City of War (55 page)

“Does that apply to atrocities too?”

“Especially to atrocities. Despite the revisionists, do you honestly believe there was anyone with a pulse in Nazi Germany who didn’t know what was going on?”

“Of course not.”

“So every ordinary citizen who kept his mouth shut contributed to the Holocaust.”

“In their own way, absolutely.”

“Well, all thirteen trials at Nuremberg netted the execution of only a couple dozen people. That’s two hundred and fifty thousand to one in Holocaust victims alone. Add in military and civilian deaths, and it’s ten times more.”

“So you’re saying nothing ever comes out even.”

“It’s not ‘even’ that matters. We’re defined by the point we decide it’s over.”

She looked at me for a moment, then turned her head. But before she did, I saw a tear on her cheek. “Goddamn you,” she said, but there wasn’t any conviction in it.

Strathmoor Hall looked warm and welcoming, not at all like a place that hadn’t been visited by its owner in over two years. Keeping four stories of eighteenth-century galleries, state rooms, paintings, grand staircases and bedrooms in good repair requires almost as many man-hours as it does pounds sterling. And, like many of its elderly brethren in the neighborhood, the undertaking is compounded by stables, lakes, a classical garden with an impossible maze and an auditorium-sized conservatory that, in its day, was the largest ever built.

Every grand home has a feature of architectural genius. Strathmoor Hall’s is a man-made horseshoe waterfall one hundred feet across that plunges nearly silently into a pool adorned with naked statues of Grecian gods. My father, who thought the falls were a “goddamn eyesore,” tried twice to have them torn out, but the blue-haired ladies of the National Trust, who aren’t supposed to have any say over private property, somehow convinced a court otherwise. I never told my father, but I was glad.

As Archer and I stood looking at it, she said, “I tried to be nonchalant when we came up that boulevard you call a driveway, but this…I’m completely at a loss.”

“My father was convinced the original owner put it in because he was impotent. He called it Compensation Falls.”

She laughed. “It makes me want to pee.”

When we walked through the back door, Mallory had our cook, Guinevere—an ample woman with breasts that could nurse a small country—waving two knives and screaming at him to get out of her kitchen, or she was going to cut off something to cook with bangers. On his way past us, he mumbled a retort, but not loudly.

“I see nothing’s changed,” I said as I kissed Guin’s neck, and she turned and hugged me close.

“The nicest thing anybody’s ever done for me was take that little fart to California,” she said in her lilting Scottish brogue.

Archer burst out laughing and bolted for the bathroom.

Black Group, Ltd. operates out of a nineteenth-century, columned, granite-faced edifice in Knightsbridge. The boardroom, like most, is a monument to the company’s successes: framed front pages of history-making headlines, detailed models of its great ships and photographs of its famous real estate. It would take two rooms of equal size to exhibit its failures, but as my father would say, “I never made a mistake I couldn’t erase in the retelling.”

The primary item on the agenda was the acquisition of a Rome media company we’d been pursuing for years only to be rebuffed each time in that quaint way the Italians have of six people waving their arms and shouting all at once. Now they’d come knocking on our door.

“There’s some upheaval in the family D’Antonio,” explained BG’s managing director, Sir Gregory Bone, to the eleven men and three women seated around the table. “The oldest son has a heroin problem, and the youngest a habit of marrying prostitutes. The late Mr. D’Antonio’s will made it absolutely clear they were to have nothing to do with the business, and their sister, Graciella, has been running it—quite ably, I should add. Now the brothers have filed suit to either be put in operating positions or have their percentages paid out in cash. They’ll lose, of course, but Graciella would like to avoid the dirty laundry that would come out at trial.”

Another director—Burton Evennette, the board’s resident curmudgeon—shook his head. “Italian courts. Only the Americans have made more of a mess of a justice system. By the time those corrupt bastards finish, the D’Antonios will be bankrupt. We should stand down and pick up the pieces.”

Sir Gregory looked down the table at me. “Would you like to speak to this, Mr. Black?”

“I see from the notes you provided that the asking price is two billion euros. What does our due diligence say?”

“It’s below market, and I believe that, under the circum
stances, we might be able to wring out another ten percent.”

I turned to Julia Rillington, head of BG’s media group. “This would fall under your wing, Julia. What do you think?”

“I’ve met Ms. D’Antonio. She’s smart and tough. If I could, I’d like to have her on my team.”

“Sir Gregory,” I said, “let me offer a suggestion. Negotiate the best deal you can, then I’ll make up the difference to two billion. That way BG will be honoring its corporate responsibility, and I’ll get a piece of an undervalued asset.”

Julia Rillington never broke eye contact with me. “And Ms. D’Antonio will not feel as though she’s had her father’s company stolen from her. Thank you, Mr. Black.”

I don’t think Burton Evennette was as impressed, but then he rarely is.

At that moment, the boardroom door opened, and Mr. Wicks, BG’s chief of security, came in. “Excuse me, Mr. Black, but there’s a gentleman in the lobby who insists on seeing you. I told him you were not available, but he refuses to leave. Before I sent for the police, I thought I should ask. He said he works for someone named Serbin.”

The man seated in the anteroom off reception was large and Asian. I recognized him immediately from Kim’s photographs as one of the colonel’s security detail. He stood quickly and handed me a rich-looking envelope with a red wax seal and my name inscribed in elegant calligraphy. As I took it, I thanked him in Mongolian, “
Bayarlla
.”

That caught him by surprise, and he smiled slightly. Then he regained his stony countenance, nodded curtly, turned and left. As I rode the elevator back to the boardroom, I broke the seal and read the KS-embossed card inside.

45

Paintings and Pageants

Archer came down the staircase with the same walk I had seen that first day back on Princeton Street. I’d been with her almost constantly since, but even though she always moved with an easy grace, this was different. Catlike. She was a woman who was used to being noticed to the exclusion of anyone else in a room, and down deep, she not only knew how to maximize it but she craved it as well.

She’d borrowed a dress from the London shop of Rudolfo Sanci, the designer who had launched her career in Europe, and there was no other word for it but imperial. Shoulderless black silk with aquamarine accents complemented by matching aquamarine Jimmy Choos. She’d also discovered a collection of jewelry in the house that I didn’t know existed and selected a flat platinum neck chain with a single strawberry-sized aquamarine on a slide at her throat. On her wrists, she wore a pair of three-inch-wide mock French cuffs in solid platinum, each set with a single, large aquamarine where the cuff link would be.

Even Mallory was taken by her entrance. “My goodness, Ms. Cayne, you are likely to be spirited off to Saint Petersburg to live at Catherine Palace.”

She smiled. “Only if I can order executions.” She eyed my tux and said, “You clean up pretty well yourself.”

I had elected to drive rather than call for a car. I hung my jacket on the hook in the back, and Archer settled into the Bentley’s passenger seat. She rummaged around in the glove box until she found a Sinatra CD, and as we drove toward the city, we listened to the Chairman of the Board do what no one else has ever done as well.

The “small dinner” turned out to be, like many things Russian, deliberately misstated. The line of cars outside my grandfather’s former home paralyzed traffic for blocks, and as we waited our turn at the valet, we watched the arriving guests disembark under the brightly lit portico. Not surprisingly, most were members of the new Russian elite—young politicians, oligarchs and wealthy ex-pats hovered over by bodyguards and sporting arm decorations of overdressed, overly obvious women.

“Nice-looking crowd,” mused Archer. “Sort of a thug and moll ball.”

Just then, one of London’s leading bookmakers got out of a vintage Rolls with a tall, trashy-looking brunette wearing way too much makeup, several million dollars’ worth of diamonds and, of all things, a tiara.

“Oh, look,” said Archer, “the queen. Jesus, if Rudolfo were here, he’d ask for his dress back.”

When we finally made our way up the red carpeted stairs, past the guards and into the home’s foyer, the place was full, and the guests were milling about to background music provided by a string quartet.

Many in the crowd recognized one or both of us, but no one approached. “Ever get tired of being resented by every woman in the room?” I asked.

“Never. But it pisses the hell out of me when they give equal time to my date.”

“I was thinking the same thing.”

She elbowed me and hit my bad rib. Time to put away the rapier wit.

My grandfather had built and disposed of the mansion long before I was born, so I’d never been inside. I’d heard, however, that the Yugoslavs had replaced the original décor with Rococo Extreme. Serbin evidently liked the look, because there was enough gilt on the mirrors, murals on the ceilings and overblown chandeliers to satisfy even the most subtlety-challenged Parisian pretender.

But what the place gave away in ostentation, it more than compensated for in art. I remember Bert’s telling me that Russian painting takes some getting used to. That Nikitin, Levitskii, and, later, Briullov were so heavy-handed that their work feels like it’s being sledgehammered through your eyeballs. In his opinion, only Vrubel and the lone, consensus female master, Bashkirtseva, possessed as fine a hand as any of the more well-known Western Europeans.

However, as ponderous as the majority of Serbin’s paintings were, and as unsophisticated a viewer as I am, the cumulative effect was nothing short of august. More interesting was how, since Russian law explicitly prohibited the export of any artwork older than fifty years, the colonel had managed to assemble a collection rivaling the Hermitage’s.

The tuxedoed and gowned guests were ushering themselves along the walls, commenting on the masterpieces while pairs of white-coated, white-gloved waiters pushed vodka and caviar carts among them. The decanters were set in hollowed-out blocks of ice marked with small labels. I ordered two glasses of Siberia, which the server made great theatre out of pouring into silver-stemmed Operetta flutes. I passed on the cut-crystal bowl of caviar also imbedded in ice, but Archer wolfed down several toast points heaped with Beluga. “No lunch,” she said with her mouth full. “Why not you?”

“It would feel like I was cheating on Wandie.”

“How very droll. I must be in England.”

We were in a drawing room admiring a Bakst canvas when an accented voice behind us said, “It’s a fake.”

We turned to find Konstantin Serbin smiling at us. “Not
one of Tiziano’s. My insurer introduced me to this fellow. I’m fascinated at the services you capitalists dream up.” He extended his hand. “I’m delighted to meet you, Mr. Black. It’s always a pleasure to make the acquaintance of a fellow soldier.”

He was smooth in a Moscow sort of way. Tanned and expertly tailored in a suit cut to complement his thick chest and five-foot-seven height. His speech was also impeccable and his manners perfect, but there was the split-second hesitation of an autodidact as he ran through his mental checklist.

“My congratulations on your successful departure from the Watergate. The note was a particularly nice touch…not to mention a bit awkward, since I’d asked a favor of an old friend.”

I bowed ever so slightly. “Glad to be of service.”

“I was much more disappointed to learn that Mr. Bruzzi is no longer with us. I’m told it was his heart.”

“You were misinformed. His heart was the last to go.”

He allowed himself a moment, discarded what he’d intended to say and turned to Archer. “I’m sure you’ve been told this many times, Ms. Cayne, but your photographs do not do you justice.”

She took his hand. “Neither do yours, Konstantin. You’re much shorter.”

I saw his eyes harden. “Now I understand why one of my fellow citizens decided to retire you.” Without warning, Serbin reached up and pushed Archer’s hair away from her bad eye. “Russian men are not so amused.”

The motion had been so sudden that she went rigid. I didn’t. I clamped my hand down on his wrist and pulled him toward me. He stumbled slightly, and I felt his powerful frame tense as we locked eyes. I knew my size was of no consequence. The only issue was whether he was prepared to let me break his arm when he made his move. We stood that way for an uncomfortable moment, then he relaxed. I waited just slightly longer and released my grip.

He turned to Archer and smiled tightly. “Excuse my manners, Ms. Cayne. It is sometimes easier to take off the uniform than the privilege.”

“Oh, do please call me Archer. After one murders a family member, I think first names should be
de rigueur,
don’t you?”

Serbin allowed himself a smile. “What I think,
Ms. Cayne,
is that if you keep score only by clever remarks, you’re not really in the game.”

He and Archer held each other’s eyes, then he turned back to me. “I’m told my home used to be your grandfather’s. Why don’t I give you a short tour?”