The Final Fabergé (43 page)

He looked solemnly at Galina. “And so I come back to the reason Oxby came to Petersburg.” As he was speaking he reached for the presentation box that was on the floor next to him. He picked it up, turned a brass fastener, and raised the lid. He took out the egg and instructed Galina to extend her hand, palm up. He placed the egg in her hand, and then he pushed against the largest of the rubies and the top sprang open. From the hidden compartment he took out the tiny easel and put the equally tiny portrait of Nicholas and Alexandra on it. Galina touched the gold basket on top of the egg, then she turned the egg slowly to see the diamonds and sapphires. Deryabin took it back and reassembled the pieces.

“This is what brought Oxby to Petersburg. If the Imperial egg leaves the city, Oxby will follow it.”

“How do you benefit from that?”

“Because the egg will be with me. Oxby will follow me. But at the same time, you and Galina will be following Oxby.”

“That will be difficult.”

“It is your job,” Deryabin said. “There's been enough blundering. I won't tolerate any more.”

Deryabin returned the egg to the box. “One of you will keep Oxby
under surveillance. When the time is right, I will meet with him.” Deryabin was taking great pleasure in presenting his scenario. “I predict that he will not waste precious time and will demand that I show him the egg. And I will insist that he introduce me to his client.”

“And if he refuses?”

“He won't. He's risked his life to find the egg. And his client has risked a lot of money. I'm not sure which one is more anxious to see it.”

There was doubt on Trivimi's face. “You would sell it directly?”

“Possibly.”

“But you agreed that an auction would bring a higher price.”

“How will I know what is the highest price? If I ask for five million and he will pay it, who can assure me I would get that much if I put it into an auction? Less the commissions and fees.” Deryabin beamed. “And it is done. No waiting.”

Trivimi said, “Not long ago you gave the order to eliminate Oxby. Now you want him to take you to his client?”

Deryabin drew heavily on the cigarette and slowly exhaled a stream of smoke. He turned to Galina. “What are your thoughts?”

“Use him for whatever he can do for you, but—” Galina paused, then said defiantly, “He can never go back to London. He must pay for what he did to Viktor.”

Deryabin gave Trivimi a knowing glance. “There's your answer.”

Trivimi said, “I am troubled by one detail. When Oxby was in my office I never said that you owned the egg.” He shook his head. “How would he know that you are taking it to New York?”

“You told him about my travel plans. Now I count on you to complete the job.” Deryabin rose from his chair. At the door he turned.

“You have his phone number.”

A
eroflot flight 003 connected St. Petersburg to New York through Shannon. It was due to arrive at Kennedy at 3:55 in the afternoon and was close to being on time. In the first-class cabin, in a forward row, sat Oleg Deryabin and Galina Lysenko. Their seats had been secured by World Travel, the once profitable subsidiary of New Century, now struggling to remain in business after being told to turn a profit or shut down. No easy accomplishment. When World Travel opened for business six years earlier, the competition came from what remained of the Soviet-operated Intourist. Today in Petersburg there were nearly as many travel agencies as drugstores.

Trivimi Laar had taken the same flight the day before and would be waiting in the International Arrivals Building.

To the casual observer, Deryabin and Galina were husband and wife, though most would agree that they were oddly matched. He, a bit old and round through the middle, she, a trophy wife with a knockout figure and face to match. It was an arrangement demanded by Deryabin, but acceded to by Galina only after her own demands for the accommodation were satisfied. Deryabin, his hand lightly touching the scratches that were neatly healing, turned to speak but found that she had fallen asleep, her head slowly dropping until it rested against his shoulder. He kissed her hair, inhaling the familiar odor of her body. He was aroused and wanted desperately to put his arms around her. To pull her close to him and kiss her. For a rare instant, Oleg Deryabin was a man possessed by feelings of genuine affection.

Galina slept for an hour. When she wakened she went to the lavatory to freshen up. She returned and Deryabin watched her settle into her seat.

He said, “Trivimi will take us to the hotel. Then he will return to the airport to meet Oxby's plane. I want you to go with him. It will take two of you to follow Oxby. If it's necessary to have another car, then
rent it. Do what's necessary, but I want to know where Oxby is staying. No less than that.”

“The Estonian doesn't have any training.” Galina frowned. “It's not like working with Viktor. Trivimi will be a handicap.”

“Your orders are to work with Trivimi,” Deryabin said firmly. “He's had more experience than you realize. I expect that Oxby will be met by one of his detective friends, and if they suspect they're being watched, they'll lose you faster than you can blink. It's their city, not yours.”

Galina stared past Deryabin, to the empty sky beyond the window. She said, “Why is it so important to know where Oxby's staying? You said he was following you, that he would call you.”

“Don't you want to know where to find him? Or do you expect he'll show up when you snap your fingers?”

“I will find him,” she said with complete conviction. “It doesn't matter how big the city is, or if he tries to hide from us. I will find him.”

“Good,” Deryabin said, and put his hand on top of hers.

“How can you be sure that someone will meet Oxby?”

“For some reason he wants us to know. When he discovered the phone in the apartment was tapped, he began using the phones in the Europe Hotel. When Trivimi told him I was going to New York, he made his own plans. But that same night he called from the apartment and gave his flight information.”

She pulled her hand away from his. “You wait until now to tell me all this?”

“What would you have done if I had told you before? It doesn't change matters, it's still your job to work with Trivimi.” He tried a smile, but showed only insincerity and a mouthful of yellowed teeth. “And you must work with him.”

The steward stopped to say he was taking last-call orders from the bar. They passed.

Oxby looked again at his watch: 7:30. Eleven hours since departure from St. Petersburg. He had slept, but in snatches, and was wakened by a brilliant sun that was low in the western sky and sent a blaze of goldcolored light through the windows. His seat was on the aisle, the seat next to him unoccupied. In the seat next to the window was a teenager curled into half a circle. Her face, sweet and innocent, lay against a pillow,
in profile. A blanket had slipped from around her shoulders and Oxby put it back, then he leaned across her and lowered the shade. The Air France flight had made a stop in Paris and the layover extended a half hour because of the heavy summertime traffic. But headwinds were light and they had made up the lost time and ten minutes more. They would arrive in New York at 8:55. He looked at his watch. It was now eighty-two minutes until touchdown.

On the empty seat beside Oxby was his travel bag. In it a couple of magazines, several guidebooks, a 35mm Pentax camera, a paperback of LeCarré's
The Russia House
, and his notebook. During the morning flight to Paris, he had written:

The pitch of the engines dropped and the plane began its descent. Oxby felt a twinge of anxiety, a minute surge of adrenaline. If fatigue was about to overtake him, it went away.

He took his pen from his shirt pocket, and as he did, the little piece of paper with the numbers on it tumbled onto his lap. He hadn't yet elevated the significance of the three numbers to the level of a mystery, though it continued to frustrate him. He spoke the numbers aloud in the unlikely event that Divine Intervention would strike and their meaning—if there was one—would be revealed.

“It's all bloody stupid,” he said softly, then repeated the numbers. “Two, eleven, nine.”

He stuffed the paper back into his shirt pocket, and took up his pen:

O
xby's young seatmate uncurled herself and looked anxiously down to her first glimpse of America. Their flight heading was south over Boston and Providence, then over water and a turn west for a direct line into Kennedy.

“Below is Long Island,” Oxby said in his flawless French. “We will be on the ground in fifteen minutes.”

The sun was setting, a fire-red ball descending below a broad band of purple and magenta clouds stretched across the horizon. The land directly below was in shadow, dotted by a million lights for as far as the eye could see.

“C'est beau!”
she said in a loud whisper that was brimful of great wonderment and expectation.

There was nothing for Oxby to add to her little statement. He sat back and watched the delight spread over the youngster's bright face.

Ed Parente became a New York City cop after graduation from City College, intending to earn a law degree at night and let it become his ticket into big business and big money. But he got married, had his first son, and joined the New York–New Jersey Port Authority police. After twenty-one years he had the same wife, two more kids, and had risen to the rank of detective lieutenant, which meant he was head of more than half of the Port Authority's team of one-hundred-plus detectives. There were few veterans in the fourteen-hundred-man police department who could match Parente's familiarity with Kennedy airport, and perhaps none who had his extensive contacts among airline and ground support personnel and the nearly dozen other police and security organizations. It was rumored that Parente knew what was behind every door in the
vast airport complex, and more important, knew how to get on the other side of each one whether it was locked or not.

Ed Parente and Alex Tobias met the year Parente was a rookie cop and Tobias made lieutenant. Though separated in age by a half generation, they had become close friends. Years earlier they had worked a number of cases together, but with time they'd gone their separate ways. Now they were a team again. They met in a small office inside the arrival building. Alex had described the circumstances surrounding Oxby's visit.