They watched the rabbi disappear after he stood to answer the door, then Petrov’s nasal voice filled the room. “Good afternoon. You are the diamond cutter Witzun?”
“I am Witzun.”
The rabbi moved back into their range of vision and resumed his seat. Petrov stood beside him, facing the bedrooms, and pulled the small felt bag from a pocket in his coat. Michael nodded in approval as the rabbi unwrapped the tissue paper with a careless, diffident air. Gavriel had warned him that a professional would not be impressed with the stone’s size or quality—cutters handled rare and beautiful stones every month.
The rabbi examined the stone under the Diamondlite, then lay it on the velour-covered table without a word.
“Isn’t it beautiful?” the Russian asked.
The rabbi lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “I have seen better.”
Michael grinned as the Russian released a soft word that sounded like a curse. Petrov’s square jaw tensed visibly. “Is it appropriate for an oval?”
“You want an oval?” The rabbi pretended surprise. “Why not a rectangle or a square? I could cut two beautiful squares from this stone. Or I could cut four rectangles, so you could make four times as many women happy.”
“It has to be an oval.” The Russian’s response held a note of impatience. “One flawless oval, cut to absolute perfection. And it has to be finished by the first of the year.” Petrov thrust his hands behind his back. “My employer insists upon it.”
The rabbi shrugged again. “It would be helpful if I knew what the stone will be used for. Will it adorn a lovely lady’s neck . . . or, heaven forbid, reflect its glory in some dull laboratory or museum?”
A thin smile crawled to Petrov’s lips. “You do not need to bother your brain with such things, old man. Cut the stone, and work quickly. Do your best and you will be rewarded.”
Sighing dramatically, Witzun fitted a loupe to his eye, then picked up the stone and squinted at it. “I shall only need four weeks. I will cut you an oval . . . for one hundred thousand euros.”
Michael heard a soft hiss as Petrov drew in his breath through his teeth. “I was told you would do it for thirty thousand.”
The rabbi lowered the stone to the table and removed the loupe from his eye. A melancholy frown flitted across his features. “Fifty thousand is my lowest price. After all, I am an artist.”
The Russian’s lips puckered with annoyance, then he nodded. “Very well. I will call for the stone on December first. Make sure it is ready.”
The rabbi said nothing as the Russian turned and walked away but picked up his book and ignored the stone on the table. After a moment, Michael heard the slam of the front door.
“Wonderful, Rabbi!” he called when Witzun looked toward the bedroom. Michael waited for Devorah to stand, then he opened the door. While Devorah moved to congratulate the rabbi, Michael walked to the window to follow the Russian’s departure.
“You are a born actor,” she said, resting her hand on the back of Witzun’s chair. She picked up the synthetic stone and stared at it under the Diamondlite. “You almost had me believing this thing was real.”
“We pulled it off, yes?” the rabbi said, turning to look at Michael.
“It appears so, Rabbi,” Michael said, lifting the edge of the curtain as he watched Petrov exit the building. He waited until the Russian slid into a waiting cab, then dropped the curtain and looked at his companions. “I’m beginning to have second thoughts about our plan. I know we had planned to have the rabbi give Petrov a cut synthetic stone when he returns in four weeks, but what if he does the same thing he did at the bourse? If he brings another jeweler, we will be placing you in danger, Rabbi. Petrov is a cold-blooded murderer, and something tells me he does not intend to pay anything for the cutting of that stone.”
He looked at the rabbi, whose smile had vanished, wiped away by astonishment.
“Rabbi is there some place you could go for a few months? I hate to ask this of you, but you will not be safe if you remain here.”
“Come to Israel, Rav Witzun.” Devorah slipped into another chair at the table. She rested her chin in her hand and looked at the rabbi with affection in her eyes. “Come to Israel and live in Me’a She’arim. You will be welcome there, and you will be appreciated. My father would love to meet you, and the yeshiva is always looking for good teachers.”
Joy suffused the rabbi’s lined features as he looked at Devorah. “I have always wanted to live and die in Israel.” He uttered the words in a hoarse whisper, as though they were too unrealistic to speak in a normal voice. “I never thought I would have the chance. There were too many things keeping me here—my children, my books, my studies—”
“What is keeping you here now?” She lay her hand on the table next to the rabbi’s, and Michael knew she was resisting the impulse to bestow a fond touch. “Your children are grown. We can pack up your books so they’ll journey with you, and you can study in the Holy Land, in the shadow of the Temple Mount.”
She looked up at Michael. “I will call my father, who will make arrangements to move the rabbi to Jerusalem. He has done his people a very great service.”
“We will have time to settle things here,” Michael added, looking around the room. “Petrov won’t be back until December. While we’re getting the rabbi ready to move, I’d like to do a bit of looking around and see if I can’t discover what connections General Gogol might have here.”
The rabbi smiled, his eyes gleaming in the brightness of the Diamondlite. “What did I do to deserve such good friends?”
“Kindness always begets kindness, and HaShem is always faithful,” Devorah murmured. She turned to Michael. “So, we confirmed Gogol wants an oval. One perfect stone—but whatever for?”
“That’s still a mystery,” Michael admitted.
“I have something to show you,” Witzun said, his eyes sparkling as he turned a page in the open book on the table before him. “Since I was waiting for a Russian, I decided to read about Russia. Look what I discovered.”
Michael leaned forward. The book was written in French, but the black-and-white photograph on the page needed no translation. He recognized the austere features of Nicholas II, the last czar, and the pale face of Alexandra, Nicholas’s wife and empress. The photo was a formal shot; the ill-fated rulers sat stiffly upon their thrones, surrounded by their somber children.
Michael crossed his arms and shifted his weight, unable to see anything significant in the picture. Devorah, however, drew in her breath in an audible gasp. “I see!” she whispered, an unmistakable thread of excitement in her voice.
The rabbi smiled in appreciation of her quick understanding. “Can this be the reason our Russian wants a similar stone?”
Suddenly Michael’s mind blew open. Alexandra Romanov, the foolish woman who ultimately led her country to the brink of the Russian Revolution, stared at the camera beneath a heavily jeweled tiara. Resting in the center of the beautiful crown was a huge oval diamond.
Devorah jabbed at the photograph with her fingernail. “Is it possible that our man Gogol wants to create another tiara? Whatever happened to this one?”
“It would be easy enough to investigate,” the rabbi said. “The Romanov crown jewels—or what remains of them—have been carefully catalogued. Most reside in museums throughout the world, but quite a few of Russia’s treasures are locked in the State Armory in Moscow.”
Devorah’s gaze flew to meet Michael’s. “What interest would Gogol have in a tiara?”
The rabbi tugged at his beard. “Perhaps he intends to present his country with a crown, a symbol, in order to elevate his reputation among the people.”
“Perhaps,” Michael added, imposing order on the whirling thoughts in his brain, “he wants to elevate himself. We have always assumed he would arrange to have himself elected president once Chapaev resigns or dies, but—”
“Perhaps,” Devorah interrupted, her eyes darkening as she stared at the photograph, “he doesn’
t want to be president—he wants to be czar, and this crown is for whomever he selects as the next czarina.” Her extraordinary eyes widened as she stared at Michael. “He wants to restore the monarchy—which would require another Russian revolution.”
Michael stared at the photograph, mesmerized by the possibility that they had stumbled upon the truth.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
District of Columbia
2330 hours
Tuesday, November 7
THE CLOCK OVER THE FIREPLACE MANTLE SLOWLY CHIMED THE HALF-HOUR AS Samuel Stedman, forty-third president of the United States, swiveled his chair to face the wide windows overlooking the darkened White House lawn. The metallic clang of the clock rattled against his nerves, scraped at ribbons of guilt and regret for things he might have done differently.
The polls had closed, and Sam had not won a second term. Right now, Bill Blackstone stood in a crowded ballroom of the Los Angeles Hyatt, one hand uplifted in victory, the other wrapped around his anorexic wife. In less than eleven weeks, Blackstone would be sitting in this office, in this chair, and Electra Zane would be brushing her teeth at the same sink Victoria had used.
Sam looked away from the window, his vision gloomily colored with the thought of the useless woman who would walk and talk and dress in the rooms where Victoria had lived. Strange, how at this moment the image of Electra Zane disturbed him far more than thoughts of her husband. The people had chosen her husband, but the woman who came with the presidential package wasn’t worthy to sit at Victoria’s graceful desk in the East Wing.
He lowered his head into his hand, knowing that the burning rock of disappointment in the pit of his gut wasn’t going away . . . not for a long, long time. Up until 10:00 P.M. they had been hopeful, but within minutes after the polls on the West Coast closed, the computers revealed that Texas voters had granted Blackstone a solid victory. And if Texas, a solid, southern, traditional state, could vote for Blackstone . . .
At 10:30 P.M., Sam had gathered his closest people about him. He shook their hands and thanked them for their hard work, then went out to face the cameras. After a short concession speech, he stepped into the presidential limo and let the driver whisk him away from the crowds.
He had wanted to be home, in his office. But it would not be home much longer.
Could he have changed things? Part of his brain wanted to believe he could have, that if he had approved a different series of campaign ads or selected a different campaign manager—but those were only incidentals. Never before in American history had two candidates been more sharply divided, and the people had made their opinions clear. They did not want tradition and responsibility. They wanted to turn the national attention inward, to adopt an adolescent self-centeredness and shed international obligations. Like grown children who return to the family homestead after finding the adult world a difficult place, America wanted to return to its youth and irresponsibility, leaving others to rule the risk-laden world stage.
He swiveled his chair again, ran his hand over the polished surface of his desk, glanced down into the small space where John-John Kennedy used to hide during games of hide-and-seek with JFK. The rich scent of lemon furniture polish rose from the wood, mingling with the heady scents of red roses, white carnations, and blue irises—the bouquet Francine had brought in this morning in anticipation of victory.
The scent of the flowers provoked the first tears. He hadn’t breathed in that scent since Victoria’s funeral, when the White House had practically reeked of roses and the sharp tang of tropical plants. Sitting motionless at his desk, Sam breathed in the sickly sweet smell and heard his heart break. It was a small, sharp sound, like the snapping of a twig underfoot.
He stared at his reflection in the polished wood and felt the touch of cold hands upon his heart, slowly twisting the life from it. Bill Blackstone and his cronies would soon control this room, this government, this beloved, misguided country. People from all fifty states would follow Blackstone into an era of license, tossing traditional values and ethics aside as easily as they disposed of plastic cutlery and aluminum soft drink cans. Virtue and honor and duty—thousands of Americans had died for those ideals on the shores of Normandy, in the jungles of Vietnam, and in the burning sands of the Middle East. But those ideals and those Americans meant nothing to Blackstone or the giddy group that would ride his coattails into power.
Would the country even realize what they were rejecting? Sam wasn’t foolish enough to think he was any great treasure, but he stood for qualities that had fallen into public disfavor. He represented the old days, when truth and honor were more valuable than gold, and a man’s reputation was the most precious thing he could own. He stood for responsibility, for truth and right in a world gone wrong—and the voters had just demonstrated how out of touch he really was.
Overcome with loss, Samuel Stedman lowered his head into his hands and wept for what might have been.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Brussels
0615 hours
Wednesday, November 8
MICHAEL AWAKENED AS IF SLAPPED FROM SLEEP BY AN INVISIBLE HAND. THE GRAY light of dawn seeped from the edges of the window blind, and across the room, the rabbi still snored softly on his cot. Michael turned onto his stomach and punched his pillow, but a current of energy pulsed through his mind, assuring him that sleep would be impossible.
He rose from his cot, took a moment to stretch, then slipped into a pair of jeans he’d tossed over a chair. Leaving the rabbi asleep, he crept out of the room, then walked silently through the kitchen, not wanting to make any noise that might alarm Devorah. She had been up late the night before, plowing through books on the Romanov dynasty and Russian history.
The rabbi joked that he had no sooner packed his books than Devorah unpacked them, but over the past few days her research had illuminated one of their suspicions. The huge diamond in the center of the Romanov tiara had disappeared during the revolution of 1917. The jeweled body of the crown remained in the Moscow State Armory, but the fabulous center diamond had undoubtedly been cut into a dozen smaller stones and sold on the black market. Devorah was convinced Gogol sought a diamond to replace the missing stone from the czarina’s tiara.
Yawning, Michael moved past the cardboard boxes stacked on the floor, then pushed aside the heavy curtains at the front window. Outside, the lights of Brussels shone like diamonds in the twilight, and a police car prowled the Rue de Blaes. Within an hour, Brussels would fully awaken.
Raking his hair out of his eyes, he slipped into a chair at the oak table and reached for his laptop. He punched the power on and yawned again as the screen flickered to life, then he reached for a knitted afghan and tossed it over his bare shoulders. Despite the steady hiss of the steam radiator against the wall, the apartment was chilly.
Hunching forward like an old woman under her shawl, Michael waited for his modem to check for e-mail, then he lifted his chin as a message from Daniel filled the screen:
Michael:
This is a dark day, buddy. Have you seen the papers? Stedman lost the election.
Lauren and I are still in mourning.
Later, D.
Michael stared blankly at the screen, then brought his fist down on the oak table, not even feeling the impact. How could this have happened? Were the American people really so foolish? How could they prefer a California playboy to a man who had literally given everything he held dear in the service of his country?
He shivered from a cold that had nothing to do with the chill in the apartment, then drew the afghan closer around him. He wanted to awaken Devorah and share this terrible news, but she wouldn’t understand. Though she often spoke of Stedman with respect, she didn’t know the man. She had never seen his eyes burn with compassion for Israel or heard the intensity of his voice when he spoke of America’s future.
And Stedman hadn’t trusted her with the task of safeguarding national interests in the face of a Russian-Arab military coalition. He had truste
d Michael.
Michael swallowed hard as a sharp pang of sorrow pierced his heart. What was he supposed to do now? He was in Brussels on Stedman’s behalf; for the last month he’d been working to fulfill Stedman’s orders. What would become of those orders when William Blackstone took office?
Michael knew Blackstone wouldn’t allow him to continue his mission. He’d be called home immediately, he and any other American servicemen working in the Middle East. The Sixth Fleet would be pulled out of the Mediterranean, and the Americans stationed at NATO bases brought home, probably with great hurrahs and celebration.
But Blackstone was not president yet.
Michael leaned toward the laptop and began to type, letting the afghan fall from his shoulders. He addressed an e-mail to the president, then routed it through Daniel’s secure ISP.
Dear Mr. President:
Words cannot convey the sorrow I’m feeling at this moment. But you should know, sir, that we are making progress here. our base inspections have been postponed, as seemed prudent after the knesset situation, but we are gaining new insight into the man who seems to be heading the Russian charge.
Unless directed otherwise, sir, I will continue to work at the task you sent me to perform. We are not finished yet. We shall keep up the fight and remain vigilant.
Sincerely, Capt. Michael Reed
He encrypted the message with Daniel’s code, then sent it off with a series of double clicks. Daniel would make certain Stedman received it.
Leaning back in his chair, Michael wrapped the afghan about his shoulders again, then looked toward the brightening window. The newspaper outside the door undoubtedly told the full story of the election, but it would be written in French. Even if it included an English translation, Michael knew he wouldn’t have the heart to read it.
By Dawn's Early Light Page 26