The Diamond Secret (5 page)

Nadya picked up a small cloth doll that sat on her windowsill. The smiling toy had a merry expression stitched on his face. Its vivid blue eyes were two buttons. It had been in the pocket of her skirt when she'd awakened at the asylum. The doll had been badly tattered; she recalled that its head was nearly off until a kind nurse at the asylum had repaired it for her.

She had no need for the worn plaything now. Her new companions would think it childish if they saw her with a doll, and she didn't want that. "Here's where we part company," she told the doll tenderly. "I'm too old for dolls."

Nadya would need a coat--too bad she didn't own one. Mrs. Zolokov also owed her over a week's pay. Nadya pulled her blanket from the bed and threw it around her shoulders like a big cape. The pay she was not going to collect was worth more than this moth-eaten wool.

"Okay. Okay," she muttered. "Are you really going through with this, you crazy girl?" There could be no doubt--if she left with them it would mean she really was insane.

Maybe not insane, but certainly reckless!

But who cared? No one!

And that was the whole point. If somewhere in the world there was a grandmother who
did
care, it was worth any chance, every chance.

Nadya tied the ends of the pillowcase together, then used the knotted middle as a handle. With her blanket over her shoulders and clutching her homemade satchel, Nadya stepped outside her room. Below, at the bottom of the stairs, Sergei and Ivan waited. Sergei waved and Ivan peered up the stairs, scowling, as though still studying her like some kind of specimen.

Nadya ducked back inside, heart pounding, scared. Was she really going to go through with this?

She turned to the doll on the windowsill. "What do you think, my little friend?" Nadya asked it. "Is what I'm about to do insane?"

Nadya had developed the habit of bouncing her ideas, concerns, and worries off of the doll. The smiling face had offered her comfort and companionship through many lonely, frightening times--unfortunately, though, it could not really offer her advice and she knew it.

"You're right," Nadya said, addressing the doll as though it had answered her. "Staying here will get me nowhere. I might as well take this chance and hope for the best."

Nadya snapped the doll off the windowsill. "What was I thinking?" she said. "I could never leave you behind, my little friend." Maybe her attachment to the doll
was
childish, but she didn't care. She loved it too much to leave it behind. Nadya stuffed the doll into the pillowcase satchel--an old friend to bring along for luck!

She pushed the door open again. Here we go.

CHAPTER FIVE
   

A Spy at the Station

As they walked along at a brisk pace toward the Trans-Siberian Railroad station, Ivan stole darting glances at Nadya. He did not dare to stare at her as long as he would have liked. Ivan wanted to examine every inch of her again and again to assure himself that his first impression had been correct. He suspected that, under all her messiness, Nadya might be pretty. He hoped so. Anastasia had been very pretty, as he recalled.

Everything was riding on this now.

But whenever Nadya caught Ivan gazing at her for overlong, she glared at him fiercely and hunched her shoulders defensively. It made her appear less like a grand duchess than anyone on earth and shook his confidence about their choice. Did Nadya really resemble Anastasia as strongly as he'd thought at first sight?

Had Sergei been right in saying that Ivan was panicking and jumping at the nearest girl he found to present as Anastasia?

Possibly.

Ivan and Sergei were stuck with her now, though, and he had to make the best of it. Once they got that filthy hair washed and put her in some decent clothing, he'd have a better idea of what he was working with.

Ivan was relying on such brief snaps of memory for all this: the blithe spirit in a white sailor-style frock seen at a distance dancing down the garden paths of The House of Special Purpose, a note of melodic laughter carried on a summer breeze, a half-dead adolescent dragging herself from a grave site, the nightmares--surely he saw her again and again in the nightmares.

The large sign for the railroad station came into view. The sidewalks grew more crowded the closer they got, and it suddenly made Ivan conscious of Nadya's ragged appearance. Passersby cast furtive, disapproving glances her way. Ivan shrugged off his woolen jacket and offered it to her. "Put this on."

"I'm not cold," she declined.

"You look like a beggar in that blanket," Ivan argued.

Nadya reared back, insulted. "You're no prize either. I don't want your smelly jacket."

Sergei took the coat from Ivan, and then gently unwrapped the blanket from Nadya's shoulders.

"Take his old thing for now," he insisted in a voice that apparently soothed her. "I'll carry the blanket and you can use it again when you sleep on the train."

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.