The Property of a Lady (28 page)

Boris spun on his heel and stalked to the door. Sergei thought how ridiculous he looked in his tall leather boots and military uniform, like a squat little marionette with the devil pulling his strings. Russia would be better off
without a man like Boris Solovsky, and he knew he wasn’t the first to think so. The rumors about Boris’s behavior in his personal life were getting wider and more persistent: worse even than Beria’s, they said. Boris had better watch his little jackbooted step.

Still, as the door slammed, he wondered worriedly where Valentin was and what he was doing. And why he had failed to secure the emerald and with it the identity of the “Lady.” Because the message had not included the code words “best wishes,” which would have told him that Valentin had found her.

Paris

Genie slept the way she had when she was a child, warm, dreamless, secure. For a blissful few hours Markheim was erased from her memory and the beautiful hard warmth of Valentin’s body next to hers comforted her. The room was still dark when she awoke, just a faint gray blur where the window was. She rolled over, smiling, expecting to see Valentin’s sleepy head on the pillow next to her. He wasn’t there. She put a tentative hand onto the sheet on his side of the bed. It was already cold. Had he deserted her because she had screwed everything up and Markheim had been murdered? Was he afraid he would be implicated? Her heart sank as she contemplated the fact that she might have been a one-night stand, the cute American TV reporter playing at spies and the Russian diplomat afraid of a scandal. Then it leapt with hope again at a tap on the door.

“Bonjour, Mademoiselle, le petit déjeuner.”

She shrank beneath the covers as a plump maid bustled in, turned on the lamp, and placed a tray of coffee and brioches on the table. Genie stared at it. There was only one cup.

“Monsieur said to wake you up at nine,” the woman told her, pulling back the curtains. She peered from the window, tut-tutting and sighing. “Another cold gray day.” She turned back to Genie with a smile and took an envelope
from her pocket. “Monsieur said you would need a good breakfast. He asked me to give you this.”

Genie waited until the door had closed behind her before she opened it. The note was written on a sheet torn from a Filofax.

“Little one,” it began, “I must leave early on urgent business. You were sleeping so soundly I thought it best not to wake you. I shall never forget last night. I will call you in Washington. Please, eat some breakfast.”

It was unsigned.

Genie sank back against the pillows with a sigh. She supposed it could be worse. At least he hadn’t deserted her totally. But she hoped with all her heart that he
would
call her in Washington. She stared at the cup of coffee on the table and suddenly she was back in Markheim’s elegant office; her spine was crawling with the feeling of something wrong and fear swept over her again as she remembered his face with the bullet hole between his blank, dead eyes.

After flinging back the bedcovers, she ran into the bathroom and was violently sick. Then she crawled back to bed and lay in Valentin’s place, clutching his pillow and crying.

Later as she stood under the shower, washing away the imprint of Valentin’s body, she decided she would take the next flight to Washington. She had had enough of this crazy amateur spy business. She took out her Filofax, she found the number, dialed Air France, and booked a seat on the Concorde to Washington. She would be home in a few hours. And no doubt she would be waiting for Valentin to call.

Düsseldorf

Düsseldorf was a bleak city despite its prosperity. The industry that had made it wealthy had also taken away its
soul, and its hotels were not places where people went for pleasure but for business. Each was as internationally anonymous as the other, but Valentin deliberately avoided them and selected one in the drab downtown area, away from the bright lights and smart restaurants.

There were no public rooms, just a plate-glass door with two flights of fake-marble steps leading to a lobby, a small, grubby elevator scratched with initials and graffiti, and a narrow staircase leading to the upper floors.

He was wearing jeans, an anorak, and a flat cap, and he carried a small brown case. He paid cash in advance and the old man behind the desk barely looked at him as he handed him his key.

The room was small and sparse with exactly enough space for the single bed, a table, and a tiny shower. Valentin looked at his watch. It was noon. After placing his bag on the table, he drew the flimsy flowered curtain, took off his shoes, and lay down on the narrow sagging bed. He thought of the bed he had just left, and of Genie, sleeping like a baby. Her blond hair fell across her face and her eyelids were still swollen from crying. One long slender leg was flung across him as she snuggled into the crook of his arm. She was very beautiful, she had smelled of roses and lilies, and he had wanted to make love to her again, but there wasn’t the time.

He had turned away from her, dressing quickly. Then he quietly packed his bag and sat down at the desk. He had thought for a long while before he wrote Genie the note, then he had picked up his bag, walked back to the bed, and stared at her. The ultimate dangerous attraction. Leaving Genie Reese could have been the hardest thing he had ever done in his life.

Now he lay on the bed in the squalid German hotel, waiting for the hours to pass until it was night, wondering what he should do about her. Of course he should never have made love to her. It was the stuff all diplomatic scandals were made of, and if Boris ever found out,
it would be just the ammunition he needed to disgrace him. He doubted he would, though. The KGB had lost his trail. For the moment, he was anonymous, and that was exactly what he wanted.

The hours passed slowly but he did not leave his room, even for food. At ten o’clock he stripped, showered, and dressed quickly in black trousers, thin black polo-necked sweater, black rubber-soled shoes, and the anorak. He placed an assortment of small tools—wire, fine cord, and a tiny detonator—in the special inside pocket of the anorak, put on the flat cap, and slid a pair of black woolen gloves and a black balaclava into his pocket, along with a small, powerful flashlight. Then he locked the rest of his things in his bag and, after locking the door behind him, walked quickly down the stairs and through the lobby. The old clerk glanced up briefly and then went back to the boxing match on television.

The car he had rented at the airport was parked two blocks away, a small black Mercedes—fast, the way Germans liked them for their autobahns. There was no traffic and it took him exactly fifteen minutes to drive the twenty miles to Haus Arnhaldt. He parked at the end of the wide lane that led to the rear of the house, switched off the lights, and waited.

He had done his research well. Haus Arnhaldt was built like a fortress, but there were no guards outside, no dogs. Just an electronic scanning device and an old security system. The place had never been burgled in 150 years, and nobody expected it ever would be. With his
Spetsnaz
training, it presented no problem to Valentin.

At midnight he put on the balaclava and gloves and jogged silently along the bridle path that led through the woods to the stables at the back of the house. There were no horses in the stables and no grooms in the cottages. He knew there had not been any since Ferdie’s daughter was killed in the riding accident ten years before. Valentin slid into one of the stalls, flicked on his flashlight, and studied
the plan of the house carefully. It was a photostat taken from a book in the public library and gave him all the information he needed.

When the second Arnhaldt had modernized the house, he had also installed a generator in the building next to the stables. Valentin glanced up at the house. There were no lights at the windows, just small ones over the main doors.

The door to the generator house was unlocked. Valentin slid inside and flipped the switch, cutting off the power and plunging the place into total darkness.

He had already figured out where the security scanners were likely to be. Avoiding them, he made his way cautiously to the back of the house near the kitchen quarters. Even though it was dark he knew from the plan he’d memorized exactly where he was going. The crenellated battlements made slinging a rope child’s play, and he was up in a flash. After searching the acres of roofs for his bearings, he walked lightly over to the west wing, secured his rope to the battlements, looped it around his waist again, and lowered himself until he was standing on a window ledge. He took a deep breath. This was the tricky bit. If he was wrong all hell would break loose.

Working quickly, he cut a pane of glass, removed it intact, and slid open the window catch. He listened for a moment but there was no sound, and he breathed again. He had been right. The security system worked from the electricity supplied by the generator, and there were no supplementary batteries. The Arnhaldts were notorious tightwads, and Ferdie must have other things on his mind than updating a system that had been there since the 1950s.

The rest was easy for a man of his training. The study looked sinister in the thin beam of his flashlight as it picked out the dark-paneled walls, the somber paintings and heavy furniture. On the desk was the pad with the drawing of the emerald, just as Genie had described it. He
turned the flashlight back on the walls, staring speculatively at the paintings. He knew that, with German logic, would be the place the first Arnhaldt had put his safe. Not behind the Sargent portrait though, nor the violent Hieronymus Bosch, nor the gloomy Rembrandt over the fireplace. He smiled as the light picked out the small anonymous landscape.

Safe-breaking is a difficult job, but this safe was so old it didn’t even need blowing. He just fiddled with it for a while, listening as the mechanism clunked into place like an old player piano. He grinned as he swung open the door. Ferdie must feel pretty secure to leave his home as vulnerable as this. There was nothing much inside, just a couple of manila envelopes.
And a square blue leather box, just the right size for the Ivanoff emerald
.

It gleamed under his flashlight like pure green ice-water, and he touched it tentatively. It felt as cold as it looked and he shivered. No matter what his father said, he could not believe that this immense jewel had belonged to his own grandmother. Yet he had been to the libraries and studied the photographs of the Ivanoff family, and when he had looked at Misha, it was himself he was seeing.
He
was the one who looked like Prince Misha Ivanoff.

He shut the box with a sharp
click
and returned the emerald to the safe. He opened the envelopes, glancing through the contents rapidly: the leases for the mines in Rajasthan dating from 1920 and granted to Arnhaldt by the USSR; a photograph of Princess Anouska wearing the tiara and two other pictures, one of a wedding couple and the other of the bride with a young girl. Startled, he flicked the light between the two faces, Anouska’s and the little girl’s, then he glanced back again at the wedding picture of Eddie Arnhaldt and his bride.

Valentin heaved a sigh of surprise: He had found more than he bargained for. There was something else in the envelope, a small piece of paper with the number of a
bank account and a name. The Kazahn Shipping Line. He stared at it, memorizing the information, and then he replaced everything in the safe and locked it.

He glanced around carefully. Everything was exactly the way it had been except for the missing pane in the window. He stepped onto the sill, tied the rope around his waist, closed the window, and shimmied back up to the roof. Keeping low, he ran lightly back to his starting point and within seconds was back on the ground. He walked to the generating plant, flicked on the switch, and saw the outside lights flash back on.

He was back at the car within minutes and on his way to Düsseldorf. The whole operation had taken him less than two hours.

He left the hotel at seven-thirty the next morning dressed in jeans, anorak, and cap and walked to a nearby workman’s café for a breakfast of bratwurst, eggs, doughy poppyseed bread, and three steaming cups of coffee. It tasted like the food of the gods. He drove the Mercedes back to the rental lot and walked across to the airport. There he went into the barber’s shop, had a shave, and changed his clothes. Once more the smart young Russian diplomat in a conservative London suit, he boarded the flight for Washington.