She slid through the door with a mocking wink. Kate felt the blood crawl up her neck. She’d always hated the way she blushed.
Blake stood in the center of the room looking simultaneously foolish and irritated.
“I better start from the beginning,” Kate said. She briefly recounted her mother’s accident, bedside confession and death. She summarized the story of her lineage and Anya Putyatin’s perilous escapes from Russia, Kiev and Paris.
“Why didn’t you tell me this earlier?” he asked.
“I wasn’t sure I could trust you,” Kate said. Her eyes locked on his. “I realize now I was wrong. You were right to warn me about how dangerous this could be.”
Kate also related her recent experience, book-ending the tale between her meeting with Imre and her surprise encounter with Vulcan Krasky at Penn Station.
Blake hung on her words, shaking his head like a worried relative, leaning forward when she talked of the alexandrite and its retrieval. Oddly, he seemed not to take in her changed appearance, offering no comment when she told how she came to purchase the all-leather outfit. For some reason, his lack of reaction left Kate feeling deflated—was she jealous of the woman who’d just departed? In any case, so much for being a guy-magnet in these clothes. Or maybe it was just their fundamental lack of chemistry. When Blake did ask questions, his manner was methodical and cautious. Compared to Imre’s seething energy, he appeared bland and analytical.
“Your fiancée is striking,” Kate observed.
Blake shook his head. “Adrienne and I are just friends,” he said. “Look, Kate, I’ve got several tests to do on your stone. I’d like to get started.”
“Of course.” Taking off the necklace, she said, “Imre coated it with something. He said it would come off, I think with fingernail polish.”
“That’s fine. It will also come off with ultrasound, which is what I use to clean gems.”
He resumed a formal tone. “There’s one thing I should mention: The terms of my insurance don’t allow me to assume liability for a stone of this potential—and I emphasize the word potential—value. I’ll need you to sign a waiver, and I’m afraid you’re going to have to stay until I finish the tests, which could take a while.”
Kate looked at her watch. It was nearly 10:00 p.m.
Following her glance, Blake said, “Look, it’s too late to find a hotel room, and that goon is still out there. You can sleep in my bedroom.”
“I left all my clothes at the station. Does Adrienne keep a nightie here I can use?”
His irritation was visible. “Adrienne does not sleep here.” He left for a moment and returned with a blue-and-white-striped Ralph Lauren dress shirt. “You’re welcome to this.”
“Thanks.” Retreating to the bedroom, Kate slipped out of her clothes and into the oversize shirt. The garment hung on her like a produce bag.
Getting out of the tight leather was like being liberated from a stiff corset. Emotionally drained and physically exhausted, she shuffled wearily to the lab where Simon sat hunched over a draughtsman’s table, wearing a pair of special magnifiers.
“I’ve got to get some sleep,” she said in the doorway, “I’m about to crash.”
“Of course.”
Blake pushed up the magnifiers on his forehead. At last he seemed to look at her.
“You cut your hair,” he said.
Chapter 26
Standing at a metal workbench in one of his suite’s two small lab rooms, Blake used a rubber spatula to scrape as much loose wax from the alexandrite as possible. Then he slipped on a pair of white cotton gloves and placed the stone in a wire basket. Carefully, he lowered the gem into a cleaning machine that transmitted sound waves through a liquid mixture of ammonia and detergent. Thirty minutes later, he raised the basket out of the solution.
Wiping the last drops of cleaning solution away, Blake nearly lost his breath. Like any crystalline gem, even through his gloves the stone felt cool to the touch—cooler than the room around him. But this alexandrite, deep green and nearly the size of a tea bag, was larger and more beautiful than any specimen he’d ever seen.
Blake began his examination by using a special measuring instrument called a micrometer. He placed the stone in the device’s “jaws,” then read its dimensions by rotating a calibrated shaft which accurately gauged the gem’s length, width and depth. The result: 65.08 mm in length, 63.62 mm in width and 42.18 mm in height—the metric equivalent of 2.5 x 2.5 x 1.6 inches. Blake smiled and nodded to himself. He’d been so skeptical of this stone, and any possibility that it might be real. Now, he had to admit, the young woman who’d seemed so very naïve just might be right: the dimensions indicated by the micrometer were precisely those in Kate’s document.
His excitement mounting, Blake opened a plastic-windowed electronic scale and placed the stone inside. The digital read-out flashed a number: 1,244.37 carats.
Blake frowned. His second test had turned up a discrepancy. According to the document Kate had given him, the stone should weigh 1275 carats.
In ancient times, jewelers used carrow seeds, known for their consistent size and weight, as scale-balancers. Today’s digital scales, however, were so sensitive that even the motion of human breath could alter their readings. For this reason, modern scales were enclosed in glass or Lucite. But Blake shook his head: even if trace air currents were present, they’d hardly account for a difference of about 30 carats.
He turned to the credenza behind his desk, and opened an old but extremely accurate mechanical balance. Electronic instruments had let him down before, but this trusted scale, with its glass case, hand-rubbed mahogany base and brass armature and weights, had never erred.
Blake placed the stone in the device’s right tray and filled the opposite tray with nineteen 64-carat weights. Atop the scale, a needle connected to the balancing beam moved toward dead center. But when he added a 32-carat weight, bringing the total to 1248 carats, the pointer swung past the median-line. Only by removing the 32 carats, then successively adding smaller weights, could he get the scale to balance.
Blake swore. The weights added up to 1244.37 carats. He’d confirmed the initial digital finding.
Assuming Kate Gavrill hadn’t risked her life for a fake, only two circumstances could explain these results. Either the original stone had been re-cut after the documents were written, or this gem—magnificent though it might be—was not the original stone.
Blake rubbed his chin, lifted his eyes from the ancient weighing instrument and stared into the distance. Original or not, as a genuine alexandrite the stone would still represent an historic and spectacularly valuable discovery.
He must continue the tests.
After dropping the gem into a vial of heavy liquid to confirm its specific gravity, Blake crossed the room to a high maple table and stool. Kneeling down, he unlocked a cupboard and withdrew a large, binocular microscope with a heavy illuminated base. He attached the instrument, specifically designed for probing the interior of gems, to a flat-panel computer screen. This would be his hardest work; if successful, it would enable him to declare with certainty whether the Romanov Stone was a natural wonder or a man-made counterfeit.
Before starting his task, Blake stood up from the stool and stretched. He crossed the small, windowless room to a book shelf, then paused. He thought again of Kate. Because of her, a beautiful, self-assured woman whom he’d known for years and with whom he’d shared passion if not love was sitting alone in a Broadway show next to his empty seat. What seemed to be pulling him toward the other female, someone he knew so little about? Was it lust for a stone or for a younger woman?
Shrugging off the questions, Blake bent over the microscope, lowering his eyes to its twin viewing lenses. He might be as fumble-headed as any man in trying to probe the mysteries of human attraction, but using this instrument he could peel away the external layers of an otherwise impenetrable ge
ological substance, peer deep inside its interior, and ascertain the origins of its creation. Was it natural or synthetic? He chuckled to himself: Was it real or was it Memorex? Steadily increasing the microscope’s magnification, he would employ the device like a physician might employ a CAT-scan, and find out.
This most critical and complex part of Blake’s work was as much art as science, and it was the part Blake loved most—when his mind joined his eyes in soaring through the inner space that gave each gem its unique character.
For the next several hours he would examine minute traces of material, trapped within the crystal, that, he hoped, would yield the truth. The inclusions in a natural alexandrite revealed the environment of the stone’s origins—the surrounding earth and rock where it had been created by centuries of heat and pressure. A synthetic, however, nearly always contained telltale residues of the metal crucible in which the stones were artificially grown.
First, Blake studied the gem’s surface. He flipped on an external fluorescent light mounted on the miscroscope’s specimen stage. Slowly, he turned the alexandrite so that the soft beam skimmed its facets. Considering its age, the jewel was remarkably free of even superficial mars and scratches—the happy result, he presumed, of being stored in a monk’s coffin for most of a century.
Now Blake turned off the fluorescent and examined the stone using an incandescent ring light that encircled its sides. Against a dark background, the gem glowed a candy red.
Cranking up the microscope’s power, Blake saw the crimson, fingerprint-like inclusions that signaled the stone’s genuineness. Then, adjusting the fine focus, he spotted something else. Almost at the gem’s exact center was a small oval-shaped cavity filled with liquid and, inside, a tiny air bubble. When he turned the jewel, the bubble floated to top center, like a carpenter’s level. This was a three-phase inclusion, rarely found in alexandrites, and nature’s signature of authentication.
Tired as he was, Blake’s heart skipped.
Invisible to the naked eye, the evidence he’d seen proved what the stone was not: a well-executed imitation worth a few thousand dollars. Instead, it was a genuine alexandrite worth uncounted millions.
But he still could not say whether it was the Romanov alexandrite.
Working with both scales, Blake re-weighed the stone a half dozen times. Each exercise produced the same result: 1244.37 carats. Finally, still clutching the weights needed to balance the stone at 1275, he slumped over the table asleep. The brass cylinders scattered out of his hands and across the credenza like tiny barrels.
When he awoke, Blake rubbed his eyes. He’d slept for three hours: It was 5:00 a.m.
Propping up his head, Blake made a tripod with his elbows. He gazed around the room. The first thing he saw was a 60-year-old magnifying glass at the corner of his desktop. It was then he remembered.
The international standard for carats wasn’t adopted until the early part of the twentieth century. He’d been forced to recalculate the weight of antique jewels before.
Blake again crossed the room to his bookcase and removed the aging leather volume he referred to when handling estate jewelry. Flipping to the index, then back to the text, he found the section containing conversion tables.
Prior to 1913, the Russian carat had been 2.24 percent lighter than the current international standard. The math was straightforward: 1275 X 97.56 % = 1243.89. So adjusted, the weight listed in Kate’s papers almost perfectly matched the results from his scales.
He walked to a small, stainless steel basin and splashed his face with cold water. Despite his weariness after hours of work, an almost giddy elation swept Blake from his toes to his scalp. He felt like Gallileo discovering the moon. In the world of gems, Simon Blake had just confirmed a specimen of towering significance. Suddenly, however, Blake felt a bolt of fear. His warnings to Kate echoed in his head: ‘Do you realize the danger to someone who possessed such a stone?’ he’d asked. Then, the question was rhetorical. Now, it was real and imminent. He rose, strode quickly to the office condo’s front door, and re-latched its three deadbolt locks.
Returning to the table, Blake scrawled his conclusion across the bottom of a notepad, musing at his earlier skepticism. He was sure of it now: the jewel described in the documents and the specimen on his desk were one and the same. Kate’s gem was the Romanov Stone—the largest and most exquisite natural alexandrite he or anyone else had ever seen.
* * *
Streaming in from the high windows, morning light silhouetted a slumped form in a chair at the end of her bed. Kate opened her eyes to see Simon Blake sitting less than three feet away, his gaze locked on the large stone he held in his hand.
“It’s real,” he said, as if to himself. “All the tests were positive. I’ve also verified that it is the Romanov alexandrite, the stone described in your document.” He looked at her, moving the chair closer. “I’ve been in this business more than twenty years,” he said, “and I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Kate’s pulse quickened as his words sunk in. The terror she’d experienced only a few hours ago at the Port Authority seemed far away.
Her eyes narrowed. “How much do you think it’s worth?”
He shrugged, still gazing at the stone. “To the one who wants it, who must have it, whatever is asked. On the open market, $40 or $50 million, perhaps more. Perhaps much more. There’s really no way to put a ceiling on the price. It’s unique in all the world; there’s simply nothing else like it.”
Pulling a small but powerful light from his pocket, Blake probed the now crystal-clear gem. As if electrified, the alexandrite flared with a raspberry glow.
Their eyes met above the stone.
“Can you believe the beauty?” His voice was low, husky, breathless. His excitement infected her. Her own breathing became shallow, more rapid.
Kate rose to a sitting position. The bedspread she’d slept under slipped to the floor. Instinctively, she drew her knees up, and pulled down the shirt, making a tent around her body.
“Touch it,” he said, moving to sit beside her. She caught the scent of him. “Hold it.”
She reached out to take the stone and her fingers brushed his. Energy hummed beneath his flesh.
Again, their eyes locked. This time they both drank more deeply.
Impulsively, with surprising quickness and strength, he pulled her toward him.
As Blake bent to her lips, Kate averted her head. She moved her head to one side, then the other, then yielded. Her arms collapsed against her chest. The stone dropped into her lap. His lips touched hers, pressing against her mouth with a fierce hunger.
Abruptly, he pulled away, turned his back to her.
“I’m sorry,” he said hoarsely. “That was way, way out of line. It was the stone. I was just so excited about the stone.”
Kate rubbed the back of her hand across her chin. How long had it been since she’d been kissed like that?
“Are you sure?” she asked.
She touched his shoulder, then slid her hand up to his neck. Gently, she drew him back to her. As he turned, he looked at her intently. His eyes seemed warm and dark and fathomless.
His hands slid down to her waist, then up to her arms, grazing the sides of her unconfined breasts.
Blake dropped his lips to hers again, and she did not resist. He opened her top and cupped her.
Kate arched against him. The Romanov Stone rolled out of her lap, down the length of her thigh and off the bed. Without breaking their kiss, Simon Blake shifted above her. He dropped his hand over the mattress and, like an infielder trapping a baseball, caught the gem before it struck the floor.
#
Part III
Chapter 27
Barefoot and wearing a black silk kimono, the slender dark-skinned Latino stood in the living room of his luxury condominium. Twenty-seven floors below, a drenching, mid-afterno
on rain steamed from the sidewalks of Bogota. Before him, in a semicircle, sat seven young adults—six men and a slender, shy-looking woman.
“Es impossible,” said one young man in Spanish.
“Not only can it be done, but you will do it,” their teacher countered in the same tongue. “You have been chosen by the cartel for this training. You will not only undertake the exercises I am going to show you, you will excel at them.”
“By the time you are finished,” Hector Molina continued, “you will know your body more intimately than you ever thought possible. You will be able to control the tiniest movements of your muscles and to interpret each flutter of your nerves.
“Thus…”
Turning away in a single dramatic motion, Molina let the robe slowly slip from his shoulders. Seen from the back, his well-proportioned body, clothed only in a black athletic supporter, was almost nubile in its beauty. A slim waist, rounded hips and thighs, and a soft-swelling musculature echoed the gentle contours of his face. A sheen of oil gleamed on his dark skin.
Tied to his ankles, wrists, elbows and neck were seven sterling silver bells.
Still facing away from the class, the instructor opened his hips; his feet were in perfect alignment with his pelvis. Heels touching, back straight, he gracefully bent his knees. Slowly, he moved from the second through fifth positions of a ballet dancer’s basic exercises, beginning with his feet wide apart, and ending with his heel against his big toe. Arching both hands above his head, he executed a slow-motion glissade, sliding until his feet were fully stretched. Rising in a flowing motion, he leapt, then dropped back to the floor, rotating in a full pirouette.
During the entire exhibition, his students had heard not a single sound. Not a jingle, not a tinkle. He slipped on the robe and turned to face them.
“Bien venidos, mis banditos,” the man said, his voice morphing seamlessly into a perfectly cadenced, English-Spanish imitation of actor Cary Grant. “Welcome to La Escuella de las Siete Campanillas—the School of The Seven Bells.”
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