Natasha's Dream by Mary Jane Staples Page B

must be very rich, Your Excellency.’
    ‘I’m not rich, and I’m not Your Excellency, you delicious girl. I simply have money for expenses. You’ll do what I’ve said, won’t you?’
    ‘Oh, with much obedience,’ said Natasha, a little dizzy at suddenly being called delicious. There were so many things about Mr Gibson that made her want to be a help to him, despite her fears.
    ‘Let’s get you a taxi,’ he said.
    He hailed one, saw Natasha into it and received a slightly emotional smile from her as he gave her hand a reassuring squeeze. He watched the taxi move off. He stood there, casually searching his coat pockets. He fished out a pipe and put it between his lips. From out of the corner of his eye, he glimpsed another taxi. It was slowing up. It stopped forty yards away. The man in the grey coat materialized, stepped quickly into the taxi and pulled the door to. The driver moved off in the same direction as Natasha’s taxi. Mr Gibson worried about her for a few moments, then thought about her assets. She had courage, endurance and resolution. She had spent years eluding some Bolshevik commissar. She would slip the man in the grey coat. Why was he tailing her? And why had the commissar gone after her? Ifshe was telling the truth, he had pursued her for years. And why had Count Orlov looked at her as if he was in incurable dislike of her? She really ought to be more confiding.

Chapter Seven
    Natasha was not sure she was being followed until her taxi had cleared the major shopping and residential areas. It was when the driver was making his way through the sparser traffic of the old quarters that she became aware of another taxi. It seemed to emerge from the pot-pourri of vehicles peeling and swinging away at junctions to stay on the same course as her own. It perturbed her. Did they not trust her to keep her mouth shut? Count Orlov had looked as if he suspected she had told Mr Gibson everything.
    It was all so bewildering and frightening. She had thought, in going to them with startling information about the sick woman, that they would be delighted to have their uncertainties resolved. But they had not been in the least delighted. They listened in almost completesilence. She said she would willingly risk what Bolshevik agents might do, she would make a written statement if only someone would help her find work in another city or town. They looked at her as if she had become demented. Count Orlov, reputed to be more disdainful of the common man than even the aristocrats of old Bourbon France, gave her a glance quite chilling. He told her the kindest thing he and his friends could do was to assume she was the victim of her overworked imagination. He said they would have her committed to an asylum if she repeated such a story to anyone else. As for finding work in another city, she was not to leave Berlin. She protested and became angry. The telling of her story had been a painful and tormenting ordeal, and she was not in the mood to play a quiet mouse. Count Orlov said if she did not want to meet with an accident, she must refrain from being insolent and must keep her mouth shut. Her story was an impossibility, a lie, and could not be repeated without doing immense harm to the cause of the Romanovs. Had she ever told it to other people?
    No, she had not. It might have brought the Bolsheviks to her.
    If you don’t wish to spend the rest of your lifein an asylum, Count Orlov had said, or meet with an accident, keep the fantasy to yourself. Do you hear?
    And because of the look in his eyes, and the chilling silence of the other people in the room, she had promised to say nothing to anybody. She knew why they did not want her to leave Berlin. If she did, she might carry her story to France or some other country where they could not lay their hands on her. She was frightened, and she was also terribly confused. She found it quite incredible that they did not want to make use of the truth.
    She supposed their attitude