The Property of a Lady (66 page)

“I thought: Oh, my God, now she has really gone mad, now she thinks she’s pregnant. At forty-four years old when she knows she can never have children.

“‘Of course you are not pregnant, Azaylee,’ I said as calmly as I could. ‘You know the doctors said it was just not possible.’

“She grinned at me, her face full of mischief. ‘They were wrong,’ she said triumphantly. ‘The test was confirmed today. You are to be a grandmother,
matiushka
. At last.’

“The clinic confirmed it and said they must keep an eye on her; she would either have to stay there or come and live with me. I took her home right away and she was happier than I have ever seen her. She was determined to do everything right: She ate the right foods, gained weight, took all her vitamins, exercised, walked, and swam. Her baby was going to be the best baby in the whole world. But if she knew the identity of the father, she wasn’t telling me. She just shrugged and said it could be one of half a dozen but I needn’t worry, they were all nice, good-looking young men. ‘Younger than me. Maybe that’s how I got pregnant,’ she said wonderingly. But it wasn’t, it was just a billion-to-one chance that came off.

“She was physically fit so the birth wasn’t too difficult, and I’ll never forget the love on her face as she held the
baby toward me. There,
matiushka,’
she said proudly. ‘She is just as beautiful as Anouska.’

“Of course she wasn’t. She was a funny-looking little thing, almost bald, and her nose looked too big for her tiny face, but to her she was a miracle of beauty. She gave the child the Russian family names and her stage name, Adair. Anna Adair.

“With Anna’s birth she seemed to come to life again. Six months later she began looking for work and I was left to bring up the child. There were just two things I wished: that Misha could have seen his granddaughter and that Zev could have been there to share her with me.

“Sometimes Azaylee worked, sometimes she didn’t, but she was always involved with some man or other, usually bad ones, and she was still in and out of the sanatorium. Until one day when Anna was six, she just went into the clinic and never came out. Her mind had finally cracked under a depression so acute that she became a virtual zombie, not even able to recognize us or communicate. At first I used to take Anna there to visit, but it was no good for her and finally I stopped. That’s when I met Tariq Kazahn again, in Paris, and Anna’s whole life changed. At last she had a real family.

“At this point too I discovered that most of Azaylee’s money had been squandered by her lovers and that she was virtually penniless. My own money was being eaten up on her clinic and doctors’ bills. They told me it would make no difference to her if I put her in a state institution because she didn’t even know where she was, but I would never do that.

“Azaylee died tragically in a fire at the clinic in 1972. Despite my sadness I was glad she had finally escaped from her years of torture and glad that Anna would no longer have the burden of knowing her mother was insane. Ava Adair was a middle-aged woman but all anyone talked about in the newspapers and magazines was how beautiful she had been, and how talented. They said there
would never be anyone like her and that she and her movies would be remembered forever. And I was left alone to bring up twelve-year-old Anna.

“There was not a great deal of money left,” she said quietly to Cal. “Most of what I had had gone on Azaylee, and now I was left with a mountain of debts for her medical care and the house. I would have to live carefully if I was going to see young Anna through college and into a career and a life of her own. I only hoped I would be spared long enough to accomplish my task.” She laughed. “I didn’t realize then that maybe I would be spared too long. Because you see, Cal, if I had died earlier, none of this would have happened. Anna knows only part of the story. She sold those jewels innocently in order to keep me here in luxury. It’s her way of saying thank you for all I did for her mother.”

It was seven in the morning and the sun was shining brightly as Nurse Milgrim rustled through the door. “It will take days to get over this,” she whispered angrily to Missie. “A whole night’s sleep lost.”

“Oh, Nurse Milgrim, this has been much better than sleep: a catharsis, a relief. And now Cal can take over.”

She looked at him appealingly and he knew how lovely she must have been. “Two questions,” he said quickly. “Do you know where she has gone?”

“Why, to Istanbul. To the Kazahns, of course,” she said as if it were the most logical place in the world.

He nodded. “And do you know if she has any papers, any legal documents …?”

“The lease to the mines, you mean? Oh, yes, Anna had everything. She took the lot when I came in here.” She laughed. “You can hardly keep an old cardboard valise full of priceless jewels under a bed at Fairlawns. They would sweep it out with the cobwebs.” She looked at him and said, “There is something else I have to explain. When I saw the young Russian diplomat, Valentin Solovsky,
on television, I knew him at once. He is Alexei’s son, Anna’s cousin.”

She handed Cal a small photograph of a pretty blond girl and said, “Please, find Anna for me.
Help her.”

Cal stared in stunned silence at the mystery girl everyone was searching for. The Ivanoff heiress.
He was looking at a picture of Genie Reese
.

Istanbul

Istanbul tumbled and crumbled under the hot spring sun, blistering and peeling, layered with dust and grime, clogged with traffic and clapped-out taxis, carpet sellers and cats. The domes of its tarnished jewels, Topkapi, Ayasofya, and the Blue Mosque glittered in the sun, the famous minarets needled the blue sky, and here and there, like an oasis of calm in the constant growl of the city, lay broad peaceful squares where people took their ease with a glass of
cai
at café tables under the trees. Below snaked the Bosphorus—the route to Russia, one shore Asia, the other Europe, abuzz with fishing boats and ferries and big gray ships, the verdant hills on either side dotted with new villas and the palaces and wooden summer houses of a past century.

Boris Solovsky scarcely noticed that the spring afternoon was blue and cloudless, nor that he was in a city of breathtaking antiquity. He cared nothing for the gentle, smiling people crowding the sidewalks, nor the dark-eyed red-lipped women, chic in couture suits, being transported to smart lunches in smart limousines, and he had only a passing glance for the soldiers outside the Dolmabahçe Palace.

He had flown from Moscow to Ankara yesterday, ostensibly on a diplomatic mission to Turkey’s capital, but later that night he had taken a private jet to Istanbul and his target. Genie Reese had escaped his agents in Washington;
she had been on a flight to Heathrow while they were still tying up the guards at her house. In London she had taken a connecting British Airways flight to Istanbul, but this time the KGB had been waiting for her. As she walked from the airport terminal they had surrounded her, jostling her into a waiting car so fast she had no time even to cry out. A quick injection and she had slumped in the seat incapable of any further protest. Now Genie Reese, alias Anna Ivanoff, awaited his pleasure.

Boris permitted himself a smile of satisfaction. It was going to be the greatest act of pleasure in a life devoted to satisfying his baser instincts. She was the key to the final destruction of Alexei and Valentin Ivanoff.

Valentin focused his powerful binoculars, scouring the buildings opposite his room in a small, rundown hotel in the Istanbul suburb of Emirgan. He saw nothing untoward; no marksmen waiting on the roofs or lurking behind open windows. The street below was busy, jammed with buses spitting diesel fumes and ancient Chevrolets with stuttering exhausts. An old-fashioned tea seller, his silver urn strapped over his shoulders, padded down the sidewalk in pointed Turkish slippers; a street vendor was doing a roaring trade with peeled and salted cucumbers to cool throats parched from the city’s dust; and at a café terrace a group of gnarled fishermen smoked hubble-bubble pipes and drank coffee that was stiff with grounds and sugar, gossiping about the old days.

It was a normal everyday Istanbul scene, far removed from the menace he knew lay in wait for him. But at least it told him he had a few hours’ grace before the KGB heard he was here. His father, Sergei, had telephoned Washington last night and greatly daring, had said urgently, “Valentin, they picked Genie Reese up at Istanbul Airport. As you have worked so hard on this case, I am sure Boris would appreciate your help.”

His heart sank as he thought about Genie and her announcement
on TV. He knew she had as good as signed her own death warrant. He had gone straight to her apartment, cursing the rush-hour traffic that delayed him ten precious minutes, only to find the guards bound, gagged, and unconscious and no sign of Genie. The KGB had gotten there before him. He was certain they had not killed her yet, because she had the information they needed. A discreet check with the airlines revealed she had taken a flight to London, then onward to Istanbul. She was somewhere in this city and he meant to find her. He knew that Boris would try to get her to Russia, and the easiest, most direct way was on one of the many Soviet ships that traversed the Bosphorus every day. She might be on any one of a dozen in the harbor. He decided to go take a look at them for any telltale signs of unusual activity.

An hour later he hailed a taxi and rode unhappily back to Emirgan. The Russian freighters in the harbor had been going about their business as usual with no extra guards or special precautions.

He sighed as he passed a restaurant, realizing he had not eaten in twenty-four hours. After telling the driver to take the route along the coast, he looked for a waterfront café. As they rounded the bend at Istinye, the great rust-red hull of the freighter the
Leonid Brezhnev
loomed in front of him.
And at the top of the gangway were two heavily armed
Spetsnaz
troopers
.

Valentin turned to stare at the big silent ship as the taxi drove on. He had stumbled across the very thing he was searching for. He was sure the special soldiers were there to guard a prisoner—Genie was on board the
Brezhnev
and if Boris was not already there, then he soon would be. Somehow he had to get her off. She would tell him who the “Lady” was—and he would do what he must do.

Ferdie Arnhaldt sat at a table by the large stone fountain in the courtyard of the Yesil Ev Hotel, sipping dry white Kavaklidere wine and waiting nervously for his contact.
The man’s lateness grated like sandpaper on his raw nerve ends, and his foot twitched in an unstoppable nervous rhythm as he glared yet again toward the arched entrance.

He looked as if he were about to explode, and the waiter standing on the steps leading into the pistachio-colored clapboard hotel watched him anxiously. Arnhaldt drained his glass and the waiter hurried to refill it, but he shook his head, flapping his hand at the man, waving him away like an irritating fly. The boy shrugged as he walked, puzzled, back to his post by the kitchen. His customer had been there for three quarters of an hour, staring at the entrance to the courtyard as if expecting a miracle to happen. He guessed he was waiting for a woman, and he thought she must really be something to cause such tension.

But ten minutes later when the customer’s companion finally arrived it wasn’t a woman, it was a squat, overweight Turk with a large mustache and a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth. The Turk glanced at him coldly and demanded a
raki
.

“Well?” Arnhaldt asked, his face a mask of anger.

The Turk shrugged. “In Istanbul the traffic is always hell. It is impossible to be anywhere on time.”

He swallowed the
raki
in two gulps and nodded to the waiter to bring another. “This little exercise is costing you a fortune,” he added truculently. “I have a dozen men watching the airport, the Kazahn villas, and the
yali
. A day-and-night watch.”

“Get on with it,” Arnhaldt spat out. “And if it’s costing me a fortune you had better have results.”

“You can be sure I do.” He lighted another cigarette, enjoying his moment of power over this wealthy, important man. “Mr. Steel,” he called himself. He was sure that was not his proper name but he was not interested enough to find out his real one. He was paying good money and that was all he cared about. He intended to
take him for every Deutschmark, especially now he could deliver the goods.

Arnhaldt’s foot beat its nervous rhythm again as the Turk sipped his
raki
and said, “The KGB agents were at Ataturk Airport yesterday, a dozen of them—a very large number, I thought, for such a small operation.”

Arnhaldt’s fist banged on the table, upsetting his glass, and the young waiter came running.
“What
operation?”

“Why, just to pick up one girl— a blond, pretty American.”

Arnhaldt frowned. He was in Istanbul to follow up the Kazahn connection, but now it looked like the KGB had beaten him to it.

“There were a couple of CIA guys there too,” the Turk said, blowing smoke rings into the air, “but they were too late. The Russians hustled her into a car before they could even turn around. They followed her. And we followed them.”