The Diamond Secret (19 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
  

Elana Kremnikov

Sergei ran through the Gardens. He was so excited that it didn't occur to him to find a taxi. By the light of the moon and an occasional gas lamp, he maneuvered through the flower-lined pathways.

It was as though fate had brought him here to Paris. To think that Elana and Peter could be so close!

With a pounding heart, he stopped beneath a lamppost to reread the directions. They directed him to go around the Gardens; certainly running diagonally through them would be faster. Not a moment could be wasted. The need to see Elana and Peter again was so overpowering that Sergei felt as though he might explode with anticipation.

Out of the Gardens, Sergei turned the wrong way at first, and then realized his mistake. Correcting his course, he came to an ancient-looking stone building in the heart of the city. Its gated courtyard faced out onto the street. Yanking on the gate, Sergei discovered it was unlocked, and he entered.

Sergei made his way into the building through a wooden door that also was unlocked. He sent up a silent prayer of thanks that these monks were so trusting and welcoming.

Wavering shadows were thrown on the walls by candles that flickered in wall sconces. The dancing light magnified the shadows thrown by carved wooden statues of saints that stood on pedestals along the way.

From behind a door, Sergei heard a hypnotic chanting: monks in meditation. Cracking open the door, he peered into a chapel. A soft light was on its altar. Black-hooded monks knelt with their heads bowed. Sergei shut his eyes and let the calming ancient chanting sounds wash over him, taking a moment to steady himself so he'd be ready to find his family.

What had they been through? Had it changed them? Did they blame him? Would the love they'd known be the same as it had been before?

A hand touched his shoulder from behind. "Is there something I can help you with?" a woman inquired.

Turning toward the voice, Sergei saw the same soft blond hair and gentle hazel eyes he'd dreamed of for so many nights. The woman was dressed as a servant in a coarse brown dress and white apron, but no amount of plainness could diminish her radiance in his eyes. "Elana," he blurted, his voice raspy with emotion.

Elana Kremnikov went ashen. "You are a ghost?"

Clutching her hand, he held it to his cheek. "No Elana, it's me and I'm alive, I promise you."

Elana threw herself onto Sergei, pressing her ear to his chest, listening to his thundering heartbeat. Then she drew back, alarmed. "I'm dreaming this!" she surmised.

"No, it's not a dream," he assured her with a light laugh, sympathetic to her disbelief.

Elana threw her arms around Sergei, holding him tightly. Tears rolled down her cheeks but her face shone with joy. "If you are a dream, I don't ever want to wake."

"I tell you, we are not dreaming," he said, stroking her hair.

"If that's so, how can it be? How did you come to be here?"

"An angel sent me to you. How did you get to Paris?"

When she did not answer, he looked down at her and saw she had fainted in his arms.

Once Elana had revived and had come to believe that she and Sergei indeed were reunited, she brought him to the modest chamber she occupied as the monastery's housekeeper. There, in a narrow bed, he saw Peter for the first time in over a year.

"He's gotten big," Sergei noted, holding a lantern over the sleeping boy. He sat on the bed and swept his hand across the boy's forehead as tears bloomed in his eyes. "I've missed so much time with him," he said in a choked voice.

Elana rubbed Sergei's shoulders to comfort him. "He looks more like you every day," she said fondly.

"Shall I wake him?" Sergei asked.

"Let him sleep," Elana said. "There will be time enough."

Elana sat on a straight-backed chair between her bed and Peter's slim cot and prepared to tell Sergei everything that had happened since they'd left Russia. Sergei seated himself on her bed to listen.

Their carriage had been overturned in a peasants' protest on their way to Denmark. They'd been left on the side of the road as the protesters dragged off the disabled carriage. Elana had tried to continue on by foot, but Peter had become gravely ill with dysentery. If a caravan of gypsies hadn't helped them, he might have died. While Peter recovered, they'd traveled with the gypsies. Along the way, Elana had met a man they knew, and he'd told her that the Red Army had commandeered their estate for a headquarters. "The man told me no one saw you after the Red Army marched into our home. He said everyone believed the Bolsheviks had killed you."

"They turned me out with only the clothes on my back and the few rubles I could hide in my pockets," he told her, "but thankfully they allowed me to live."

"I asked everyone, every Russian person I met, about you," Elana recalled vehemently. "No one had seen you."

Sergei shook his head at the irony of it all. By going off to search for his missing wife and son, he had created a situation that made it impossible for
them
to find him. "How did you wind up here in Paris?" he asked.

"The gypsies were traveling through France to Spain. I'm grateful for them. They took good care of Peter; we never would have made it out of Russia on our own. When Peter was well enough, we left them and headed for Paris."

"There are other Russians here in Paris. Did you go to them for help?"

Elana shook her head. "As we were walking into Paris, I developed a fever and collapsed on the road. Who knows what would have happened if some traveling monks hadn't seen Peter crying there by my side. They brought us here and, when I was better, they gave me employment. If I'd had a friend in Paris it would have been different, but I saw no reason to bother people I only vaguely knew when we were really all right where we were."

Sergei glanced around at the Spartan quarters, so different from the life she'd known before. "How brave you've been, Elana," he said, filled with guilt that he had not been able to do more for them. If he had been smarter, more well-connected, more relentless in his search, he felt he could have spared them all this.

Elana leaned forward in her chair and touched Sergei's arm. "You know, Sergei, my grief at losing you was deep. But I have found an inner peace and quiet happiness here in this monastery that before, I never would have believed existed. I missed you, but not our old life of superficial acquaintances and lavish excess."

"That's funny," Sergei said, smiling.

Elana frowned. "I'm not trying to be funny."

"No, I'm not mocking you. Never. I mean...I don't miss it either. I've rather enjoyed living by my wits without all the pompous grandiosity. But tell me--don't you find this just a little dull?"

Elana laughed, and to hear that beloved, familiar, wonderful laugh again after so long was almost too wonderful to bear. "Maybe life with gypsies was more fun," she admitted. "But I would never want to go back to the life of the aristocracy."

Sergei chuckled at that. "And a good thing too, if we ever want to return to Russia. The aristocracy isn't well liked over there right now. They're putting everyone who's survived to work."

When he spoke the word "survived" the merriment left Elana's face. She lunged from her chair and into his arms. Crying fresh tears, she put her arms around his neck. "I am so happy that you are alive, my darling. So happy. So happy."

He held her, kissing her soft hair, silently swearing to never let her leave his protection again.

Someone knocked at the door and Elana moved from his arms to answer it. She spoke quietly to the monk outside her door, and then she turned to Sergei. "Someone has come looking for you."

Elana opened the door wide to reveal a police officer standing behind the monk.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
  

Blood Memory

Nadya followed the uniformed police officer into a back room of the station house. Ivan lay on a table, a sheet over his body but not over his face. "Est-il vivant?" she asked.

"Il est vivant mais passé de hors," the officer replied.

Thank goodness,
she thought, resting her hand on her anxiously pounding heart. He wasn't dead but unconscious, probably passed out from the loss of blood.

Then Nadya realized what had just happened. How had she spoken and understood French? She hadn't comprehended what the hotel clerk had been saying to her until she saw the flyer. But the shock of seeing Ivan lying there had jogged something inside her, some buried ability to speak another language.

The police officer told her--in French--that a patrol car had found him bleeding and unconscious on the walkway at the bank of the river. They'd found identification in his wallet and had seen immediately that he was Russian. They'd had an artist execute a quick sketch, which they'd sent to all the hotels, searching for anyone who might know him. Fortunately, Nadya arrived quickly and, as she'd directed them, they'd sent out an officer to find her friend at the monastery.

Nadya understood nearly every word the police officer said, and what she couldn't exactly understand, she could piece together from the context. "Will he live?" she asked the officer, speaking in French.

The policeman told her frankly that, in his experience, wounds like Ivan's usually were fatal.

His words made Nadya reel, and she quickly crossed to the table on which Ivan had been laid, gripping its corner for support. "Have you called a doctor?" she asked.

"Yes, yes, he is on his way," the officer replied as he left the room.

Ivan's white shirt had turned almost entirely red with his blood. Gingerly lifting the fabric, she saw that someone had placed a gauze bandage over the wound, but it, too, was soaked through. On a chair across the room was a pile of white towels. She decided that one of them would be better than the soggy, blood-soaked bandage, as she pulled off her long gloves.

With a replacement towel ready, she peeled away the bandage. To her horror, a crimson torrent began to gush from Ivan's flesh. Instinctively, Nadya jammed the heel of her hand over the gaping injury to slow the outpouring of blood.

Working quickly, she used her left hand to grab the clean towel and press it down on Ivan's chest. A rose-like splotch appeared at the towel's center, but it didn't spread too far. After several minutes, she grew confident that the bleeding had subsided enough to take her hand away. As she withdrew it, Nadya was mesmerized by the red trails of drying blood running from among her fingers, pooling at her palm, and forming streams to her elbow. Her cuticles were rimmed in red where Ivan's blood had seeped under and around her nails.

Just as shock had jolted loose her buried knowledge of French, this sight unlocked another long-bolted door in her mind. Like dreaming while strangely hyperalert, Nadya saw the scene unfold inside her head so vividly it was as though she were living it all over again.

Her eyes crack open and she slowly becomes aware that she is lying facedown on the ground in the woods. The dirt's coolness is like a salve on something burning at the side of her waist. That same flaming agony is blazing across her forehead.

She hears a bird's high call.

Above her, leaves rustle.

There's water running somewhere in the distance.

Metal clangs against rock.

With a searing pain in her neck, she forces her head around toward the clang. Three Red Army soldiers are waist-deep in a very large hole, digging. Beside the hole is a pile of bodies. Blessedly, their faces are all turned away from her, but she has come awake enough to understand
203
who they are.

She remembers everything now, but knows this is not the time to allow the shattering reality in. To do so would dissolve her into unspeakable grief. This is a moment to think only of survival. For she knows she is one of the corpses the soldiers intend to bury.

Unexpectedly and with animal-like awareness, she is startled to feel a gaze on her. She turns in its direction. A handsome soldier carrying a rifle is staring down at her in alarm. Closing her eyes, she awaits the inevitable shot that will finish her.

A moment passes.

Then another.

There is no shot, so she opens her eyes. The soldier is gone. A little ways off, she hears him being violently sick.

She is nauseated too, but there's no time to focus on it. No one is watching her. This is her chance to move, if she can.

Digging her nails in the dirt, she pulls herself along.

The handsome soldier is returning; she hears his footsteps coming closer. Turning back, their eyes meet. His face is full of sympathy. Somehow she can feel that he is a friend. He turns away again, silently indicating that he won't stop her from leaving.

She's now at the edge of the clearing. The soldiers remain intent on their digging. Their lookout is not alerting them. She is getting away!