Hot Siberian (7 page)

Vivian keyed and started the Bentley, a black sedan which in another year would be out of its teens. The car's three previous owners had gotten the best out of it, and Vivian after the first year of diligent care had become indifferent to its various mechanical ills. The car could burp and shudder, smoke and stall all it wanted, she decided, it would get not one penny more of costly sympathy from her. Evidently, the car had conceded to her attitude, as for the past two years it had been running as if in its prime. She pulled the Bent out to the archway of Loundes Close and let it idle there. Within a minute or two along came Archer in his Rolls-Royce Silver Spirit. Beaming, he waved out at them and lifted his drink in a salute to their fealty, their having waited for him.

A quarter hour later both cars were through with the traffic of London proper and westbound on the M4, the Bent leading the way. Nikolai reached into a cardboard carton in the backseat and got a compact disk, just any one of about thirty that were there, all equally favored. He didn't look at its label, let it be a surprise when he inserted the disk into the player and out came the group Weather Report doing “Corner Pocket.” Perfect for the moment: happy, brassy, percussive, honest moving music. He turned the volume up and glanced back at Ninja between the rear speakers. Ninja's ears were twitching in time with the beat and his whiskers were vibrating.

Archer, following at an unsafe distance, had his driver flick the Rolls's headlights, so as not to be altogether excluded. Each time Nikolai turned and looked back or Vivian glanced into the rearview mirror, those headlights spoke brightly for Archer. Nikolai didn't mind, really. Archer was Archer. Well-meaning, not really over-the-nose, just very British. He had an irrepressible streak of generosity that was unusual for a wealthy person. Most of his sort were penny squeezers. And certainly Nikolai couldn't blame the man for loving Vivian. That would be like blaming himself. The only strong criticism he could make was that Archer had once had her and been fool enough to lose her.

Nikolai reached over and gently slipped his hand beneath Vivian's hair. He knew how much she liked having the back of her neck touched while she drove. And the lobes of her ears. She smiled, pleased with him, as his fingertips moved on her skin. She remained profile to him, intent on driving.

Nikolai took her in.

He thought how each time she came into his eyes she brought love, more love. It wasn't, the way he saw it, love that was only assimilated by him, used like fuel. Rather it was love that also accumulated, mounted up. Sometimes it was the sort of love that he could neatly arrange, comfortably compile. More often it was love flooded in, shoved in, heaped in every which way, so much that he was sure it surpassed his bursting point.

He was reflective as he looked at her now, recalling the first time he ever saw her. Even then, in that initial momentary impression, she must have occupied some of his emptiness, that space in him that he had, until then, disregarded, at least never given honest attention to.

On an afternoon a year and four months ago.

At Sotheby's on New Bond Street.

In the high-ceilinged main auction room.

The sale being conducted that day featured Russian works of art, icons, objects of vertu. Nikolai was there only as an observer with a personal interest. The atmosphere of the auction room struck him as solemn, suitable for the auction itself, which was a sort of capitalistic rite. A few chairs out of three hundred were vacant, but Nikolai chose to stand at the rear of the room and follow the sale with a catalogue. Colored photographic slides of the auctioned items were projected on a screen. It was all done in a hurry for some reason, perhaps, Nikolai thought, to help spur impetuous extravagance. As for those in attendance, from Nikolai's point of view they were just the backs of so many heads. The auctioneer behind the raised lectern recited the litany of money, while a split second later than his voice the electronic calculator above displayed the pounds sterling of each bid converted into dollars, marks, francs, and yen. A silver-gilt-and-shaded-enamel desk set by Maria Semyenova, circa 1910, was fought over and finally won for six thousand pounds by someone identified only as paddle number fifty-three.

Next came the Fabergé items.

A night-table clock of gold and silver enameled rose pink over a guilloché ground attributed to Fabergé work-master Michael Perchin, St. Petersburg, 1900. It sold for twenty thousand pounds.

A nephrite-and-diamond imperial presentation box bearing the monogram of Czar Nicholas II, made by Fabergé workmaster Henrik Wigstrom, St. Petersburg, 1900. It went for forty thousand pounds.

A jeweled gold photograph frame surmounted by the Russian imperial eagle, enameled powder blue over a guilloché ground, containing a photo of Empress Alexandra Feodorovna, made by Fabergé workmaster Johan Victor Aarne, St. Petersburg, 1911. It brought twenty-three thousand pounds.

Where he had been perturbed before, Nikolai was now fascinated. He felt affiliated to all these precious things: the card cases, snuffboxes, tiny enameled Easter eggs, stickpins, and other items born out of the old Fabergé workshop.

Lot number 152 was next, the auctioneer announced.

It was the reason Nikolai was there.

The mouse.

The photographic slide of it was projected. A tiny white mouse in a crouching position, perfectly carved out of chalcedony. Its eyes cabochon rubies, its silver ears and tail set with diamonds. The bidding on it began at ten thousand and went rapidly up. “Twelve thousand, thirteen thousand, fourteen thousand,” said the auctioneer, his eyes and hand as well as his voice acknowledging the raised paddles, the bidders, left, right, and center. Nikolai was proud. The room felt changed to him now, brighter; the very air of it seemed to contain a familiar old glee. At twenty-five thousand the bidding slowed. Nikolai noticed that down near the front the paddle in the hand on the end of an arm sleeved in lively blue was held insistently, dominantly aloft. Until it was no longer challenged and the auctioneer said, “… fair warning … thirty-four thousand … down it goes at thirty-four thousand,” and conclusive as an exclamation point the little block of hardwood that served in place of a mallet in the auctioneer's hand was smacked down sharply.

The woman in blue got up from her chair, sidled out the row, and came down the center aisle. Nikolai immediately saw she was beautiful, and as she came closer he felt even that was an understatement. The way she touched him off, heightened his senses, he was, in only a moment, able to appreciate much of her. Her straight brown hair of a length that just cleared her shoulders was healthily heavy, and moved with her. Her hair parenthesized her strongly structured face and fine features, her complexion of pale olive, her wide-set eyes with an oriental hint to them. She was tall and not embarrassed by it, not at all hunchy.

Nikolai took her to be a wealthy British woman, the thoroughbred sort, most likely the occupant of a certain branch of a branch in the genealogy of some noble tree, Lady somebody. He told himself that it wasn't her beauty that compelled him to follow her out to the corridor. He did have another reason, which had just occurred to him.

He waited for her to finish at the cashier's counter. She would have passed right by him if he hadn't politely intercepted her. He didn't beg her pardon or anything trite as that. “You bought the mouse” were his first words to her.

“Yes,” she said warily.

“Would you allow me to see it?”

“It was on exhibition here for three days,” she said coolly.

“I missed the exhibitions.”

An almost imperceptible lift of her chin told him that was his tough luck, but then, as though suddenly realizing a different path, she warmed a notch to ask: “Are you interested in purchasing it?”

“Might I please have a look at it?”

“Are you by chance a dealer?”

“No.”

“A private collector, then.”

He smiled at that, and she took it as a positive reply. She removed from her handbag the little hinged maple box that bore the Fabergé stamp on its lid. She opened the box to reveal the carved white chalcedony mouse resting in the creamy silk bed of its exact indented impression. She offered it along with another question. “Are you perhaps a Fabergé expert?”

“Somewhat,” Nikolai replied with polite modesty. He very carefully removed the mouse from its box. It was truly tiny, only about an inch and a quarter from nose to tail. He placed the mouse on the flat of his palm and held it at eye level, as though allowing the mouse with its rubies to get a better look at him.

“Possibly,” she said, “you'll be kind enough to give me your opinion on its authenticity. You know how it is with Fabergé—so much has been faked, and so nicely faked I might add, that one can't help but be leery.”

“What's your opinion?”

“Well, I just put out thirty-four thousand for it, so what I think ought to be evident.” She was not quite successful in concealing that she was on unsure ground.

Nikolai took out his ten-power magnifying loupe and examined the mouse. On the underside of its tail, precisely where it should be, he found the Fabergé hallmark, the Cyrillic initials KΦ(KF), and next to that the stamped mark showing the head of a girl in profile wearing the Russian headdress called a
kokoshnik
, which conveyed that the piece was made in St. Petersburg, then the numerals 88 that stood for its silver content of 88
zolotniki
, close to pure. Last were the Cyrillic letters MB (MB), the initials identifying the Fabergé workmaster.

“Around three hundred rubles,” Nikolai said.

Her breath caught.

“That was how much it sold for originally in 1910,” he added.

She exhaled her relief.

“Today it's priceless.”

“Well, hardly priceless,” she contended. “I just bought it.”

Nikolai was glad to tell her: “There is only one other similar Fabergé mouse. A blue one. It's in the private collection of the Queen, in Buckingham Palace.”

Later she would tell him that at that point she almost said, “No shit.” “Did you bid on it?” she asked.

“No.”

“Why not?”

“The way you were bidding I wouldn't have had a chance.”

“That's how I am when I want something.”

“It's the way most people would like to be. However, it requires the means.”

“You really think I bullied the bidding?” she asked with a slight smug grin.

“Entirely.”

“Well, in truth I'm more of a sport than a bully. To prove it, tell you what—I'll let you have the mouse right now for forty thousand.”

He pretended to be giving that consideration. Actually, he was thinking how long they'd been standing there. She had time to squander, maybe, but not to waste.

“I've been trying to place your accent,” she said, “and I hope you don't mind my saying it, but the best I can come up with is that you're an American with an affectation.”

He told her his name.

She didn't reciprocate with hers. She said his name aloud as though to test the ring of it. “Borodin? The same as the composer?”

“He was my great-great-uncle.”

“Then you're Russian. I must say I never would have guessed.” And then without hesitation, running right along as though it were a continuation of the sentence, she asked: “What do you say to forty thousand?”

He was tempted to tell her that her margin of six thousand was not appropriate to the swiftness of the turnover. But before he could say anything she wanted to know the time and he was sure next she would say she was late for an appointment and hurry off, leaving him completely at a loss. He wouldn't let that happen, he told himself. He'd stalk after her, watch where she went, follow her all the way into the night, act the absolute fool. “Five minutes to four,” he told her.

“I thought so,” she said. “I've got the growls.”

They had tea at Brown's, which was close by. “Brown's serves a nice not stratospheric but rather high tea,” she said. Nikolai doubted that he'd ever get used to English tea. For one thing it was drunk from a cup or mug rather than a glass, and some people diluted it with milk or cream and further ruined it with sugar. Like most Russians he preferred straight, strong tea. Nevertheless, there he sat with her in a cozy banquette at Brown's, traitor to his palate, having what he believed was the finest tea he'd ever tasted.

It wasn't until she requested the waiter to bring another hot, fresh pot and more cakes that she gave up trying to sell Nikolai the mouse. And it wasn't until she'd returned from her only trip to the powder room (later she would tell him she'd gone in only for the mirror, to take measure of the libido in her eyes) that she confided it was necessary for her to sell it. By then, she had Nikolai so entranced he couldn't think it ridiculous or even odd that she'd given Sotheby's a check that far exceeded the amount she had in her account at her branch of Barclays. He wondered why Sotheby's would so readily accept so large a check from her. He asked her about that.

“They always do,” she said, and from that Nikolai gathered this was not a unique predicament for her.

“Not to be concerned,” she told him. “I know someone who, in a breath, will buy it for forty.”

“So you were speculating—saw the chance to make a profit and jumped at it.”

She indicated the tip of her little finger. “Only about this much of my motive was profit. I simply wanted it, had to have it if only for a short while. The other Fabergé things were lovely, but this mouse just won me.”

Perfect words. They called for Nikolai to tell her: “It was made by my grandfather.”

“He was a Fabergé?”

“He was Maksim Bemechev, a workmaster
for
Fabergé in St. Petersburg during the early nineteen hundreds.”

“What is a workmaster? I can imagine, but tell me.”