The Romanov Prophecy by Steve Berry (2004)

 Russia’s Nicholas II, his wife Alexandra, and their five children were murdered in Yekaterinburg on 17 July 1918.  The remains of Nicholas II and his family were exhumed in July 1991.  Two of the bodies of the imperial children, however, were not found in the mass grave.

Berry’s the Romanov Prophecy sits on the premise that the Crown Prince Alexei and the Princess Anastasia may have somehow managed to escape.

Enter Miles Lord, a lawyer of Pridgen & Woodworth’s International Division, whose  assignment is to support the claim of Stefan Baklanov’s claim to the Russian throne.  Russia, tired of its political experiments, is now ready to give monarchy another chance.

Baklanov, a Romanov by birth, is the leading contender for selection by the Tsarist Commission.  Since Baklanov is heavily entrenched with Western businesses, many of which are Pridgen & Woodworth’s clients, the law firm sent Lord to make sure that there is nothing that could impugn Baklanov’s claim.

A series of attempts against Lord’s life, old documents, and Rasputin’s prophecy, however, has led Lord to believe that there is something that could severely threaten Baklanov’s chance at the Russian throne: two of the imperial children have survived and that their progeny are out there biding their time.

Romanov Prophecy is a fast-past paced, heart-pumping book hard to put down. Be ready to suspend disbelief that Russia wants to revert to monarchy and that Rasputin was anything but a charlatan. 

Romanov Prophecy is highly recommended reading for long layovers at airports.

POSTSCRIPT:  Caty Petersen, a Filipina, recently brought forth a claim that her grandmother was the Princess Anastasia.  According to Petersen, her grandmother arrived by boat in the Philippines and stayed for a time with an orphanage before marrying her grandfather. The problem with this claim is that a DNA testing in 2007 showed that the remains of two children found in a separate grave about 70 meters away from the mass grave of the Romanovs rendered irrefutable that these were the two children who for a long time were thought to have escaped.