The Property of a Lady (2 page)

A catalog advertising a sale of fine jewels to be held by Christie’s in Geneva lay on his desk. Alongside it was a note from his brother and enemy, Major-General Boris Solovsky, the head of the KGB. It drew his attention to the item on page fifteen, a large unset emerald of flawless quality. He read the note again.

“Although this stone is slightly less than half the weight of the Ivanoff emerald, there is little doubt that it is part of the same jewel. There is only one in the world of this quality. It is our belief that the emerald has been cut and is now being disposed of in separate lots, though the other half will probably not appear until some time has elapsed. In view of the diamond that came on to the market last year, which was also thought to have come from
the same source, we believe that the Ivanoff treasure is being unloaded. At last.”

He glanced at the catalog again, checking the provenance. No name was given. The emerald was described only as “The Property of a Lady.” Sergei sat back, considering. He knew what his brother was after. It was something more valuable than emeralds and more powerful than the Ivanoff billions amassed in Swiss banks and awaiting a claim of ownership. The KGB wanted whoever was selling those jewels to be found and brought to Russia before someone else got to them first. And Boris Solovsky had a personal interest in the matter.

He ran his hands wearily through his iron-gray hair. The Ivanoff story was etched indelibly into his brain. The past had finally caught up with him, and now, ironically, he was to be the one to set the wheels in motion.

After pressing the intercom switch, he told his secretary to summon his son Valentin Solovsky, the diplomat.

Washington

There were half a dozen men at the confidential meeting in the White House: The President himself, his secretary of state, the secretary of defense, the representative of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, the head of the CIA, and the representative of the National Security Council. Copies of the Christie’s catalog lay on the oval table in front of them. The President glanced at his secretary of state as they listened carefully to Cal Warrender, a bright, rugged-looking man of thirty-eight and already a power in the National Security Council. Cal trod the delicate path between the White House and the State Department and was well thought of by both. He was considered one of Washington’s up-and-coming young men.

Cal was saying that he had been to Christie’s in Geneva in the guise of a potential buyer and had taken along an
expert from Cartier. He had inspected the emerald and was sure it was part of the Ivanoff treasure.

“Emeralds are notoriously fragile,” Cal said, “and to attempt to cut a stone like the Ivanoff emerald was a great risk. They could have ended up with a million shards of worthless green glass. It was cut by a master, and we know there are only three in the world skilled—and confident—enough to do the job. One in Amsterdam, one in Israel, and one in Bangkok. I believe that if you trace that gem cutter, you will find your mysterious seller, the anonymous ‘Lady.’”

He handed the President a reproduction of a faded sepia photograph taken in 1909 in St. Petersburg, Russia, pointing out the diamond court tiara centered with the great emerald, telling him that the unsmiling woman wearing the tiara was the beautiful Princess Anouska Ivanoff on the occasion of her wedding.

“The fact remains,” the President said crisply, “that whoever the anonymous woman selling the jewel really is, she holds the answer to an issue we have been trying to resolve for over seventy years. And if Russia finds her first, the balance of world power will tilt sharply in their direction. The race is on, gentlemen. Whatever it takes, wherever it leads you … find that ‘Lady.’”

Düsseldorf

A tall, gaunt, blond-haired man paced the floor of his luxurious office at the Arnhaldt Group of Companies, whose worldwide trade encompassed iron, steel, armaments, mining, and construction. The Arnhaldts had supplied armaments to every war since Napoleon’s time, always reemerging, regardless of who won or lost, with even greater wealth and power. Among the world’s leading corporations, they were a powerhouse.

Ferdie Arnhaldt stopped his pacing and stared out of
the window of his solidly grand office, but he didn’t see the traffic snarled thirty storeys below. His mind was on the catalog on his desk, open at page fifteen. He knew that the possessor of that emerald threatened the security and stability of the Arnhaldt empire. And he also knew that if he found “the Lady,” his company would be the richest and most powerful in the world. It was all—or nothing. He must find her and deal with her, before the other interested parties got there first.

Geneva

Genie Reese paced the Hotel Richemond’s front steps moodily. She was twenty-eight years old, blond, and what her mother had once termed laughingly “almost gorgeous. If only your nose were a little smaller,” she used to tease, “and your hair three shades blonder, you would be a movie star.” Of course her mother had only been laughing and vivacious on her good days; most of the time she didn’t speak to Genie at all. Her mother had died some years ago, but Genie thought maybe now she would have been pleased with the way she had turned out.

As she had grown up, somehow her features had placed themselves in the right proportions: Her pretty nose no longer looked too big for her delicate face and, thanks to the magician at the hairdressing salon, her hair was now the required three shades lighter. She was tall with great legs and she had “style.” But she wasn’t the movie star of her mother’s dreams; instead Genie was a reporter on American network television.

She usually covered the political beat in Washington. As she waited for her crew to set up, she reflected angrily on the fact that she had been sent to Geneva to report on a trivial event. She had been planning on covering the crucial speech the President was to make to the oil industry in Texas, she had done her research, got her angle …
and then her producer had told her that because she was a woman, jewels would be right up her alley. He’d sent her rival, Mick Longworth, to Texas and Genie to Geneva, and for once her long-assumed cool had almost cracked and she had fought back tears of anger.

“Who cares what jewels rich women are selling and buying?” she had demanded furiously.

“That’s just it,” he’d replied with an irritating grin that just made her want to kick him. “The rumor is that Washington is interested, and so is Russia.” He had forestalled her next question, saying he didn’t know why, but she should get moving and find out.

And so, three days on, there she was in Geneva at Christie’s jewelry sale at the Hotel Richemond. Her crew had filmed the customers arriving: discreet, tight-lipped men in business suits studying their catalogs and smart socialites in Chanel suits checking their profiles in the long mirrors and gossiping wickedly.

Now it was all over and they were filming her outside the hotel. The wind blowing fresh from the lake caught her blond hair and she tossed her head impatiently, squinting her blue eyes in the glare of the lights.

“So,” she began, “in a surprise move, the emerald—’the Property of a Lady’—was withdrawn from the sale only moments before the auction was to begin. Rumor has it that it was expected to sell for at least seven million, but so much more was offered in a private bid that the seller decided to accept. The sum is said to be over nine million dollars. But why so much? The experts tell us that the stone is flawless, and that itself is unique. But the rumors around town say that it may be one half of the Ivanoff emerald, last seen in the court tiara of Princess Anouska, wife of one of the richest princes in tsarist Russia … and let me tell you, there were more than two hundred of those princely families and all of them
seriously
rich. But Prince Michael—
Misha
Ivanoff—was reputed to be even richer than the tsar himself. The story was often told in
St. Petersburg that because of the upkeep of the tsar’s great estates, his dozens of palaces and his many servants and retainers—as well as all their families—there were times when the tsar was short of a ruble or two. But not Misha Ivanoff.
And
he had a beautiful wife who spent money like water. Anouska Ivanoff was an acquisitive magpie: Anything that glittered she had to have. In her time, she was known as Cartier’s biggest customer.

“The story of the emerald in question is that it was given to an earlier Ivanoff prince by a maharaja when he was traveling through India. The prince had taken a dinner service of pure gold to present to his host, from whom he was negotiating the purchase of tracts of land thought to contain valuable minerals and ores. Not wanting to be outdone by his guest, the maharaja plucked an immense emerald from the jeweled headdress of his favorite and most adored”—she paused, laughing—“his favorite and most adored
elephant!
It seems the maharaja loved the creature more than all his many wives, and it was to Prince Ivanoff’s credit that he recognized the value of the gift; not merely the precious stone, but the esteem in which the elephant was held. Apparently he was a shrewd businessman and managed to add even more millions to the Ivanoff coffers. There was so much that not even a generation or two of gamblers and wastrel Ivanoffs could dissipate it. However lavishly they spent, there was always more.

“Later, the great emerald was set by Cartier in Paris into the princess’s court tiara, a sunburst of twenty-one rays of large diamonds that was so heavy it gave her a headache on the official occasions she had to wear it.

“Did the Ivanoffs live too ostentatiously? It would seem so, because when the day of the revolution dawned, their flamboyant life-style and extravagant possessions earmarked the family for a tragic end. The prince was reported burned to death in his country estate. The princess fled with her mother-in-law and two children, six-year-old
Alexei and three-year-old Xenia, but they were overtaken in the frozen winter forest. All were reported slain and their bodies left to the wolves. The princess’s famous collection of jewels disappeared, among them the great court tiara—and the maharaja’s emerald.

“So, was this a little bit of history that was sold at Christie’s here in Geneva today? Is the rumor true that several governments were after it? And if so, why? All we know is that the jewel was sold privately, but was it to Russia? Or the U.S.A.? The anonymous seller, identifiable only as ‘a Lady’ in this catalog and protected by the secrecy that shrouds the Swiss banking system, is the only person who might be able to unlock the secret to the Ivanoff fortune—a fortune that rumor now says has been safely locked away in the bank vaults, gaining interest each year until it amounts to one of the richest in the world. Billions and billions of dollars, we are told. But whoever knows the answer is not telling. The ‘Lady,’ who is today reputedly more than nine million dollars richer, is as elusive as the ghost of Princess Anouska Ivanoff. May she rest in peace.”

Genie put down her mike wearily. “That’s it, guys,” she told her crew. “I’ll edit it back at the station, but right now I’m going to buy you all a drink. Because I’m tired, and I’m bored with these goddamned jewels and rumors, and I’d rather be anywhere else in the world than right here, right now.”

Maryland

The old lady imprisoned in her large chair by the window reached a fragile, blue-veined hand to the table beside her. She pressed the remote button to switch off the television set and leaned back wearily. So, she thought, it had finally happened. All the years of hiding, all the years of fighting to keep her promise—in one day they had come
to nothing. She had warned them but this time her warnings had gone unheeded. And she knew it had been done to keep her, a tired old lady, in luxury. The sale of the Ivanoff emerald was an act of love, but it was one that she no longer needed.

She coughed, gasping air into her failing lungs, an act so habitual now she scarcely heeded it. She thought of the girl she had just seen on television, talking of the Ivanoffs as impersonally as if they had been pawns in a Russian chess game. But it hadn’t been like that at all. She knew because she had been there. And she knew what it was, besides the billions of dollars and the ransom in jewels, that great nations wanted. They were on the trail of a secret to which only she, Missie O’Bryan, knew the answer, she and a Russian gypsy who had prophesied many years ago that a great responsibility would fall on her shoulders. A responsibility that could change the world.

After pulling open a drawer in the little table beside her, she took out an elaborate silver frame bordered in rich enamels. At the top was the Ivanoff crest of a wolf’s head and five diamond plumes banded with rubies on a sapphire ground. In tiny gold Russian lettering was the family’s motto, “Upholders of Truth and Honor.” She peered closely at the fading sepia photograph of Prince Michael Alexandrovich Ivanoff, whose forebears had served at all the Russian Imperial courts since Peter the Great, remembering the first time she had seen him in the vast hall of the St. Petersburg mansion. She had hesitated by the door, awed by its grandeur. Her eyes had been drawn like a magnet to the tall, blond, handsome man standing at the top of the marble stairs, his hand resting on the collar of a great amber-colored dog. And she was to wonder ever after if time really did stand still as their eyes met.

With a sigh she replaced the photograph in the drawer. She had never, in all her long, eventful life, been free to
display it. Misha’s face, along with her secrets, had been locked away for over seventy years.

Then, of course, she had still been Verity Byron, but the prince had always called her “Missie,” with that special touch of tenderness in his deep voice that had sent a thrill down her spine. She had loved him then, and she loved him now, more than any other man in her tangled life. And one day soon, if heaven was the reality she believed it to be, they would be together again and they would both be young and beautiful and their love would last forever. Only then, of course, she would have to explain to him what had happened. She would have to tell him that she had tried to keep her promise.