The Property of a Lady (23 page)

“Alexei was a beautiful child, so blond in contrast to their darkness, and of course they knew who he was and always made a great fuss of him, inviting him into their houses and offering him syrupy drinks and little sweet cakes and fresh bread and their delicious jam. But this day one of the older women from the Massalsky Tabors beckoned to me to leave Alexei with her daughter and to come into her house alone. I was a little mystified, but I followed her into a back room.

“It was dark, just the light of a small red-shaded lamp;
there was a round table with a red cloth and two chairs, and she motioned me to sit down. After going to a shelf, she took down a crystal ball. I remember smiling, thinking she wanted to make an extra ruble or two by pretending to tell my fortune.

“The light from the lamp flickered over her face as she gripped the ball in both hands and stared into its depths. I watched her silently. Her face was very lined and I guessed she must be more than seventy, but there was no trace of gray in her black hair and her hands were very beautiful, with long slender fingers and polished oval nails. When she finally looked up at me her eyes were mesmerizing, like dark pools, and I felt myself drawn to her. I leaned closer as she spoke, unable to take my eyes away.

“‘There has been sorrow in your life,’ she told me, ‘and you are alone in the world, yet you are surrounded by love.’ I was amazed that she was right. I knew that the Russian women, who were obsessed by mysticism, believed the gypsies’ predictions, but I had always been skeptical. I thought it was just an amusing game, a way to make money.

“‘It is not a love that will bring you happiness,’ she said, and then she stopped. Then she said quickly, ‘You are too young, you should return to your homeland,
you must not remain here.’
She took her eyes away from mine and stared back into the crystal and I followed her gaze, wondering what she could see in there. ‘There is love and despair in your life, and happiness will not lie in the direction you think. Love will always rule your life, and because of it you will undertake a great responsibility.’ She looked at me strangely and then added, ‘A
responsibility that could change the world.’

“Of course I was intrigued, I wanted to hear more, but she suddenly pushed the crystal away from her and walked to the door, holding back the curtain for me. I took some money from my purse and offered it to her,
but she put her hands behind her back and shook her head. ‘God protect you,
malenkaya
, little one’ was all she said.

“It wasn’t long before her prophecy began to come true. Things were going from bad to worse in Russia. The war was a shambles, partly because the tsar was insisting on conducting it himself, and there were strikes and riots in the cities. Events happened quickly and the Bolsheviks gradually began to gain control. Many people were leaving Russia while they could, but others, like Misha, wanted to stay and protect their interests.

“He trusted his people, and why shouldn’t he? He had looked after them better than their own fathers. His trust was sadly misplaced; they had fallen for the Bolsheviks’ promises of riches and land for every man, and now, when we rode through the village, the children were whisked indoors by their sullen-faced mothers and the men avoided our eyes.

“One by one the servants disappeared. There was danger in the air and Misha tried to persuade me to leave, but I could not. It was my eighteenth birthday; Anouska was depressed and spent the day in bed. Sofia and Misha and I were dining with the old aunts and cousins. They had just toasted me in champagne, when suddenly there was a great hammering on the door.

“It was a friend, a doctor from the neighboring town, thirty kilometers away; he had come to warn Misha that the mobs were growing, that they were violent and that we should flee while we could. The house was thrown into chaos as we prepared to leave. The old people refused to go and so did Misha. He promised to join us in the Crimea within a few days. As we were leaving he said, ‘Take care of my children for me, Missie.’ I looked into his eyes and saw what was written there. And then he said ‘I love you,’ and he kissed me.”

There was a long silence and Leyla held her breath, waiting for what Missie wanted to say next.

“I never saw him again.” Missie’s voice shook as she added, “You know the rest. Anouska was killed in the forest as we fled, and Alexei too. With Tariq Kazahn’s help, Sofia and I escaped to America with Xenia.”

The moon was high now, flooding the terrace with a strange white light as Leyla stared at Missie and Anna. Anna pressed Missie’s hand to her cheek and she could see she was crying.

“Misha and I were never lovers,” Missie said quietly. “I was young and innocent, and Misha was a gentleman.”

“Oh, Missie,” Anna whispered, “I’m so sorry, I should not have asked you. But I’m glad I know. Now I understand so much better.”

“I’m glad,
dushka,”
Missie said. “But it’s all a long time ago, and your great-grandmother and I made a decision then to put it all behind us and look only to the future. And now that’s what you must do too.”

“I promise,” Anna said. But even then, Leyla had wondered how she could ever keep such a promise.

Yet it seemed that Anna had. For years she had barely mentioned it, and then all of a sudden she had come to Leyla and told her she needed money. Urgently.

“Ask Grandfather,” Leyla had said promptly. “If it’s that desperate, of course he will give you whatever you need.”

But Anna had refused. She said Tariq Pasha had already repaid the Kazahn debt of honor and this was her responsibility. And then she had told Leyla about the jewels.

It had all seemed so easy, the way she explained it, and when the diamond had sold so easily, they had dared to go further. Leyla had quite fancied her role as courier, slinking around Bangkok in dark glasses and making deals with the shady Mr. Abyss. Now she knew that had been the easy part. The hard part was yet to come: She had to face Kazahn Pasha’s wrath alone.

Düsseldorf

The Arnhaldt mansion dominated the forested landscape, towering over the trees from the crown of its hill like a great gray mausoleum. It had been built by Ferdie’s great-great-grandfather as a tribute to himself and the success that, in 1825, had taken him from his mother’s smalltown drapery business to the pinnacle of fortune as one of Germany’s elite new steel barons.

By the time he had made his fortune and gained his title, Ferdinand Arnhaldt had had enough of making do with cheap gimmickry. He had built his mansion to last. It was of solid gray stone, with turrets and battlements, arched gothic windows and columned porticos, surrounded by gardens in the French style but lacking their charm and by hundreds of acres of parkland and forest. Indoors, the walls were paneled in rich woods; there were marble floors and onyx fireplaces, a carved Jacobean oak staircase taken from an English manor, and tall stained-glass windows that let in little light, giving it a gloomy, churchlike atmosphere.

Ferdie Arnhaldt sat in the oak-paneled study that had been his great-grandfather’s, his grandfather’s, and his own father’s, in the same big burgundy leather swivel chair they had sat in, at the same massive partners’ desk they had once used. On a pad of dark velvet in front of him lay the emerald. There was no question in his mind that it was the Ivanoff jewel, and the fact that it had been
cut and that he had paid a great deal of money for it did not give him any cause for concern. In fact he considered it a triumph: Hadn’t he snatched it from beneath the very noses of the competition? And the competition was as tough as they came. What did worry him was that he was over nine million dollars poorer and the identity of the “Lady” was still a mystery. The auctioneers had said they didn’t know and the Siss bank refused to tell him.

The metal castors on the chair screeched as he pushed it back, and he made a mental note to inform the housekeeper of the fact. The Arnhaldt household had always been run like clockwork, and he was not about to let standards slip. He could still remember his great-grandmother firing the butler for not being quick enough at opening the door when her automobile drew up outside. The fact that the man had been with the family for twenty years and suffered from arthritis had concerned her not at all. “I will tolerate nothing but the best,” she had snapped when his father had protested that he liked the butler and he was used to him. “If he is no longer the best then he goes.” And he had, only to be replaced by a succession of new butlers, none of whom could live up to his great-grandmother’s tyrannical demands, nor to the old butler’s qualities.

Still, Ferdie had learned his lessons young, and even today, when good staff was harder to find, it was impossible for him to let such things as a table improperly set or a telltale layer of dust on the tops of the picture frames or squeaking castors go without comment. He knew he was not popular with his household staff, or with his workforce at the five huge Arnhaldt engineering factories and at the ironworks, the smelting plants, the foundries, and the offices. He knew what they whispered about him: “The steely image of his father,” they said, “and the iron fist of his great-grandmother.” It was true, he did look like his father: the same light-blue eyes and blond hair brushed neatly back from the broad brow, the strong
nose and powerful jaw, and the same tall, carefully disciplined body.

Ferdie’s wife had accused him of being inhuman. Arlette was French and when he first met her she was frivolous and pretty in a cute doll-like way. She had black boot-button eyes, a cloud of dark curling hair, large breasts, and a very tiny waist. Of course there had always been girls available to young men as rich as Ferdie Arnhaldt, and he had never lacked for a glamorous companion on his arm, but wily Arlette had wooed him with all her sensual Parisian charm and before he knew it they were married. He had realized too late that she had married him for his money, but by then she was pregnant and he would never divorce the mother of his child. The fact that the child was a girl had at first been a great disappointment, but he had soon grown to love her. His little daughter had a combination of her mother’s looks and the Arnhaldts’ powerful will. Her picture still dominated his desk though she had been dead ten years now, killed in a horseback riding accident when she was only fourteen. Time had healed the wounds but never the bitterness of her loss.

Afterward he had decided it was expedient not to divorce Arlette, because she served as a good excuse to keep other wily women away from his fortune. Of course, should the need or desire arise he would divorce her in a minute. Meanwhile, he kept her in luxury in an enormous apartment in Monaco.

Ferdie walked across to the painting on the wall beside the fireplace. For a house of such richness and grandeur, filled with objects of such solid value, the painting was a nonentity: a mediocre woodland scene signed by an unknown artist. His great-grandfather had hung it there a century ago to conceal the wall safe behind it, in the belief that if he put a valuable masterpiece there it might get stolen and lead the thieves to even greater treasures behind.

After pressing the concealed button, Ferdie waited until the painting slid slowly to one side, and then he dialed the combination and opened up the safe. There was nothing in there of any value to common thieves, only to his enemies. It was stacked with papers and documents. He pulled out a brown manila envelope and carried it back to the desk. He sat for a long time looking at the photographs it contained.

The first picture was of his grandfather on the occasion of his second marriage. He had been fifty-two years old and looked the way all the Arnhaldt men did: tall, hard, and upright in his gray morning suit, his silk top hat held firmly against his chest. His bride was young and very beautiful, soft-faced with love in yards of bridal satin and lace. The second photograph was of the same woman, this time seated on a chair. She was holding up a hand to touch the smiling little blond girl leaning against her shoulder. The third photograph was faded and worn from much handling. It was of Princess Anouska Ivanoff wearing the famous tiara with the emerald.

For the umpteenth time Ferdie compared Anouska’s face with the blond child’s, examining them minutely, feature for feature. The resemblance was undeniable.

After pushing the photographs to one side, he took some documents from the envelope. They were a series of expired leases from the Russian Soviet Socialist Republic dating from 1920, giving the Arnhaldt Company the rights to mine lands on Rajasthan, previously the property of the Ivanoff family. Those mines contained the valuable tungsten necessary for hardening steel, without which the Arnhaldt factories would have been worthless. For over seventy years the Arnhaldts had been shelling out a fortune to the Soviets, knowing that their claim to ownership was invalid. Now the mines were even more valuable to an armaments business moving into new systems of warfare, and Arnhaldt would be held to ransom no longer. Ferdie intended to make sure this time that the
mines were legally his. Just as his grandfather had tried to do, all those years before. And this time,
nothing
would stop him.