Claim the Crown Read online

  Claim the Crown

  Carla Neggers

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Copyright © 2019 by Carla Neggers

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  To my brothers: Jacob, Mark, Jeffrey

  To my sisters: Bonnie, Hilda, Gretchen

  And to our parents, Leo and Florine,

  who chased the bats for us when we were little.

  Prologue

  Budapest, 1956

  The young American covered her mouth as she hurried past another pile of smoldering rubble. Her turquoise eyes, usually so clear and alert, were watery, stinging from the acrid smoke, and her lungs burned. She wanted desperately to run, to be gone. But she restricted her pace to a brisk walk. She couldn’t call attention to herself now. She couldn’t panic.

  She focused her thoughts on the people huddled in the shadowed buildings around her. Most of them wouldn’t be leaving, not tonight, not ever, but they had survived centuries of this. She wondered how. Why didn’t they just give up? Only eleven years ago, in the last gasps of World War II, the Germans and the Russians had waged a bloody confrontation with Budapest as the battlefield. Most of the old city on the Danube had been reduced to ruins. The Germans had left; the Russians stayed.

  Now once again, here were the tanks, the shelling, the destruction, the death.

  And yet as she moved through the gray, shattered streets, she, a stranger, could sense the underlying tenacity of the people. Magyars, the Hungarians call themselves. Over the centuries, they had outlasted the Mongols, the Turks, the Austrians. Now they would outlast the Russians.

  Down a quiet, narrow alley, she found the tiny stone church. It was cold inside, and dark. She kept her hood pulled over her auburn curls. Old men and women hunched their shoulders, praying. Wide-eyed, children looked up at the echo of her footsteps.

  She remembered the woman she had seen in the park, not a week ago, crying as she rushed her two small children past the bloated corpses hanging from the trees. The men had been lynched, their bodies left to rot, a testament to the depth of anger of the Hungarian people. They had been members of the hated state secret police, the Államvédelmi Hivatal, known simply, always with a shudder, as the ÁVH. Through the ÁVH, the Soviet Union and its hardline Stalinist allies in Hungary had carried out a decade of terror against the very people they claimed to have liberated. They were responsible for thousands of tortures, deportations, forced relocations, imprisonments, executions. During their brief moment of power, when the revolution against the Russians looked as if it might succeed, some had seized the chance to wreak vengeance against the murderers of the ÁVH.

  “Szemét gyilkosok,” the woman in the park had said. Filthy murderers. Was she speaking of the ÁVH men rotting in the sun? Or the lynch mob? Perhaps it didn’t matter. There was pain in her gaunt face, and she tried to cover the eyes of her children.

  The fat priest came forward in the stillness of the church. He spoke little English, and he was arrogant. He didn’t like the auburn-haired, troublesome American. She didn’t like him. She’d met him during her first days in Budapest, when the ancient city—the Paris of the East—was filled with hope and energy, and Hungarians still believed they could oust the Soviets from their country.

  How far they’d all plunged in just two weeks!

  What had begun spontaneously—without any real plan, without any real leaders—was ending in tragedy, violence and broken dreams. Thousands had died, and now many thousands were being arrested and tens of thousands were fleeing their homeland. It was all so pathetically clear now. There would be no help from the West. There would be no formation of a multiparty coalition government that would lead Hungary into the future. No withdrawal of Hungary from the Warsaw Pact. No declaration of Hungarian neutrality.

  Hungary was back in the Soviet bloc: a satellite.

  Lithe and unconventionally beautiful, the American smiled nervously at the red-faced priest, and suddenly she had to choke back her guilt, for she knew he had been right about her, after all. He had told the others she was silly and dangerous, and she was. She had come to Budapest as a lark.

  Now she was in danger of losing everything.

  Dipping into the pocket of her grimy cashmere coat, she withdrew the tiny replica of an ornate gold crown. She didn’t know what kind of crown it was, or what it meant, only that she had been told not to lose it. “It’s your path to freedom...” That had sounded so melodramatic.

  She handed the crown to the priest, and spoke in a whisper. “I wish to see orült szerzetes.” The mad monk. She had fancied him as a latter-day Scarlet Pimpernel, a romantic hero. Oh, Lord, how naive could she have been!

  The priest nodded reluctantly toward the confessional. She mumbled her thanks and slipped behind the faded velvet curtain.

  She felt weak. Slowly she knelt.

  The screen slid back. Behind it, she could only see shadows. But he was there. She felt his presence.

  A voice said in quiet, careful English, “You shouldn’t have come.”

  “I had to.”

  She hated the quaver in her voice. She had been afraid—was afraid, now—but exhilarated, too. She thrived on challenge, adventure, excitement. Having babies, redecorating houses, devoting herself to the right charities, the right friends, the right man—that was all right for other women, but not for her. This was for her.

  Licking her lips, she rushed on. “They said you won’t be coming with us. It’s not true, is it?”

  There was no hesitation. “Yes. It’s true.”

  “But you have to come! If you stay here you’ll be killed!”

  “I must stay.”

  Her heart pounded and she began to shiver uncontrollably, her hands twisting together in a mockery of prayer. She stared through the screen and tried to distinguish the outline of his face among the shadows.

  “You must be brave,” he said. She could feel his warm smile. “One day, perhaps.”

  And that was all.

  Unable to speak, she watched the screen slide shut. There was fear in her eyes, she knew. And no hope.

  1

  With a flagrant disregard for the sweltering heat, Ashley Wakefield dashed down the six steps of her regal brick building on the flats of Beacon Hill. She had shut her cream-colored door with a firm pull and now moved quickly, her two-inch heels clicking on the brick sidewalk. There had been a time when anything more glamorous than a pair of old sneakers had defeated her. But that had changed. So much had.

  She fishe
d her keys from an outer pocket of her Hermes leather handbag, singled out the one she wanted, and stuck it in the lock of the maroon Jaguar XJS parked unceremoniously on the curb. She paid dearly for space in a parking garage—more than what her rent used to be—but if she found a spot on lower Chestnut Street, she grabbed it. She didn’t worry about car thieves. If someone stole the Jag, she’d buy another. It was only a car.

  As she bent slightly to open the door, a few strands of her long, very dark hair loosened from her French twist, her only concession to the sticky weather, and dropped into her face. She brushed them impatiently away.

  To her left, just beyond the hood of the car, there was a clicking noise. Then, “Got it!”

  She looked around and sighed. Him again. The skinny photographer with the high-water jeans. He’d been wearing the same outfit when she’d first encountered him in Newport a few weeks ago. One of the infuriating paparazzi following the Newport set, he’d popped out from nowhere and snapped a picture of her in a batik sarong skirt and bandeau. She’d decided it was just one of those unfortunate things and promptly forgotten the incident.

  Then, a week later, he’d turned up at a gala event at Tanglewood in the Berkshires and, she supposed, got any number of shots of her in an elegant, understated Bill Blass evening gown. She’d wondered if it were just a coincidence, but somehow doubted that.

  The following week he was there, in New York, when she headed into the gargantuan building on Central Park South where she had a pied-a-terre, and he’d caught her laden with bags and boxes from Bergdorf Goodman. It was obviously not a coincidence. But as she rarely shopped, it was as if he were photographing someone else. Was she that slender blue-eyed woman in the white sundress?

  It was now clear she was a special target for him. As they went into the dog days of August, he’d turned up at Touchstone Communications, the Boston consulting firm of which Ashley was founder and president. He hadn’t ventured inside. He’d merely lurked in the main lobby of the building until she’d emerged with one of the firm’s more famous clients. And then he’d pounced, clicking off a half dozen shots while Ashley had fumed.

  She did not like having her picture taken.

  Now he was on her doorstep. She supposed she wouldn’t get much sympathy from her friends: they’d warned her about having her name, address and phone number listed in the Boston white pages. You’re rich, they told her. You have to act rich.

  But that wasn’t Ashley’s style.

  The little worm was grinning at her. “Next time you could smile, you know.”

  She opened the car door wide. Dressed in a raw silk suit and a tissue linen shell, she looked the model female executive—except for her eyes, which were too large and too bright and too vivid a shade of blue. Her face had strong angular features, and she was slim through the hips, and at five six, not tall. People said she had a striking personality: once met, she wasn’t easily forgotten.

  “Next time,” she said, “I could smash your camera over your head.”

  “I could write that down.”

  “Go ahead.” Since his photographs of her had yet to appear in any periodical she knew of, she had decided he was little more than a desperate pest, looking for his first big break. Well, it wouldn’t be her.

  He shifted his weight onto one leg. “Quite the ice princess, huh?”

  “I’m not a princess, Mr.—” She wished she could get his name.

  But he didn’t introduce himself. “Then what are you? You know, you had a photographer from the Post believing you discovered treasure on a sunken Spanish galleon.”

  So he knew about that. Ashley was surprised. That had been one of her many indiscretions, long regretted, but preferable to the truth. People always wanted to know where she came from. What difference did it make? “I’m just a hardworking woman.”

  “Yeah. Right.”

  She climbed into the car, tucked her loose hairs back into her twist and turned the key in the ignition. The photographer patted the hood. “Don’t drive too fast,” he said.

  It was her pleasure to screech out into Chestnut Street and watch him scamper back onto the sidewalk, out of her way.

  * * *

  After Ashley Wakefield buzzed off in her sporty Jaguar, Rob Gazelle walked on back to his hotel at Copley Place, one of the new high-class urban malls sprouting up in city after city. He immediately called Sybil Morgenstern. It was almost six o’clock on a sweaty Tuesday, but he knew Sybil would be in her sleek Madison Avenue office, puffing away on one of the skinny brown cigarettes she smoked by the dozen. Rob never touched the things. Sybil was the editor in chief of You magazine, and scores of Rob’s ill-gotten photographs had graced her covers. It was a glossy national weekly that catered to the public’s insatiable curiosity about celebrities. No one topped Sybil for being able to ferret out the latest juicy tidbits about the rich and the famous, but she wasn’t satisfied with stopping there.

  Sybil Morgenstern had to create celebrities.

  She answered the phone herself. Rob stretched out on his bed. “Hey, Syb, how you doing?”

  “What is it, Gazelle?”

  No small talk for Sybil. She had a loud, demanding voice and a cutting wit, and as far as Rob knew, he was the only one who ever got away with calling her Syb. That was because he was the best in the business.

  But when he could no longer produce, she’d squash him like the cockroach she kept telling him he was.

  Going after Ashley Wakefield had been Sybil’s idea.

  “I’ve got some new shots of our mystery lady.”

  “Any info?”

  “Getting there.”

  Sybil hissed with impatience. “For heaven's sake, Rob, how long am I going to have to wait? All I need is one thing I can use to pin her down.”

  “She’s a stunner, Syb.”

  “I know that.”

  “But she’s skittish. She doesn’t like having her picture taken. If we move too fast, we’ll lose her.”

  “Damn.”

  “Trust me, Syb. Look, next Saturday she’s going to be at the opening of this new wing at the New England Oceanographic Institute. She’s introducing the governor, and fat asses from all over New England are going to be there. I know fish aren’t your thing, Syb, but this place is supposed to have the biggest exhibit tank in the world and all our Ashley’s fish buddies ought to be there. I should be able to get something. Can you wrangle me a press pass?”

  Sybil didn’t even hesitate. “Done.”

  * * *

  Ashley made Amherst, a college town and farming community in west central Massachusetts, in less than two hours. She drove along the back roads she knew so well to the Wakefield Farm, which occupied a hundred acres in the fertile Connecticut River Valley. In spite of soaring land values in the area, it was still a working farm, producing vegetables for market, a few eggs, lambs, wool, just getting by, as it always had, as far back as she could remember.

  The farmhouse itself was old, white with red shutters, but not a classic antique. Giant maple trees shaded the front yard, which needed mowing. Close to the side of the house was a small red shed, and beyond it a kitchen garden and a dozen fruit trees. The land rose gently behind the house, where there were a red barn, a chicken coop, pigpen, sheep pen and, farther up, fields and woods.

  Ashley parked her Jaguar in the horseshoe-shaped dirt driveway, behind the battered yellow pickup her uncle had driven for years. It was one of two trucks he’d owned since coming to the farm thirty years ago. The first he had driven up from Tennessee, with his infant niece and nephew strapped into the front seat beside him, now his to raise. His name was Bartholomew Wakefield, but Ashley and her twin brother, David, had found Uncle Bartholomew an impossibility, and they’d always called him Barky. Now everyone did, except bill collectors and the IRS.

  The grass was yellowing in the late summer sun, and the air was still and filled with the smells of the farm. Vegetables were piled on and around the flat wooden trailer that stood on the edge of
the driveway. People could just stop and serve themselves, weighing their produce on the old rusted scale, leaving their money in the three-pound Maxwell House coffee can.

  With her high heels sinking slightly in the soft grass, Ashley walked up behind the shed, where Barky was hanging threadbare sheets on his handmade clothesline. She pulled off her jacket and hung it by one finger over her shoulder. She should have changed, she thought. Her businesslike, urban clothes just seemed to emphasize the differences between them, Barky the farmer, Ashley the...the what? Executive, jet setter, city girl, philanthropist? Sometimes she didn’t know.

  “Hi, Barky.”

  He shook out a sheet. She could remember hanging that very same sheet back when she was a teenager. She didn’t know why it hadn’t fallen apart by now, given her uncle’s penchant for hanging wash in any manner of weather. He didn’t believe in clothes dryers.

  Ashley herself owned Porthault linens and replaced them nearly every year. Barky had refused her discards, or even to let her buy him new ones. The old ones, he insisted, still had plenty of wear in them.

  “Yaa, hello,” he said in his distinctive accent. He had been born in Poland, son of a Polish woman, and emigrated to his father’s native England before World War II, and then, after the war, to the United States. His accent reflected the different places he’d lived.

  He snapped two clothespins onto the sheet and smoothed it out as it hung limp in the hot, still air. He didn’t seem surprised to see his niece on a Tuesday afternoon—didn’t, in fact, seem surprised to see her at all. She could come and go as she pleased, and that was fine with him. Tumultuous as her life might be, fraught with questions and complexities, the world of Bartholomew Wakefield never changed. He tended his gardens, his animals, his wood stoves, and life went on. He was a stump of a man, with a fringe of golden brown hair and warm golden brown eyes and weather-beaten skin. He had a long prominent nose that might have been ugly on anyone else, but on him was a source of strength and character in his face. As always, he wore baggy denim work pants, a dark-colored BVD T-shirt—today’s was navy blue—and sneakers. He had on a Red Sox cap.