Winter Palace (21 page)

Three paces later a leather-jacketed young man approached Jeffrey and insisted, “Ten dollars, six thousand eight hundred rubles. Bank only give you five thousand nine hundred. You change, yes?”

“No thank you.”

“Why you not change?” The man moved to block his progress toward the taxi rank. “This good rate. You save big. You change how much?”

“
Vsyo, vsyo!
” A driver ran up and shooed the man away, then led Jeffrey back toward his taxi, a relic from a bygone era. He was a little man with pudgy features creased into a worried frown. He accepted Ivona's slip of paper, read the address printed in Cyrillic, said something Jeffrey could not understand. Then he gunned his motor and they sped off.

Saint Petersburg wore the air of a queen in a royal sulk. The city remained dressed in the imperial finery decreed by Peter the Great, founder of the Russian empire. Yet eight long Communist decades had left her sullen and slightly wilted. Buildings cried out for a good cleaning. Filth clogged every pore. Dust erased the sea's perfume and choked the air.

The city was rimmed by water and laced with canals. Narrow cobblestone streets opened suddenly into great thoroughfares, which emptied into sweeping royal plazas, then closed
again into cramped alleys. Bridges were poorly preserved works of art.

The guesthouse was located on the Nevsky Prospekt, one of the city's main thoroughfares. No sign announced its presence. The taxi driver stopped in front of what appeared to be storefront windows masked by heavy drapes and pointed down a set of stairs leading to an entrance slightly below street level. Jeffrey paid him and motioned for him to remain while Jeffrey made sure the place was open for business. The driver nodded as though he understood, but as soon as Jeffrey had pulled out his suitcase and closed the trunk, the driver was away.

Jeffrey turned to find a tall, dark-haired man come bounding up the stairs. “You Sinclair?”

“Yes. Is—”

He was about Jeffrey's age, but his face appeared to have lived through twice the number of winters. “How much you pay that driver?”

“What he asked. Twenty dollars.”

The young man shook his fist and shouted abuse after the rapidly vanishing taxi. Then he turned and grinned. “Is okay. You rich American, yes? You pay four times cost for taxi, maybe ten times cost for room.”

“No. That is—” Jeffrey stopped. “Four times what I was supposed to pay?”

The young man laughed. “Hey, is no big problem. He bring you where you want to go, not to place where gang wait and take everything, maybe your life.” He reached for Jeffrey's case, hefted it, said, “Welcome to Saint Petersburg, Sinclair.”

The stairs led down to a glass-door entrance that still bore faint remnants of its former business. “This old butcher shop,” the young man said. “We buy lease from city. First make mountain of paper. Send paper to everybody in whole world. You get your paper?”

“Not yet,” Jeffrey replied.

“It come, no worry.” The young man wore faded jeans
and a Harley-Davidson T-shirt under a form-fitted leather jacket. “You my first American guest. This special day. I love America. So great there. So free. Can do anything, no rules. Nobody looks down your back all the time. You work hard, you make good money, you keep it. Is dreamland, yes?”

“America isn't perfect,” Jeffrey replied quietly. “A lot of people have it tough there.” The young man chose not to hear. He opened the doors and ushered them into what clearly had once been the main shoproom and was now a ceramic-tiled parlor, sporting threadbare furniture and brightly colored Kazakh carpets. A waist-high stove was decorated with cheerful hand-painted tiles. Through the rear doors, Jeffrey could see a neat dining area leading into a large kitchen. A set of wooden stairs climbed the side wall and disappeared into a hole in the ceiling that appeared to be lined by an old door frame. Jeffrey squinted and decided it was indeed a door frame.

“This place is great,” he declared. “A thousand times better than some faceless hotel.”

The young man puffed out with pride. “I am Sergei Popov. Welcome to first Popov Hotel.”

“The first of many,” Jeffrey assured him.

“That is dream.” He turned to a doting old lady seated by the stove. “This is grandmother,” he said fondly.

Jeffrey gave a formal sort of bow and motioned toward the intricate hand-crocheted tablecloth on which she was working. “That is truly beautiful work.”

The old lady replied with a smile that revealed a mouthful of gold teeth. She spoke to her grandson, who translated, “She asks if you are one buying old estate for Artemis company.”

Jeffrey assumed Ivona had already been at work, setting their cover in order. “I won't be acquiring it myself. I am just representing a buyer.”

“Grandmother not happy with this. She wants all old palaces to go back to proper families,” Sergei translated. “My grandmother's mother used to work at palace, before
Revolution. Grandmother was there often as little girl. She remember old family very well from this palace you buy.”

“How interesting,” Jeffrey said politely.

“My grandmother,” Sergei continued, “she survives the Nine Hundred Day Siege. You have heard of this, yes?”

Jeffrey nodded. It was the name given to the Nazis' attempt to bomb and starve Saint Petersburg into submission. “It must have been horrible.”

The young man translated and was given a few creaky words in reply. “‘The hardest time is now.' That is what she says. That is what many of the people are saying. The hardest time is now. I tell you, Sinclair, if many more people begin to say the same, you will see change from your darkest dreams.”

“My name is Jeffrey,” he corrected. “The people are growing angry?”

“My people, their anger is like wave,” Sergei replied. “Up and down, up and down. All their lives they wait, wait, wait for change. Now change comes, but so slow it touches grandchildren's lives, not theirs. And the new government, now they say, you must wait some more. And the people are saying, no. No more waiting.”

He picked up Jeffrey's bag. “Come, I show you room.”

As they climbed the narrow stairs, Jeffrey said, “I love the way so many of your buildings are painted with bright colors.”

“Yes, is pretty. You see, Russian winters are hard. Many days with gray skies. Much snow and ice. Colors important then.”

“I've seen a lot of buildings being reconstructed. I hope they keep to the old color schemes.”

“Yes, maybe.” He opened a door onto a small room equipped with a sagging bed, a nightstand, a chair, a table, a tiny window, and frayed curtains. It was spotlessly clean. “But the reconstruction, it is almost all stopped. The city has no money. The city tries to teach people to pay taxes. You can guess what the people say back, yes?”

“I sure can,” Jeffrey replied.

“Sure. So the city asks bank for loan. You can guess what says the bank. So the city is broke. Police, they stop cars and say, I give ticket. People say back, no, here is money. Police say good, no salary, so I take. This new style of Russian government. You like?”

“Not really.”

“No. I am also not liking. Is chaos.” He set down the suitcase with a thump. “Room okay?”

“It's fine, thanks.”

“Not first class Paris-style, but clean. And my grandmother, she good cook. You see.” He clapped Jeffrey on the shoulder and turned away.

“Wait,” Jeffrey said. “Do you think there's any hope that Russia can make it work?”

“Sure, is hope.” The man exposed a stained grin. “You know Russian folk songs? Balalaika and accordion and mandolin?”

“I've heard a few.”

“So many songs, they start slow, very soft and slow. Then a little fast. Then more fast. Then very fast and boots stomping and hands clapping and everyone shouting and boom! All the people are laughing and singing so fast, like storm of music. The Russian people, they are like song. Slow at start, then boom! You watch. The boom soon come. Either they race to be good capitalists, or they race to darkness. But my people, soon they race.”

Ivona Aristonova arrived in the early afternoon. She acknowledged Jeffrey's greeting with a brief nod and allowed Sergei to show her to her room. The stress of her long train journey was etched deep on her face, but she swiftly returned and began the trial of telephoning around for appointments.

An hour later she announced, “We are in luck. The director responsible for applications to acquire property is available
this afternoon. We have an appointment to present your request. You cannot imagine how fortunate you are.”

“Great,” Jeffrey replied, and wondered why she sounded as if she were accusing him of something. “Could I perhaps book a call to my wife?”

Again there was the sense of unbalancing Ivona with his words, again for no reason that he could understand. “Your wife?”

“In London,” Jeffrey replied. “I would just like to let her know I'm all right.”

“How long are you staying?”

“Five days. Why?”

“It will not be long enough to obtain a connection.” She collected herself. “Shall we be going?”

Basil Island was connected to what now was Saint Petersburg's center by the Palace Bridge. It was the largest of the forty islands in the Neva Delta that made up Saint Petersburg, Ivona explained as their taxi drove them to the meeting. Jeffrey showed polite interest, wondering if the lessons were intended as anything more than a shield. A shield against what, he could not determine.

“Originally,” Ivona continued, “the region belonged to the Novgorod principality. In the time of the Tartars, that principality was the only one in all Russia strong enough to resist their onslaught. It remained a free city throughout that dark time. But in the sixteenth century, Czar Ivan the Terrible decided that Novgorod was not loyal and succeeded in doing what the Mongols could not; he slaughtered the inhabitants, then put to the torch what before had been Russia's most active port. The region was then too weak to withstand the Swedish invasion and remained under Swedish rule until Peter the Great retook the area and declared it the capital of the new Russian empire.”

She pointed to a red-brick castle wall fronting the river. “Czar Peter's first residence was the St. Peter and Paul Fortress, which in later years became the most infamous and
gloomy prison in all Russia. Not far beyond that is our destination, the Smolny Convent.”

“We're meeting with government officials in a convent?”

“Most of the city's old winter palaces, including the one you are interested in, are the responsibility of the Ministry of Culture,” Ivona replied. “The ministry's central offices are located in the convent's outbuildings.”

The taxi turned into a garden fronting a vast series of Baroque buildings. Their exteriors were painted a bright robin's-egg blue and were graced with dozens of white pillars and porticos. A series of gold-decked onion domes crowned the roofs.

Ivona waited while Jeffrey paid the driver the agreed-upon fare of two dollars. As they walked toward the side entrance, she continued, “Smolny Convent literally translates as the convent of the tea warehouses. Peter the Great placed the city's main spice and tea docks on this point. When the harbors were moved farther from the growing city, the Empress Elizabeth established a convent here. Her successor, Catherine the Great, turned it into the nation's first school, and it remained a school until the October Revolution. Now the main church is a hall for city recitals and speeches, and the outer buildings house the city's Ministry of Culture.”

They entered doors embossed with the standard red-and-gold Cyrillic sign denoting an official government building. Ivona gave their names to the blank-faced receptionist seated beside the hulking militia guard. Soon a heavyset woman appeared and motioned for them to follow her.

The reason for the officials' willingness to see Jeffrey on such short notice was evident the moment introductions were concluded. “It is a tremendous strain to maintain these places,” the senior official explained through Ivona. She was a dark-haired matron with piercing green eyes. “We now are required to pay the going commercial rate for all materials. The cost of upkeep for several hundred such old palaces is enormous.”

“So you are willing to sell us the palace in question?” Jeffrey asked, pleased with her direct approach.

“Under the proper circumstances,” she replied, an avaricious gleam to her eyes. “Some of these palaces will be retained for state use, but there are so many of them right now that it really doesn't matter which ones are sold.”

Her associate, a bearded gentleman seated beside her at the oval conference table, spoke. Ivona translated, “For what purpose did your group wish to use this building?”

“Artemis Holdings is a Swiss trading company with an international board,” Jeffrey began, reciting directly from the papers Markov had supplied. “They deal primarily in construction metals. They want to use the estate as a base for business operations in Russia, and maintain residential flats there for local managers.”

“Good,” the woman director replied. “We are most eager to see more international companies coming in and making such investments.”

“Given that Artemis proves to be an acceptable company,” her associate agreed, “this should be no problem. Especially since their activities in metal trading will help stimulate our economy.”

The director consulted a paper before her. “The property appears to have been well maintained over the years. The house was formerly used as office space by a government-owned company which went out of business with the advent of perestroika. Then last year a local company took a short-term lease on the ground floor.” She peered at the next page. “They list their purpose as warehouse and distribution.”

“With the enormous rise in costs,” her associate said apologetically, “we have been forced to accept whatever offer comes our way.”