The Ring of the Queen (The Lost Tsar Trilogy Book 1) Read online

  Part IX

  That’s part of the excitement of life – new people, new experiences.

  -Kirsten Dunst

  It was 6 pm Moscow time when we were to arrive. I’d had the world clock on my phone monitoring different time zones all the way there. It was only 11 am at home. I knew that it would take me a few days to get used to the time change. Where I lived, we’d only been doing daylight savings time for a few years, much less all the time zones that we had just crossed. I looked out the window and wondered why the voice on the intercom hadn’t said anything about landing yet. We’d been right on time with all of our flights.

  “Good evening ladies and gentlemen,” the voice said in Russian. “We are about to begin our descent into Domodedovo Airport. We were scheduled to land at Sheremetyevo II International Airport, but there are some disturbances there. We apologize for any inconvenience. We will be landing in approximately 20 minutes.”

  The arrangements that Tania and I had made said that someone would be at the airport to pick us up. I didn’t know if they had been notified, or if they had been monitoring a web site with updates. I hoped that someone would still be there to pick us up. I also wondered what on Earth was going on at the other airport that would cause flights to be diverted.

  I pressed the call button for the attendant. A lovely attendant who had been serving us drinks and snacks the whole way came to us. She was an attractive Slavic woman with dark hair and dark eyes. She was tall and wore the Aeroflot uniform with style.

  “What can I do for you?” the attendant asked me.

  “I hate to be a bother, but I had a question. This is our first time out of the United States, and our first time flying,” I explained, motioning to Tania to indicate that I was attempting to speak for both of us. “I was just wondering if you knew what was causing us to be rerouted to another airport. We were supposed to be picked up by someone from Moscow University.”

  “I do apologize,” the attendant replied. “We were told to reroute because of protests at Sheremetyevo II.”

  “What kind of protest would be going on at the airport?” I asked.

  “It’s my understanding that there is a protest for the Tsarist movement going on there, and it’s getting a bit out of hand.”

  “Are they rerouting all the incoming flights?” Tania asked.

  “No, only a few,” the attendant replied.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  The attendant walked away and I immediately started to get my phone out.

  “What makes you think your phone will work up here and in Russia?” Tania asked me.

  “It’s not a cell phone, it’s a Sat phone. I’m calling my mom to see if she’s seen anything on the news about this. She’ll be freaking out if she has,” I explained.

  It took a while for the call to go through, but soon I heard it ringing. My mom answered quickly.

  “Stacey? What’s going on? Did you change your mind? Are you on your way home?” mom asked.

  “No, I just wanted to tell you that we are about to land in Moscow. I thought you might be worried,” I replied.

  “Well of course I’m worried. Why did you call to see if I was worried? What’s going on?” mom asked.

  “They rerouted us because of some protests; it’s no big deal,” I said. “There’s another perfectly good airport right in town where we can land.”

  “I’m looking at every news channel I can find. There’s nothing on about it,” mom said. “Can I ask, is it just your plane or all flights that are being rerouted?”

  A little voice went off in the back of my head that I couldn’t explain. “Why would you ask that?”

  “I was just curious.”

  “The attendant said that it was some but not all,” I explained.

  “Honey, there’s something that I should have told you before…” my mother started.

  “We are beginning our final descent into Domodedovo Airport,” the voice on the intercom said. “Please turn off any electronic devices, make sure you return to your seats and fasten your seatbelts, and return you seats and tray tables to the upright and secure positions. We should be landing in approximately 12 minutes. Thank you.”

  “Mom, I gotta go. They said to turn off all our devices. I’ll call you soon,” I told her.

  “Honey wait,” mom tried to start to talk to me.

  “I have to go, love you.” I turned off the phone. I didn’t want the first thing that happened to me in Moscow to be that I got yelled at by the flight staff.

  The landing was pretty smooth. I thought that maybe they should learn how to do that in Frankfurt. That landing had been rough. They said that it was because of the wind, but I wondered. I looked out the window. It was dark, so I didn’t see much. There were a lot of lights in certain places. It wasn’t like the other airports we’d flown to that had lights everywhere and looked like some space station on the moon. It had it dark spots. I immediately assessed that all airports were in fact not alike. I’d been wrong about that.

  The attendant walked to our row as soon as the plane hit the ground. “Ladies, your transport will be meeting you at this airport. They were notified of the changes. I thought you would want to know that you had a ride.”

  “Thank you so much,” I replied. “Isn’t that nice of her,” I said to Tania.

  “How did she know what was going on with us?” Tania asked. “Why didn’t she have any messages for anyone else? Don’t you find that weird?”

  “I think you’re being paranoid,” I told her. “How many times have you told me that you thought that there was some kind of plot going on? Sometimes I think you’re a little sensitive. Besides, I told her that we were supposed to have a ride.”

  “I just have this thing where red flags fly the minute I think that someone has too much information about me. It freaks me out,” Tania replied.

  “Something tells me you’ve come to the wrong place,” I told her.

  We both watched out the window as the plane taxied to our gate. I was surprised to see workers rolling the stairs out to the plane. At all of the other airports there had been jet ways that attached to the plane where the door opened. I hadn’t flown before, but from what I’d seen on television; I was pretty sure that stairs were old fashioned.

  I exited the plane with Tania right behind me. I’d heard that it was cold in Moscow in the winter time, but wow. When I stepped onto that stairway, I thought my face was going to freeze. They hadn’t said how cold it was before we landed as they had at the other airports. I wondered if they didn’t know or if they just didn’t want to tell us. Honestly, I didn’t want to know what the temperature was, nor did I want to know what the wind chill was. The wind was blowing like crazy, almost knocking us over as we walked to the door that went to our gate at the airport.

  When we walked into the airport, we immediately saw a desk with a man at it that looked like a military officer. He had on this military styled uniform and he looked really serious. I couldn’t tell if he was serious looking by nature, or if he was annoyed.

  “Passports,” the man said with his hand out when we reached his counter.

  I handed him my passport.

  “Visa,” he said.

  I handed him my Visa.

  “Do you have anything to declare?” he asked.

  “No,” I replied.

  “Welcome to Moskva.”

  Tania went through the same procedure, and we were on our way. We found our way to the baggage area and got our bags. We didn’t walk two feet before we were approached by a good looking man. He was everything a girl would want. He was tall, dark haired, brown eyes, well dressed in jeans and a button down shirt. He was smiling the minute I saw him.

  “Hello, welcome to Moscow!” he said, shaking hands with me and then with Tania. “Sorry about all the fuss with the airport change and all. I hope you had a pleasant flight.”

  Tania and I exchanged p
uzzled looks. “Yes, our flights were fine,” I said.

  “Who are you?” Tania asked.

  His face turned red. “Oh my, I’m sorry. My name is Steve Zemecki. Dr. Steve Zemecki. I’m here to pick you up and take you to the university.”

  “You’re not Russian,” Tania said. “What the hell is going on?”

  Dr. Zemecki smiled. “My apologies. You’re right. I’m not Russian. I’m from Brooklyn.”

  “Great, I fly half way around the world to learn something in Russia and run into some expat from New York,” Tania groaned.

  “Tania!” I snapped at her. “Be nice.”

  “I’m not nice,” she said. “I’m from Boston. I tell it like it is.”

  “My apologies,” Dr. Zemecki said. “I would be Russian if I could. As it stands, how about I help you to the van with your bags and we get you safely tucked into your dorm room at the university? The van is right this way.”

  He motioned to the door that we were nearing as we walked and talked. He took Tania’s bag from her and hurried along. I wondered why he seemed to be in such a rush. I also wondered how he knew who we were. I’d sent no pictures along.

  “You seem to be in a rush,” I said. “This doesn’t have anything to do with the protests at the other airport that the attendant told us about, does it?”

  “Maybe a little,” he said as he walked quickly out the door. “It was getting pretty rowdy at the other airport from what I understand.”

  The van that he opened in the loading area was just a brown van. It didn’t say anything about the university on it and it looked like it had seen way better days.

  “Are you sure you’re from the university?” I asked.

  “Yeah, and how do you know who we are?” Tania added.

  Dr. Zemecki stopped and looked at us. “I assure you ladies that I am from the university. I got files on all the students before admitting you to the class. There were pictures in your files from your other schools. Besides, you dress like Americans.”

  I couldn’t argue with that. Even I had noticed that we stuck out in the crowd. Russians dressed very differently than we did. They wore more utilitarian clothing. It was more geared for the freezing cold weather than ours was. The cold was going to kill me for the next three weeks. I was more sure of it every time I walked outside and got a good gust of wind in the face.

  “Fine,” Tania said to Dr. Zemecki. She started to help him load our bags into the van.

  I noticed something out of the corner of my eye. When I looked not far down the walk from the area where the van was parked, I saw a small group of people. They were holding signs, and I assumed that they must be more protestors.

  I motioned to the group. “What are they protesting,” I asked Dr. Zemecki.

  “Recently there’s been a movement to reinstate a Tsar,” he explained. “They don’t like the president here. I don’t blame them. He seems to be a real ass.”

  “So, how many protests are there going on around here?” I asked.

  “You see them here and there,” Dr. Zemecki replied. “They gather with their little posters about finding a Tsar.”

  Dr. Zemecki rushed us into the van and pulled away from the curb. I was really starting to wonder what was going on. The posters were easy for me to read. They said, “Welcome to Moscow.”

  The Ring of the Queen