Hot Siberian (15 page)

Ten minutes later she came down and out, dressed in fresh clothes and with knees scrubbed. Concealing her uncertainty, she welcomed the older man and the young woman who were seated on the terrace with Nikolai. Introductions revealed that the young woman was as French as she appeared. Her name was Valérie de Varignon, which sounded contrived but was a pleasure to pronounce. She had an atypical Gallic disposition, an honest, lively smile. The man was Grigori Savich, and the “Minister” that Nikolai put before his name transmitted respect as would the British “Lord” or “Sir.” Vivian had heard Nikolai speak of this man, so she knew his importance.

Savich charmed from his first words, even though they were the predictable apology for the intrusion. “We were out for a weekend drive and happened to be nearby,” he explained. “When we phoned earlier no one answered, so we came just on the chance. Hope you don't mind.”

“Not at all,” Vivian charmed back. “In fact, we were in the mood for visitors, weren't we, Nickie?”

“Yes,” Nikolai replied too quickly. He was still off-balance from Savich's having shown up like this. No doubt Savich in his high position could easily find out Vivian's unlisted number and the location of her house in Devon. But why was Savich there? Ministers didn't just drop in. Had Savich been in his Claridge's suite and let loneliness get the best of him? That was difficult to imagine. Savich was the sort who would battle such a mood, not give in to it. Even if Savich had craved company, why would he choose them, Nikolai and Vivian? No matter—Nikolai was delighted that Savich was there.

“Not to entirely impose we brought a little something,” Savich said.

The little something was a 1.8-kilo container of caviar, Royal Beluga. It was in a blue-and-black disk-shaped tin packed in shaved ice which was kept from melting by dry ice. It had been shipped via Aeroflot just the day before from Astrakhan on the Caspian Sea. Savich had also brought a half-dozen bottles of Noskovskaya vodka, as if one or two wouldn't have been sufficient.

Vivian put the vodka into the crammed freezer compartment of her refrigerator, sacrificing several packages of frozen entrées to make room. As they waited for the vodka to chill, Vivian maneuvered the attention onto Mademoiselle de Varignon.

“Please call me Valérie,” the young Frenchwoman said. She had an enviable accent. It gave color to even the most mundane things. Vivian found that Valérie needed little drawing out, was very open about herself, even her personal self. She confided amusingly that she had assumed the “de” of her name in order not to sound like a Victor Hugo character. “I am a dancer and an actress,” she said as though that were evident. Then she admitted that the dancing and acting she did was hardly demanding as such. “I work at Le Crazy Horse,” she said, assuming they would know she meant the Paris nightclub. She related brightly how in one Crazy Horse sketch her pubic hair (she called it her “poos-ie hair”) had to be heart-shaped. “It was
très mignon
but such a bother to keep clipped just so. I shaved and got a merkin.”

“A what?”

“
Comprenez
‘merkin'? A
perruque
, a wig for the pelvis.” As though they were in every shop window.

Vivian decided she liked Valérie and her candor. Hers was the sort of ingenuous sophistication that especially a young Frenchwoman could get away with. She was very pretty and physical. Slender, slight in the hips but nicely waisted, she had a somewhat boyish figure, except for her rounded bottom and her breasts. All things considered, Valérie gave the impression that she would be unconditionally selfish in bed.

As for Valérie and bed and Savich, Vivian intuitively gathered that this day of countrying was a respite between sexual encounters—the one of last night, which, judging from the languor of Valérie's eyes, had been very successful, and the one of the night to come, which accounted for the nervous lower torso she also detected in Valérie. This Savich must be quite a well-practiced fellow, Vivian surmised. She turned her appraisal to him. His air said that he believed his years of experience were in his favor. And he wasn't fooling himself, Vivian felt. He must have been torrid when he was younger, was likely even more so now. Where was it she'd read that certain men naturally gave off extra huge whiffs of an arousing chemical, a kind of inverse estrus? Now what had brought that to mind? Mainly for her own fortification she gave Nikolai a part-kiss, part-bite on the nape of his neck on her way in to check on the vodka.

The bottle was frosted. The warmth of Savich's hand melted a print on it as he filled four small glass tumblers. He left the opening of the caviar to Nikolai, who removed the inch-wide rubber band that had acted as a seal for the disk-shaped tin. The large gray caviar grains were revealed, mounded up, packed snugly but not damaged. Shining fresh, not at all watery, this was Royal Beluga at its finest. A clump of grains fell from the edge into the ice, but what matter when there was four pounds?

“
Quelle décadence!
” Valérie exclaimed.

Nikolai assumed the caviar was from the embassy's supply. The vodka as well. Still, it was thoughtful of Savich.

They scooped it onto Waterford luncheon plates, huge portions, properly accompanied by just
crème fraiche
and decrusted, lightly buttered toast. Savich raised his tumbler to Nikolai, but his words were: “To your Vivian.” They all tossed down to that, Vivian too.

Crunching on a triangle of toast piled with beluga, Savich asked Vivian: “Do you know how to make blinis?”

“No, but I've vowed to learn.”

That was the first Nikolai had heard of it.

“Learn to make good blinis and I'll see that you receive a tin of beluga like this every week,” Savich promised.

“Only if you'll come and share,” Vivian told him.

“But of course.” Savich laughed, pleased. “How else would I be able to judge your blinis?”

Valérie's elevated eyebrow and off-color smirk were an explicit reply.

Nikolai wasn't feeling the vodka for some reason, and he had just drunk his fourth. He warned himself that this might be one of those times when it hit him all at once. He merely sipped at his next tumblerful. He was in a listening and loving mood, would listen to Savich and watch Vivian and enjoy being proud of her.

“The czars preferred an altogether different variety of caviar,” Savich was saying. “Much smaller roe and golden yellow in color. It's very rare now. Personally, I don't care all that much for it.”

Savich touched on other caviar trivia, such as how Louis XV spat out his first taste, cursed, and called it
confiture de poisson
—fish jam—and how Picasso prepaid for his caviar by sending cash wrapped in one of his drawings.

“Really?”

“Truly.”

During the next hour Savich complimented Vivian seven times. Nikolai counted.

The telephone rang. Vivian answered on the terrace extension. It was Archer wondering what Vivian and Nikolai were doing about dinner. He'd take pot luck, he said. Vivian informed him of her guests.

“Delightful!” Archer said. “We can all have dinner here.”

Vivian told him: “We're not up to one of your stodgy gluts.”

“I'll serve
nouvelle
,” he promised.

“Besides, you'll insist on black tie and all that.”

“Like hell. You can come bare-arsed for all I care. Be here anytime from seven on. Ta.” He clicked off.

Nikolai had passed by the paved private road that led to Archer's house numerous times. He'd never taken it. Whenever Archer invited him, Nikolai declined with an excuse. It happened so often that Nikolai felt his avoidance had to be transparent. To ease embarrassment he stockpiled excuses so that he could have one ready. Even when Vivian announced that she was going over to Archer's and did he want to come, Nikolai had remained home and tried not to keep looking at his watch.

Tonight, however, he was going along. The Daimler limousine had just turned in on Archer's road, and while Vivian, Savich, and Valérie indulged in a glib, lighthearted exchange, Nikolai gazed ahead. Archer's house could not be seen from there, the outer reaches of his land, nor was it visible when the Daimler finally came to a high double gate with imposing piers. The gate was hospitably open. Beyond it the grounds were more cared for, Nikolai noticed. Trees were trimmed of all but their higher, healthier branches, and there was no underbrush to compete with their handsome trunks. Vast grassy meadows were kept mown just enough to appear at their best. In the distance off to the right a dozen or so black cows were grazing as though in a pastoral painting.

Not until the Daimler passed through a grove of oaks and over a rise did Archer's place come into view. Nikolai realized at once that it couldn't be called a house. It was a mansion, nobler and more extensive than he'd expected. Vivian should have prepared him for this. He should have asked her. The structure was of smooth-worked beige stone. It was only three tall stories, but, in typical Palladian fashion, it went on and on. The stark monotony of its facade was relieved by a centered portico with four slender columns and Ionic capitals. Wide steps curved down.

The Daimler pulled up to the steps, where two white-gloved footmen and Archer were waiting. Archer was beaming, overjoyed that they'd come. It was as though their arrival would dispel something unbearable. Savich and Valérie were introduced and warmly received, and from the vigor with which Archer shook Nikolai's hand one would never have guessed they'd been together just that morning. The footmen stood by should anyone happen to slip on the steps.

Archer led the way into a spacious entrance hall with a crystal chandelier so immense that Nikolai was uneasy standing beneath it. There were huge identical bouquets on the left and the right. Nikolai wondered if they'd been hurriedly arranged and put in place. He decided they were routine. The scent of pale yellow lilies and white-bearded irises streamed into his nostrils. The click of Vivian's and Valérie's heels on the geometrically patterned marble floor sounded overly loud. All of Nikolai's senses were turned up. Suddenly it seemed imperative that he touch something, be it the carved edge of the Régence console against the wall or the richly ornamented doorcase that he passed through, as, following along after the others, he entered a reception room. He shoved his hands except for his thumbs in the pockets of his jacket and attempted nonchalance.

Vodka martinis were concocted and poured by Archer personally. He hoped aloud they met with everyone's approval. Savich took a testing sip and after a moment of earnest deliberation during which his dark bushed-up brows animated and his tongue worked around within his closed mouth, he pronounced Archer's martini superb. He was playing the minister. Covertly, he half-winked at Nikolai to let him know none of this was to be taken seriously.

Dinner was not a matter of sitting down in one place and having it. From martinis in that reception room they went into another adjoining reception room for the starters: smoked Norwegian wild salmon, iced lobster soufflé, Galway oysters on the half shell. They then proceeded to the dining room and a table easily large enough for forty. Their seating was at one end, arranged so Nikolai was next to Valérie with Vivian opposite. Archer graciously relinquished the host's place at the head to Savich, making him focal.

The main courses consisted of roast partridge with young cabbage and wild mushrooms, and best end of English lamb with horseradish purée. The wines were a '67 Chăteau Pétrus Pomeral and a '72 Montrachet Romanée-Conti. The servants placed the entrées on the table and then backed off to discreetly stand by, in keeping with Archer's orders. He believed the family-style casualness of passing around the food and wine would be to Vivian's present liking.

From the dining hall they adjourned, as Archer put it, to a small ground-floor salon for cheeses, including some of Dorset's legendary blue vinney. And sweets from a trolley. Lemon cheesecake, cherry cake with fresh double cream,
tarte de poivre provençal
, iced Grand Marnier parfait, and a trifle according to a recipe dated 1823. Then it was upstairs to the more relaxed atmosphere of a leathery study for coffee, nibbles, and whatever digestives they might desire. Vivian was for a bit of port, as was Valérie. The gentlemen had twenty-five-year-old Glenfiddich.

During the circuitous course of the meal the conversation ranged from banal to the esoteric, from the most recent royal dallyings to the efficacy of the casting of spells. Vivian couldn't have been less interested in who of the royal string had been lately seen in full drag or gone public with an odd erogenous zone. However, as might be expected, she was an opinionated authority when it came to spells. Most ancient spells were pure nonsense, she said. Such as the one that was supposed to guarantee loving fidelity, a potion made up of desiccated swallow wombs and sparrow livers. But she did put solemn stock in certain voodoo spells, and she advised everyone there to do the same. She bloody well didn't want anyone sticking pins in a doll effigy of her, she said in a half-whisper, as though to prevent transmitting that possibility to someone anywhere in the world.

Savich was having a marvelous time, making the most of the luxurious surroundings, the delicious offerings, and the lovely company. Without slighting Valérie he allowed himself to be more diverted by Vivian. He hung on her words, was caught by the mere turn of her head, flash of her eyes. He leaned across the corner of the table not to miss a nuance or inflection from her. Several times to underscore a conversational point or to emphatically concur he patted the back of her hand.

“I should love to gamble in Macao,” Vivian said.

“Why especially Macao?”

“It would be so unlike playing in our clubs. Much faster, and furious and loud.”

“Wouldn't that be distracting?”

“How would you possibly concentrate?”