Do You Promise Not to Tell? (3 page)

Pat nodded. “Of course, Peter. But it doesn’t hurt to pay a little more attention to what our forebears went through.”

Their turn came to pick up their coats and, buttoning her camel-hair reefer, Pat turned to say good-bye to Professor Kavanagh.

“It was so nice to meet you.”

“Same here. You know, it’s lunchtime, and seeing all that beautiful Fabergé has really stimulated my appetite. How about I take you two out for an ail-American hamburger?”

Before Pat could decline, Peter chimed, “Great!”

Pat laughed.
Why shouldn’t I go?
she asked herself. Often when a man asked her out, she made some excuse about her business or her parental responsibilities. She’d finally admitted to herself that she just didn’t want to fall in love again, to be involved with someone who could complicate her life. But this would be safe enough. Peter and his teacher. A hamburger. There’d be no pressure. Professor Kavanagh was looking at her expectantly.

“Sounds good. A cheeseburger would hit the spot right about now.”

As they exited to the street through the heavy glass door, Pat felt a tap on her shoulder. She turned expectantly.

“My God—Farrell! Farrell Slater!” Pat reached to hug the other woman. “I haven’t seen you in . . . forever!”

Tony didn’t really mind wearing the cossack costume. It sure worked like a charm on the little old ladies who were the big tippers. He was just grateful that Clifford Montgomery had decided that Russian Season at Churchill’s was February and March, not July and August.

He stood before the imposing entrance of the auction house wearing a long, marine-blue wool coat with red collar and cuffs, and slouchy black boots. A sword hung at his waist and slings of bullets crisscrossed his chest. A holster held a fake gun on his hip. He’d even let his beard grow in anticipation of this month. Tony wanted to look as authentic as he could.

What a crowd this Fabergé stuff was bringing in! Montgomery and the board of directors must be pretty happy. Good for business. And what was good for Churchill’s was great for Tony.

The more customers who came to the auction house, the more tips Tony made. At about thirty thousand dollars, his salary was meager by New York City standards. But in a good year he could triple his income by charming and pampering the wealthy clientele.

He hailed cabs and checked coats and packages, ingratiating himself to the patrons who expected to be accommodated and were prepared to pay for it. He
accompanied old men and women and blind people across busy Madison Avenue; not because he’d get paid for it, but because it was the right thing to do. Many times, though, it did pay off—not because these vulnerable creatures were wealthy Churchill’s customers, but because the regular auction-house clients took notice of his good deeds and rewarded him for it. Ten- add twenty-dollar bills added up quickly and it was easy not to declare cash for tax purposes.

Christmastime was the best. People were the most generous then. But when there were special theme months at Churchill’s, and the same customers returned to each session in a series of auctions, they soon felt comfortable with the pleasant doorman. Tony took good care of them and, honoring their part of the unspoken contract, they slid the bills into his gloved hand.

“Good morning, Mrs. Busby.” He opened the door for yet another attractive, well-groomed woman.

Tony enjoyed his vantage point in front of Churchill’s. He saw everyone as they arrived and when they departed. He always made an effort to learn their names. The customers liked that.

Thursday

Life was raw in “Little Odessa,” or Brighton Beach, as it was named on the map of the borough of Brooklyn. Brighton Beach Avenue, the main thoroughfare, bustled with intense, hardened faces hurrying to their destinations. Only the old and the very young moved at a more relaxed pace.

The avenue was dotted with open-air fruit stands. The Russian immigrants chose their apples, bananas, and pears with a level of concentration and wonder. It had not been like this in the Old Country. Never this abundance of fresh produce, ripe and unspoiled.

At the corner newsstands, the
New York Post
, the
Daily News
, and
People
magazine were displayed alongside Russian newspapers. Along the sidewalks, people set up their own small stands to sell books printed in Cyrillic, the Russian alphabet.

The street signs were in Cyrillic, too. So were the signs that labeled the drugstores, five-and-dimes, and jewelry shops. The markets stocked the traditional Russian foodstuffs: black bread, fish, and pastries. Lots and lots of pastries. After decades of deprivation, the Russian immigrant loved to indulge his sweet tooth.

On the boardwalk that ran parallel to Brighton Beach Avenue and alongside the cold, gray Atlantic
Ocean, older men and women took their daily exercise in the late-winter sun. Conversations were all in Russian. Often the discussions centered on the crime in Little Odessa.

Some things would never change. In the Old Country, the government officials were always on the take. In America, the Russian mafia demanded its own pound of flesh. Too many times, the talk on the boardwalk was about some poor, defiant shopkeeper who’d been shot when he didn’t come up with the protection money. The criminals wanted a piece of everything.

In a rented room over the Primorski Restaurant, Misha Grinkov bent over his workbench. He had come to the United States so many years ago, heading straight for Brighton Beach. Not speaking a word of English, he wanted to go to the only place in America he knew of where language would not be a problem for him.

But when seeking employment in his new country, he had gone back to the business he knew best. He took a subway to Manhattan and to the sleek world of the Upper East Side, heading straight for La Russie Imperiale, the venerated Fifth Avenue antique store. La Russie Imperiale specialized in the sale of Russian antiquities, artifacts and jewelry from the days before the Communists had seized control of the largest country in the world.

The owner, Konstantin Kaledin, had spoken to him in Russian. Misha had described his work in St. Petersburg, and gingerly unwrapped a black felt-covered bundle that he had carried and guarded carefully on the long journey to his new home. When Kaledin had
examined Misha’s expert work, he had hired the immigrant on the spot.

The very next day, Kaledin set Misha to work executing his specialty—enameling. There was a constant stream of cigarette cases, letter openers, tea-glass holders, kovshes, frames, and candlesticks that needed to be repaired. Misha mixed the compound of glass and metal oxides and heated it until it began to melt. That was painstakingly applied and fused to a prepared metal surface which had already been engraved. The extremely high temperatures necessary to melt the enamel taxed the skills of most enamel experts, but Misha had always enjoyed the challenge. During his long apprenticeship in Russia, he had spent every minute he could, experimenting with layering enamels, inserting gold-leaf patterns between the layers, and engraving decorations on the metal surface before applying the enamel. Misha lovingly polished the enamel with chamois leather for many, many hours. He did it willingly, knowing that the extra work made for a more beautiful finish.

One day Mr. Kaledin, his face even more serious than usual, approached Misha at his workbench.

“I have a very unhappy customer. The enamel cracked on a very costly piece. I trust you enough to repair it.”

So Misha Grinkov had come to see his first Fabergé egg in America.

For the next decade, Misha labored at La Russie Imperiale, repairing the enamel on the beautiful pieces that came into the shop and picking up English from the other workers and the aging Konstantin Kaledin.
A job at La Russie had cachet in the world of antiques. A sales position provided one with an opportunity to acquire a better education in Russian works of art than could ever be gained in any classroom or library.

There was one apprentice salesman back in those early years, a salesman who had eventually become Kaledin’s right-hand man—a tall, well-spoken black man named Clifford Montgomery. Misha remembered how upset Kaledin had been when Montgomery had decided to leave the shop and go to work at Churchill’s Auction House.

Jack McCord hated Russian school. He found the language difficult and he had little aptitude for it. But he loved his job, thrived on the investigative work and puzzle-solving, and took great satisfaction in nailing the bad guys. Learning that damned Russian language was the price of admission to his profession.

The Cold War was over, but the Federal Bureau of Investigation still had reason to send select agents to Russian school. Though for decades the FBI graduates had worked in espionage and focused on the Soviet spies in the United States, McCord was assigned to the art-fraud division in the New York office. The spread of forged Russian art objects was virulent.

As he drove out to Brighton Beach in the early-morning hours, he cursed the budget cutbacks at the Bureau. There were never enough agents to do everything that needed to be done. A ridiculously strong argument had had to be made to his supervisor in order to have a surveillance team assigned to his case. Despite Jack’s pleading, the boss didn’t think Misha Grinkov was important enough to be watched around the clock.

“You’ll have to do the best you can,” Supervisor Roger Quick said.

Easy for Quick to say as he sat on his can, never having to leave the office. It had been a long time
since Quick had been in the field, and it showed. Jack couldn’t stand Quick, and it angered him that he had to take orders from the jerk.

But he controlled himself. He knew Quick was egging him on and would love to see Jack lose his temper. Again.

In the foggy grayness of the morning, Jack found a parking space around the corner from the Primorski Restaurant. He parked the car, locked it, and walked toward the coffee shop across the street.

Nothing would make that son of a bitch happier, Jack reflected as he crossed Brighton Beach Avenue. Quick wanted Jack to blow his stack, knowing that one more burst of uncontrolled temper would end Jack’s career. The FBI didn’t like loose cannons.

He’d be damned if he’d give Quick the satisfaction.

Jack took a seat in a booth that faced out to the street, ordered a cup of coffee, and waited for Misha.

At her KEY News desk the morning after the auction, Farrell sipped her coffee and read the black-and-white account on the front page of the
Times
.

The Moon Egg, the last of the Imperial Easter Eggs commissioned by the czar Nicholas II for his wife, Alexandra, lost for decades in the chaos following the Russian revolution in 1917, was purchased yesterday by an unknown buyer for six million dollars at Churchill’s auction gallery in New York. The creation of the egg was guided by Carl Fabergé, the best-known artist-jeweler of all time.

The Moon Egg, fabricated of milky, translucent enamel over engraved gold, rests on dark blue clouds of carved lapis lazuli which rotate on a gold base. The design for the egg, recently unearthed in an old catalogue of Fabergé designs, called for the egg to open to reveal the Fabergé trademark “surprise”—in this case, a spray of diamonds which, at the triggering of a mechanism, shimmers to simulate a comet of shooting stars. Over time, the diamond surprise has disappeared from the Moon Egg.

The egg was never delivered to the czar since Nicholas, his wife Alexandra Feodorovna, and
their five children were taken as prisoners by the Bolshevik revolutionaries. The entire family was executed the following year.

In the tumult that followed the overthrow of the Imperial family, many treasures were lost, stolen, or sold by the cash-poor new government, Carl Fabergé’s jewelry-design book, from the St. Petersburg Archives, includes sketches of the planned egg but, until Churchill’s announced the sale, the actual whereabouts, or even the existence, of the Moon Egg had been a mystery.

Over the years, varied objects of fantasy and function created at the House of Fabergé have turned up in unlikely places. Churchill’s reports that the Moon Egg was discovered and purchased by the consignor at New York’s Twenty-Sixth Street Flea Market late last year.

The discovery sent tremors of excitement throughout the art world. It had been expected that the Moon Egg would be purchased by the Forbes Magazine Collection, which retains twelve Fabergé Imperial Easter Eggs. The buyer, who bid by phone, wished to remain anonymous, according to Clifford Montgomery, president and specialist in charge of Russian Works of Art and Objects of Vertu at Churchill’s.

Farrell took another sip of coffee, dribbling some on her starched white blouse. Slob! She was on a roll, all right. She stared at the color picture of the Moon Egg that accompanied the
Times
article and wished that Range’s dislike of her hadn’t clouded his decision.
A full piece on the Moon Egg had been warranted on
Evening Headlines
. It was pretty pathetic when a personality clash dictated what the American viewing public saw on the evening news. But Farrell knew that was exactly what had happened.

Even KEY News president Yelena Gregory had taken note. Yelena, who had some Russian blood herself, had phoned to let Range know she wasn’t pleased by the omission. Range must be kicking himself, Farrell mused gleefully. The
New York Times
was gospel at KEY—and all the other networks had done full pieces on their evening broadcasts.