The Man Who Risked It All (39 page)
Dunker was at the door to his office when suddenly his face tensed and then went purple as he thought of something: his three million euro golden parachute in the event of severance. That was it, of course! That’s why Greenmor had asked him to stay. And he had signed!
As Dunker went into his office, he walked past Andrew without even seeing him. The words came out of his mouth without him realizing: “That little jerk has just screwed me a second time!”
His secretary raised an eyebrow.
“I’m sorry, sir?”
I
LEFT THE
office early to go to see Igor Dubrovski. He owed me an explanation. It was too easy to hide as he had done the day before. The CEO’s chauffeur, henceforth at my disposal, drove me.
Arriving at the mansion, our large car stopped outside the black gate, and I got out. Thick clouds were gathering in the sky; the air was heavy with moisture. Looming in the grayness, the château looked like a ghost ship.
I recognized the servant who opened the door for me and led me without a word to the great drawing room. The gloomy weather plunged the interior into a melancholic darkness. Contrary to the habits of the house, few lights were on.
I found Catherine on a sofa with her legs tucked under her, her shoes abandoned on the carpet.
“Hello.”
She looked at me but didn’t respond, making do with a slight nod. I looked around. She was alone. In the darkness, the large, closed piano looked like a slab of black marble. Through the tall windows, opened onto the garden, I could see the first drops of rain sliding off the leaves.
“Where is Igor?”
She didn’t reply but looked away.
“Oh … you know his real name.”
“Yes.”
She remained silent for a long while.
“Alan …”
“Yes …”
She sighed.
“I’ve got to tell you …”
“What?”
I could sense she was tense.
“Igor is dead.”
“Igor is …”
“Yes. He had a heart attack yesterday morning. The servants could do nothing. Help arrived too late.”
Igor dead. I couldn’t believe it. It was inconceivable. Even if my feelings toward him were mixed, after going through the spectrum of emotions, from admiration to hatred and fear, in the space of a summer, there remained nonetheless the man who had freed me from the shackles of my inhibitions and made me capable of fully living my life. Igor was dead. I suddenly felt very much in his debt, and … ungrateful. I would never have the opportunity to thank him.
Sadness slowly mounted in me, finding its place in every part of my being. I suddenly felt heavy, downcast. The old lion had left the world.
A thought crossed my mind:
Did the answers to my questions disappear with him?
“Catherine, can I ask you something?”
“Alan, I …”
“The trial. The François Littrec trial. Igor was guilty, wasn’t he?”
“No, he had nothing to blame himself for in that business.”
“But why did he hypnotize the jurors? That’s what he did, didn’t he?”
Catherine gave a sad smile.
“It wouldn’t surprise me, but if he did, it’s probably because he preferred exercising influence to having to justify himself. Or perhaps it was simply impossible for him to prove his innocence, however real it was. He had had very few conversations with the young man, who was being treated by others as well. Igor was not responsible for him ending his life.”
“And me? Our meeting at the Eiffel Tower wasn’t by chance, was it?”
She looked at me kindly.
“No, you’re right.”
“He deliberately drew me into his sanctuary, is that it?”
She nodded.
I swallowed hard. She was his accomplice; she knew about everything and had let it happen.
“Catherine, do you know why he knew Audrey?”
She turned her head toward the window, then spoke in a dreamy voice, her attention on the rain streaming down noisily in the garden.
“Igor knew the intensity of your relationship. He informed Audrey of … his plan for you. He convinced her to leave you after putting the article on suicide in your apartment.”
“He asked Audrey to leave me?!”
I was disgusted. How could he have done such a beastly thing?
“She was hard to persuade, but Igor was good at that. He proved it was in your interest and negotiated with her the period of time he needed before she could renew contact with you.”
I found it hard to believe that Audrey had played along with him. Her personality was too definite for that.
“And when I saw her coming out of here that one time …”
“She had come to tell him to get lost, that she couldn’t go on, that it was all senseless. Igor had to renegotiate the time left. Alan …”
This story made me beside myself. I felt a dull anger mounting in me.
“But how could he?”
“Alan …”
“It’s really hateful to play with people’s feelings like that!”
“Alan …”
“And if she’d met someone else during that time?”
“Alan …”
“It was taking an enormous risk to …”
Catherine shouted over my words to make herself heard.
“Igor was your father, Alan!”
Her voice resounded in the great drawing room. The vibrations went on in my head. Silence fell all around. I was stunned, bewildered. My mind reeled under the combined assault of emotions and thoughts.
Catherine remained rooted to the spot. She didn’t take her eyes off me, despite her embarrassment.
“My father …”
I stammered, quite unable to articulate anything intelligible.
“I don’t know if your mother told you,” she went on very gently. “The man who raised you in the States was not your father.”
“Yes, yes, she did. I knew that.”
“Years after conceiving you, Igor agreed to take in the daughter of a servant who’d fallen ill. She was a single mother and had no one to look after her child during the two weeks she was in the hospital. She was a lovely little girl, about the age you would have been … Very bold, she was full of life, mischievous and funny. She was still very young, but she already had quite a personality. Igor fell for her. He’d never shown the slightest interest in children, but now he spent all his time looking after her. She was a revelation to him. She made him realize a lot of things. When Audrey’s mother came out of the hospital and took her daughter back, Igor insisted he be allowed to continue looking after her regularly. He played the role of a godfather, a protector—a role he kept later when she became an adult, even after her mother was no longer working here. The little girl coming into his life was a trigger. Igor suddenly remembered the child he had had, who had never known its father. That idea started to haunt him day and night. He was seized with remorse and couldn’t bear knowing that his only child was living somewhere without him. So he started searching on a grand scale, with all the means at his disposal. But it was like looking for a needle in a haystack. It took him nearly fifteen years to find any trace of you. And by chance you came back to live near him, without knowing it.”
“Chance …”
“Then he waited to contact you, putting it off from day to day, week to week. A sort of reserve, no doubt. After spending all that time looking for you, once he had found you, he suddenly no longer had the courage to face you. He was afraid you’d reject him, that you wouldn’t forgive him for having abandoned you and your mother even before you were born. At one point, I even thought he would never approach you, that he was going to give up forever. Then he had you followed, more and more closely. It became almost an obsession. He read the reports every night. He knew all about your life, day by day, including your fears, your disappointments, your feelings.
“Vladi was no longer enough to tail you. You would have noticed him sooner or later. So he asked his protégée to take part. She agreed. But the man who loved to control everything had not at all imagined what was going to happen. As a result of following you, observing you, the girl fell head over heels in love with you and from then on refused to give him the reports.”
“Don’t tell me …”
“Yes.”
“Audrey?”
Catherine looked at me in silence, and then nodded.
My God, Audrey was Igor’s protégée.
“It was then that he decided to … take you in hand. I think it was a way of treating his guilt for not having brought you up. Unless it was a way of regaining control of a situation that was getting away from him. He’d been looking for you for fifteen years, and just as he was getting ready to appear in your life, you threw yourself body and soul into the arms of a young woman. Perhaps, unconsciously, he wanted to keep you to himself for a while. As for me, I was very much of two minds about his idea of taking care of you. I thought there was a risk it would make your reunion even more complicated the day you found out about it, but he took no notice. As usual, he was his own master.”
“But what were you to him? I always wondered.”
“You could say a female colleague who became a friend. I’m a psychiatrist as well, and when I was still officially practicing, I had heard of his achievements. So I contacted him and asked to train in his presence. He agreed right away, only too happy for someone to take an interest in him and his skills. You must accept that your father was a genius, Alan, in spite of his slightly special methods.”
“But you must admit it’s madness to push your son to commit suicide, just to put yourself in a position to support him afterward. I could have died then and there, or even killed myself by another method than the one he had tried to suggest.”
“No, you were being closely watched.”
Nonetheless, something was troubling me, upsetting me profoundly, though I wasn’t able to identify what. I remained like this, in this strange state, for a few moments, and then the memory came rushing back to me.
“Catherine … the day I met him for the first time, at the Eiffel Tower, I was in a sorry state.”
“I know.”
“And Igor encouraged me to jump. I swear. I can still hear him saying: ‘Go on, jump!’”
Catherine gave a slight, melancholy smile.
“Ah, there you are! All Igor is in that scene! He knew enough about you and your personality to be certain that giving you the order to jump was the best way of stopping you.”
“But … suppose he’d been wrong? He took an enormous risk!”
“Don’t you see? That’s why we’ll never be like him. All his life, he took risks. But your father knew people better than they knew themselves. It was instinctive. He felt what had to be said in an instant. And on that level, he never made a mistake.”
Outside, the rain had stopped. Now, the garden was bathed in a bright light that was reflected in the wet leaves. Some delicate scents reached us through the open windows.
We talked about my father for a long while. I finally thanked Catherine for confiding in me. She told me the day of the funeral, and I left. At the drawing room door, I hesitated, and then turned around.
“Did Igor know … about my election?”
Catherine looked up and nodded.
One question bothered me; I was a little ashamed to ask it.
“Was he proud of me?”
She turned her head to the garden, remained silent a few seconds, and then answered in a voice that was slightly husky: “I came to see him that evening, after Vladi told me. He couldn’t reach Igor. I came in, and Igor was at the piano. He remained with his back to me, but he stopped playing to listen. He knew why I was coming. I announced your victory, which he received in silence, without saying a word. He didn’t move. After a long while, I went over to him.”
Catherine left a long pause, and then went on:
“His eyes were full of tears.”
M
Y REUNION WITH
Audrey took its place in the record book that had already been full for some days. It was a great joy to be reunited, closing the painful parenthesis of our separation. I was delighted to find she still loved me. I felt light, happy, overcome with emotion to be able once more to see her, touch her, smell her, kiss her. We swore never to be separated again, whatever happened. We talked about Igor as well, of course, united in sadness, both of us in tears. She told me of her childhood with him, and I of our short but intense relationship. We laughed together at my fears about him, the tasks he had given me, the adventures that resulted.
After an Orthodox mass at Saint-Alexandre Nevsky Cathedral on the Rue Danu, the burial took place at the Russian cemetery in Sainte Geneviève des Bois, half an hour south of Paris. Most of the people present didn’t know each other, apart from the assembled servants. The others didn’t talk, but stood quietly or walked along the cemetery’s shaded paths while waiting for the body to arrive. There were more women than men, some of them very beautiful, wearing bright colors.
Then the coffin appeared, and instinctively we all grouped together. It was carried by four men dressed in black, followed by Vladi, who was holding an astonishingly calm Stalin on a leash.
We followed them in a long, silent procession, in radiant sunshine, through the verdant expanse of this beautiful and disturbing place filled with great birches, spruce, and pine trees, their knotted trunks standing out against the brilliant blue of the sky.
I turned down a path, and suddenly my heart felt a pang. A piano had been put there in front of us. A young man with Slavic features and pale blue eyes sat at the keyboard, looking serious. He started to play, the crystalline, melancholy notes falling in the silence. The crowd stopped moving, hanging onto the emotion of the moment. Audrey pressed against me. The melody moved into heartbreaking chords, their beauty enough to shatter the armor of the strongest man, drawing him into the realm of feelings, suffering, and meditation.
I would have recognized the music anywhere: Rachmaninoff was accompanying my father to his last resting place. Even the most insensitive among us could not hold back the tears.
M
ONTHS WENT BY
. Audrey and I moved into the château one winter morning, when snow had covered the garden with a fine downy mantle and the flakes had gathered on the long, majestic branches of the great cedar. It was cold and the air smelled fresh, like in the mountains.