The Diamond Secret (Once Upon a Time) by Suzanne Weyn
Nodding, Nadya slipped into the jacket that Sergei held out for her.
How well he manages her! Sergei is like that with everyone, though, Ivan thought. He is the kind of aristocrat who is truly noble.
Ivan had been surprised that Sergei had never been arrested by the Bolsheviks, who persecuted all the former nobility. It seemed so clear from his manner that he had once been Count Sergei Mikhailovitch Kremnikov. He’d survived simply by walking away from everything he’d once had, abandoning it all to the Bolsheviks.
Now Sergei fell into step with Ivan, speaking to him in lowered tones so Nadya wouldn’t hear. “Where are we going, by the way?”
“Paris, of course,” Ivan answered.
“Do we even know how to get to Paris?” Sergei asked.
“Of course I do,” Ivan replied. “You know I’ve been planning this for months.”
“Shouldn’t we spruce up the, er, duchess, before we go?” Sergei pointed out.
“It’s a long trip, especially with no money for a ship or train ticket. We can work with her along the way.” Again, Ivan glanced at Nadya trudging along in his too-big-for-her jacket. It might be a blessing that the journey would be so long. Turning her into a believable grand duchess was going to take some doing.
They walked into the station and were greeted by a busy room full of people. The train station was not as grand as the one in Moscow, but it was still large, with twenty–foot tin ceilings that caused the many voices within to echo, amplifying the din. “Last car, last minute?” Ivan checked with Sergei.
“Last car, last minute,” Sergei confirmed. “We’ll take it as far west as we can.” This was their usual strategy for traveling without the benefit of tickets. Once the train sounded its departure whistle, the conductors left their positions on the platform between trains where they checked the tickets of the boarding passengers. Sergei and Ivan would then hop on. They had to be fast, because it was only a minute or two after the whistle blast before the train would begin to move.
“Should we inform her highness of the train boarding plan?” Ivan asked.
“I don’t think so. It might undermine her already—shall we say—fragile confidence in us,” Sergei replied.
“Good point,” Ivan agreed. “I don’t think she trusts us at all, especially not me. We’ll just stall until the last possible moment.”
They saw a sign for a train heading to Moscow. With a nod, Sergei ushered Nadya toward it. “Our first stop on the way to Paris,” Sergei explained.
Before they got to the track, Ivan suggested they use the public toilet facilities that the train station offered. It seemed like a good idea and would cause some natural delay.
Directing Nadya toward the room marked for females—the Bolsheviks had changed all signs from LADIES and GENTLEMEN to the more proletariat-friendly MEN and WOMEN—Ivan and Sergei went into the men’s restroom.
As they washed in the cold water at the sinks, Sergei explained that he had told Nadya she might be the granddaughter of some minor White Russian countess in exile.” I feared that our real intention might frighten her off,” he said.
“It probably would,” Ivan agreed. “How did you get her to think she might be the granddaughter of a countess, though? Is that even possible to her?”
Sergei told Ivan about Nadya’s amnesia. “Anything’s possible,” Sergei suggested. “Since the truth of her birth parents is unknown, and may never be known, she could be from anywhere.”
“I’ve never seen Paris. Have you?” Ivan asked as he dried his hands.
“I have,” Sergei divulged. “You’ll love it—or you’ll hate it, depending on how you feel about priceless art, beautiful women, and fabulous food.”
“It sounds very bourgeois,” Ivan noted.
“It is not an accident that the word to describe a life of comfort is French,” Sergei pointed out. “And to think that their revolution took place over a hundred years before ours did.”
“I try to no longer have opinions about anything political or otherwise,” Ivan remarked.
“You are a cynic,” Sergei said.
“I am disgusted with life and weary to the bone, that’s all,” Ivan countered.
“Weary at twenty?” Sergei questioned doubtfully.
“Is that all I am?” Ivan asked as they left the bathroom. “I thought I was one hundred and twenty.”
Sergei stopped before they left the bathroom. “I think I might have been wrong not to tell Nadya that we want her to pose as Anastasia. I don’t feel right about it.”
“I disagree. She might not have come if she knew we were involving her in a fraud. Why don’t we tell her we believe she is Anastasia? Why not? She has no memory anyway. How could she argue?”
“I don’t know,” Sergei said warily.
“We’ll wait until we get on the train. That way she can’t bolt,” Ivan insisted.
“But is it right to make her believe she’s someone she’s not?” Sergei questioned.
“Think of it this way: If she’s going to live the rest of her days as Grand Duchess Anastasia, isn’t it better if she believes that’s who she really is?”
“I suppose,” Sergei agreed, following Ivan out the door.
Nadya rushed to them the moment they stepped into the station. Grabbing the lapel of Sergei’s jacket, she spoke rapidly to him. “A man behind that pillar was spying on me.”
“Spying?” Ivan asked.
“Yes!” she cried. “He was very thin with a horrible scar across his face. He wore a long dark coat. Every time I looked at him, he ducked back behind the pillar.”
“Is he there now?” Sergei asked, his eyes darting around the station.
“I don’t know,” Nadya answered.
“Have you ever seen him before?” Ivan asked, looking from left to right.
“At first I thought he looked familiar, but I couldn’t recall a name or where I might know him from. I suppose I was mistaken,” Nadya replied.
“Wait here,” Ivan said. Making a wide loop around the station at a jog, he came up behind the pillar. No one was there. He surveyed the station for a man fitting Nadya’s description but found no one.
Had there been a man or was this some paranoid delusion?
He’d have to be watchful for this sort of thing. Mrs. Zolokov had warned them that Nadya was from an insane asylum, after all.
CHAPTER SIX
An Imperial Dream
Nadya settled into her seat by the window and watched the countryside roll by. The compartment they were in was extremely pleasant. They’d nearly missed their train because Sergei and Ivan had insisted on searching for the scarred man until the very last second. They’d had to run and jump on the train as it was already beginning to move. And then it took forever for them to find this compartment.
But now that they were settled, Nadya hoped they had left that creep from the station behind. Sergei seemed to believe her, but Nadya suspected that Ivan thought she was making it up or was just acting crazy. She could tell he was not the trusting sort, and Mrs. Zolokov’s remarks had made him wary of her.
Sergei had left the compartment, saying he needed to check into something regarding their tickets. She wondered when he’d even had time to buy them. She hadn’t seen him do it; maybe he’d purchased the tickets while she was in the bathroom.
She looked over at Ivan across the way, his eyes shut and his head hung down, arms crossed and long legs stretched out on the empty seat beside him. There was no denying that he was very handsome—in a ragged, unkempt way, of course. If he wasn’t so rude and off-putting, she might even be attracted to him.
Don’t even think it! she scolded herself. To fall for Ivan would be the worst mistake you could make. At the tavern she’d seen plenty of young women involved with men who treated them rudely—it was painful to watch.
Leaning closer to the window, Nadya gazed out. The train rocked gently while the sunlight threw a blanket of warmth over her. Soon Nadya’s temple rested on the glas
The dreams that crowded her sleeping mind were erratic. One moment she was swirling at a grand ball, and in the next she was learning to speak French. Nadya would awaken, look out as the snowy landscape moved past, shift in her seat, and fall back to sleep, only to plunge once again into the shadowy world of elusive dreams.
Nadya awoke once to see a hazy sunset over the mountains. Sergei was talking quietly to a conductor. “My friend is sleeping on a coat containing our tickets,” he said, pointing to the slumbering Ivan across from her. “He’s exhausted. Can we let him sleep a while longer?”
As the conductor consented to this, Nadya shifted once more, dimly aware of the conversation, and then returned to her dreams.
Nadya is still in the train compartment, but it has somehow grown more lavish, with ornate gold trim on both the walls and seats. They are going around a mountainside. Below them is a very dark sea. “Is the ocean filled with ink?” she asks a regal man in a military uniform who comes into the compartment. He has a big mustache and is very, very tall. But then Nadya realizes that he is not as tall as she’d first thought. It is she who has grown smaller.
She vaguely recognizes that the man is Czar Nicholas, the ruler of Russia.
“The sea is not filled with ink,” he says kindly. “You have been sleeping since St. Petersburg. We will soon be to Livadia.”
“I have a mouse in my pocket,” she tells him. “I scared Mrs. Zolokov with it. Are you proud of me?”
Czar Nicholas pets her hair. “Shvizbik,” he says fondly.
Nadya looks out the window again and sees a train that is an exact duplicate of the one they are on. “Why are there two trains?” she asks.
“To fool anyone who would try to hurt us,” the tall man replies.
“Who would want to hurt us?” she asks. But before he can answer she hears gunfire! Bullets crash through the window.
She screams as loudly as she can. If she can scream louder than the noise, she won’t have to hear it!
“Nadya! Nadya! Wake up!” Sergei was shaking her awake.
“What’s the matter with her?” Ivan demanded. “Make her stop screaming!”
“Shh! Shh!” Sergei hushed her urgently. “Nadya! Snap out of it!”
“Those gunshots! Who shot at us?” she asked frantically as she came awake. Nadya was back in the simple coach compartment.
“I was dreaming again,” she realized. “One of my nightmares.”
“Tell us about it,” Sergei urged.
“It was strange. The czar of Russia, Nicholas, was there. I know him from photos, but in the dream it seemed perfectly natural that I could speak with him.”
“That’s dreams for you,” Ivan remarked.
Nadya nodded. “We were in a train passing by a sea filled with black ink.”
“The Black Sea!” Sergei cried excitedly. “I have read books by a psychologist named Freud. He believes that our dreams are not always direct, but instead they speak to us in a complex language of symbols and word games.”
“So you think that a sea of black ink is the Black Sea?” Ivan questioned.
“Of course it is,” Sergei insisted. “Nadya, can you recall ever being there?”
“I told you, I can’t remember. Right now I’m not even sure where the Black Sea is.”
“Many wealthy Russians had summer homes in the mountains of the Crimea, overlooking the Black Sea,” Sergei explained. “The Imperial Family even had a place there. See? This is proof that your family was aristocratic.”
Ivan looked at him doubtfully. “A dream about ink isn’t proof of anything,” he disagreed.
“I thought you believed I really could be this girl you are looking for,” Nadya said, challenging him with an edge of annoyance in her voice. “Have you changed your mind about me?”
“What I believe won’t matter if we can’t convince the countess that you are her lost granddaughter,” he replied.
“Convince her?” Nadya asked. “Won’t she recognize me?”
“You were younger when she last saw you,” Sergei reminded Nadya. “I’m sure you’ve changed a great deal. She may question whether we’ve found the right girl.”
“How can we convince her?” Nadya asked. “I’ve told you I have no memory.”
Sergei sat down beside her. “We will give you memories based on what we know of this girl’s life.”
“What was my name?” Nadya wanted to know.
Ivan and Sergei exchanged questioning glances. Nadya noticed and felt confused. What was going on? Didn’t they know her name? And if not, why not?
“Anna,” Ivan said.
“Anna what?”
Again, Nadya sensed their discomfort. They looked at one another uneasily but did not answer.
“What is it you are not telling me?” Nadya demanded. “I may have no memory, but I’m not stupid. Something’s going on. Why won’t you tell me the girl’s name?”
Sergei took hold of Nadya’s hand and gazed into her eyes. Nadya shifted away from him a bit. A feeling of ominous dread welled within her. Whatever information he was about to impart had filled him with a new solemnity, and it frightened her. “What?” She pressed him to speak.
Ivan leaned in. “Nadya, we believe you may be the grand duchess Anastasia Romanov.”
Wide-eyed, Nadya looked incredulously from one to the other. Then she got it. “He’s joking, correct?” She checked with Sergei, suddenly sure Ivan had to be mocking her.
Sergei shook his head. “We’re very serious.”
A wild bark of laughter rose from inside her. “And they say I’m insane!” she cried. “You two are totally out of your minds!”
This was awful—she’d run off with two lunatics! Though if it had been happening to someone else, she’d think it was hilarious.
Agitated, she got up and began to pace. “I should have known this was too good to be true. I must have been the biggest idiot on earth to have thought that you two were going to whisk me out of my miserable existence into some fairy tale. And now, here I am in a worse predicament than I had been in back at The Happy Comrades.”
It was all just ridiculous, really, and she began to laugh so hard that she fell over onto the empty seat beside Ivan and let a hysterical fit of giggles rock her.
“Nadya, stop,” Ivan implored. “Stop and listen.”
“I can’t stop,” she insisted through outbursts of laughter. “It’s all too funny. If I’m Anastasia, who are you? Napoleon?” She pointed to Sergei. “I suppose he’s Peter the Great!”
Sergei took hold of each of her hands. The gentle but firm gesture calmed her to a breathless panting. “Surely you see how funny all this is,” she said.
“Why couldn’t you be Anastasia?” Sergei asked without any hint of levity.
“Because she’s dead, for one thing.”
“Her grandmother doesn’t think so,” Ivan countered. “She may have received reports that we don’t know about. She’s still well-connected throughout Russia.”
“Is that so?” Nadya questioned skeptically. “Her Imperial Highness, the Dowager Grand Empress Marie Feodorovna Romanov, personally sought out you two to find Anastasia?”
“No, not personally,” Sergei admitted sheepishly. “But we received information that—”
“I saw it in the newspaper too,” she shouted, cutting Sergei off as the memory came roaring back to her. “Mrs. Zolokov had me use the article as a fire starter.”
Clutching her forehead, she closed her eyes in a futile attempt to block out everything. Oh, what giant mess had she gotten herself into?
“Mrs. Zolokov doesn’t have the inside information that I have,” Ivan said seriously.
The earnest sincerity of his tone caught Nadya by surprise. It was a note she hadn’t heard from him before. But she refused to let on that he had her attention, and she kept her eyes clenched shut.
“Look at me, Nadya. I’m telling you the truth,” Ivan insisted. “We have inside information
Nadya opened one eye just a little. “Oh yes?” she said. “And what information is that?”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Fast Thinking
“I served as a stable boy at the Peterhof Palace,” Ivan lied with a certainty he hoped was convincing. “I drove along with my father, the head coachman to the Imperial Family.”
There was an element of truth in this fabrication. In reality he’d visited the grand palace, with its many fountains and statues built by Peter the Great. He’d gone with his father, who had sharpened kitchen utensils and repaired broken blades and handles. Though he never laid eyes on any member of the Imperial Family back then, he had once bumped into the czarina Alexandra’s sinister adviser, the supposed “holy man” Father Grigory Rasputin.
Rasputin was a big, powerfully built figure with a long, ragged black beard. He often dressed in a dirty black cassock. Ivan vividly recalled his revulsion at the bad energy, not to mention the foul odor—a mix of garlic and days-old sweat—emanating from him.
“Anastasia and I were friends.” Ivan went on lying. “We played together.”
He paused to see how she accepted this news. Her eyes were narrowed suspiciously. He would have to progress with care. Nadya reminded him of a deer whose ears were tuned to the footfall of hunters in the forest. One misstep along the path and she’d be on to him.
Ivan was now having doubts about the wisdom of lying to her. Why not tell her they planned to swindle the old dame out of her money by providing a plausible substitute for her dead granddaughter? Maybe Nadya would go for it and play along willingly. What would she have to lose?
But Ivan always lived by his instincts, and they were telling him that this girl wouldn’t be part of a scam, no matter how advantageous it might prove to her. Despite Nadya’s rough appearance and all the hard knocks she must have taken, there was something intrinsically fresh and straightforward about her. The only way this was going to work was if she believed it. There was so much to be gained for everyone if Nadya only would believe she was Anastasia Romanov: for her, it was a family member to take her in and love her, not to mention a life of luxury; for Sergei and Ivan, it was the reward money; for the grand duchess, it was the return of her granddaughter. It was a worthy enterprise, a good deed, but it had to be done carefully.