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eside Xenia was not Konstantin Antonovich at all, but rather one of the British dandies who had
accompanied the Queen. And with this knowledge, it had not been hard to locate the other three men
standing in their separate doors. The Welles man in charge of it all, his old comrade Rayley Abrams
from the saunas, and finally that goddam little twit Vlad had introduced him to in the streets. Filip
had tried to tell Vlad that boy would cause trouble, but it had never, even in his most extreme
moments of paranoia, occurred to Filip that rosy-cheeked Davy Mabrey was Scotland Yard.
He had rushed down to the second level hoping he might intercept at least one of them before
they too gave chase, but by the time he had arrived there no one was left but one of the women in the
red dresses, shrieking to the heavens. God knows who she was or what she had seen but at least the
orchestra was dulling the sound of her cries, the only fortune which had favored him yet.
It was time for Plan B. There was always a Plan B and even, for very bad days, a Plan C. Filip
could only hope that in their panic Vlad and Gregor remembered it.
9:20 PM
Vlad was lost. He tried to recall Yulian’s drawings and Filip’s descriptions, for he had
certainly studied them often enough in the meeting room. But now it seemed that all the facts had left
his head and he was being followed by the Siberian dance master, a man who presumably knew the
palace like the back of his hand. The problem was that the halls, each lined with doors indicating
rooms which were small and close together, all looked too damnably alike and, judging by the
familiar smirk of a whore in one of the tawdry portraits, he feared he had somehow doubled back and
was passing the same point for the second time. If he wasn’t careful, he was about to run headlong
into the man who was chasing him.
In desperation Vlad stopped at a door. A random choice, one of dozens just like it. He turned
the knob and it opened.
9:20 PM