Requiem For a Glass Heart (12 page)

“Yes, incredibly, it is,” he said, clearly amazed.

Irina laughed casually and turned again to the painting. “The key to restoration, of course, is knowing the chemistry of the pigments you are working with,” she went on. “You could destroy a painting in seconds if you were ignorant of the composition and properties of its original pigments.” She stared a moment at the painting in front of her. “The red in that horseman’s robe, for instance, is vermillion, which in its natural mineral form is called cinnabar, the crystalline form of mercuric sulfide. But the Chinese had discovered a dry-process vermillion—synthetic cinnabar—by combining mercury, which is derived from cinnabar, and sulfur, which creates a black product, and subliming it to form the red modification called vermillion. It is a relatively stable pigment, but capricious. Sometimes it holds its color for centuries …but sometimes not.”

Wei was looking at her as if he couldn’t believe his ears. Irina moved to the next work.

“This is of the Nanga school. I’m guessing the artist is Watanabe Kazan, Japanese, nineteenth century.”

“Good God … you are absolutely right.”

“The color of that kimono is made with malachite, a
moderately permanent pigment. Under certain conditions it tends to blacken, but the malachite areas on frescoes from medieval Italy are still quite brilliant.”

She moved to the next painting. “I have no doubt about the identity of this artist. Ishikawa Toyonubu, Japanese, eighteenth century.”

Wei nodded, beaming.

“Look at the white in the fleshtones on this courtesan. That is achieved by the use of a pigment made of pulverized oyster shells called
gofun.
This makes a more subdued white than the heavy metal whites and enables the creation of these subtle but almost luminous fleshtones. This is a superb example, too. You should be proud of this one especially.”

If Irina had had any doubts about winning Wei’s acceptance, they faded rapidly with each disquisition as she moved from picture to picture. Several times she did not know, or pretended not to know, an artist or a date, which gave Wei an opportunity to reciprocate with his own expertise. Though she had been terrified that she would never be able to recall enough of her long-out-of-use scholarship to impress him, she was delighted to find that the more she talked, the more she remembered. And in truth, if she got some technical bit of information wrong about this pigment or that one, she had no real fear that Wei could possibly detect the bobble.

They had dinner together in a small dining room not far from the library, served by silent French maids who wore only their stockings, no shoes. The food arrived silently and the used tableware disappeared silently, and never during the evening did she observe Wei giving even the subtlest signal to tell them when to come and go.

Wei was indeed a beguiling man, and it was clear to her that he was finding the evening much to his liking. Krupatin, Irina now realized, had not done this with any lack of cunning. Keeping her in the dark about Wei’s knowledge of her art training was a stroke of genius. This last-minute discovery, while disconcerting for her initially, provided a spontaneity that might not have been present if she had been allowed to plan everything down to the last detail. Not only did she recover beautifully, but the concentration she had to summon to do that allowed Wei to see her at her least calculating, and she found the instant reimmersion in her old profession stimulating in a way that was surprisingly refreshing. And she had
to admit, Wei was unabashedly charmed by her. Again Krupatin had been shrewd. He had given Wei an evening to remember, combining his two passions: art and Western women.

But in his typical disregard for Irina, Krupatin had not foreseen everything. Irina herself was finding the evening stimulating. It was only with the greatest difficulty that she reminded herself to do her job. Wei was a supremely self-confident man and had the casual self-assurance of those who have been wealthy from childhood and have never known anything else. He had that immaculate sexuality that was peculiar to Asian men, appearing meticulous in his dress and manner, his dinner jacket crisply cut to his compact physique. He had only the first creases of crow’s feet at the corners of his eyes to hint that he was not as young as he seemed.

Irina watched him carefully. For some reason he never ate all of any course put in front of him. Once she even saw him start to eat a last bite of something, then stop himself and lay down his fork. He was left-handed and wore a carved gold ring with a Ceylon-cut ruby on the finger where a wedding band should have been. Sometimes he tended to listen to her talk by turning his head slightly to his right, as though he had better hearing in his left ear.

Twice during the evening a telephone was brought to him at the table, with someone already on the line. Irina never heard a telephone ring, and neither time did he indicate any surprise or impatience at being interrupted. Both times he apologized to her, put the telephone to his ear—his left ear—and began talking without verifying who was on the line. He spoke in Chinese and seemed to give information and receive none. His tone of voice was the same as he was using with her: gentle, polite, relaxed.

Irina found herself actually intrigued by him, or by the evening in general, and had to remind herself of the fate of his three mistresses. She also found herself wondering if perhaps the demise of these women was not a bit of disinformation Krupatin had added to Wei’s dossier as a hedge against the possibility that Irina might not be sufficiently repulsed by the man she was being positioned to kill.

“D
ID YOU SLEEP WELL?” HE ASKED.

The terrace was shady, but the late morning sun was falling obliquely through the towering chestnut trees that predominated in the wooded grounds onto the lawn below. The perimeter of the lawn and the grounds was made up of thick shrubbery that formed a barrier inside the wrought-iron fence that faced the Rue Férou.

“Very well,” she said, approaching the table. “Thank you.”

She had been awakened by an Asian maid with coffee on a silver tray. The maid had informed her that Monsieur Wei wished her to join him on the terrace in forty-five minutes. Did Madame want her to run her bath? No. Did Madame want her to run the shower? No. Did she need any assistance in the bath? No. Did she need assistance dressing? No. Very well. If Madame required anything, please ring number six on the telephone.

“Sometimes a strange city, a strange bed, can be disconcerting,” he said, standing to hold her chair as she sat at the marble-topped table.

“It never bothers me,” she said. “Besides, Paris is no strange city to me.”

Wei raised his eyebrows inquisitively.

“I lived here for over a year, not that long ago,” she explained. “Ever since then it’s been a friendly city to me.”

“But you live in St. Petersburg now,” Wei said. “Coffee?”

“Please. Yes, St. Petersburg is my home. Most of the time, anyway.”

“You travel a great deal, then?”

“A good bit,” she said.

They chatted a few minutes over coffee while she ate a few samplings from the tray of pastries on the table. She noticed
Le Monde and
the London
Times
at his elbow, each folded several times after having been read. Crows called from the tallest trees on the grounds, and faintly in the background, barely audible, the noises of Paris seeped through the woods.

After she had toyed with her food for a sufficient length of time, Wei turned his chair sideways to the table and faced her, crossing his legs, his thin hand on a fresh cup of coffee.

“This is very unusual, what Sergei wants to do,” he said without preamble.

“What’s that?” she asked, to give herself a second.

Wei smiled as though he knew she was being disingenuous. “Wanting to employ a ‘trusted emissary.’”

“If you didn’t insist on meeting in the U.S., it wouldn’t be necessary,” she said.

“Perhaps I will change my mind.”

She shrugged and nodded as if to say, yes, that would do it.

“Have you done this sort of thing for him before?”

“Yes, this sort of thing.”

“I think he is being paranoid.”

“Do you?”

“What do you think?”

“I have found that more often than not, Sergei Krupatin knows exactly what he is doing.”

He smiled. “Well said. Then you don’t think he is being paranoid.”

“You must know, Monsieur Wei, how I must answer that.”

Wei stared at her. She had no idea how to read his expression, which hinted, perhaps, at admiration.

“Sergei did not tell me how he knows you.”

She looked at him and sipped her coffee, keeping her eyes on him over the rim of her cup. He was smiling faintly.

“Really?”

“No.”

She put down her cup and sat back in her chair. “He must have thought it wasn’t important.”

“Perhaps. But still, I would like to know.”

She regarded him a moment, and then she felt that it was her turn to smile. “Why?”

But Wei was not so easily drawn out either.

“How long have you known him?”

She didn’t want to answer this. Her sense of self-preservation warned her that she should not give him any more information than she could possibly afford.

“I hardly think that’s relevant,” she said.

“But if I think it is, that’s what is important, isn’t it?”

She looked at him, paused, then slowly pushed her coffee cup away from her. “Monsieur Wei, I am a very private person. I feel sure that is something you can appreciate. With all respect, I do not want myself investigated any more than you surely must have done already.” He did not react to this. “I am agreeing to do this for Sergei Krupatin because I owe him a favor, not because I have to. But my need to repay that favor is not greater than my own desire for privacy. If you are not satisfied with me as you find me, you should tell Sergei Krupatin, and he will find someone else for this role. And I will not be offended, I assure you.”

As if by theatrical cue, bells began tolling from St.-Sulpice at the end of Rue Férou, and others, more faintly, from St.-Germain-des-Prés, nearer the Seine.

Wei’s expression had grown more serious as she spoke, but when she finished and the bells lilted in the clear morning air, he let a placid smile return to his smooth Asian features.

“I can see why Sergei has chosen you,” he said with a slight nod of acquiescence. “But please excuse me. I did not want to make this sound like an inquisition. Perhaps the circumstances here have made this more awkward than necessary. My interest, Olya, is more personal than professional. I am not interrogating you. I am … well, simply curious, as a man is curious about a woman because she is a woman, not an emissary.”

She was taken aback. It was not a staged reaction, but it was in fact the proper response. She could see this in his face.

“I simply would like to know if your relationship with
Sergei Krupatin involves more than business,” Wei said. “Or do I have the liberty to get to know you better?”

She looked at him, privately astonished that Sergei’s bet had paid off so quickly. He was Satan’s psychologist; he had known exactly how his man was going to respond to her.

“Our relationship is strictly business,” she said, and then added quickly, “but I am not at all sure that what you are suggesting is …” She didn’t want to insult him. “… a good idea under the circumstances.”

“I am only suggesting less formality between us,” he said unconvincingly. “We have so much in common, as we discovered last night.”

“I suppose the question is which of us knows him better,” she said. “I know him well enough to think he would see that as…… a curious development.”

“You think so?” Wei allowed himself another amused smile.

“I do.”

“Then you feel obligated to tell him everything that passes between us?”

“Not obligated, no. But I do have a responsibility not to compromise the position I am supposed to represent here,” she said.

She had to be careful to strike the right balance. The Chinese was no fool. Perhaps he was playing with her. She had to remain independent, possessing some authority of her own, but at the same time she could not put herself in a position that Wei himself would find disloyal if she were working for him instead of Krupatin. And yet she could not afford to give up the seduction factor. It could be the key to everything she needed.

She was given another lucky break when one of Wei’s shoeless and silent maids glided across the terrace with his telephone.

“Excuse me,” he said.

As he spoke on the telephone she turned her face away from him, presenting her profile. She knew he would be watching her, and she wanted to portray just the amount of uncertainty that she guessed he would want to see. He would want to think that his charm was working on her, that she was tempted. She imagined that he believed any woman would want a taste of this life—his obvious wealth, his refined
manners, and yes, even his considerable sexuality. A fling at least, surely. She knew that scores of women had had similar propositions from him, and she thought she could guess with some certainty what the results had been.

She lifted her chin and stared out across the lawn, absently stroking the side of her long throat with the back of her fingers. She knew he was watching. She straightened her back, lost in thought, and felt his eyes on her breasts as surely as if he had laid his hand there. Wei murmured in Chinese, and the crows of Paris called their ageless calls across the stone churches and ancient narrow streets of the Rive Gauche.

When he finished talking on the telephone, she continued staring, seemingly lost in thought about the conversation they had just had, perhaps uncertain as to what she was going to do about it.

“Olya.”

She started, her thoughts interrupted, and turned to him. The maid was gliding away across the terrace.

“What were you thinking?” he asked.

“Nothing.” Dialogue older than the churches.

“You never answered my question.”

“I was supposed to come here to put your mind at ease about my role in the negotiations. Have I done that?”

“Of course. I couldn’t possibly have any objections.”

“Very well,” she said. “Then I think we should leave it at that.”

“No, I don’t think so,” he said.

She stiffened inside and regarded him closely.

“What do you mean?” She was terse. She had seen these kinds of men turn vicious with the tenderest words on their lips. If that was the case here, she was well prepared to meet the situation with bravado, if nothing else.

He looked at his watch. “I have just made arrangements to have you taken to Sicily on one of my planes. You are supposed to be there by one o’clock this afternoon, which means you will have to leave within the hour. You are not actually going to Palermo but to Carlo Bontate’s estate, which is inland, in the hills south of Palermo. My pilot has been to Marineo before and knows it well.”

“This was the original arrangement?”

“Sergei has agreed to this. And Bontate,” he said, not
directly answering her question. He hesitated a moment. “You have not met Carlo?”

“No.”

“We are quite different people,” he said.

She wondered why he felt it necessary to tell her that.

“When you have finished in Palermo, my pilot will bring you back to Paris.”

“To Paris?”

“Sergei did not object to your spending one more night here on your way back,” Wei said. “To talk about art again …” He smiled. “If you have no objections. I would consider it an honor to have you.”