The Ben Hope Collection: 6 BOOK SET (213 page)

Chapter Sixty-Nine

Ben waited for more. It was quiet on the balcony, just the roar of a speedboat cutting across the sea audible in the distance and the murmur of the palms. The sun was beginning to dip closer towards the sea, a shimmering gold disc burning the water.

‘A painting?’ Darcey asked.

Mimi shook her head. ‘Not a painting. But a piece of art, yes. The Dark Medusa is one of the lost eggs created by Peter Carl Fabergé, jewellery-maker to the Russian Imperial court.’

From a forged Goya to a rich man’s pointless trinket. Ben said nothing.

The old woman went on: ‘Fabergé made thousands of wonderful ornate eggs, each with its own individual theme, and the one that Alexander Borowsky commissioned him to create was especially unique. The prince was an avid scholar of classical literature and mythology. He had read Ovid and Homer and Virgil in the original Greek and Latin, and the theme of the egg was intended to reflect this passion of his. It was so high,’ – she spaced her thin hands vertically about eight inches apart – ‘made of white gold, encrusted with diamonds, and around its outside were painted scenes from mythology. But the best part was inside. Each Fabergé egg contained a “surprise”. Sometimes a fabulous jewel, sometimes a miniature portrait or icon. This one contained a tiny gemstone bust of one of classical literature’s most infamous, terrible creations. The Medusa.’

‘The lady with the snakes for hair,’ Darcey said. ‘Who could turn men to stone with just one look.’

Mimi nodded. ‘And Fabergé’s Medusa had eyes just as penetrating. They were crafted from alexandrite, a rare gem that was known as the national stone of Imperial Russia, named after Tsar Alexander II. It could change colour, from deep red to vivid green, depending on the light. The rest of the figurine was cut from a single bloodstone. Almost black, with flecks of red iron oxide that looked like spatters of blood. Fabergé intended the effect to be striking, even frightening. Little wonder that his creation quickly became known as the
Dark
Medusa.’

Ben was fighting to anticipate where this story was leading. What was the connection between a Russian piece of jewellery and a fake Goya forged by an Italian countess? ‘You say this thing was lost. But the way you describe it, it sounds as if you’ve held it in your hand.’

Mimi gazed deeply at him, pursed her wrinkled lips, and went on. ‘The egg was so magnificent that it rivalled even the finest of the so-called Imperial eggs that Fabergé had created for the ruling Romanov family. Completely captivated by its beauty while on a visit to the Borowsky estate, Tsar Nicholas II offered Alexander whatever price he wanted for it. Even in 1903, it was worth millions. But Borowsky was too proud of it, and he told the Tsar that it was not for sale.

‘Tsar Nicholas was a greedy and unscrupulous man. Slighted, he sent a gang of thieves to steal the egg one night while the Borowskys were at the opera. Alexander was devastated at the loss. He strongly suspected who the culprit was, and that the egg was now in the Tsar’s Winter Palace. But he knew better than to complain. The Tsar answered to nobody and the
Okhrana
, his secret police, had unlimited powers to make people, as well as valuable objects, disappear into the night, never to be seen again.

‘So Alexander Borowsky wisely held his tongue. Years passed. Our story moves forward in time to the year 1917. By now, Alexander’s wealth was greater than ever. His son Leo was now twenty-two, a handsome and charming young prince.’

Ben nodded to himself.
Of course
. Now he remembered why the name Leo had been tugging at his memory. It was the painting he’d seen in the gallery. Gabriella Giordani’s portrait of the aristocratic-looking young man. So this was Leo.

‘He was not like so many of these indulged young rich boys we see today.’ Mimi gestured across the bay at the distant homes and palaces of Monaco. ‘Leo had many accomplishments. He was a violin virtuoso, a published poet, an expert horseman. No doubt he would have distinguished himself at the military career he was considering, when everything suddenly changed.’

‘The 1917 revolution,’ Ben said.

Mimi nodded. ‘Everyone is familiar with what happened next. Almost overnight, Tsar Nicholas was overthrown and imprisoned. After a short period of provisional government, the country fell to the rule of the revolutionary Bolsheviks, under Lenin. The country was plunged into turmoil, made worse by the fact that Russia was in the middle of fighting World War I at the same time. It was a time of brutal murder. The Bolsheviks executed the Tsar and his family. The new secret police rounded up the aristocracy, confiscated their property, their assets, everything. Sonja, Natasha and Kitty Borowsky were taken and sent to a women’s prison, never to be heard of again. Alexander Borowsky and his younger brother were incarcerated in Spalernaia prison, where in 1919 they were executed by firing squad on the orders of the Bolshevik committee. Only Leo managed to escape. Now he was a fugitive, virtually penniless. He fell in with a counter-revolutionary group angered at the duplicity and brutality of the Bolsheviks. One dictatorship had simply been replaced by another.’

‘Tell us something new,’ Ben said.

‘Meanwhile, the Bolsheviks were loading their coffers with booty stripped from the aristocracy. Word reached Leo and some of his friends that the Dark Medusa had been among a hoard of treasures taken from the Winter Palace and stored in a warehouse together with piles of artwork, gold, silver and other valuables. They conspired to steal the egg back. Russia was flooded with weapons from the war, and so it was easy for them to procure rifles.

‘The robbery was successful,’ Mimi went on. ‘And yet, at the same time it was disastrous. Leo and his friends were able to get inside the warehouse. But while they were searching for the egg, the revolutionary guards were alerted and the place was surrounded. They were compelled to shoot their way out. Many were killed. Leo was the only one who got away alive. But he had his egg.

‘Now he set off to flee from Russia. He had just enough money salvaged to bribe his way across the border, but it was a dangerous journey. Russia was in a state of anarchy. Gangs of leaderless soldiers were roaming the country in those final days of the war, descending on villages, raping and murdering women and girls while their menfolk were hacked to pieces with bayonets to save ammunition. It was unsafe to travel the roads. Leo did not dare to attempt the journey with such a precious cargo. Too much blood had been shed to lose it to bandits. So he hid his treasure in a secret place and drew a map to mark its location, vowing that one day, when the madness was over, he would come back and get it.

‘He was lucky. He managed to flee into exile in Europe, where he found haven among members of the nobility sympathetic to the plight of the Russian aristocracy. He was able to survive, playing on his charm and title and giving music lessons to the children of the wealthy. Then, in 1925, nearly eight years after fleeing his homeland, he came to stay as a guest in the home of an Italian count, near Rome.’

‘Let me guess,’ Ben said. ‘Count Rodingo De Crescenzo.’

Chapter Seventy

The pieces were slowly coming together now. Ben could feel the first dawning rays of understanding poking through the darkness.

‘Put a dashing prince into the mix with an unhappily married young woman and her prick of husband,’ Darcey said. ‘Pretty obvious what’s going to happen.’

‘Prince Leo could not have been more different from the cold, soulless philistine to whom Gabriella found herself enslaved,’ Mimi agreed. ‘And yes, inevitably, they became very close. He encouraged her passion for art, and she in turn confided in him that she had carried on painting in her secret room, behind the count’s back. They were falling in love, though there was no . . .’ Mimi frowned. ‘What is the word?’

‘Impropriety,’ Ben said.

‘That is it. There was no impropriety between them. Nothing of that sort. However, Count De Crescenzo did not see it that way. Crazed with jealousy at the growing bond between his wife and their guest, he accused her of infidelity, had Borowsky thrown out of the house and challenged him to an illegal duel.

‘Gabriella knew that her husband was an expert marksman with a pistol. The night before the duel was to take place, she sneaked out of the house and went to Leo to beg him not to fight. That was the night she stayed with him. Before dawn the following morning, she told him, “Now we really are lovers. There has been infidelity, and so there is no longer any honour to defend and no reason to fight him.” It was senseless to stay and go through with the duel. They could run away together. She could paint, and he could teach music. They might never be rich, but money did not matter. They would have each other.’

‘Leo didn’t listen,’ Ben said.

‘His sense of honour was too strong,’ Mimi said. ‘But he cared deeply for what might happen to her. He told her that if he should die, he had something that would ensure her stability for ever. She would be free to leave her husband and be independent of him. She could pursue her dream, un fettered, for the rest of her life. This was when Leo confided in Gabriella the secret of the Dark Medusa. He gave her the map showing the location of its hiding place. He was convinced that the troubles that had descended on his country would soon pass, and that she would be able to travel there and retrieve the treasure with no danger to herself. After her tryst with the prince . . . this is the right word, “tryst”?’

Ben nodded. ‘Go on.’

‘Afterwards, she hurried home with the precious map hidden in her clothing. I let her into the house before the count could catch her. We ran together to her secret room, looking desperately for somewhere to hide the map. It was I who had the idea for a hiding place nobody would ever discover. We opened up the frame of her Goya copy. And we hid the map inside, between the picture and the back of the frame.’

‘What happened to Borowsky?’ Darcey asked.

‘At dawn that day, he and the count met at the appointed place outside Rome. From forty paces, each fired a single shot. Leo’s ball missed. Count De Crescenzo’s struck the prince in the shoulder.’ Mimi gave a shrug. ‘Honour was done.’

‘So Leo survived?’

‘In the days before antibiotics, such a wound could turn fatal. He lasted three days. Gabriella was by his side until the end.’ The old woman’s voice was hoarse from talking. She took another long sip from her drink. ‘When Gabriella returned from the hospital, heartbroken and weeping bitterly, clutching a dagger in the folds of her dress and vowing to use it to avenge her lover, she found the count gone and her trunk packed outside the gate. That terrible man Ugo had been ordered not to allow her into the house.

‘And that was when I found her,’ Mimi said sadly. ‘Sitting alone in the gardens, inconsolable. She embraced me. We both wept when she told me she must leave, that she would never see me again. I replied that I would leave too, and come with her. She said to me, “Are you mad, girl? You have employment here. I can offer you little. The only money I will have are the few coins I can get by pawning this necklace and these rings.” But I insisted I wanted to stay with her. “And the map,” I said to her. “With the map, you could be rich again.” Gabriella seemed uninterested. “I have lost my Leo,” she said. “But Leo wanted you to have it,” I replied. “Let me run to the secret room and fetch it.”’

Mimi’s voice drifted off. She turned her head slowly and gazed out at the darkening sea for a long moment. When she turned back to face Ben, he saw that her wrinkled old eyes had welled up with tears that spilled down her cheeks.

‘I betrayed her,’ she whispered.

Ben frowned, but said nothing.

‘I went back to the secret room,’ Mimi said. ‘Gabriella’s paintings were stacked against the wall. I found the Goya. I opened the back of the frame, the way I had learned. And then I did something that I have regretted for twenty years, since my Lord Jesus came into my life and I repented of my sins.’

‘You took the map for yourself,’ Ben said.

Mimi wiped her eyes. ‘I was frightened. I was just a child. I suppose I could have simply taken it, hidden it and left. But I was terrified that somehow Gabriella would find out what I had done. There were papers and crayons on a table. I made a copy of the map before replacing the original inside the back of the frame. Then I ran back to Gabriella in the gardens, crying and telling her that Ugo had come and seen me before I could get to the secret room. It was a lie, but the next moment, we heard the dogs barking. Now Ugo really had spotted us. We had to run. We fled to the city.

‘Pawning the few belongings that remained to her, Gabriella was able to rent cheap lodgings for us in a very poor quarter of Rome. We took work where we could find it. We cleaned. We mended clothes. By night, Gabriella would paint, driving herself to exhaustion in the hope that one day soon, she would find some small success as an artist. She never dreamed that she would become so successful – or that it would take so many years of hardship before she was able to sell her work. The art world was as ruthless and narrow-minded as it is today, and in Italy it was hard for a woman.’

Mimi gazed into space for a moment, as if reliving the memories. ‘She did not find true success until the middle of the 1970s, when she was in her sixties. By that time, I had long since left her. We had lived together as friends for almost thirty years,’ she added regretfully, hanging her head. ‘And in all that time, I never told her that I had made a copy of Leo’s map.’

‘When did you go back for the Dark Medusa?’ Ben said.

The old woman looked up at him sharply, then let out a long sigh. ‘You have understood, Mr Hope.’

‘All this didn’t come from nowhere,’ Ben said.

‘I schemed for many years behind Gabriella’s back. I learned much about Russia, its history and its politics, even studied some of the language. I knew that the country was impenetrable. Joseph Stalin held Russia in a ring of steel, making it too dangerous for a woman on her own to attempt to smuggle out such a treasure. I would certainly have been caught and sent to die in the Siberian labour camps. So I waited.

‘Then, in 1953, I heard the news that Stalin had died. The same year, I took a job in a factory where I met Eduardo. He was three years older than me, a union representative and a member of the Italian Communist Party, which was very strong at that time and had particular links with Soviet Russia. I began to go to political meetings with him, and it was through those connections that the chance arose for the two of us to visit Russia on a special visa. My time had come at last. We travelled to the location shown on the map. In the graveyard of a ruined church near St Petersburg, inside the grave of a man called Andrei Bezukhov, just as Leo had said, it was there waiting for me. It was mine. It was beautiful.’ Mimi’s voice trailed away to a croak.

‘You didn’t keep it long, did you?’ Ben said.

‘We had to be careful. We found a dealer who valued the egg for us, and for a very high commission agreed to be discreet. This took many months. The man who eventually bought it was from Arabia, a sheikh who had made billions from oil. We met in a suite at the Ritz Hotel in Paris on 27 July, 1955, surrounded by his bodyguards and lawyers and the experts he had brought with him to verify the egg was genuine. I can still remember the sheikh’s face as he held the Dark Medusa for the first time. The money was in two suitcases. Nine million US dollars in one, eight million dollars in the other. Ten minutes later it was ours.’

‘I’m betting the Italian Communist Party never saw a penny in donations,’ Darcey said.

Mimi ignored her. ‘Eduardo and I never even returned to Italy. The possessions we had left behind were not worth going back for. Instead we moved here, to the Principality of Monaco where we knew our money would be safe from tax collectors.’

‘And the two of you lived happily ever after,’ Darcey said.

Mimi sighed. ‘It seemed like a dream at first. We had been poor all our lives, and now this. Life became just one big party. We had no real friends, but we did not care, as we could buy all the false friends we needed to make ourselves feel contented. Eduardo began collecting fast cars, Ferraris, Bugattis. He bought a yacht.’ She prodded her chest. ‘By the time two years had gone by, this little Italian woman in her mid-forties was no longer enough to satisfy him. He began to stray. Then when he realised that these beautiful young French girls were only interested in him for his money – that they laughed about him behind his back and called him an old
connard –
he began to drink. One night, when he was very drunk, we fought bitterly. Eduardo stormed out of our villa, got into his racing car . . . and I never saw him alive again. The police found the wreck at the foot of the cliffs the next morning.’

There was silence on the balcony for a few moments. Darcey was sitting with her arms folded across her chest and little sympathy showing on her face. Mimi’s eyes were downcast as she clutched her rosary beads tightly in her frail, liver-spotted fists, rocking slightly in her chair. Ben looked at her and all he could see was a desperate old woman consumed with shame. Her conscience had caught up with her late in life, but it was hitting hard. It was eating her alive that she couldn’t go back and repair the things she’d done wrong in her past.

And there was a part of Ben that understood that feeling very well.

‘I betrayed the only true friend I ever had,’ Mimi sobbed. ‘When I had wealth and she had none, what did I do to help her? Nothing. And then, thanks to my deception, in 1986, those men came to her home. And they killed her to find the egg. It was my fault that she died alone and in fear. If we had gone to Russia together to find the Dark Medusa, if it had been sold openly as it should have been . . .’ Mimi shook her head in sorrow.

‘I believe the men who broke into Gabriella’s home were the same that robbed the gallery,’ Ben said. ‘I think they found something in her house that night. Something containing clues that led them, all these years later, to the Goya when it finally resurfaced at the exhibition. I think it was her diary. Gabriella must have written in it that the map was in the frame.’

Mimi nodded sadly. ‘This would explain why they knew to look for “The Penitent Sinner”. She wrote everything in that diary.’

‘Except where the hidden room was,’ Ben said. ‘That much remained a secret.’ He paused. ‘Mimi, I should tell you that the person behind this is a Russian gangster called Grigori Shikov.’

Mimi blinked. ‘A Russian?’

‘He’s a very ruthless man and he clearly wants the Dark Medusa desperately enough that he won’t hesitate to kill for it. In all these years, has anyone ever approached you; threatened you, or anyone around you?’

‘No,’ Mimi said. ‘Never.’

Ben remembered what Pietro De Crescenzo had said about the mystery surrounding Gabriella Giordani’s companion. Nobody had ever known her surname – and Gabriella had obviously never given away her identity in the diary, either. For a man of Shikov’s power and influence, a Simonetta Renzi might have been traceable; but a ‘Mimi’ could vanish without a trace. Free to live a wealthy and contented life, while others had to suffer and die for what she’d taken.

Now Ben understood everything – all but one unresolved question.

‘Why did you want to contact me, Mimi?’ he asked quietly.

The old woman wiped a tear from her eye, then looked at him earnestly. ‘Mr Hope, “The Penitent Sinner” is not a drawing. It is a real person, and she sits before you now. I cannot undo the crimes I have committed in my past, but now it is time for me to make amends as best I can. When I saw you on television, this good man who risked his life to save others –
l’eroe della galleria
– I knew that I wanted this man to help me repay my debt.’

Ben was silent.

‘After Eduardo died, I started my business. I have worked hard, and been very successful. I am no less wealthy now than I was the day I sold the Dark Medusa to the oil sheikh. Mr Hope, I want you to take my money. All of it, save the small sum that will see me through to the end of my days. I want you to distribute the money among the families of those touched by the tragedy I have caused. I know I cannot bring back the loved ones they have lost. But it is all I can do.’ She leaned forward in her chair and looked into Ben’s eyes. ‘Will you agree?’