patronize me, girl! Call the police! Where are your brains! Think!”

She found the bottle and offered it to him. He pushed it away. “He was about to tell us!” Klaus screeched.

“It is a quick way to stop a trial, Nina,” Paul said, “calling in a bomb threat. And the timing was… opportune. He seemed on the verge of saying something really big, didn’t he? Did you see Zhukovsky leave the stand or see him on the way out?”

“No,” Nina said. “Are you saying this bomb threat was to shut Alex Zhukovsky up? Klaus, what is going on?”

“Haven’t you been reading up on the Cossacks who became royal pages, on the murder of the Romanov family at Ekaterinburg, and how those bones were dug up but some were never found? Haven’t you paid any attention at all?” Klaus said, struggling to get up. Paul took his arm, practically lifting him from the ground into a standing position.

“Of course I have. But none of it seems very relevant. I mean, Constantin was a page, but…”

“Haven’t you figured out yet who you had on the stand just now?”

“Who?”

“The tsarevitch! Of all the Russias!”

“Oh, my God,” Nina said. The old man, the legend, had finally cracked. She dithered. Did they need an ambulance for him, or should they just run for Paul’s car and take him themselves?

“Mr. van Wagoner! Tell her!”

“Okay,” Paul said, “but first you’re going to have to tell me what you’re talking about.”

People ran by. Sirens wailed. Klaus leaned back, putting his weight against a telephone pole. He started to laugh, then cough. He broke up, first gasping, then giggling. “Ha, ha! Buried right there in old Monterey! He has been under our tushies all these years! It’s perfect!”

“Paul, we have to do something for Klaus,” Nina said.

Klaus held on to the phone pole, helpless with laughter.

25

Monday 9/29

AT ONE-THIRTY, IN A STATE OF MONUMENTAL IRE, JUDGE SALAS called the court to order once more. Alex Zhukovsky did not reappear in the hall outside Courtroom 2.

The falseness of the bomb threat was almost as tormenting as a real bomb would have been, Nina reflected. Judicial processes shot to hell, people standing around on hot sidewalks, judges sent scurrying, police standing helplessly around-it made fools of them all.

And yet, Zhukovsky’s absence was one real and cautionary result. The jurors had been kept corralled at the Honeybee throughout; the reporters weren’t going anywhere; Stefan had eaten his tuna salad sandwich at the police station. Zhukovsky was the only one missing.

Nina and Paul debated what to do. They had spent the interim calling Klaus’s wife, Anna, a sensible psychoanalyst who sent a minion over to take Klaus home for a long nap. He had been overexcited and maybe worse than that. He only agreed to go after Nina promised him faithfully that she would get him a copy of Constantin Zhukovsky’s death certificate. Paul was at the office of Vital Statistics taking care of that long shot right now. Under pressure from Sandy about his decision to stay in Carmel and work with Paul, Wish admitted he had forgotten to get it.

Nina decided not to ask for a recess. Salas would not like that, would perhaps implode at such a request after having lost so much status. His hard-won rituals shattered, he was seething with male hormones and Nina knew she would have to soldier on.

Just as Salas said forbiddingly, “Call your next witness,” Ginger Hirabayashi strode through the doors in a flurry of black leather and Grinders boots, to resolve their dilemma. Her Hermès briefcase gaped open and she pulled papers out as she walked. Limping and wearing a matching black neck brace, she seemed not at all embarrassed at being the main object of attention. She went straight to Nina and whispered, “Huge break. Am I on?”

“We have to talk first,” Nina whispered back. “Our first witness isn’t here, so you can go on, but I have to know what you’re going to say.”

“Okay. Take five.”

Nina stood up and begged the time. Salas wouldn’t even dismiss the jury. She and Ginger had to consult in hisses in the hall.

“How are you?”

Ginger said, “Me? Oh, you mean the Russian. I’d like to thank that asshole. He got me thinking even harder. I’m fine.”

“But-your neck.”

“Listen, are we going to spend the time talking about me getting a little beat up?” She ripped the collar off her neck, wincing. “There. Better?”

“You’re sure you’re ready to go? I don’t like not having time to…”

“Jump right in,” Ginger said. “Just put me on. On the blood evidence. I had another panel percolating in the back of the lab that took the comparison of DNA right down to the quark level, and it took time. But look what I found.”

She talked so quickly Nina barely had time to nod, punctuating her statements with, “Do you believe it?” Nina got more and more excited. She bit her thumbnail and said, “Okay. You keep one copy of your report to refer to on the stand. Give me the other copies and the original and I’ll introduce it right now.”

“I can’t wait to get a paper out on this. Medico-legal history.”