Valérie’s elevated eyebrow and off-color smirk were an explicit reply.
Nikolai wasn’t feeling the vodka for some reason, and he had just drunk his fourth. He warned himself that this might be one of those times when it hit him all at once. He merely sipped at his next tumblerful. He was in a listening and loving mood, would listen to Savich and watch Vivian and enjoy being proud of her.
“The czars preferred an altogether different variety of caviar,” Savich was saying. “Much smaller roe and golden yellow in color. It’s very rare now. Personally, I don’t care all that much for it.”
Savich touched on other caviar trivia, such as how Louis XV spat out his first taste, cursed, and called it confiture de poisson—fish jam—and how Picasso prepaid for his caviar by sending cash wrapped in one of his drawings.
“Really?”
“Truly.”
During the next hour Savich complimented Vivian seven times. Nikolai counted.
The telephone rang. Vivian answered on the terrace extension. It was Archer wondering what Vivian and Nikolai were doing about dinner. He’d take pot luck, he said. Vivian informed him of her guests.
“Delightful!” Archer said. “We can all have dinner here.”
Vivian told him: “We’re not up to one of your stodgy gluts.”
“I’ll serve nouvelle,” he promised.
“Besides, you’ll insist on black tie and all that.”
“Like hell. You can come bare-arsed for all I care. Be here anytime from seven on. Ta.” He clicked off.
Nikolai had passed by the paved private road that led to Archer’s house numerous times. He’d never taken it. Whenever Archer invited him, Nikolai declined with an excuse. It happened so often that Nikolai felt his avoidance had to be transparent. To ease embarrassment he stockpiled excuses so that he could have one ready. Even when Vivian announced that she was going over to Archer’s and did he want to come, Nikolai had remained home and tried not to keep looking at his watch.
Tonight, however, he was going along. The Daimler limousine had just turned in on Archer’s road, and while Vivian, Savich, and Valérie indulged in a glib, lighthearted exchange, Nikolai gazed ahead. Archer’s house could not be seen from there, the outer reaches of his land, nor was it visible when the Daimler finally came to a high double gate with imposing piers. The gate was hospitably open. Beyond it the grounds were more cared for, Nikolai noticed. Trees were trimmed of all but their higher, healthier branches, and there was no underbrush to compete with their handsome trunks. Vast grassy meadows were kept mown just enough to appear at their best. In the distance off to the right a dozen or so black cows were grazing as though in a pastoral painting.
Not until the Daimler passed through a grove of oaks and over a rise did Archer’s place come into view. Nikolai realized at once that it couldn’t be called a house. It was a mansion, nobler and more extensive than he’d expected. Vivian should have prepared him for this. He should have asked her. The structure was of smooth-worked beige stone. It was only three tall stories, but, in typical Palladian fashion, it went on and on. The stark monotony of its facade was relieved by a centered portico with four slender columns and Ionic capitals. Wide steps curved down.
The Daimler pulled up to the steps, where two white-gloved footmen and Archer were waiting. Archer was beaming, overjoyed that they’d come. It was as though their arrival would dispel something unbearable. Savich and Valérie were introduced and warmly received, and from the vigor with which Archer shook Nikolai’s hand one would never have guessed they’d been together just that morning. The footmen stood by should anyone happen to slip on the steps.
Archer led the way into a spacious entrance hall with a crystal chandelier so immense that Nikolai was uneasy standing beneath it. There were huge identical bouquets on the left and the right. Nikolai wondered if they’d been hurriedly arranged and put in place. He decided they were routine. The scent of pale yellow lilies and white-bearded irises streamed into his nostrils. The click of Vivian’s and Valérie’s heels on the geometrically patterned marble floor sounded overly loud. All of Nikolai’s senses were turned up. Suddenly it seemed imperative that he touch something, be it the carved edge of the Régence console against the wall or the richly ornamented doorcase that he passed through, as, following along after the others, he entered a reception room. He shoved his hands except for his thumbs in the pockets of his jacket and attempted nonchalance.
Vodka martinis were concocted and poured by Archer personally. He hoped aloud they met with everyone’s approval. Savich took a testing sip and after a moment of earnest deliberation during which his dark bushed-up brows animated and his tongue worked around within his closed mouth, he pronounced Archer’s martini superb. He was playing the minister. Covertly, he half-winked at Nikolai to let him know none of this was to be taken seriously.
Dinner was not a matter of sitting down in one place and having it. From martinis in that reception room they went into another adjoining reception room for the starters: smoked Norwegian wild salmon, iced lobster soufflé, Galway oysters on the half shell. They then proceeded to the dining room and a table easily large enough for forty. Their seating was at one end, arranged so Nikolai was next to Valérie with Vivian opposite. Archer graciously relinquished the host’s place at the head to Savich, making him focal.
The main courses consisted of roast partridge with young cabbage and wild mushrooms, and best end of English lamb with horseradish purée. The wines were a ’67 Chăteau Pétrus Pomeral and a ’72 Montrachet Romanée-Conti. The servants placed the entrées on the table and then backed off to discreetly stand by, in keeping with Archer’s orders. He believed the family-style casualness of passing around the food and wine would be to Vivian’s present liking.
From the dining hall they adjourned, as Archer put it, to a small ground-floor salon for cheeses, including some of Dorset’s legendary blue vinney. And sweets from a trolley. Lemon cheesecake, cherry cake with fresh double cream, tarte de poivre provençal, iced Grand Marnier parfait, and a trifle according to a recipe dated 1823. Then it was upstairs to the more relaxed atmosphere of a leathery study for coffee, nibbles, and whatever digestives they might desire. Vivian was for a bit of port, as was Valérie. The gentlemen had twenty-five-year-old Glenfiddich.
During the circuitous course of the meal the conversation ranged from banal to the esoteric, from the most recent royal dallyings to the efficacy of the casting of spells. Vivian couldn’t have been less interested in who of the royal string had been lately seen in full drag or gone public with an odd erogenous zone. However, as might be expected, she was an opinionated authority when it came to spells. Most ancient spells were pure nonsense, she said. Such as the one that was supposed to guarantee loving fidelity, a potion made up of desiccated swallow wombs and sparrow livers. But she did put solemn stock in certain voodoo spells, and she advised everyone there to do the same. She bloody well didn’t want anyone sticking pins in a doll effigy of her, she said in a half-whisper, as though to prevent transmitting that possibility to someone anywhere in the world.
Savich was having a marvelous time, making the most of the luxurious surroundings, the delicious offerings, and the lovely company. Without slighting Valérie he allowed himself to be more diverted by Vivian. He hung on her words, was caught by the mere turn of her head, flash of her eyes. He leaned across the corner of the table not to miss a nuance or inflection from her. Several times to underscore a conversational point or to emphatically concur he patted the back of her hand.
“I should love to gamble in Macao,” Vivian said.
“Why especially Macao?”
“It would be so unlike playing in our clubs. Much faster, and furious and loud.”
“Wouldn’t that be distracting?”
“How would you possibly concentrate?”
“I don’t know,” she replied. “Perhaps one doesn’t do so much concentrating in Macao, and that’s the attraction. When it comes to gambling the Chinese ar
e anything but inscrutable, you know. They make a din of it.”
“They’re reputed to be excellent gamblers.”
“They’re not really,” Vivian said. “They wager wildly without the slightest regard for the realities of chance. Every so often luck feels sorry for them and lets them win an unlikely bet, and that’s what everyone oohs and aahs about and remembers.” She sighed longingly. “Someday, just wait, I’ll be right in the thick of it in Macao.”
“I’m sure you will,” Savich encouraged.
“We could leave tomorrow,” Archer offered, not altogether lightly.
Didn’t that cause Vivian to pause? She might be mentally making that voyage, Nikolai believed. He thought she looked particularly beautiful tonight and it wasn’t that he was seeing her through his insecurity. She’d altered her makeup, he noticed. A stronger mouth and softer eyes. She had exaggerated the oriental aspect of her eyes. Thus the penchant for Macao. The cause had been the effect. The romantic notion occurred to Nikolai that time would be kind if it halted then and there, so he would forever have her just as she was in his sight.
When they were seated in the upper study Archer suggested a game of cards. They could learn whist as it had been played originally in the eighteenth century, he said. He’d just acquired a booklet of instructions that had been printed back then for members of the court. Wouldn’t that be amusing?
Apparently no one thought so.
Valérie was feeling the dominance of a huge portrait that hung on the wall near her armchair. It was a full-length study of one of Archer’s eighteenth-century female forebears, well done, when the lady was in her prime. “Lovely,” Valérie said, “but she’d be even lovelier if she didn’t have such a stern look about her.”
“In those days they were invariably portrayed with their mouths set like that,” Archer told her.
“Why not a smile?” Valérie smiled.
“They had rotten teeth,” Vivian explained. She was seated in an armchair upholstered in a leather so soft it would have been suitable for fine gloves. She was discreetly observing Savich, who was seated on the sofa across from her. How was it, Vivian wondered, that a Russian bureaucrat, a political descendant of that man in the accountant’s suit who had called himself Lenin, could be so completely at ease in these prodigal circumstances? Where was his Communist conscience? He seemed to take for granted a lap of luxury such as this, as though he had it coming. Vivian was most eager to find out what the irises of his eyes would reveal. She had brought along her magnifying monocle for that express purpose.
“I’ve decided to learn how to cook both sheke and borshch urankii,” she said out of the blue.
Nikolai, who couldn’t recall having seen her delving into a Russian cookbook, wondered if she was serious.
Savich smiled and patted the sofa cushion next to him, and within a few minutes she had her monocle magnifying his eyes. As she examined and simultaneously discoursed on the fundamentals of iridology, Nikolai stepped out of the study unnoticed.
He needed to be alone for a while, thought that might help his perspective. All evening he had tried to shake the feeling that his being there at Archer’s verified the inevitability of the emotional hurt that lay ahead for him. His smiles had been merely the pulling up of the corners of his mouth, and he hadn’t been able to compete nearly as deftly as usual in the repartée. Stop being the melancholy Russian, he told himself. Or, as Vivian would put it, get centered.
He wandered Archer’s place. Down the long, wide upper hallway, in and out of various rooms, appreciating precious things while trying not to be affected by them. It was of no personal consequence, he thought, that the carpet he was standing on was a perfect eighteenth-century Aubusson, or that the boulle marquetry writing table that had its place in one of the less significant guest bedrooms was Louis XIV and was worth well over a hundred thousand. He was on the landing immediately above the main staircase, feeling the pricelessness of a perfectly lighted Tintoretto, when he realized someone was beside him.
“What’s wrong, Nikolai?” Savich asked.
“Nothing.”
“Tell me.”
“I felt like moving around. I stuffed myself with dinner.” Savich persisted with eye-to-eye silence.
Nikolai stated the fact. “Vivian was married to him.”
“I know.”
“She was married to all this.”
“And from what I gather she could be again.”
“Yes.”
“If she so chose.” Savich made the point.
“Eventually it may not be a matter of choice.”
“Very little in life is inevitable,” Savich said and gave Nikolai an encouraging pat on the shoulder. “From what I see, you have nothing to worry about.”
CHAPTER
8
MONDAY MORNING IN GENEVA.
Arthur Newfeld believed the deal was surely sweet enough to suffer some for. But he had such awful jet lag. Worse than ever. All the hinges and other articulations of his seventy-year-old body seemed to be refusing, and his head felt mushy and lopsided.
How was it, he wondered, that so many people could fly away without a qualm and fall into any bed anyplace in the world and wake up bright and ready to do business? Not he. He was a prisoner of his time zone. Like a finely tuned, hypersensitive clock, his vital intricacies got out of whack when moved. And, as irony would have it, for the greater part of his life there’d been so much moving demanded of him. Ten times a year for thirty years he’d had to make the flight from New York to London to New York. Three hundred round trips altogether. One would have thought that after a while he’d have become conditioned to it. No one ever knew how much he dreaded those trips, all those times he’d sat in one boarding area or another at Kennedy International and debated with the reason why it was imperative that he get on the plane. He was always the last to get on, reluctantly committing himself to the torture he knew lay ahead. Whenever he arrived in London and went at his appointed hour to 11 Harrowhouse Street for his “sight” he was always at more of a disadvantage than any of the other diamond dealers and brokers. There on the table would be his parcel of rough, the small box wrapped just so with immaculate white paper, inviolably sealed by blobs of bright red wax impressed with the Systern’s official stamp. Because of his jet lag, it never seemed to Newfeld that those were his fingers that opened the parcel, never his eyes that looked over the lot of rough diamonds the System was allowing him to buy. What strain it had been each time to appear interested, to take out his monogrammed gold loupe and bring it up to his left eye and pretend to be examining the stones. It was only ritual, of course, but it was expected of him. Truth be known, he couldn’t really appraise the quality of the goods the System had chosen to dole out to him until he got them back to New York and his head was cleared.
What intensified it all the more was his having to keep his suffering to himself. He’d never spoken of his jet lag, not even lightly, to any of his fellow dealers, and certainly not to anyone at the System. He couldn’t afford to have them knowing such inside information. They would have rated him a pushover in business, and, as well, it would have been exposing what Newfeld regarded as a personal weakness, unmanly. Thus, as the excuse to catch the very next flight home to the comfort of his own timing there’d always been pressing business back in New York or crucial family matters. In all those years there’d been no socializing or camaraderie in London, no leisurely dinners at the Savoy, weekends in Surrey, or any of that. He’d missed so much.
What relief for Newfeld when five years ago his son Theodor had finally been approved by the System and permitted to take over the responsibility of attending the sights on behalf of the family firm. The rather retired Newfeld had, at first, let out many relieved breaths. However, after a while, his guilt made him think about how much more he could have accomplished had he been a good traveler. Jet lag, now that it was no longer a monthly inevitability, seemed a surmountable, minor thing. He’d allowed it to stunt the firm o
f Newfeld & Son. If he had it to do over again, he’d fight it with more resolve, he thought. He might not beat it but at least he’d give it a better battle.
And now here he was in Geneva, doing just that. Standing in the lobby of the Président Hotel feeling painfully out of sync with the time and the place and the activity around him and yet determined to persevere. Not just to see the deal through but to force himself to stay on for a day or two after it was concluded, to see Geneva, stroll around the lake, do whatever.
But first the deal. What a sweet one it was. Nearly too good to be true. He stood to make four million, nearly five, without putting out a dime except for expenses. Theodor knew nothing about it. He hadn’t mentioned it to Theodor because he wanted—needed, actually—to pull this off on his own. He hadn’t even told Theodor about the Russian fellow who’d come into the office on 47th Street a short while back. Without appointment. An extremely fair-haired Russian who’d introduced himself as Dmitri Tarasov. He’d shown Newfeld a sample lot of goods and made the proposition to him as though aware of the private circumstances that would obviate refusal.
Newfeld wasn’t naive. He immediately recognized the sample lot as Aikhal goods. All one-caraters, perfect. He assumed the deal was an underbelly sort, the kind that disappeared the moment too many questions were asked about it, the kind one just got into or didn’t. “You provide the investment-type customer, we supply the goods at enough below the going market price for you to make a nice margin of profit,” Tarasov had told him.
Newfeld, as instructed, had taken a particular flight to Paris and laid over for an hour at De Gaulle. At a certain airport bistro counter he’d put down his business case while he ordered and drank a café américain. He was surprised when, a quarter hour later, the business case he picked up was still his. He’d expected a switch. Evidently it had been taken away for a moment and returned. He didn’t open it, waited until he was in Geneva and in his room at the Président to look at the diamonds. Three packets of them. Eight hundred to each packet. Each stone an exact carat. Such perfect little beauties.
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