The Deal (28 page)

“Careful there, young one,” he said condescendingly. “Often, the one who arrives right on time is the one who completely misses the party.”

Sick of his voice I hung up, but instead of heading to the elevators my legs started for the front door. His last words resonated with me. Ironically, not with regard to real estate.

I slammed the front door of my father’s brownstone shut behind me. There was no time to wait for the elevator, so I charged up the stairs with the same thoughts tossing in my head as they had done the whole cab ride uptown. Maybe everything was playing out so calmly for a reason. Maybe certain powers and people, which I still couldn’t put together, were doing just enough to keep my attention away from where it needed to be: Danish Jubilee Egg. Maybe Angie, Robie/Hart, and Pangaea-Man were all in on it together; maybe they had been pulling me here and there with locks of hair and bathroom visits on purpose. Maybe they were watching closer than they wanted me to think. Paranoia was working in overdrive.

Just as I reached the top step I slowed down. Pop’s long-time housekeeper, Bea, was usually milling about this time of day. When I didn’t hear her in the immediate vicinity, I continued in to the study. I thought of closing the door, but decided it was better to be able to hear someone coming down the hall as opposed to their turning the knob and walking in on me.

I crouched then opened the door of books. As I started turning the safe’s dial, I couldn’t shake off the feeling of defeat that was starting to creep its way up my body. Nor could I make sense of it. I had never been involved in anything like this. I was starting to feel as if I’d been had. I had heard a million stories. I had read a million books. This was always how it happened. Unassuming bastard gets blindsided, and he never saw it coming. My breathing sped up from the tension. It was as if I was about to win the anti-lottery.

The front chamber articles seemed to be intact. The only difference was that some of the cash was gone. My father, I thought. Hurrying, I pushed on the rear internal wall, revealing the second chamber. The watches were all in place, as were the documents, which I removed and placed on the carpet. As I reached back into the safe I could feel goose bumps raise on my arms just as a thin rush of sweat came to the skin’s surface over my whole body. I took a deep breath.

As I pulled the black leather box from the confines of the wall, my confidence as well as my inner faith picked up where the feelings of defeat had left off. I flipped it open and stared mesmerized for a few moments at the work of art, absorbing its beauty. I hadn’t seen it in only days, yet the mental image of how brilliant it was from the perfectly aligned elements to the piece of history subtly told had already begun to dull. It was that impressive.

I tucked the black box back in its safe house then picked up
the documents to do the same. But as I lifted the surprisingly weighty stack of what seemed to be more like card stock than paper, I couldn’t fight my curiosity. I had never once looked at these articles. But now they were face up in my hands and from the systematic chad markings to the different stamps and seals it became immediately apparent what I was holding. They were stock certificates. Only the words on them weren’t in English letters. They were in the Cyrillic alphabet.

The hair on my arms stood on end. I lightly touched the surface of the topmost certificate and looked again at the typed Russian characters in the center of the sheet. There was something written in pencil, in my father’s handwriting, underneath them. I lifted the document closer to my face. It read:
Sapphire Pendant Excavation
.

Sapphire Pendant, I said to myself. Sapphire Pendant.

It sounded familiar, I thought. But why? Aside from the name of the booze I liked to drink?

Figuring it was Pop’s English translation of the company’s name, I moved on to the next. Same thing. Underneath the bold, centrally positioned Russian words was his penciled handwriting. The second read,
Ch. Chariot Energy Inc
. I could swear I had seen this one too. Just as I began whispering to myself, “What the hell—” it came to me. They were the names of two of Prevkos’ subsidiaries, companies I had read about a number of times before while keeping up with our family friends’ progress.

I barreled through the rest of the pile.
The Necessary Mining Company, Alexander Gas Construct, M. Enamel Energy Consortium, Empire Nephrite Mining and Piping
. I had read about them all. But as I came upon the name on the seventh and final certificate, I understood that there was perhaps an even deeper, undoubtedly scarier, connection than I ever could have anticipated. The name of the last subsidiary was
Northern Jubilee Gas Extrusion
.

Jubilee.

As in Danish Jubilee Egg.

I went back to the first certificate in the stack.

“Sapphire Pendant,” I repeated again.

Then it hit me.

Hen Egg with Sapphire Pendant.

I swept into my apartment like a cyclone, Neo doing all he could to keep up as I tore toward the living room. I went straight for the coffee table, more specifically the stack of five ridiculously oversized coffee-table books on top of it, and removed the top one. It was the self-serving birthday gift from my old flame Sharon. The cover was shiny, still looked brand new, which made sense since the book had only been cracked a handful of times. I tucked it under my arm and headed for the study.

Once there, I placed my briefcase containing the stock certificates and the repossessed stolen antique on my desk and fell into my chair. I put the book in my lap. For a moment I marveled at the photograph on the cover, a shot of two imperial eggs side by side.

“Basket of Wild Flowers Egg,” I whispered to myself, remembering the one on the left. It was one of Sharon’s favorites.

Basket of Wild Flowers Egg was exquisite. Predominantly a silver body covered with pearly enamel and rose-cut diamonds, the top of the egg was an untamed explosion of colorful buds in full bloom. Buds so lifelike, you could swear they were prime to be plucked for a magical bouquet.

I opened the book and started to rip through. There it was just as I thought. Hen Egg with Sapphire Pendant, produced in 1886.

I removed the stock certificates from my briefcase, revisited the second one,
Ch. Chariot Energy Inc.
, and returned again to the book. Cherub Egg with Chariot, 1888. I proceeded to go through the full list of companies. As I did I confirmed what my instincts had already told me. Each of the seven company names on the Prevkos subsidiary stock certificates I was holding was derived from, in some way, one of eight Fabergé imperial Easter eggs.

The eight imperial Easter eggs that had gone missing almost a century earlier.

The egg unaccounted for was 1909’s Alexander II Commemorative Egg. I booted my computer and jumped on the Internet to corroborate my thoughts about the subsidiaries. My thinking was dead on. Of twelve total Prevkos subsidiaries, eight were named after the missing eggs. The unspoken-for treasure’s offspring was called “Alex Com II Exploration.”

I closed the book and dropped it on the floor. I didn’t move, barely breathed. As much as I wanted to collapse from the strain of trying to make connections from all of the information, something gave me strength. Something I couldn’t ignore, something true. It was Tommy’s voice. I could hear the thing he said to me six years earlier.

“There’s one thing I demand of anyone who works for me, Jonah. One thing,” he exclaimed before suddenly making it a point to stare into my eyes like he was trying to hypnotize me, “that you never—ever—pass up an opportunity to gain knowledge. Because in real estate, like in life, knowledge always wins the race.”

I took a deep breath, picked up the book, and once again placed it in my lap. I concentrated on Tommy’s words, words that professionally had worked nicely for me. I had run the real estate race with Tommy, Jake, and Perry as a team and won. But it was life’s race, I was starting to feel, where I was perhaps lost somewhere in the middle of the pack.

I started at the beginning. Almost instantly miscellaneous information began to jump from the pages. There were the names of the two looted imperial palaces where the eggs had resided, Anichkov Palace and Gatchina Palace. There were the names of the two men believed to be the possible creators of the initial-less eggs, Piotr Derbyshev, an expert stone carver and one of Wigstrom’s most trusted hands, and Nikolai Alexandrovich Petrov, the shop’s utmost authority in enamel application. There were all types of arresting facts about not only the eggs and the players, but about the revolution and the era itself.

I knew that I had to keep reading. I knew from Tommy’s teachings that I didn’t have a choice. I flew through the eggs and their surrounding history, but as I whisked through the sheets of paper as fast as I could, I couldn’t help getting stuck on some of the pictures. Strangely, surprisingly, Sharon’s wandering seminars had taken on a new face. Her words, her desire to share something truly beautiful with me, no longer seemed as selfish as I had once thought. I was enraptured by the colors, the intricacies, and the materials. The meticulousness of each egg that used to seem tedious suddenly
captivated me.

Finally, I came across Danish Jubilee Egg.

I looked at the black-and-white photograph, as well as the publisher’s digitally enhanced supposed color version next to it, both of which paled by comparison to what I now possessed. It was one of only two of the missing eight imperial eggs with a visual record. There was mention of two smaller accompanying portraits, but since having the antique, I thought, I hadn’t seen either. Then I realized since most of the eggs opened to reveal a miniature surprise they must be hidden in the egg’s center.

I started on the text. Because it was, for so long, considered one of the missing, there isn’t as much information available as there is for some of the others. But apparently, in basic terms, this Fabergé egg memorialized the most significant event of 1902 for Maria Feodorovna—her visit to Copenhagen to mark the fortieth anniversary of the ascension of King Christian, her father, to Denmark’s throne. It also marked the death of Queen Louise five years earlier at Bernsdorff Castle. The egg was given to her by her son Czar Nicholas II. The two portraits contained within are of her father, King Christian IX, and of the king’s queen, Maria’s mother. Once presented, Danish Jubilee Egg remained at Anichkov Palace until 1917. It then went missing after the revolution until the day it was found in 1979.

I looked for information on the critical markings, but there wasn’t any. Not just for Danish Jubilee Egg but for any of the missing eggs. No zolotniks, no head-workmaster initials, nothing. Just more mystery.

Chapter 30

That night, after a raucous dinner at the Palm, the group of us headed to the new Penthouse Club on the West Side. It was Jake, Klyman, two of his pals who live in the city, and me. We were pretty liquored and drugged up. Even though I had realized I needed to curb this shit, I couldn’t give Jake any reason to question me. But between the package from the girl still calling herself Angie and the stock certificates, my paranoia hit a whole new plane. Every once in a while I reached into my jacket and felt the gun just to make sure it was still there.

The five of us were given a prime table up front. Drinks were immediately placed all around, and before we could blink there were what seemed like five girls for every one of us swarming the table. Each woman’s body was tighter than the next. One girl actually seemed to have a line of aqua-colored floss running between her legs and nothing else.

“Hey, Jonah, Archmont’s wife working tonight?” joked Jake. “How about this one. A thin, retractable cord attached to cigarette lighters in cars? This way you can’t lose the lighter under the seat while you’re driving.”

A hand appeared on my shoulder.

“How you doing tonight?” asked a forced, overly sexy voice. “I’m Shawna.”

Shawna was a blond bombshell standing no more than five foot three. She had a tiny waist, huge fake boobs, orange skin from caked-on tanning lotion, and muscle tone beyond belief. Her bleached platinum hair fell to her waist and her green-color contact lensed eyes fought hard to connect with my own. She was wearing a barely there white bikini top that only covered her nipples along with her matching, leave-nothing-to-the-imagination thong.

“No thanks,” I said, referring to the lap dance she was offering. “I’m just drinking tonight.”

“Well, I don’t think it’s up to you.”

Klyman, being straddled by a hot African-American girl, raised his martini glass to me.

“Your friend seems to think you may like me,” she continued.

“Thank me later,” barked Klyman.

He had pre-purchased me a lap dance. I returned my eyes to Shawna. I couldn’t afford to draw attention to myself by acting out of character. A quick dance, I figured, then I could remove myself from the table.

“Maybe just one,” I said.

No sooner than the words had come out of my mouth was Shawna removing her top. Slinkily she began to dance in between my legs, gyrating slowly as she ran her hands up the front of her body and began to play with her hair. Her eyes were closed, and her knees slightly brushed the inside of my thighs with each of her seductive sways.

She then turned away from me. I took a sip of my Sapphire and tonic just as she decided to bend all the way forward, keeping her well-proportioned legs perfectly straight as she strategically positioned her ass right in front of my face. I was supposed to be focused on the results of Shawna’s countless hours on a StairMaster. Instead I was dialed into a guy sitting across the way having a lap dance of his own. He seemed to be looking my way.

I turned my attention to Shawna again just as she swung around. She was facing me. She lunged forward, grabbing the corners of the chair out past my shoulders, then slowly slid the front of her body down my own until she was on the ground, kneeling in front of me. She ran her chest back up my crotch until her face was level with my own. Her hands now used my thighs as supports as she moved her mouth around to my ear. I could feel and smell her hot, minty breath as her lips parted and she began to speak.