The Property of a Lady (13 page)

A network of Kazahn relatives had soon covered the region, many of them working as fruit farmers or as cattle herders or tending the terraced vineyards of Georgia, but though they were reduced to menial tasks they never forgot that they had once been a proud ruling race, famed for their horsemanship and their fierceness in battle. And when the Russian revolution began in 1917, they had decided they were not about to let any upstart peasant revolutionary
soldiers push them around and tell them what to do. They were prepared to defend their principles and were giving the People’s Revolutionary Army a great deal of trouble.

Tariq was thirty years old, a big man, tall, with powerful shoulders and strong hands. He had thick curling black hair, a bushy black mustache, high Tartar cheekbones, and flashing blue eyes. When he smiled he showed a set of teeth as big and white as those of the fierce young stallion he rode with such ease and grace. And he was hot-tempered, impetuous, and intelligent.

Tariq was already a soldier in the army of the tsar when he met and married a Chinese woman of the Manchu race, and they had three small children: a son, Michael, named for his childhood friend Prince Michael Ivanoff, and two girls.

He had heard the rumor that the Ivanoffs were second after the tsar on the Cheka’s death list and knew that unless he acted quickly, they would surely be killed.

He had promised Missie he would save them; now he had to figure out how. As always, he went to his wife, Han-Su, for guidance. She was living in an old fisherman’s cottage near Yalta’s waterfront and managing somehow to feed her family on the small amounts he sent her from time to time and on the vegetables she grew herself in the patch of fertile soil at the back of the house. Han-Su was a tiny, birdlike, graceful woman with shining black hair that she always wore in a heavy knot at the nape of her neck; her sloping dark eyes held centuries of wisdom, and Tariq had learned to trust her judgment.

“What shall I do, Han-Su?” he asked. “I have promised the girl that I will guide the Ivanoffs to safety. I will do it … I must do it.”

“You must send them here at once,” she told him. “Not under cover of night, because that is what the Cheka expect runaways to do. Let the child come first. She must carry a posy of flowers as if she is visiting friends. No one
will suspect her alone. Later the young woman will take the dog for a walk. She will stroll along the seafront, maybe stop and have a cool drink in a café. She will wander along the shore, casually, until she reaches here. The old lady must wear peasants’ clothing, a black dress, a shawl, a
babushka
. She will carry the basket of vegetables I will give you, and she will make as if to call at a few houses, selling them, making her way through the streets to this house.”

“And after that?” he asked eagerly.

“You must go see the thief, Vassily Murgenyev. He is making a fortune issuing false papers using the collection of official rubber stamps he stole from the municipal offices and the foreign embassies. Tell him you want papers that will get three people to Constantinople and then across Europe. He will ask too much money but you will bargain with him. Meanwhile they will stay here with me. I shall speak with the harbormaster at Alupka, just along the coast. He is half Chinese and comes from my province. He will help get them a boat to Constantinople.”

“Han-Su, you are wonderful,” Tariq cried, hugging her passionately, but she merely smiled.

“Misha Ivanoff was your friend,” she said calmly. “It is our duty to help his family. There is just one problem, Tariq. It will cost a great deal of money.”

His face fell as he remembered that Missie had told him they had none, then he drew himself up proudly. “Leave that to me, Han-Su,” he told her. “I shall find the money.”

The following day he went back to the churchyard where he had arranged to meet Missie and told her what to do. Everything went like clockwork, and by the next afternoon the three of them and the dog were installed in the fisherman’s cottage by the sea. For a week Tariq patrolled Yalta’s hills, collecting a few rubles from each of the poor but loyal soldiers and the White Russian officers, knocking on the doors of people he trusted, explaining that he was helping refugees to escape. It was a risk, but
one he took happily for he had undertaken the responsibility of his dead friend, Misha, and if it cost him his life he would not shirk it.

The night they were to leave for Alupka and the small fishing boat waiting to take them to Constantinople, Tariq arrived at the cottage bearing a bottle of good vodka. “None of this peasant-made rubbish,” he said with a laugh, filling their glasses, “because tonight we drink a toast to the Ivanoffs. Long may they live.”

After the toast Princess Sofia handed him a narrow suede box and said “Whatever happens will happen, Tariq. You have done your best and the rest is in God’s hands. I am giving you and Han-Su this, with my gratitude and my son’s. You are a brave and loyal man, Tariq Kazahn, and my son loved you as a true friend.”

Tariq stared at the glittering diamond necklace lying on its bed of black velvet, stunned into silence.

“Your Highness is very generous to my husband,” Han-Su said quickly, “but of course we cannot accept such a payment. We are happy to help. You owe us nothing.”

The petite Chinese woman and the tall Russian aristocrat eyed each other respectfully as Tariq snapped the box shut and held it out to Sofia.

“It is not a payment, Han-Su, and it will make an old woman happy if you will accept my gift,” Sofia said firmly.

Han-Su bowed low. “I am honored, Your Highness,” she replied.

Sofia and Missie rode the twenty hilly kilometers to Alupka on small, sure-footed donkeys, while Tariq carried the child. He also carried an automatic rifle slung over his shoulder and his old Tartar sword in its leather scabbard at his hip. It was dark and moonless but Tariq was used to it and easily spotted the waiting fishing boat. The vessel was as black as the night with all lights doused.
As it slid quietly from the shore across the inky sea to Turkey, Tariq and his family prayed for Sofia and her granddaughter, though they knew they would never see them again.

Istanbul

One year after they had helped Missie and the Ivanoffs escape, the White Russian forces in the south were finally defeated and Tariq and Han-Su were also forced to flee with their children in a small, leaky open boat across the Black Sea. When they reached Constantinople it was Han-Su who, with a few quiet words, kept her hotheaded husband under control. Instead of selling Princess Sofia’s diamond necklace on the back streets of the city, where she was afraid it might be recognized and traced back to them, and where anyway it would only have brought in a pittance, she sent it secretly to relatives in Hong Kong, where it was broken down and sold for enough money to give them a new start in life.

It was Han-Su who decided that the money should be invested in a small freighter traveling to the Mediterranean ports with cargoes of spices, silken carpets, brass, and silver and returning with vital machinery or, sometimes, guns. Meanwhile, the family lived frugally in a small, tumbledown wooden house atop one of the old city’s many hills, close to its hub, the Galata Bridge spanning the Bosphorus.

With Han-Su’s sharpness with money and Tariq’s flair for promoting new business, the Kazahn Freighter Line soon began to prosper. Another ship was bought, larger than the first and newer and able to travel longer distances. Turkish manufacturers learned they could rely on
Kazahn’s ships and foreigners importing goods filled them on their return journeys. Tariq bought more ships and got more business and Han-Su banked the money. Within five years they owned a small fleet and a thriving enterprise. The foundations of the great Tariq Kazahn shipping empire had been laid.

After ten years they owned one of the world’s largest shipping lines and were one of the richest families in Turkey. They had moved into a beautiful
yali
, an old summer palace at Yenikoy on the European shore of the Bosphorus. Its gardens were fragrant with jasmine and lemon trees, fountains tinkled coolly, and birds filled the air with their music. Whenever one of Tariq’s ships sailed up the Bosphorus on its way from Europe to Asia, it would fly all flags and blast its siren as it passed the Kazahn
yali
. Looking handsome in the crisp white naval uniform and gold-trimmed officer’s cap he always wore now, with one hand firmly on the precious Tartar sword at his hip, Tariq would salute proudly from his balcony.

But Tariq Kazahn never let any member of his family forget that they owed everything to the noble Ivanoffs.

“Without them, the Kazahns might still be peasants,” he would roar at his children and later his grandchildren. “Their diamond necklace founded our fortune. The Ivanoffs are gone, many dead, others who knows where? But never forget that our first duty—our loyalty, our
sacred obligation
, is to the Ivanoffs. When I die, I shall pass that obligation on to you, my children, and then on to your children. This is my legacy to you. A Kazahn must never fail that duty.”

Tariq’s only sadness was that at the age of eleven his son Michael contracted a crippling disease that left one leg withered and useless. As the boy recovered his health he encouraged him to exercise, employing physical-education experts to improve his physique. As if to compensate for his weakness and his shambling gait, by the time he was a young man Michael Kazahn had the torso of a
bull. On his specially made saddle, he rode his horse like a member of one of the Tartar hordes of old. He became a crack shot and a great huntsman and was always the life and soul of the family gatherings, for by now his two sisters were married and his parents were grandparents.

The years since their flight from Russia had passed quickly, but Tariq never let his family forget their background and the legacy of loyalty to his beloved Ivanoffs.

Michael was twenty-two years old and had his father’s strong, dark good looks and hot temperament. Han-Su decided he needed a wife to calm him down. She also decided which girl she wanted him to marry.

Refika was eighteen, the daughter of a wealthy Turkish banker and his French wife. She was pretty with dark brown eyes and her mother’s blond hair, and she was well educated with strong ideas. This pleased Han-Su because she knew that the Kazahn men needed strong women.

She planned their introduction cleverly, choosing a sultry summer night with just the tiniest breeze drifting across the Bosphorus. Refika, wearing a pale-green chiffon dress with a jeweled belt encircling her narrow waist, sat between her parents, her ankles demurely crossed. Tariq fixed her with his piercing blue eyes. She was aware that he was observing her every move as they waited for Michael to arrive. His sisters were fluttering about, offering sweetmeats to the guests while their husbands made small talk with Refika’s father, and though Han-Su smiled as she apologized for her son’s lateness, inside she was seething. Michael resented her matchmaking: She knew he must still be with the woman he kept in an apartment in the old city and that he was deliberately late because he wanted Refika to see him walk into the room. He wanted her to see that he was a cripple.

Refika’s eyes met Tariq’s and she smiled at him disarmingly. After walking toward him, she sat at his feet on a low ottoman covered with a fine silk carpet.

“Kazahn Pasha,” she said in her soft, musical voice, “I have heard that you are a man among men, that those who work for you admire your courage as well as your business head. I have heard that everyone who knows you adores you; even that you are known as ‘Sultan’ Kazahn. I can see that you are a handsome man, better-looking than any of the young men I know, but your eyes are fierce when they look at me. This worries me, Kazahn Pasha, because you do not yet know me.”

Tariq’s jaw dropped and he stared at her, taken aback. “Fierce?” he repeated. “No, never … I am only fierce against my enemies or those who would cheat me.”

“Am I your enemy then?” she persisted softly.

“No … of course not.” She had him bewildered by her frankness.

“Then do you feel that I am going to cheat you? Or maybe cheat your son?”

“Cheat … no, no I don’t think that….”

She smoothed her soft chiffon skirts around her pretty legs and said, “Good, Kazahn Pasha. Then we have no problems between us, no secrets left unspoken. I hope it will always be that way.” Lifting her head proudly, she stared at Michael, limping across the room toward them, his slanting blue eyes as fierce as Tariq’s. “Like father, like son,” she said, smiling mischievously, and Tariq knew that he had met his match. Refika would be the perfect wife for his son.

Michael’s withered leg had not mattered to Refika. All she saw was a tall, bearlike, handsome young man, glaring at her as suspiciously as his father. But she had no fears. She knew what she wanted and, with all the skills learned from her French mother, she knew how to charm a man. By the end of the evening Michael was loath to let her go. He was used to the overt sexual charms of the series of women who over the years had occupied his apartment in the old town or else to the demure, well-brought-up girls who were too shy even to speak more
than two words to him. Refika was a mixture of both. She was demure yet not shy, bold but not brazen, teasing yet not “knowing.” Suddenly he was a man in love, and after a whirlwind courtship they were married on a rare rainy day in September.