He began thinking about Val and wondering how she would receive the news of this latest Romanov find. He knew he had been rude in not replying when she wrote to him in a spirit of friendship. So many years had passed that she might be dead by now, although he reckoned she had been a good twenty years younger than him. That meant she was only in her late sixties; he himself had reached the grand old age of eighty-eight and was still amazed to think he had made it into the twenty-first century. He’d always assumed he’d be dead by then.

Over dinner that evening, he asked his grandson, “If I wanted to track down a woman who used to work at Sydney University, would that be easy to do?”

“What’s her name?” Misha asked, picking up his smartphone.

“Val Scott. She was a professor of history.”

Within seconds, Misha had found her. “Scott was her maiden name. Her married name is Koskov. Do you want to email her?”

Ludmilla gave Stepan an amused look. “After all this time?”

Stepan gave a shrug. “I don’t know. Not email. No.” If she lived in the Leningrad area, he would have asked her for a cup of coffee, but there was too much to say to put it in an email.

“We could ask if she wants to do a Skype call,” Misha suggested. Stepan looked puzzled, so he continued, “It’s a video telephone call where you can see each other on the computer screen.”

Stepan muttered, “What will they think of next?” Why was he even considering contacting her after all this time? Perhaps he felt he owed her an apology for his brusqueness and for not replying to her letters. He could tell her he had read her thesis, and they could laugh at all the experts who’d gotten it wrong over the Romanov graves.

“Sydney is eight hours ahead,” Misha said, having found that information on his phone. “If you call in the morning our time, it will be evening for her.”

“She probably won’t want to speak to me,” Stepan said. Anyway, what would he say to her? He couldn’t tell her that their father had been a rapist. There was no need for her to know.

“I’ll email and ask her if she would like to Skype,” Misha said, typing away with impressive speed.

“Remind her that we met in the Peterhof palace in 1976 when she brought in a sun, moon, and stars box,” Stepan said.

“Done!” Misha replied.

Stepan pursed his lips. What would be would be.

He didn’t have long to wait. When he arrived at breakfast the next morning, Misha grinned. “Your lady friend in Sydney says yes, she would love to talk to you. She’s sent her Skype address. Want to do it this morning?”