Brilliant (19 page)

F  O  R  T  Y  -  O  N  E

Well, of course, I couldn’t rip his clothes off any more than I could steal the Russian crown jewels, but I looked at him and swallowed. I felt warm, and excited. The Pasha burned over my heart like a hot coal. I couldn’t decide which I wanted more, the jewelry or Owen.

“I’ll have some safes brought up, then we’ll begin the inventory,” Andrew was explaining to Mr. Rush. “It’s going to take us several weeks to authenticate and catalog this lot, but using your list, you and I should be able to complete an inventory in a matter of two or three hours. Then we’ll give you a receipt and store the goods in our central jewelry safe.”

Owen got to his feet and offered his hand to Mr. Rush. The two men shook. “You’ll let me or Miss Keswick know if there’s anything I can do for you. My office is just across the reception room.”

They’d begun the painstaking inventory process before he was out the door. Andrew read an item off the list, Mr. Rush held the corresponding piece up for view. It was checked off and laid aside. After watching them for a while, I excused myself. I don’t think they even noticed.

Downstairs, a few stragglers arrived for today’s sale of Antiquities, which Bertram had gaveled into action fifteen minutes ago—it was a testament to his personal celebrity and irresistible personality that he could get such a fine turnout for such an arcane field as today’s: fourth-, fifth-, and sixth-century B.C. Greek urns, vases, and so forth. But he was putting his mark on Ballantine’s, people were starting to pay attention. Today’s latecomers clutched their catalogues, whispering back and forth to one another as they slipped into the saleroom.

I took a deep breath and poured myself a glass of water. I needed to settle down, cool off. Not to be vulgar, but the fact is, I was as hot as a firecracker. Hopefully, a little cold water would get rid of my fever. I took a long drink and held the chilly glass on my neck. My hickey throbbed, and I had a feeling it was flashing through my scarf like a neon light.

The intercom rang. I picked it up and heard Owen’s voice. “Kick,” he said, all business. “Would you come in here, please. And bring your book.”

“Right.”

“Oh, and one other thing.”

“Yes?”

“Don’t wear your panties.”

I slammed the phone down as though it were radioactive. An uncontrollable, adolescent feeling of hysteria bubbled up in me. But, heaven help me: I did what he said!

The second I stepped into his office, Owen closed and locked the door and grabbed me, and we were instantly on the new sofa that had replaced the one where Tina expired. It wasn’t really a “new” sofa, it was a salmon-colored, damask silk, Regency affair with big, soft, down cushions and some very comfortable fringed side pillows—I knew when I selected it, sooner or later, someone, some girl, would benefit from its comfort. I never dreamed it would be me. Of course, at the moment, we could have been on a cement floor for all the difference it made. We were breathless and insatiable. I don’t think even dousing us with a cold fire hose could have gotten us apart.

“I can’t control myself around you,” Owen said when things had calmed down a little. “You are the most luscious, exquisite woman I’ve ever known.”

“It’s the jewelry, Owen.”

“No, I mean it.”

“I think that’s going a little far,” I answered. “But you’re nice to say so. You aren’t bad yourself.”

“All I can think about is how much I want you. All of you.”

“Well, I’ll tell you what, you can think about whatever you want, but you’d better let me up because I have to go back to work.”

“I’m the boss, and I’m telling you, you don’t have to leave quite yet.”

It always made me laugh when he said he was the boss.

Just when things were getting interesting again, there was the sound of a huge explosion. It was as though a bomb had gone off.

Owen was instantly on his feet. “What in the hell was that?”

“You’ve made the earth move.”

F  O  R  T  Y  -  T  W  O

The conference room door flew open and Dimitri Rush charged out, his face registering the shock we all felt. “Get back in there,” Owen yelled as he ran for the stairs. “Bolt the door. Don’t let anybody in.” There was pandemonium throughout the house.

Downstairs, the front door hung from its hinges, and the front windows were gone—blown out. Impenetrable smoke, falling plaster, and floating bits of debris thickened the air. I could see people screaming, but I couldn’t hear them—everything seemed to be happening in slow motion, with the sound track at the wrong speed.

What in the hell had happened? Obviously a bomb had gone off. But where. And why? Why us?

Owen descended the steps two steps at a time, and I followed. The main floor was in chaos. Our security guards, many of whom were off-duty policemen, called for calm at the tops of their voices, but they were completely overwhelmed. I could hear Bertram calling from the podium at the far end of the saleroom, “Please, please, people. Nobody panic. Try to stay calm.” To little avail. I’d never seen panic—it was unstoppable, a virtually unstoppable force with a life of its own. A number of people, patrons and employees, were completely out of control, screaming at the tops of their lungs and willing to trample one another as they tried to cram themselves through the bottleneck of what remained of the front door. Their desperation to get outside for fear the building was in danger of collapse was as palpable as the dust-and-debris-filled air. They pushed and shoved and stumbled down the steps, into the rain, and into the busy square, where all that remained of Mr. Rush’s Range Rover was a smoldering black smudge. Our wrought-iron fence twisted off its posts like licorice. The front gate was gone and large chunks were missing from the granite steps. The cars on either side of Mr. Rush’s—a Mercedes sedan and a Rolls Silver Cloud—were on fire. People struggled to pull their unconscious drivers to safety while others scrambled for their lives around them, before those cars, too, exploded.

Inside, many stood frozen in place in the midst of the panic, deep in shock. Roger, our senior guard, lay motionless in a corner, evidently thrown there by the blast. Then it began to register that throughout the front of the house, wherever there’d been windows, people were injured, slashed by broken glass, some horribly. Some were on the floor, others stood clutching themselves. Blood seemed to be everywhere.

As quickly as the panic started, it was replaced by an eerie calm. Cooler heads began to prevail. There was no fire inside. The explosion had come from the outside in, not inside, and the most pressing danger was the burning cars.

“Get back from the windows,” the security team called out instructions. “Move back into the house.” The individuals who’d maintained their composure and self-control rushed to assist the injured, carrying them back behind the stairs to the kitchen and meeting rooms, pressing jackets, scarves, handkerchiefs, whatever they could get their hands on, against the wounds to try to staunch the flow until the paramedics came.

It was miraculous how quickly help seemed to arrive. The fire department put out the two car fires immediately, eliminating the most urgent threat. Police and emergency support personnel flooded in and took over, bringing order and assurance.

Outside, emergency response personnel started to round up the terrified victims. Blankets materialized, and cups of tea, dozens of umbrellas and cell phones for those who didn’t have them, and Red Cross volunteers to help make the calls. I don’t know how long it took for all this to happen, but it seemed as though help appeared out of nowhere, and suddenly, and blessedly, it was everywhere.

The rain slowed to a heavy mist, making it easier for the police and firefighters to complete an orderly evacuation of the building and for the paramedics to evaluate, triage, and transport the injured. One of the first to be taken to the hospital was Bertram who, in spite of his insistence he was fine and should be left till last, had sustained multiple, deep, cuts on his face and hands, had a serious gash in his head, and what I overheard somebody say was a collapsed lung. It was a miracle his eyes had been spared.

“Will you kindly tell them I’m fine,” he complained breathlessly to Owen, who jogged alongside his stretcher as they dashed to the ambulance. “Tell them to take the people who need it.” He had no idea how badly injured he was.

“You’ve got to go now—you need to get back here as soon as possible.” Owen said it as an order. “The quicker you get checked out, the quicker we can assess what’s happened.”

“Righto,” Bertram whispered as they slammed the ambulance door shut and took off, sirens screaming full blast.

The devastated look on Owen’s face as they carried off his complaining president said everything. The losses—human and material—were mind-boggling.

We watched stretchers with the most seriously injured victims whisked away: Winston, our doorman; Roger, our senior guard; a passerby, two customers; and the chauffeurs of the now-burned-out carcasses of the luxury sedans. What we read in the papers about happening to others had happened to us. We’d been attacked. Bombed. Terrorized. It was surreal. There was no safe place on the planet.

Many of our customers were old enough to remember when London was bombed in World War II, and not surprisingly, they seemed the least affected by what had just happened. They knew exactly what to do, and how to behave, and began to rally the younger patrons in the crowd, who were in shock and verged on tears.

“Let me see here,” I overheard a distinguished older woman say to a spoiled-looking girl who looked to be in her thirties and close to blubbering, “Do you have both your legs?”

“Yes.” Her lips quivered.

“Do you have both your arms?”

“Yes.”

“Can you see?”

“Yes.”

“Are you injured anywhere at all?”

“No.”

“Well, then, I suggest you get yourself under control, stop whimpering, grow up, and make yourself useful.” It worked better than a slap in the face or a splash of cold water.

The library at the opposite end of the square opened its doors and welcomed the survivors in out of the cold, where they were questioned by Scotland Yard detectives (under the command of our friend Thomas Curtis), calmed and soothed by aid workers, then taken home.

Owen, Dimitri Rush and his dogs, Andrew Gardner, and I stood shivering under a tree in the square across the street. A police command post with sandbag walls was being erected between us and the building. We were in shock. All we could do was stare at the building and think how this was simply not happening.

“Sir,” Curtis said to Owen, who seemed not to hear. “Mr. Brace,” he said more firmly until Owen’s eyes focused on his face. “I’m going to have to ask all of you to go to the library down the street.”

“Are you out of your fucking mind?” Owen said.

The distinguished commander looked disappointed. “Sir, please . . .”

“Listen. The value of the goods in this building is similar to the British Museum, and I’m personally liable for them.”

Curtis opened his mouth to speak but Owen kept after him.

“I’m not moving, and if you want me to get the prime minister on the phone, or the lord mayor, or the head of Scotland Yard, or the Queen of England, to tell you to let us stay here, I’m happy to do it. But we’re not budging.”

“The building is in danger of collapse.”

“That’s bullshit, and you know it. Listen, Commander, I’ll sign what- ever you want, I’ll indemnify whoever you want, but I cannot and will not take my eyes off that building until I am one hundred percent confident it, and all the goods inside of it, are secure. It would be like leaving the Waterloo Barracks and the National Portrait Gallery unsecured with their faces blown off and me liable for all their contents.”

The two men studied each other.

“Please,” Owen finally said.

So, Owen, Dimitri, Andrew, and I stayed behind the police command post. Since there’d been no time to grab our coats, we huddled beneath gray army blankets draped around our shoulders. There was no way any of us was going to take our eyes off the building with Mr. Rush’s jewelry sitting in the conference room, unsecured and uninventoried: None of our multiple insurance policies would cover it. If any of it were stolen, we’d be completely liable. Owen’s face was a mask, so I couldn’t tell his exact thoughts, but if they were anything like mine, then they ran along the lines of tallying up precisely what the insurance would and would not cover, and estimating the inevitable tidal wave of lawsuits, some of which were unquestionably being filed at that exact moment over the emergency cell phones provided by the Red Cross volunteers.

Media trucks lined up on three sides of the square behind the perimeter of police ropes. I watched them as though they—or we— were in the Twilight Zone. I saw them interviewing people. I noticed big cameras pointed in our direction. I watched policemen holding up their arms to keep the reporters away. And I thought, so this is how it works when something like this happens. It didn’t seem real or as though it had anything at all to do with us. We were observers from a different dimension.

F  O  R  T  Y  -  T  H  R  E  E

Commander Curtis finally got around to focusing his attention on Dimitri Rush, whose dogs lay curled up on either side of him. There was a slight frown on the commander’s face, the expression of a con- firmed skeptic. “Mr. Rush,” he paused and ran his hand over his forehead, gathering his thoughts, “why would somebody want to blow up your car?”

“Any number of factions,” Mr. Rush answered.

“Factions?”

“Monarchists. Communists. Extremists. Even the government.”

“The government?”

“The Russian government.”

Thomas shook his head. “Lord have mercy.” He turned back toward the blind-eyed building.

Bomb squad experts, accompanied by specially trained, bomb- sniffing German shepherds—men and dogs alike, covered in heavy protective gear—were combing the building for what Thomas said were “secondary devices.”

“ ‘Secondary devices?’ ” I asked.

“Bombers are particularly cruel,” he explained. He kept his attention on the comings and goings of his assistant, who shuttled back and forth between the command post and various staging points. “Sometimes they let a bomb go off, and then time the next one to go off right where people will be trying to get away and rescue workers are trying to get in.”

I felt a chill run through my entire body. “It’s sick business.”

The dog teams exited the building. Signals were given. No other devices had been found. Thank God.

“Okay,” I said, “let’s go get this collection secured before we all have a heart attack.”

The commander shook his head. “I’m sorry, Miss Keswick, but until we get a green light from the structural engineers, the building remains off-limits.”

I opened my mouth to speak, but he continued, talking to us as though we were thickheaded. I wanted to hit him. And then Owen walked up and from the expression on his face and the way his hands were balled into fists, I was pretty sure he was about to. I stepped between them.

“I’m sorry, Commander,” I said. “I don’t mean to be disrespectful, but that won’t do. You don’t understand the vastness of what we’re dealing with. Mr. Rush’s collection alone is worth possibly five hundred million pounds, and it’s just lying there on a conference table. And obviously, somebody has gone to a great deal of effort to try to get it. It’s got to be put in the jewelry vault.”

“Five hundred million?” His bright blue eyes stared hard into mine.

“For starters. Much of it’s priceless.”

“Where is the vault, Miss Keswick?”

“In the fourth cellar,” Andrew answered. He was shivering, and his glasses were foggy. I don’t think he was accustomed to being outdoors. “It was built to withstand a nuclear attack. The jewelry’s unguarded at the moment, sir. I’m sure you don’t want that responsibility on your shoulders in addition to everything else.”

I felt sorry for Commander Thomas Curtis. I don’t mean he was a weak man, far from it. I just think he didn’t like his job very much. I think he agreed with the logic of our argument in spite of the fact it went against all department policies. I also think he was burned-out and didn’t have the wherewithal or the desire to fight back.

“Wait here.” He pulled the collar of his raincoat up around his neck and limped over and had what looked like a heated discussion with the head of the bomb bureau. The conversation concluded with a lot of nodding. He returned. “Follow me,” he said. “Be extremely careful where you step. The structure is now officially a crime scene, and we don’t want you rearranging any evidence.”

Owen rolled his eyes at me. “Mr. Important.”

“Shut up, Owen,” I said. “This guy’s sticking his neck out for you.”

It took additional convincing of the structural engineers that we should be allowed to use one of the service elevators to transport the cases and safes; the fact was, the elevator we wanted to use was in the back of the building, far from the scene of the blast, and they conceded that the chances of its having been damaged were slim.

We were a shell-shocked group, numbly accompanying police officers and our in-house guards as they ferried the safes down to the safety of the cellar and the jewel vault, where the inventory would be recommenced and completed. Owen was on the phone most of the time with David, and I was on the phone with the hospital, checking on Bertram and the other injuries.

“He’s still in surgery,” I glumly reported. It was late afternoon. It seemed as though he’d been in surgery for hours.

It took an inordinate amount of time to get the cases moved, not only because they had to be repacked, but also because so many of us were involved in their transportation and we were all feeling territorial: Nobody wanted to let any of the goods out of his or her sight for a second.

Finally, they sat on padded worktables around the edge of the jewelry vault and Dimitri and Andrew were ready to proceed. They placed the first case on the velvet-covered center table and unlatched it.

I leaned against the wall and closed my eyes. I felt like crying. I wanted to go home and put my head under my pillow.

“Kick,” Owen said, “it’s starting to hit the fan, and I’ve got to get to the hotel and meet with David—he’s hired a public relations/damage-control specialist who insists we get on the air with the company perspective as soon as possible. Will you stay till they’re done and just double-check that everything’s squared away? Locked up the way it should be.”

I nodded. I would have stayed anyway. My home had been attacked, my life. I couldn’t leave her bruised and bleeding until I was sure I’d done all I could to help.

In reality, there wasn’t much for me to do but hang around and wait for them to finish. I couldn’t very well go upstairs and help hammer plywood over the windows. After about an hour, Thomas Curtis appeared.

He handed me a cup of steaming black coffee and held his lighter for my cigarette. “There are some sandwiches and cakes out in the hall from the Red Cross.”

I followed him into the wide, dark corridor. The furnace had been turned off in case of a gas leak, and it was starting to get cold.

I was suddenly so tired, so permeated by sadness and grief, I thought I’d collapse.

“Why don’t we sit down?” Thomas suggested. “I think I saw some folding chairs in that storeroom.”

He retrieved the chairs and set them up on either side of the scratched, Danish-Modern-looking side table (probably unbought or unclaimed from a sale) which held the tray of sandwiches. “More coffee?”

“What I’d like is a drink.” I smiled and took a deep breath.

“A whiskey would hit the spot right now. Unfortunately, it’s not in my cards, but it shouldn’t be much longer before you can go.”

“I’m sorry Mr. Brace was rude to you. There’s just so much at stake.”

Curtis nodded. “I’m used to it. His reaction was very common— threatening to call the higher-ups. Textbook. The fact is, the lord mayor and head of Scotland Yard are out of the country—at a conference in Oslo, so he wouldn’t have had much luck getting them on the phone. He might have been able to get through to the prime minister, but the prime minister would have reasserted my authority. It was my decision to permit the four of you to remain—I knew there wasn’t any harm in letting you stay close by. Made it easier for us to get quick answers. Believe me, I’ve had much tougher adversaries than Mr. Brace.”

I wasn’t so sure of that—Owen could be more diabolical than Professor Moriarty—but I didn’t say so. “I’m sorry I couldn’t go to the V and A with you yesterday, Thomas—I love the Rafael cartoons and their Sunday brunch. Was it terrific?”

“Very.”

“I was away for the weekend.”

“So I see.” He smiled broadly. He was looking straight at my neck. “Lucky fellow.”

“Oh, my God.” My hand flew up to my neck, scene of the incriminating hickey—my scarf was gone. “Oh, God.”

We both started laughing, and within seconds had tears running down our cheeks. I know my face was bright red. I don’t think I’d ever laughed so hard in my life. It was so ludicrous, so naughty, so ridiculous. And what made it even funnier was that we both knew it. Things like hickeys simply did not happen to people our age, what- ever that was.

“I swear to God this has never happened to me before,” I told him, although I don’t know why; it wasn’t any of his business. “I’m just absolutely horrified by it.”

“Don’t be embarrassed on my account. Believe me, whatever you were doing was possibly as much fun, maybe even more, than the museum. Although I wouldn’t bet on it. I haven’t seen a raspberry like that since I was at Oxford.”

“
Raspberry
? Oh, my God. How unbelievably cheap.” We both went hysterical again.

When Mr. Rush and Andrew emerged from the safe, we were still trying to compose ourselves. Then, as bad luck would have it, just as we got outside, the lord mayor of London and the head of Scotland Yard drove up, right off the plane from Norway. That wiped the smile off Commander Thomas Curtis’s face. His jaw set. His troubles were just beginning.