The Property of a Lady (21 page)

“Proceed?
Take a look at this!” He flung a Turkish newspaper at Ahmet’s feet. “And this, and this….”
The Times
, the
International Herald Tribune
, the
Wall Street Journal, Le Monde, Figaro…
. “Japan, Germany, everybody is talking about the sale of the emerald.” He snorted.
“And especially Russia and America
. So? How long do you think it will take the CIA or the KGB to find out that it was Anna who sold the jewel?”

“Surely not. The secrecy of the Swiss banking system is sacrosanct.”

“Of course it is,” Michael roared, stomping his new cane, “but even in Swiss banks there are human beings—and there will always be one who can be bought. No, I tell you, Ahmet, we are in trouble. And I for one want to know
why!”

After flinging himself back across the room to his desk, he pressed the intercom again and told Asil to get him a Paris number. He thwacked his new cane angrily against the side of the desk, bellowing with impatience as the answering machine picked up the call and Leyla’s voice asked sweetly if the caller would leave a message.

“Leyla,” he roared, “this is Kazahn Pasha. Why are you not at home when I call? Perhaps you are avoiding your family now? Because of all the trouble you are bringing upon us? You—and your sister, Anna! Where are you? And where is Anna? I order you to be on the next flight to
Istanbul …
both of you
. And you can tell Anna she has Kazahn Pasha to reckon with!”

Slamming down the phone triumphantly, he beamed across the room at Ahmet. “There,” he said, satisfied with his performance, “that should put the fear of God into them both. And so it should, because, my dear son, I have a feeling they are both in terrible danger.”

Ahmet knew his father was right. The matter had escalated to global proportions. Who knew what the real story was behind the desire of nations to obtain the jewel? For some reason or other, they still wanted to find the Ivanoffs, and he had a feeling it was for more than the billions lying unclaimed in the banks. One thing he knew: He had better find out, and fast.

Back in his office, he dialed Leyla’s number, waiting patiently for the tone before leaving a message telling her to obey Kazahn Pasha’s orders and return at once with Anna. “You are both in grave danger,” he added. “Come home so we can help you….”

His next call was to a certain man in a small office on the waterfront at Piraeus. The man was a member of a well-known but impoverished Greek shipping family with access to every level of society, both business and social. He had been in Ahmet’s secret employ for more than thirty years, ever since the beginning of the Kazahn Freighter Line, spying on their Greek rivals so that Ahmet knew their business almost before they did. Ahmet had paid him well over the years, but just enough to keep him wanting more. The Greek was a born spy, clever, sharp, and without scruples. He was the kind of character who sought out others like himself: In any country at any time, this man could find a “mole.” And now Ahmet had the biggest job of his life for him.

Leyla breathed a sigh of relief as the Air France 727 roared down the runway and soared into the air. For a few seconds she could see Paris sprawling below, then the
clouds closed in, the seat belt sign clicked off, and an anonymous female voice informed them that those who wished might smoke. Above the layer of cloud the sun shone in a clear blue sky and just a few hours away lay Istanbul.

She glanced at the empty seat next to her. Anna’s seat. She had paced the courtyard outside the Louvre this morning, the airline tickets in her purse, but Anna never arrived. After two hours she had hurried back to her apartment hoping she had left a message, but this time no red light was blinking on her answering machine. She had waited until the very last minute before taking a taxi to the airport, where she had called again for her messages, but still no word from Anna, and she was worried sick.

Why
had they done it? she asked herself angrily.
Why
hadn’t Anna just gone to Kazahn Pasha and asked for the money she needed? But she knew why. Michael would have wanted to know what she had done with her inheritance and Anna didn’t want to tell him. It was Anna’s fierce Russian pride that had led to all this. Not that she had ever talked much about her ancestors, but apart from Missie and the Kazahns the past was all she had really ever had.

Leyla remembered the summer in Istanbul when she was eight and Anna was fourteen. They had been sitting on the terrace watching the sun set over the Bosphorus like a great scarlet cut-out pasted onto a gauzy-gold sky. A full moon was rising behind the darkening hills and the faint scent of night-blooming flowers drifted on the air. There were just the four of them: Tariq and Missie, Anna and Leyla, watching silently, each lost in his or her own thoughts as the sun slid quickly behind the horizon, leaving them wrapped in the warm blue-black dusk, soft as velvet.

Leyla was sitting on a silk-covered ottoman at Tariq’s feet, and Anna was leaning against the balustrade, gazing
over the dark water. “Missie,” she had said in a quiet voice, “tell me about Varishnya and my grandfather.”

Leyla glanced up at Missie sitting beside Tariq and saw him take her hand in his comfortingly. “Some things are too painful to remember,” he told Anna. “The past is the past, it should be forgotten.”

Missie replied quietly, “But she is right, she should know about her family. She should know the truth, the way it was.”

The silence had seemed endless as they waited for Missie to gather her thoughts and then she had begun.

“The first time I saw Misha Ivanoff,” she said quietly, “I was just sixteen years old and still considered a child; my long hair was tied back in a large floppy bow and I wore a simple white dress with a low, wide sash, white stockings, and little brown button boots. I was all alone in Russia, in the world really, for my father had just died and I had no other living relatives. I had traveled from the Crimean coast to St. Petersburg in the Ivanoff private train that seemed to me like a palace on wheels; in fact, it ran so smoothly even the wheels seemed cushioned. But if I had thought the train luxurious, nothing prepared me for the splendor of the palace on the banks of the Moika Canal.

“A chauffeur in the deep-blue Ivanoff livery met me at the station and drove me to the house in a wonderful de Courmont motor car, and as it drew up in front of a flight of marble steps a huge doorman, looking big as a bear in his blue coat with a blue bandolier studded with gold medals, sprang to open the door for me. I was stunned by the grandeuran side. The hall towered three storeys high, its creamy marble columns were embellished with carvings, and its soaring windows were draped in stiff golden silk. The floor was a checkerboard of black and white marble with an immense sweep of magenta carpet running from the magnificent double doors to the top of the marble staircase. And at its summit stood a tall blond
man with his hand resting on the collar of a great amber-colored dog.”

“Viktor,” Anna breathed, coming to sit at Missie’s feet. “The dog my mother always talked about.”

Missie nodded. “When she was a child, Viktor was your mother’s best friend. Her only friend,” she added sadly.

“What next?” Anna demanded.

“Even though he was wearing an old tweed jacket, I thought he looked commanding and very Russian,” Missie said. “He was very tall, his shoulders were broad, and he moved like an athlete. His blond hair was thick and very straight, and he wore it longer than was usual in those days, brushed back from his forehead. His eyes were slate-gray set very deep, and he had high cheekbones that gave his face rugged planes and angles. He was the handsomest man I had ever seen.” She paused for a minute and then she whispered, “And I have wondered ever since if time really did stand still as our eyes met.”

Anna drew in her breath in a little gasp and Leyla peered anxiously at her. They all knew that Missie had been in love with Misha, but this was the first time she had ever put it into words. The darkness had fallen, and as the moon sailed higher in the sky she could just make out Anna’s fair head resting against Missie’s knee as she listened.

“Your grandfather was one of the richest men in Russia,” she went on. “As well as the villa at Yalta and the St. Petersburg mansion, there was the summer house next to the tsar’s at Tsarskoe Selo and the country estate at Varishnya, your grandfather’s favorite. It was the exact opposite of the St. Petersburg house. It wasn’t the least bit grand, and it was one of the oddest houses I have ever seen. It was built all higgledy-piggledy, as if it had started out quite small and extra bits were added over the years as the family needed more space. It was L-shaped with wings sticking out and extra storeys stuck here and there, and the style was what I suppose you might call Russian
rococo with a squashed-looking green-gold dome over the great hall. Outside, each bit of the house was painted a different color like a gay patchwork quilt. Inside there were no corridors, just a series of long narrow rooms that led one into the other, and all the floors were made of wide wooden planks, cut from the elm trees on the estate and polished to a beautiful mellow golden-brown slipperiness—just right for little feet like your mother’s and her brother Alexei’s to slide on. In summer, the tall French windows would be thrown wide to catch the breeze and even on the hottest days it was always deliciously cool. And in winter when the arctic wind howled outside, the huge tiled stoves roared in every corner and Varishnya was the coziest house in the world.

“And it was always full of people. All the old Ivanoff relations lived there, and their friends who had come to visit and somehow never gone home again: the maiden aunts, the widows, and the cousins. You always knew where they were by the smell of mothballs and peppermint and the click of their knitting needles and the whisper of gossip. It was strange how they always seemed to know the latest scandals, even though they had not been to town in years.

“And then there were the servants. It seemed to take dozens of them to run the big house—it must have had close to a hundred rooms though no one had ever really counted, and of course even among the servants there was a hierarchy. At the top was Vassily, the butler and major-domo who had been there since Misha’s own grandfather’s time. He was old and very doddery, but Misha refused to ask him to retire. He said Varishnya and the family were the old man’s entire life and that without it, he knew he would soon die.” Missie sighed, thinking for a while before picking up the story again. “Nyanya was the next in importance. She too was old, though not as old as Vassily. She considered the nursery her own domain where not even Princess Anouska could tell her
what to do. As far as children were concerned, Nyanya knew best. She had iron-gray hair covered in a white
babushka
. The ordinary servants wore blue aprons, but Nyanya’s was white. It was the badge of her standing within the household, so even visitors knew she was a person to be reckoned with. I remember some days her hands would be so swollen with arthritis she couldn’t bathe the children and she was forced to stand by, grumbling, while one of the dozen nursery maids did the job. But it was always Nyanya’s lap little Xenia and Alexei climbed onto at night, and Nyanya who told them bedtime stories. And it was Nyanya they loved best, after their father.”

Leyla frowned, wondering why Missie had not said “after their father
and mother.”
Anna never spoke of
her
mother either; it was almost as if she didn’t exist, yet she knew she did.

“Then came the German tutor, and Anouska’s personal maid and Misha’s valet. They were both French and considered themselves very superior and a cut above the Russian servants. They were always whispering behind their hands and sweeping around the house in haughty silence.” Missie laughed. “The old aunts always said they acted as if they owned the place instead of the prince, but in the end they were the last to leave Varishnya. All the others had disappeared days before, like rats from a sinking ship.

“Anyway,” she went quickly on, “there were half a dozen chefs and a huge kitchen staff and dozens of indoor servants. I remember one young girl who did nothing but light all the lamps at night and take them away to clean the wicks in the morning. And another who did nothing but tend the enormous stoves. And then of course there were the dozens of gardeners and the man whose job it was to make sure the grass tennis court was the smoothest in all Russia. And the stables where the grooms looked after Misha’s beloved horses. There must have been twenty or thirty of them. And the kennels where
they looked after the teams of sled dogs and the pack of borzois.

“Your grandmother, Princess Anouska, hated to be alone, and the house was always crammed with people and there were endless parties. Sometimes we had to wear fancy dress or old Russian costumes, but no matter what she wore, Anouska Ivanoff always looked beautiful. She was the most gorgeous woman I have ever seen; she looked like a polished bronze figurine with her corn-gold hair and eyes like pansies. Even her skin had a sort of golden glow. She was young, only twenty-six or -seven, and very gay, and when she laughed it made you want to join in. Only sometimes it seemed she couldn’t stop laughing, as if she were acting gay and carefree but you could sense that underneath she wasn’t gay at all. You never quite knew where you were with Anouska: One minute she was the life and soul of the party and the next she had disappeared. She would lock herself in her room for days on end and not even Misha could get her to open the door. Only her maid was allowed in with the trays of food he sent her, but they were always returned untouched. I remember thinking it very strange at first, but everybody seemed to accept it as a matter of course. It was just the way Anouska was.

“Misha was a good man,” she said, looking at Anna. “He considered his servants and the estate workers and their families at Varishnya his responsibility. He looked after them with proper Russian tenderness, and they called him
batiushka
—little father. Every month he held a meeting in the great hall, where they were served beer and food, and any man was free to voice his grievance and know he would be dealt fairly with, even though Anouska always complained that the smell of their crude sheepskin jackets made the house reek for a week afterward. Each family had its own little house and every man had work. Long before the official reforms, the Ivanoffs had given every family its own
usadba
, a plot of land where
they grew their own vegetables and potatoes. It had been a long time since anyone on the Varishnya estates had known the pangs of hunger.