Blood of the Czars Read online

  “Tatty! Where you going? You’re missing a hell of a party.”

  “Party?”

  “Back on the beach. Augusta von Letzendorf’s party. She’s got a whole crew of Europeans with her this summer.”

  Tatty had heard about them. “I wasn’t invited,” she said.

  “I was. And she told me to bring friends.”

  Joe Walsh was invited to some of the best Hamptons parties. Consequently, those events never had trouble from police, or outsiders. Walsh was a decent sort, bluff and cheery and with some wit about him, a charitable fellow with always an open arm for the extra or unwanted woman of a weekend. People who snubbed or cut Joe Walsh because he was a mere policeman were often snubbed or cut themselves.

  Tatty wanted to go home, but the others denied her the opportunity. Seeing that the policeman was only Walsh, they hurried back over the stone wall.

  “Did you say party?” said Alice. Others made it a chorus: “Party! Party!”

  Tatty sighed, feeling like some primitive tribal matriarch. “All right,” she said. “For a little while.”

  Trooping back along the road behind Walsh’s slowly moving police car, Tatty asked Paget where Gwen had gone. Tatty had guessed, but she was curious about how much attention Paget was paying.

  “She went back to the house with the booze,” he said. “Someone had to do it. And when someone has to do it, there’s Gwen.”

  “Does that bother you?”

  “That’s not what bothers me about Gwen.”

  As Tatty fully expected, the party Walsh led them to was precisely the one they had just raided. The tall blonde who was Augusta von Letzendorf welcomed Walsh, telling him about the mysteriously disappearing liquor and the strange occurrences of screaming women and night-riding horses. Walsh, with a grin, only shrugged. The von Letzendorf woman looked at Amanda with uncomfortable interest, but said nothing. Tatty took a seat off by herself, where she could watch the waves break out of the blackness. A pleasant-looking man in a sweatshirt and ragged cut-offs made her a gin and bitter lemon, which she accepted somewhat guiltily. He seated himself next to her and, with a well-bred German accent, introduced himself as Paul.

  He was a prince—literally. Tatty knew about him, about all of them. They were all princes or archdukes or countesses or something, if only by marriage. Augusta, once a model, was a baroness by marriage. Her group here had been featured in an article on the Hamptons in the most recent issue of W magazine.

  “It is a warm night, yes?” the prince said. “For the end of summer.”

  The low surf was cresting white and gold in the firelight. Paul had serious eyes, but an innocent face, a person to trust.

  “It’s lovely,” she said. “I wish I weren’t going back this week.”

  It was a lie. Her urge to return to her apartment on East Fifty-seventh Street was almost frantic. It was as though a few days back in Manhattan would somehow enhance her prospects for her Friday luncheon with Sid Greene. Staying here, she was holding back time.

  “I am going back tomorrow morning,” said Paul. “Erik and I.” He nodded toward a thin, blondish man talking to Amanda. “Would you like to come with us? I have a very large Mercedes-Benz sedan. You could sleep if you liked, in the back.”

  Augusta was dancing, or at least swaying back and forth, accompanied by her own loud humming.

  Tatty was as good as these people, even by their standards. What had Mathilde been? A princess? A countess? In any event, a relative of the Romanovs. She had the blood of czars.

  She declined the man’s invitation. Finishing her drink, she excused herself. She ran all the way back, not so much in haste as in a need for release and freedom, her head back, her bare feet pattering over the asphalt, her breath rapid but easy.

  Reaching her almost darkened house, she took a seat in the most distant of the canvas chairs set out on her side lawn, tilting back her head, drawing the night and its sounds close around her. It could be hours before the others came back from the beach party. It was a pleasing prospect.

  Tatty lost track of time. The sound of approaching footsteps surprised her as they came from the left, from the town, not the beach, a man walking with a brisk, military pace. The sound stopped, and a moment later Ramsey Saylor stepped onto the lawn. Though Tatty was off in the shadows, he saw her immediately, and came toward her with the purposefulness of someone approaching a bank teller.

  He was dressed as she might have expected: a tan poplin suit; white shirt with button-down collar; and muted striped tie, doubtless all of it from Brooks Brothers. He carried an under-the-seat overnight bag with the handle of a squash or tennis raquet protruding from the side. He set it down silently as he eased himself into the chair next to her.

  “Tatty, Tatty,” he said. “God, but it’s good to see you. And in so irenic a circumstance. I feared you’d be surrounded by houseguests, engaged in some Hamptons romp.”

  Ramsey was a handsome man as F. Scott Fitzgerald had been handsome, with extraordinarily clear blue eyes. His complexion was very English, flushed cheeks visible even beneath his tan. His lips were a trifle feminine, with a droll turn at the corners appropriate to his style of speech. Though Ramsey had a surprisingly high-pitched voice, he spoke in a long, Westchester drawl. Tatty recalled that he was now thirty-three.

  “You’ve arrived rather late, Ramsey,” she said.

  “I am awfully late. I had business in Center Moriches. God, I’ve never had business in Center Moriches before in my life.”

  Tatty remembered that the Philippine president had established a luxurious hideaway there. It was the only point of interest in Center Moriches.

  “Have you now become an Asian expert?” she said.

  The droll corners turned up, revealing a flash of perfect teeth.

  “Clever Tatty,” he said. “No, it has not to do with Marcos. A colleague from Langley, actually. Summering there. God, what is the Agency coming to? Center Moriches.”

  He leaned to look into her face, into her eyes. He touched her cheek and smiled.

  “I trust my presence is not invasive,” he said. “You Hamptons types live such perennative lives. I shouldn’t have thought you’d mind another old face turning up again.”

  “I’m sure Gwen will find your presence invasive, and then some. She’s inside.”

  “Ah, sweet Gwen. I suppose she found me invasive from the very beginning.” Another flash of teeth.

  Tatty frowned. “What do you want, Ramsey? Are you here on some errand for the Agency?”

  “As a matter of fact, yes. My superiors were quite upset about what happened to you in Marseilles last year. They want to make it up to you.”

  “Nearly a year later.”

  “It took some time to arrange something meaningful, don’t you know. After all, you don’t need mere money. And your gravamens in this case are quite compelling. I think you’ll be quite pleased, when we talk about it tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow.”

  “Yes. God, Tat. No need for major discourse tonight. Actually, I was going to come see you about it after you returned to town, but since I was in the area anyway, well, how could I stay away?”

  “Ramsey. I do have a houseful of guests. They’re all down at the beach.”

  “Yours is a commodious dwelling, Tatty. Surely you can provide me with some wretched corner and scrap of blanket.”

  “All right,” she said.

  “You’re the kindest person I know,” he said, his smile remaining in place. He leaned toward her, and put his hand gently on her bare knee, rubbing it softly with his thumb. “Dear, dear Tatty. It’s been eleven years. Can you imagine? Eleven years since I first sang to you that song from Hair, ‘Smith girls are delicious.’”

  “The proper lyric was ‘black girls.’”

  “Tatty. You are the very antithesis of every black girl in the world. Have you ever stopped to ponder that? You are the whitest woman I’ve ever known. And without question the most beautiful.”

 
She wondered how annoyed she should be, but before she could decide, he had lifted her to her feet. She was fearful of what was coming, but didn’t want to stop it. He kissed her. She tried to remain stiff in his arms but it was hopeless.

  It was a mistake to let him do that, and a mistake to let him do it again. But, unnaturally perceptive, he had read her perfectly again. Before she could quite figure out what to do about it, he had slipped his hand beneath the waistband of her shorts and, finding no obstructive underwear, had moved with practiced swiftness to remembered places, and then to the most perfectly wonderful place. She was helpless against this man she had once, twice, so passionately loved.

  “Not here,” she said, between heavy breaths. “In back. I have a place. There’s a hedge. Ramsey. You’re a bastard.”

  He lifted her with an easy swiftness. She had forgotten his remarkable strength.

  “To the hedge,” he said. “And then to the gin.”

  Afterward he was gentlemanly enough, or at least clever enough, not to ask her how long it had been. To her chagrin, she had made it more than obvious how long.

  3

  The morning came much as had the one before it: a pinkish sky beyond the window, a cool breeze moving the curtains, the unhappy residue of too much drinking too evident. What was different was the foreground presence of Ramsey Saylor’s bare back and dark head.

  Pausing only for a few words to Gwen, who greeted Saylor with only the most brittle courtesy, they had taken gin to Tatty’s room, and, after an interval of drink, talk, and fitful sleep, had made love once more.

  He lay quite still, his breathing the quietest wisp of a sound. She did not know if this was a matter of physiology or another of his practiced skills, whether he was being considerate of her or merely professionally cautious, but Saylor did not snore. Gwen once said it was the most likeable thing about him.

  Moving carefully, Tatty slowly sat up, then gently swung her tanned legs over the side of the bed. Ramsey did not stir. She eased herself to her feet. Ramsey still did not stir, but he spoke.

  “My darling Tatty. There is nothing so bucolic about the Hamptons that warrants rising at so chthonic an hour.”

  “Do you have to talk like William F. Buckley all the time?”

  It was something of an insult. Much as their politics and mannerisms coincided, Ramsey considered himself Buckley’s superior—intellectually, physically, and socially. Ramsey’s father had of course been nothing more prestigious than a well-off arms exporter, but the Saylors were Episcopalian and the Buckleys Catholic. In Ramsey’s world, that still counted.

  “Your remark is a rhetorical nullity,” he said, still motionless. She could not see, but guessed he had his eyes closed. “Tatty, let us go sailing this afternoon.”

  “To chat?”

  “Yes.”

  “To chat professionally. About the Central Intelligence Agency’s generous offer?”

  “Yes.”

  He was studying her body.

  “God, Tatty, you’re still the golden girl of the beach. Come back to bed.”

  “Ramsey, my houseguests are leaving this morning. I must say good-bye.” She glanced at his shoulders. He had been a wrestling champion at Princeton, and looked as though he still could be.

  She locked the bathroom door behind her.

  Saylor was as good as his name, the best yachtsman Tatty had ever known. Buckley had crossed the Atlantic in a large boat with a large crew and servants, writing of the experience as though it were an epic voyage rivaling Brendan the Navigator’s. Ramsey had crossed the Atlantic several times, in much smaller boats, and once by himself, treating all the adventures as routine, as though it was expected of sailors to cross the Atlantic. He had won a Newport-Bermuda race, among many others.

  With its forward staysail and jib, Tatty’s thirty-foot cutter had a painfully heavy weather helm when sailing close-hauled, yet Ramsey tacked into the strong easterly with an almost effortless grip of the tiller. He had few words for Tatty other than commands to shift and trim sail. The strong wind and heaving spray were not conducive to conversation. Both were wearing foul-weather jackets, Ramsey’s imprinted with the word BERMUDA and a map of the island.

  At length they came abeam of the channel that led north from Cedar Point, and Ramsey fell off to a broad reach as he turned into it, lessening the cut of the wind and making for a gentler passage. He leaned back, relaxing, squinting forward over the pitching bow.

  “All right,” she said, “what do you want to say to me? If this is all leading up to another of your patriotic recruiting pitches, Ramsey, I can’t think of a sillier approach.”

  His flashing smile froze in place. It was an acting technique. Putting the face in neutral while the mind raced ahead.

  “Tatty, I can’t think of anything your country would welcome more than to have you assisting the Agency on a full-time basis.”

  “And I can’t think of anything I’d welcome less. After Marseilles.”

  “Under the circumstances, your reluctance is certainly understandable.”

  “That thug tried to rape me, Ramsey. He damn near succeeded. You assured me I’d be protected every step of the way. Yet you let that bastard get into my hotel room. He broke my wrist. He hit me in the face.”

  “We haven’t forgotten that.”

  “He could have killed me.”

  “You dealt with that possibility magnificently.”

  “I blew his bloody brains out! That disgusting mess, all over everything, all over me. God, what you made me do, Ramsey. I could throw up all over again just thinking about it.”

  Ramsey pushed the tiller away from him slightly, pointing the boat back up into the wind, its increasing sound filling the silence that came between them. They were well out into Gardiners Bay now. Ramsey was steering toward Orient Point, far across the roughening open water.

  He took her hand.

  “I’m not trying to recruit you, Tatty. My concern over your daisegnonian lifestyle is quite genuine. Almost fatherly.”

  “You’re all of three years older than I am.”

  “You often make me feel quite fatherly nevertheless. Perhaps it’s because you’re an orphan.”

  “For God’s sake, Ramsey.”

  There was a rain squall visible to weather, far down the bay, or possibly farther east, in Block Island Sound.

  “Ramsey. What is it you came to say to me?”

  “You’re curious as to what it is the Agency would like to offer you, by way of compensation.”

  “You thought I’d never ask.”

  She had felt so close to this man, just half a day before. Now he seemed someone she scarcely knew. For a third of her life they had been friends and sometime lovers, from the last reach of childhood until now, the last of her youth. She could not comprehend why he seemed so distant and forbidding. She kept her friends too long.

  “Tatty, we’d like to offer you a job.”

  “I told you. Nothing could interest me less.”

  “I don’t mean Agency work. Not really. We have in mind something altogether suitable for your profession, something theatrical.”

  “Shakespeare? Shaw?”

  He treated her to another quick smile as he paused to haul the main sheet in tighter and point the bow up to the very edge of irons, heeling the boat till the rail touched the hissing rush of sea.

  “Not Shakespeare,” he said, raising his voice against the humming and drumming of the shrouds and sails, increasing its register to a remarkably high pitch. “Harriet Beecher Stowe.”

  “What?”

  “Ready about!”

  It was a command. He was going to come about, shift the bow through the wind and change course for the south. It fell to her to slack off the jib and staysail and haul them to the starboard side. She moved to the winches. “Ready!”

  He swung the tiller. “Helm’s-alee!” She worked the winches quickly, then waited to see his point of sail before setting the sails in trim. He was falling off to t
he southwest, back toward Sag Harbor.

  “Harriet Beecher Stowe,” Ramsey repeated. “The State Department has arranged for some dramatic readings abroad. Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass. Abraham Lincoln’s speeches. Harriet Tubman. Frederick Douglass. Stephen Crane’s Red Badge of Courage. They want an actress, and haven’t decided on one. We thought of you. It’s a month’s work.”

  “Why the Civil War?”

  “Russian people are extremely interested in American slavery and the Civil War. Their Kremlin masters are fond of indulging this interest. They love to draw egregiously spurious parallels to the serfs and their own civil war.”

  “These readings are to be done in Russia?”

  “Two weeks in Leningrad. Two weeks in Moscow. The pay is fifty thousand. It comes from a foundation grant.”

  “Why do you want to indulge the Kremlin masters?”

  “I don’t. It’s strictly State Department. More of their cultural exchange foolishness. It helps keep us supplied with defecting ballet dancers.”

  “What is your interest in this?”

  “You might do us a favor or two while you’re over there, but it mostly struck us as a wonderful opportunity for you. We have a number of media contacts, of course. We might arrange some publicity for you. I shouldn’t be surprised if you received some sort of pleasant write-up in one of the news magazines.”

  “I’m not interested.”

  “It’s only four weeks. The money is quite generous. We feel very obligated to you, and here you are spurning our gesture of gratitude and concern.”

  He was into a broad reach again, steering for Cedar Point. The wind sound had fallen almost to silence.

  “The man I killed was a Russian agent,” she said. “You told me that yourself.”

  “He was, but of the most minor sort. A hired troll.”

  “But their troll nonetheless. And you would send me to Russia! Are you really trying to get me killed, Ramsey, or am I just becoming paranoid in my old age?”