Sparkles

by Louise Bagshawe

  “Where have you been, my sweetheart?” Judy asked timidly. She wanted to touch him, to hold him, but she was shy—scared of the man in front of her.

  He gazed off into the distance.

  “I went home,” he said.

  In the end, it had been a memory, long buried, that had summoned him.

  His father, falling to the earth, in the snow. The ground, exposed beneath him. The strange colour, unremarkable at that time: a yellow brown, weathered, rough, and glinting. . . .

  And vanity, a weakness. Not pride, of course. Pierre Massot was full of pride, and he thought it justified. Every day since those first moments in Giles Massot’s old shop, since the first telephone call he had made to De Beers, he had earned the right to pride. His brilliant acumen, his total ruthlessness, had made his peers jealous and his enemies afraid; he had ruined careers at a stroke, beggared suppliers, driven the competition into bankruptcy, and the women . . . how he had charmed the women. Within six months, they flocked to place Vendôme, and later, to rue Faubourg.

  The meteoric rise of House Massot was unexpected, by all save himself. And Katherine.

  He had enjoyed the natural rewards. The fine house, first, and then the château; what pleasure to drive out the French nobles whose seat it had been for four hundred years. The women, beginning immediately—drugs, once—he had not relished the loss of control. There were the fastest cars, the bespoke suits, the servants. He had enjoyed setting Katherine up, grand beyond measure, richer than any French duchess, or Italian principessa, living a sterile life, watching him, eating with him, unable to touch him. There was a savagery to her devotion that he found amusing. And in his way, he had compensated her.

  Until the day he found Sophie Roberts, on the beach.

  He instantly knew he must have her; she radiated innocence and purity. She was, of course, naive, gullible, overly religious—stupid qualities, but ones that suited her for the task he would assign. It helped that she came from parents who couldn’t be bothered with her, and longed to get out; it helped that she was pathetically grateful, and wedded to a bourgeois idea of marriage and fidelity. As with Aud, he had enjoyed Katherine’s reaction when he made the introduction, but unlike Aud, Sophie possessed ample beauty, and innate style and grace.

  Had he written his requirements on a piece of paper and mag icked them into existence, he could have done no better.

  Of course. Success was his destiny.

  And soon enough, she was pregnant. Pierre found her laboured tension in bed unpalatable; there was too much good girl, no passion—unlike his mistresses, she did not adore him, or cling to him. When she gave birth to a son, he left her bed for good.

  The boy interested him only academically. An heir was a necessity. It was pleasing to see that he resembled his father. Pierre occasionally played with him, and took pleasure in the physical resemblance. At work, he had discovered the most amusing of his many girls, Judith Dean: a young American unlike his wife— ambitious, pushy, in awe of his business achievements. She was erotic and adventurous, and made his days at the office more fun. He bought her an apartment, and kept a key. Some of the other women fell by the wayside. He kept only one or two besides Judy, for a connoisseur must always have variety.

  And then, it seemed, his life was settled. The riches, the wife, the “mother,” the status, the son, the favoured mistress—all was in place. There was the odd pathetic attempt at a takeover, of which Mayberry’s was the most tiresome, but nothing serious.

  And Pierre Massot began to get bored.

  That was his weakness.

  He desired excitement. Sluts were too easy, drugs beneath him. He wanted to be applauded, not for his new identity, but for his old. And he had promoted a man within the company who did not deserve it.

  Gregoire Lazard.

  Lazard was a mediocre manager at best. Pierre had summoned him to his office to fire him, and to do it cruelly, leaving the man abjectly humiliated and unemployable. There were no second chances at House Massot.

  But as soon as he saw him, he changed his mind. And for one reason.

  A glance could tell, Gregoire Lazard was not French.

  He was Russian.

  He knew instantly. There was the pallid skin that years of French sun could not totally alter; there were the slightly slanted eyes, with the hooded lids; there was a hard way of carrying himself that the man had not been able to shed.

  And on a whim, as Gregoire introduced himself in fluent French, Pierre shook his hand, and said, “Priviet, kak dela?”

  The man blinked; he made a good recovery.

  “U me nya vsyo harasho. Me nya zavout . . . Grigory.”

  Pierre nodded; he had asked the man’s name, and he had surrendered—in Russian.

  “Me nya zavout Pyotr,” he replied. And then switched back to French. Oh yes, he was French, of course, but he had spent his childhood in Morocco, and then some teenage years in the Soviet Union.

  “I do not talk about it,” he said.

  Gregoire bowed. “Of course.” But his eyes were alight with curiosity.

  He was promoted, and soon became Pierre’s deputy. Pierre enjoyed the freedom to speak Russian with the man, to drink vodka, and taste caviar; he knew that Gregoire, in his sneaky little way, had tried to discover more. But the trail was cold; he had covered his tracks too well.

  And Gregoire did not dig too deeply. Pierre gave him a first-class seat on the gravy train. He took a peverse pleasure in the man’s suspicions; he wanted someone to believe he had come from the dark, cold land to the east and carved himself an empire in the City of Light. Gregoire was a useful hatchet man, a dogsbody, and lapdog; he jumped to Pierre’s commands, and the younger man ensured they were often shaming; Gregoire, as favourite, like Katherine, like all his satellites, must know who was boss.

  Over time he came to trust Gregoire completely. From disdain, rather than admiration, he knew he was safe with this puppet. And he chose to tease him, speaking Russian ever more frequently, dropping in references that only a true Russian would know.

  And then, at last, Gregoire came to him.

  “It’s a new find,” he said. “Siberia. Diamonds. Hundreds of square miles.”

  Pierre blinked. “What?” He scoured the news daily, and the wires had had nothing. “Is this a joke?”

  “No joke. They found kimberlite in the northern forests.”

  “And the government has taken it?”

  This was Russia now, not the Soviet Union, but would the new capitalism survive a find of this magnitude? Diamonds were one of the great sources of wealth. An entire nation, South Africa, had been built on the stones.

  More than anything in the world, Pierre wanted his own diamonds. He was bound to De Beers, as a lackey, like any other site holder. He paid their prices, and he did so without comment. Their way or the highway.

  The loss of control disgusted him. The monopoly of another disgusted him. He imagined what it might be like to have his own mines, and the thought was intoxicating. To think that he, Pierre Massot, who had come from . . . that wasn’t important, he told himself. He deserved it, though. He deserved them. He had to have them, and then the circle would be complete. His journey would be over.

  “They don’t know.”

  Pierre stopped pacing his office. He turned and looked slowly at Gregoire Lazard. Dull-witted fool he might be, but Lazard had all his attention.

  “Then how do you know?”

  “I still have contacts.” Lazard had boasted that his friends, gangsters all, had purchased his ticket to the West when Russia was still under Communism’s grip, and perestroika was just a theory. “Some moujiks found a stone in the soil, washed from a riverbed. They sold it in a mining town for a handful of American dollars. It was a piece of rough.”

  Pierre licked his lips.

  “Did anybody cut the stone?”

  “It wound its way to the Giaperellis in Milan.” Pierre nodded; he knew them well, Angelo and Gepetto; they were shady, but b
rilliant; they agreed to cut rough without knowing its provenance, and had made a fortune laundering conflict diamonds.

  “It was orange,” Lazard said. “A brilliant, true orange, eight-carat oval. I hear it looked like a fine spessartite garnet.”

  Pierre’s eyes sparkled. Spessartite was perhaps his favourite stone: tangerine to blood orange, it combined the warmth of fire with the coolness of a diamond—passion in control. He never gave spessartite to any of his women. It was his own stone, and he wore a museum-quality round set in deep twenty-four-karat gold in place of a signet ring.

  But how much better than spessartite would be a real orange diamond. And that’s what the kimberlite must be, which was pushing great hunks of rough onto the surface of rivers.

  He felt a lust for acquisition that momentarily surprised him. Yet why should it? He was rich, true, but not in the league he wanted to be. He dominated Paris, yet he was not the richest man in France, let alone the world. In the playground of the Roth schilds and the Gettys, he had still not earned admission. . . .

  The man who owned diamonds would be different.

  He would no longer be a merchant or a jeweller. He would be an owner. He would be De Beers.

  “Who owns the land?”

  “It is in private hands. The Kamazhak family have much of it. And they do not want diamonds . . .”

  The Kamazhaks were devils; some of the cruelest of the Russian mafia, they robbed, shot, and bribed at will. They ran drugs into the decadent West, and they regarded themselves as rulers of a vast tract of Siberia.

  “They would sell the unpopulated areas for ready cash, and supplies of weapons and trucks. Perhaps we could send somebody there, to do a deal.” Gregoire looked hopeful. “You’re running the firm. . . . Perhaps I could go.”

  Surprised at his transparency, Pierre laughed disdainfully and launched into rapid-fire Russian.

  “I don’t think so, Gosha! Little Grigory Alexandrovich, finding himself the lord of miles of Siberian diamonds!”

  “But they need somebody that speaks their language. And knows their culture.”

  “I assure you that I qualify on both accounts.” Pierre sneered. “Do you think I am going to trust you with buying land with my money, in my name? You would never return.”

  “You don’t trust me, Pyotr,” Gregoire sulked. “You prefer your pretty mistress downstairs, you talk to her of business . . .”

  His eyebrow lifted. “Only for my own pleasure. She’s far more amusing than you, of course, but she’s a woman. A female . . . Do not be concerned; you brought me this information, and you will be rewarded.” He went to his desk. “I want a report. No copies. Everything you know. Names and numbers of your contacts. I will go to Siberia. It will be secret, of course. Nobody must know where I have gone.” He smiled thinly. “I will not even tell my wife. I should be back in a month.” He patted Gregoire Lazard on the back. “And in the meantime, you will be in charge. Acting chief executive, with the use of my office, and all my privileges. And a salary of ten million francs a year.”

  Lazard’s catlike eyes widened. “Ten million francs!”

  “You understand what that buys, Grigory. It is not your management expertise.” Pierre’s lip curled again. “It is your information, your loyalty, and your secrecy.” His voice threatened softly. “You should not fail me in any area.”

  “I will not. I will get you the information, Pierre . . . Pyotr. Today. And when will you be leaving?”

  Pierre raised a brow, as though it were a stupid question.

  “Tomorrow,” he said. “When it is time to act—you act.”

  He only remembered, much later, how Gregoire Lazard’s smile had deepened.

  “Oh yes,” Lazard had said quietly. “I agree with you.”

  “Home? But this is your home,” Judy said.

  Her voice snapped him from his memories. “I will tell you later. First, I want to know what has happened here. With my firm, and my family.”

  Judy blinked. He did not know.

  Pierre was here, and he didn’t know. Any of it. How could she tell him? How could she tell him she had slept with his son?

  She prevaricated. “But my dear, it’s been so long. . . .”

  “Summarize,” he said, coldly.

  Judy sat down and, very carefully, began.

  “Your wife betrayed you. . . . Gregoire stole. . . . Gregoire and Sophie were lovers. . . . I tried to stop it . . . she came to the office . . . the stock started falling . . .”

  He listened impassively as she recited the tale.

  “And my mother?” he asked. “My son?”

  Judy made a split-second decision. “He was a fool,” she said, contemptuously. “And weak ... he sold your company ... he and Katherine . . . and they set him up there as a puppet. But then Mayberry fired him.”

  “Mayberry.” It came back to him. “Hugh Montfort . . .”

  “Pete Stockton,” she corrected him, and filled him in.

  “So.” And now anger, indeed rage, was written bright across his face, and Judy shrank from it. “My wife . . . my wife is a whore. . . .”

  Judy was glad to see it; how often had she longed for him to hate Sophie, to despise her the way she did.

  The bell rang. She reluctantly took her gaze from Pierre and went to the door. The food had arrived; Judy took the tray from the compliant waiter and slammed the door in his face. There was no question of payment. Her credit was more than good.

  Pierre closed his eyes; she saw purple bruising around the lids. He breathed in, deeply.

  “I will eat,” he said.

  Judy served him at the table. It was the oddest meal of her life. Pierre ate slowly, almost agonizingly so; he was clearly half-starved, but he would not rush even a single bite.

  He had perfect control. It killed her.

  “This is acceptable,” he said, at one point. “You will have them deliver breakfasts, lunches, and suppers here. With wines, and fresh juices and coffee.”

  “Yes—of course. Whatever you say, darling.”

  “They will leave the meals in the hallway. You will pay with your card.”

  She nodded.

  “And of course, you will quit work. There must be a reason that you are staying in the apartment, and ordering food.” He made a gesture. “Depression, perhaps.”

  “I’ll be glad to quit.” Judy wanted to shout for joy. “I hate Pete, and I hate Gregoire even worse—”

  Pierre stared at her. “Lazard? I thought you said Sophie had dismissed him.”

  “Oh, yes, but Pete Stockton rehired him—to show ‘continu ity.’ ” Judy withdrew a cigarette and lit up; her fingers were trembling, so she walked to her balcony. “It didn’t work. The stock is tanking. Nothing helped, not firing your son, not ousting Sophie.”

  “And Gregoire is there now?”

  “At work. Every day.”

  “I’ve changed my mind,” Pierre pronounced. “You will return to the office. Now. You will find the personnel files. Get me every detail on Lazard. His address. His car.” He pushed back his chair and stood up. “Call here as soon as you have it. Be fast.”

  “I—yes, I’m going . . .”

  Judy hesitated. Pierre would be alone—there was a TV set here. He would watch the news. He would learn about her and Tom—if he didn’t already know. . . .

  “I must tell you something,” she said.

  “It’s not important. This is.”

  “No—it does matter.” Tears clouded her eyes. She was a professional spinner, yet Judy had no idea how to manage this information. “You have to understand that I thought you were dead, my darling. . . .”

  Pierre turned around. And his eyes on her now were chips of ice.

  “You have betrayed me, Judy?” he asked flatly. “Is that what you are to tell me?”

  “I missed you,” she blurted. “So much . . . so long . . . every day . . . and he looks so like you—I—I went out with Tom. . . .”

  Pierre’s eyebrows lift
ed.

  “It’s over now!” she wept, almost hysterical. “It’s over! It was never serious.”

  “You slept with my son?”

  His tone was dry, analytical. She nodded, terribly ashamed.

  “Can you ever forgive me?”

  “For what?” he shrugged. “I see the child inherited some of my taste.” A thin smile.

  Judy felt sick.

  “Come, come, we have never been bourgeois,” Pierre said. “Why would I care?”

  He saw her expression, and added gently, “You are mine, not his; you will always be mine.”

  “Okay.” Judy sobbed. “Okay . . .”

  “Now go,” Pierre told her. “I am trusting you with something important. It matters to me very much.”

  She did not argue. The worst was over. She shut the door, and went to the street to fetch her car.

  Tom had watched from the window as Judy’s car sped down the drive, and wondered idly where she was going. He thought about calling his mother, but it was late; she would be with her new husband—their first night married . . .

  He winced; he might have made a fragile truce with Montfort, but he still did not wish to think about that. There was Katherine, but he was still angry with her, and Grandmother had never been affectionate, not in the way he needed at the moment.

  Then there was Polly. But he couldn’t call her now. Not right now.

  His head was racing. So many thoughts. A surfeit of unpleasant emotions. He hated the mother of his child, that was what it came down to. And she was right, total bitch that she was—he could do nothing about it. She would beggar him, and he’d pay it, just to keep his baby alive.

  He walked out of Judy’s suite and crossed the main stairway on the first floor; the ornate moldings and gilt leaf on the ceilings oppressed him . . .

  Mother had often complained of it, and he knew why now. It was a ridiculous house for one person. It made him feel small and lonely.

  He walked to the great polished banister that curved down to the lobby. The east marble staircase was four-stories high. He wondered what Polly would do if she were here. . . . Probably whoop and slide all the way down, screaming.