CHAPTER 18
Club Diogenes
2200 Block, Irina Way, Ufa
November 25, 1637
The 2200 block wasn’t all the way to the dirigible base, but it was close and the investor had planned the building based on the assumption that the dirigible base at Ufa would continue to be a going concern, on the assumption, in fact, that there would be, over the years, more and more dirigibles. Based on that belief, the investors had built a large complex, including two stories of hotel rooms and a very large restaurant.
After the loss of the Czarina Evdokia and the Czar Alexis, Czar Mikhail had not completely abandoned dirigibles, but had deprioritized them. The Muscovite Russian government was still working on the replacement for the Czar Alexis in Bor. But that dirigible was unlikely to stop at Ufa even after it was finished sometime in 1638.
All of which meant that the investors who had spent several millions of rubles building the hotel, dining and entertainment complex were finally having to face up to the fact that though there was probably some market, their business there wasn’t going to be nearly as much as they’d hoped. And a majority of them were looking for a way out, some of them fairly desperately.
It wasn’t that they were going to lose money. In fact, they were probably going to make a decent amount as Ufa continued to grow. But they weren’t going to make the piles and piles of money they’d been counting on.
That was what the Lyapunov financial advisor had explained to Alla, Miroslava, and Vasilii, as well as Dominika, Zia Chernoff, and ten-year-old Princess Irina. They were all here now to look over the mostly finished complex that they could get for only a few million rubles.
There were, aside from the restaurant which would be named the Stranger’s Room, also offices and meeting rooms, as well as guest rooms.
“I want that one,” Irina said of a suite near the back of the complex whose glass windows looked out at the empty field that was going to be the dirigible base. It had three bed chambers and a sitting room and wasn’t that different from three other similar suites.
“I like living in the Dacha,” Vasilii complained, rather half-heartedly. They’d had a talk with Czar Mikhail that morning about the project. Mikhail couldn’t fire Budanov for some very good political reasons, and the Embassy Bureau had several perfectly legitimate functions that included the instituting and staffing of embassies in the rest of Europe and Asia, which part of the job Budanov seemed at least fairly competent at.
As he preferred to do when he could, Mikhail had decided to go around the problem. The crown’s investment in the Diogenes Club would officially be about the whim of a spoiled princess. In fact, at least some of the intelligence function of the Embassy Bureau was to be quietly transferred here, under the control of Ivan Borisovich Petrov, who would henceforth have the code name Mycroft, initial M.
Meanwhile, Alla was going to get her restaurant.
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Three days later, they signed the contracts and Alla went to work with the help of the financial advisor, hiring staff for the restaurant. And on the first day of interviews, Elina showed up.
“Anna, what are you doing here?”
“Elina?” Alla said in something close to shock. She hadn’t seen Elina since she’d been a servant in the kitchen of Captain Petrov.
“I ran off a couple of weeks after you did. I thought you’d be shacked up with Master Gregory. The captain was furious after you two ran off.”
“Not as furious as he wanted people to think,” Alla muttered. In fact, Gregory had “run off” with “Anna” on his father’s orders, as a way of getting the dangerous-to-have-around Alla Lyapunov out of his house and to Ufa where she was needed. “Anyway,” she said louder, “I know you can make croissants and other French pastries, so if you want the job, you’re hired.”
Elina was just standing there with her mouth open, and there were other potential employees in line. Not a long line. Work was available in Ufa. In fact, most of the people who were applying already had jobs. They were just looking for better ones. So Alla turned Elina over to their business manager who would be running the negotiations with potential employees, with one final command. “Don’t mention where you know me from.”
✧ ✧ ✧
Several hours later, one of the new servants who was, in fact, a spy recently fired from the Embassy Bureau brought Elina to Alla’s room in Club Diogenes. It was part of a three-room suite that Alla would share with Miroslava and Vasilii. Her suite was two doors down from Princess Irina’s suite, which was unoccupied at the moment, and was the Royal Suite that was reserved for the use of the royal family when and if they decided to visit. The fact that the royal family had a suite here was a major draw, making it the club.
All of that made sense to Elina. The notion that Anna, the incompetent kitchen girl, was actually Alla Lyapunov . . . that was much harder to get her head around.
“Come in and have a seat, Elina,” Alla said. “It’s kind of a long story.”
And over the next couple of hours, Alla told it. She explained that she’d seen her parents’ bodies in the street and, not having anyplace else to go, had ended up on Irina Petrov’s doorstep because she knew the girl from church, and rather than turn her over to Sheremetev, Captain Gregory Petrov had taken her in and hidden her as a servant. “It wasn’t easy,” Alla admitted. “If I hadn’t been terrified half out of my mind I never would have been able to become Anna the servant girl.” She explained how for months she’d lived in the servants’ quarters, been a servant, and at first a not very good servant.
“That part I remember.” Elina grinned. “For the first couple of months, Cook was constantly complaining that if they were going to bring someone in from the country, why couldn’t they bring someone who had a brain.”
“Yes. Every day, every hour, it seemed I did something wrong,” Alla admitted. “I was dreadfully afraid that the cook would complain to the captain and I would be turned over to Sheremetev’s hounds after all.” Alla shivered in memory.
Elina looked at the young woman before her and realized for the first time that being born the daughter of a noble house didn’t mean everything was always perfect. She’d worked in the same house, but the worst she’d ever feared had been the possibility of a slap, and the greater possibility that the cook might yell at her. The possibility that she might be killed for a poorly prepared goose had never entered her mind.
“You can’t tell anyone that Alla Lyapunov and Anna, the kitchen girl in the household of Captain Gregory Petrov, are the same person. It might well get the captain, Mistress Petrov and Nadia killed. Sheremetev, or whoever is in charge back in Moscow now, can’t get at me here or at Cousin Vasilii, but they can still punish the Petrov family for taking in Alla Lyapunov if they find out.”
Elina wasn’t a great fan of the Petrov family. She didn’t hate them. They’d treated their servants fairly well. But they were still Russian lower nobility who, to Elina’s mind, made them only slightly better than the upper nobility.
“The Flying Squirrel—” she started to say, but Alla interrupted.
“Would you like to meet him?”
“Meet who?”
“The Flying Squirrel. The man who writes the Flying Squirrel pamphlets.”
“You know who he is?”
“He’s a friend of Vasilii’s,” Alla said. Then added, “Do you want to see Nadia dead on the street? Is that what you want?”
“No, I guess not.”
Royal Palace, Ufa
November 26, 1637
Eight-year-old Alexi Romanov was convinced that Irina got all the good stuff. This was most unfair, since he was the one who was going to have to be czar when he grew up. Even though his papa had explained that the royal suite at the Diogenes Club was the family’s, not Irina’s, everyone was saying it was Irina’s suite. It wasn’t fair. Besides, she was bossy and stuck up. But after some loud complaints, he’d gone off to play with his Hero-class model airplane.
While Alexi was making strafing runs on the evil Zunghar cavalry, Mikhail and Evdokia were having a chat with Vasilii.
“What do you think of the Diogenes Club?” Mikhail asked.
“I think you’re being too clever by half, Your Majesty,” Vasilii said. “The Embassy Bureau is where we’ve done intelligence work since Ivan the Terrible’s time.”
“I know, but we need a network in Muscovite Russia and Budanov isn’t the man to do it, even if I could trust him.”
“And you think Ivan Borisovich is?”
“I know he looks simple and straightforward, and in many ways he is. But he’s a top flight analyst, and he’s loyal.” Mikhail raised a hand. “Anyway, that’s not why you’re here. I am trying to decide whether to send you east with Vlad and Brandy, or leave you here with Miroslava to help oversee the Diogenes Club.”
“How about you leave me here and let me design steam engines?”
“Now that would be a waste,” Mikhail said. “Besides, you’re going to design steam engines no matter what other work I assign you. You can’t help yourself.”
“Not if I’m out in the back of beyond, loading wood into the new firebox.”
“Okay. That decides it. You’ll be staying. You will be moving out of the Dacha to the Diogenes Club, to look after your wife and daughter. But don’t feel bad. We’re going to have a nice little lab in the basement. I think we’ll nickname you Q.”
Vasilii looked over at the czarina and asked, “What’s the penalty for regicide, Majesty? Taking into account the provocation. Q!”
“Even granting the provocation, it’s quite severe,” Czarina Evdokia said. “On the other hand, just thinking about it is perfectly legal.” She smiled sweetly at her husband.