The Property of a Lady (26 page)

Much later, she lay curled beside him while he slept, feeling his breath on her cheek and the security of his arms around her, thinking about what she had heard about love at first sight. People always said it could happen, and maybe now she believed it.

Istanbul

A car was waiting for Leyla at Ataturk Airport. “Welcome home, Miss Leyla.” The chauffeur beamed. “Kazahn Pasha is expecting you. I am to drive straight to the Kazahn
yali.”

Leyla smiled, thinking it was typical of Michael Kazahn to expect her to obey him to the letter and be on the next flight from Paris. And of course he had been right. But she was surprised they were going to the
yali:
These days it was used mainly as a summer house. Both Michael and Ahmet had built spacious modern houses atop a steep hill at Yenikoy, where the double-height windows gave a dramatic view of the Bosphorus far below. She guessed the meeting must be a very important one since Michael believed that all walls except the
yali’s
had ears.

The journey from the airport seemed endless, and her stomach churned nervously as the chauffeur threaded his way slowly through the usual traffic jam at Eminonu and across the Galata Bridge leading from the old city to the new, driving at the usual Turkish breakneck speed along the shores of the Bosphorus toward Yenikoy.

It was a bright, cold day but she stared without noticing at the sun sparkling on the water. They passed Bebek, where she had gone to school, and the ancient castle at Rumeli Hisari, then through Emirgan, where the cliff sloped steeply up to beautiful Emirgan Park.

The old ugly docks at Istinye had been cleared away,
leaving the beautiful sweep of the bay uncluttered, and now only a tiny shipyard remained with a few ships dry-docked undergoing repairs. A vast red-hulled tanker displaying the Russian hammer-and-sickle insignia on its funnel and looking as big as a hotel lay in the deep-water mooring. Leyla glanced at it speculatively as they passed. The enormous superstructure in its bows threatened to tilt the ship on its end, and she knew the tanker must have had a dead weight of at least half a million tons, more than any of her father’s ships, because Ahmet was always wary of potential ecological mishaps and preferred to play it safe.

The car slid past the silent, gloomy tanker, around the bend toward Yenikoy where the ferryboats hooted and fussed on their way to Tarabya. Then it turned sharply right through the huge wooden gates into the courtyard of the Kazahn
yali
.

Everything looked as it always had, right from Tariq Kazahn’s time. The simple pale-green wooden façade with its white gingerbread balconies and fretwork screens; the cobbled courtyard with its shade trees, its Victorian lanterns, and the remnants of thousand-year-old columns and statues excavated from Anatolia. And inside, the contrast of great luxury: antique Turkish carpets and low, silk-covered divans, the great hall with its marble floors and glorious blue Izmir tiles, and the long, flower-filled terrace by the Bosphorus where the family had always gathered on warm summer evenings in the past. The house was full of treasures: antique Turkish silver and brassware, rare wall hangings from Bursa, ancient examples of calligraphy from Persia. There were porphyry columns and inlaid wall panels and a painted canvas ceiling that resembled fabulous Ottoman brocade. Leyla never walked through those big wooden doors without thinking of her great-grandfather, because when Tariq and Han-Su had created their family home, they
had also created a living museum and a lasting memory of themselves.

They were waiting for her in Tariq Pasha’s old study. Her father, Ahmet, hurried to embrace her, looking anxiously behind her for Anna.

“Where is she?” thundered Michael, limping toward her, his leg swinging and his cane thumping angrily on the marble floor.

“Oh, Grandfather, I don’t know,” she cried, bursting into tears.

She sank into a seat in the great bay window overlooking the Bosphorus, sobbing bitterly into her hands, and Michael stared at her nonplussed. “Don’t cry, Leyla,” he said gruffly, coming to sit beside her. “It’s only your old grandfather in one of his tempers. You know it doesn’t mean anything, it’s just my way.” He patted her dark head awkwardly.

“I’m not crying for you, Grandfather,” she said, sobbing, “I’m crying for Anna. She was supposed to meet me. I had her ticket in my bag, and she just never showed up. There was no message, nothing, and after what you said, I’m so afraid.”

“I called her at home and at work,” Ahmet said worriedly, “and she’s not there either. No one seemed to know where she is.”

“If she’s got any sense, she’s hiding out somewhere,” Michael shouted, “and if she has the brains I always thought she had, she’ll be on her way here as fast as she can.”

Leyla lifted her head from her hands, pushing back strands of wet hair from her tearstained face. “No, she won’t,” she said. “She’s afraid to come home.”

Ahmet glared at his father and said exasperatedly, “What did I tell you? You always roar and shout instead of asking simple questions….”

“Never mind that now,” Michael roared again, “let’s get
to the bottom of this story! Leyla, the first thing I want to know is
why
Anna sold the emerald.”

“She needed money to pay for Missie’s rest home. The bills are enormous. I had no idea these places cost so much until she told me. But only the best was good enough for her beloved Missie.”

Michael nodded approvingly. “She was right. But why did she need money? What about the million dollars from Tariq Pasha?”

“Remember, Anna was only seventeen when she inherited the money. She paid off a lot of debts and bought the house in Los Angeles,” she said. “They had bad advice and the rest just disappeared in bad investments. There was just enough for Missie to live on until she went to the nursing home.” Leyla gripped her grandfather’s hands tightly and said, “Oh, Grandfather, don’t you see? Anna was ashamed to come to you and ask for money. She said the Kazahns had repaid their debt of honor and now the responsibility was hers. But it was impossible for her to earn enough to keep herself
and
cover Missie’s bills.

“Then she called me and said she had thought of a solution. She told me that Missie had kept a cardboard valise under her bed for years. She had always supposed it held her personal mementos, old photos, diaries, that sort of thing. But when Missie went to Fairlawns, she showed Anna these fabulous jewels supposedly worth millions and gave her the valise to look after. Of course she told her the story, and reminded her of the old warnings about the Ivanoffs, but Anna didn’t believe it. She said that it was many years since the revolution, that Russia was different now—you know,
glasnost, perestroika
—we thought it didn’t matter anymore. But we decided anyway to be careful. We put the diamond up for auction last year and it sold without any fuss. The emerald was so big we knew it had to be cut. Anna found out the name of a gem cutter and I delivered the stone to Bangkok. To a Mr. Gerome Abyss.”

Ahmet nodded and said, “I know the name. He was well respected in Paris for many years, did a lot of work for Cartier until he was discredited. You took a big risk, Leyla. He might have ruined the stone. How much did you pay him?”

“I promised him ten percent. We thought the stone would bring in maybe two million, no more than that. Anna sent Abyss twenty-five thousand to do the job. The rest was to be paid later, after the sale.” She smiled grimly. “Now Mr. Abyss is going to find himself a much richer man than he thought.”

“Didn’t you realize,” Ahmet said quietly, “that a flawless emerald of that size is extremely rare? That it would be bound to draw the attention of the world’s experts? Cartier must still have the original sketches and plans for cutting the stone and for the design of the tiara. Its every facet would have been noted. They would recognize it immediately as the Ivanoff emerald.”

“We just didn’t think anyone cared anymore.” Leyla sighed. “It didn’t seem that important. And anyway,
why
should anyone care about the Ivanoff emerald?”

Michael paced the room again nervously. “It’s not just the emerald,” he said, “it’s the billions of Ivanoff dollars in the banks.”

“Billions?” Leyla looked at him, stunned. “You mean the story is true? There really are billions of dollars?
And they belong to Anna?”

“Of course it’s true,” Michael roared. “Your great-grandfather knew it. And so did Missie.” He groaned. “She never told Azaylee or Anna because she thought it was still dangerous. The KGB has a long memory, Leyla, they are like the elephant that never forgets.”

“There’s more to it than that,” Ahmet said in his precise tones. “My spy has excellent contacts. Not only did he trace the buyer, but he also found the reason why he was willing to pay any sum to get the jewel. And what he and
Russia and America want.” They stared at him open-mouthed as he told them the story of the mines.

Finally he said, “Russia holds ownership documents known to be false and there is nothing America can do about it,
unless
they find the missing Ivanoff. In other words,
Anna
. If the Soviets find her, she will be spirited back to Russia. They will get the legally signed papers they need to lay their hands on the billions, and they will finally have the true Ivanoff signature on their title deeds to the mines.” He shrugged his shoulders grimly. “And of course she will never be heard of again.”

“Granddaughter,” Michael said, taking Leyla’s hands in his compassionately, “now you know why Anna is in such danger. We must try to find her, get her back to Istanbul. She will be safe here with us.”

“You and Anna made a grave mistake,” Ahmet said quietly. “Obviously Anna wanted to remain anonymous so you decided to deposit the money in the Kazahn account in Switzerland.”

“We were going to tell you afterward,” Leyla said quickly. “Anna thought it would be safer. She said it was a numbered account and no one would be able to trace it.”

“Anna used the number of the Kazahn account in which her money was originally deposited many years ago. But the numbered account was changed recently, and she simply paid the check into an open account in the name of the Kazahn Shipping Line.” Ahmet shrugged. “It would be easy for the buyer or any interested party to trace such a check,
if he really wanted to
. All it takes these days is a computer raider…. And I have no doubt that by now, at least one person,
the buyer
, believes that the Kazahns sold the emerald.” He shrugged. “We must wait and see what happens.”

“Tell me,” Michael said quickly, “has Anna ever mentioned the name Arnhaldt?”

“You mean the German steel tycoon?” She thought for a moment. “Yes, I believe she did once. She mentioned that
when she was packing Missie’s things, she had come across a picture of Baron Arnhaldt clipped from a magazine. I remember she said she thought it was odd, but she didn’t ask Missie about him. She said if Missie hadn’t mentioned anything then, it either wasn’t important or she didn’t want to tell her.”

“We believe,” Ahmet said quietly, “that Ferdie Arnhaldt bought the emerald. Arnhaldt is a megalomaniac, like his father and grandfather before him. He is the armaments king and he knows if he can get his hands on those mines, he will control both the world’s defense systems and its armaments supplies. He can hold the world to ransom. He bought the emerald because he hoped it would lead him to the ‘Lady.’ To Anna.”

“But we knew nothing about the billions and important mines,” Leyla cried despairingly. “We never imagined Missie’s old stories could really be true. We thought that the past was the past and it was all over and done with.”

“And so it probably would have been if it were not for those mines,” Michael said abruptly. “One more thing, Leyla. Does Anna know where the original ownership deeds to the mines are? Because they are the one thing in the world everyone wants to lay their hands on.”

Her dazzling blue eyes widened in horror. “Oh, Grandfather Kazahn Pasha,” she whispered, “now I remember. They were in the valise with the jewels. It was just an old document, brown with age and crumbling at the edges. We thought it worthless but Anna kept it because it had the prince’s signature and the Ivanoff seal. She said she would carry it with her in case she ever had to prove her identity at the bank. But she didn’t know about the mines and the billions. Oh, Kazahn Pasha.” She wailed.
“That document is in Annas handbag.”