The Relic by Evelyn Anthony Read Free Book Online

navigating the little inlets and outcrops of rock around the coast. She was an apt pupil; she loved the sea and had no fear of it.
    The little boat had been replaced by a motor cruiser. Soon it was Lucy who sailed to St Malo and Yuri who crewed happily for her. They spent their holidays at sea; he had taught her to navigate and she took them down to the south of France the year before his last illness.
    She thought of that time, watching the sea and the boats below. They had been so happy together, so deeply companionable. She’d had boyfriends, but no one had engaged her heart. That belonged to Yuri and to the man whose faded photograph was still pinned on her bedroom wall. The face haunted her; she kept it as others kept an icon, to remind them of their faith and to give them strength. Imprisoned, persecuted, defiant to the last, Dimitri Volkov was the dream that hadn’t faded like his photograph. Mischa was wrong to doubt. Volkov hadn’t changed.
    She thought of the ancient cross, in its dark hiding place. A thousand years ago it had been given by the tyrant Vladimir when he converted to the Christian faith. Ever since, men had woven legends around it and invoked its mystical powers. Dark superstitions had invested the cross with a God-given power to bless or curse. No Tsar dared take the oath at his coronation without holding it in his right hand. Hands tainted by murder and sacrilege had reached out to seize and destroy it. But the shrine was empty. The priest who had been its guardian had died in torment rather than betray where it was hidden.
    A life-span later, the old tyranny was crumbling. A people who had never known freedom were demanding it. All it needed was a man of vision and heroic courage to bring the cross back in triumph to Russia, to rally the millions of Ukrainians against the power of Moscow. Volkov was that man.
    It was a smooth flight the next morning. Lucy landed at Geneva airport and took a taxi to Les Trois Fontaines, a modest family hotel in the Rue de la Tour Maitresse. The weather was glorious. It was a lovely city, built round the southern end of the spectacular lake. Her hotel room was pleasant and not too expensive. She explained to the proprietress that she was on a working holiday and would need to rent an apartment.
    The first estate agent she visited suggested several properties, but none was suitable. Too smart and highly priced, or too geared to short-term family lets. There was one, the girl suggested, that might suit her at Petit Saconnex, but it was for a six-month tenure. Lucy didn’t argue. The setting had to be right. Unobtrusive but congenial. The time didn’t matter.
    Volkov couldn’t be won without careful preparation. He had to accept this strange emissary, to trust her. And she needed a place where they could meet without attracting attention.
    She arranged to view the apartment the next day and went on a brief tour of the city. That evening she sought out the proprietress. Unlike many Swiss, Madame liked to gossip. She accepted Lucy’s explanation that she was a journalist on a popular English women’s magazine.
    A journalist with a special assignment. Her curiosity was aroused. A film star? There were plenty living in the region. Pop singer, perhaps? No, Lucy said, hesitating before she let Madame in to her secret. Professor Volkov, the famous Soviet dissident who had been exiled from Russia—her magazine wanted an interview with him that would exploit the women’s angle. Nothing political, Lucy shrugged that aside. Just domestic details. How he’d adjusted … what were his hobbies? That kind of thing.
    Madame nodded her agreement. Just the sort of thing she would like to read about someone so well known. ‘But, he never gives interviews. Never been seen on TV,’ she said. ‘I remember there was an uproar in the Press when he came here first … must have been several years ago. But he wouldn’t see anyone or