*    *    *

‘It’s a confidence trick, sir!’

‘You have it, Wentworth. I put my hands up to it. A deceitful piece of chicanery! A dirty bit of business!’

‘The end justifies the means, then, you’d say?’

‘Don’t be tedious!’ Joe responded to her cross face with a flash of impatience. ‘This is not a debating society. This is a police force. And a national protection unit. It will take considerable nerve and a degree of low cunning to pull it off. You, I observe, are not short of either, so stay with the stroke I set, will you? We’re anticipating no less than the removal – the permanent removal, one hopes – of this menace to the lives of the prince and the rest of the royal family. When it’s removed, gone abroad, they’ll be able to go about their daily business once more without the constant fear of assassination.’

‘You say “it”, sir.’ Lily spoke hesitantly. ‘We’re talking about “she” – a strong-minded woman who will object to being manipulated. She may refuse to accept a suggestion that she simply leave the country.’

‘I would expect so. And that’s why we have to make her an offer that is irresistible to her. One that will give more satisfaction than sticking a knife in HRH or whatever she has planned for him next time. We have to thank some ancient Greek for an old military proverb: If you wish to get rid of your enemy, build him a golden bridge to flee across.

‘Aristides’ advice to Themistocles, I believe, sir,’ Bacchus chipped in. ‘Concerning the Persian retreat back across the Dardanelles.’

‘Thank you, Bacchus. I believe you’re right. And we’re going to take it again. It’s exactly what we’re going to do. With the utmost politesse we’re going to show our enemy to the border and offer a passage out. The golden bridge in question is a first-class berth on a luxury liner – the Hirondelle did you say, Bacchus?’

‘Yes, sir. The pride of the French fleet,’ he announced. ‘She starts on Friday from Cherbourg where she takes on board a few chefs de cuisine and a chanteuse or two. Then she nips across to Southampton where she picks up the English contingent and goes in one hop to New York. Dancing and dining and entertainment all the way. From there, first class again on the transcontinental railway … Chicago and the sunset route west to San Francisco.’

They all fell silent, imagining the luxury, the adventure, the wide horizons. Someone sighed.

‘May I ask what Anna Petrovna is supposed to do with herself once she gets to California, sir?’ Lily asked.

‘Ah, yes! The whole point of the exercise! Now – what would constitute an impulse strong enough to counter the urge to kill? I’ll tell you: friendship, a reunion, the promise of a fresh start and a wonderful climate, they tell me, in California. And a thriving Russian colony to welcome her. Got your cutting, Bacchus?’

The Branch man showed it around the table and began to read out salient details. ‘This appeared a week ago so it’s very fresh. There’s a good chance that she’s not seen it. It’s an eye-witness report. A woman recognized as the archduchess Tatiana has been sighted in the city of San Francisco. Several times. Climbing aboard a cable-car … dancing at Governor Stephens’s fund-raising event for Asiatic orphans … sipping champagne in a night club … You can imagine.’

‘Well, you know how it is,’ Joe said with a smile. ‘An odd thing, but anyone who disappears is reported to have been sighted in San Francisco.’

‘Your hero, Oscar, responsible for that little insight, I believe?’ Bacchus commented.

With an impatient sigh, Lily burst in: ‘San Francisco? But that’s halfway round the world! What would a Russian princess be doing in San Francisco? What would any Russians be doing there? It’s a nonsense!’ Her voice was amused and disbelieving.

Fanshawe, for once, concurred. ‘Another one. For dead girls, the Tsar’s daughters don’t half get about the globe. The last sighting was in Rome. Another one in Japan. And then there was that novice who turned up in a Greek nunnery last year … That was supposed to be the religious one – Olga. There’s an Anastasia or two doing the rounds in Germany … that one they fished out of a canal in Berlin last winter seems to be putting on a convincing act. They’re all over the show. Anywhere but in the Koptyaki forest buried under a ton of railway sleepers. They’re dead. The whole lot of them. And we don’t have to guess – the Bolshies have held up their bloodstained hands for this one.’

‘Many would think twice before accepting evidence or even a confession from those duplicitous thugs,’ Sandilands reprimanded. ‘This identification is not so easily dismissed, Fanshawe. And it’s one we really could wish had not surfaced. I have to tell you … it is supported by other evidence of survival.’ He pursed his lips and fidgeted with his tie.

Oblivious of the exchange of scathing glances and a snort of disbelief, Joe went to stare at the painting, absorbed by dark thoughts. ‘I agree – there are bodies buried under the taiga. That much I accept. Unfortunately, in spite of our best efforts, no one has been able to establish exactly whose bodies they are. Burned, rotted by acid, crushed by bulldozer and scattered, they could be remains filched from the refuse bins of the local hospital for all we know. Or corpses simply swept up from the streets – heaven knows there was no shortage at the time – starvation and disease were rife. Impossible ever to be sure. I’ll tell you now and the story is not to be mentioned outside this room.’

He caught a nervous glance from Bacchus and responded to it: ‘We can speak freely. No listening equipment, Bacchus. I haven’t authorized it in the ops room.’

Unusually serious, even hesitant, he caught and held everyone’s eye, each in turn.

‘There are indeed Romanovs buried in the forest near Ekaterinburg. But not all. The Tsar and his son, the heir, were shot and bayoneted to death along with their doctor who tried to intervene. Poor old Botkin. Loyal to the last. The Empress? It’s less clear at this point – we really don’t know – but it’s thought she succumbed and died of natural causes. She had been very ill for some months. Her body may lie there also. It’s possible.’ He was weighing his words, not wishing to say more than he could verify.

‘Uncouth and dangerous though they were, the guards appointed by the Ural Soviet could not bring themselves to shoot the girls, of whom they had got quite fond during their three-month incarceration. They’d appreciated the way they put on no airs and graces but rolled their sleeves up and cooked and cleaned for the household. And kept the peace. In a cramped space with a sick little brother, an increasingly deranged mother and an ineffectual father, the girls were up against it but they made the best of their imprisonment, remaining good natured and friendly with the young lads who were guarding them.

‘These were only too pleased to look the other way when a diesel truck turned up one night at the Ipatiev villa with papers granting permission to separate the women from the men and take them away. The family had travelled this way before, as a matter of convenience, and made nothing of it. But this time the Empress – with foresight perhaps? – refused to leave her husband and son. And that’s where we lose track of her. The four girls were bundled off. They were driven to the relative safety of the estate of an old marshal of the Tsar’s at Lysva which was by then in the hands of the advancing White Army. We have a touching confirmation of this from the villa itself. Our eagle-eyed man in Ekaterinburg during his inspection of the premises after the murders noticed a word scrawled backwards in haste across a mirror … the letters spelled out LYSVA.

‘It cannot have been until much later that the girls heard of the deaths of the Tsar and Tsarevich. By then, they had been split up. A quartet of pretty girls with aristocratic ways travelling about Russia would not have got far. They were moved about singly with escorts, dressed in nun’s clothes or as nurses. Now, from our geographical perspective we see Russia as Moscow and St Petersburg – a sort of exotic but civilized offshoot of Europe. We forget that thousands more miles of it run east, right over to Japan. And Ekaterinburg is in the middle of this land mass. With access to the Trans-Siberian railway … The Romanovs didn’t go west to the capital – they went east, further into the wilderness.