The Deal (38 page)

“I’ll go to the cops,” I bluffed further. “Tell them what I know and let them fill in the holes.”

“No you won’t. Because from the trouble it seems you’ve found yourself in, you would have already if it were a viable option.”

Derbyshev, to my surprise, stood from the table. With a quick step he was at my side looking down at me.

“I’m a businessman,” he stated sternly, “I make deals. What Andreu and I are doing is just that. We’re making a deal, completing a transaction, one that doesn’t concern you or Danish Jubilee Egg. Now it’s time for you to go. When I return from the restroom, I expect you to be gone.”

Derbyshev turned and started to walk off. I was so hot I became cold. As much as I wanted to run up from behind and tackle him, my gut was telling me this was a guy with the game plan to back up the talk. As I struggled to come up with my next move, Derbyshev turned back toward me.

“By the way—smart.”

I was confused.

“Smart?”

“That’s right. I get driven in the back of a Bentley because I’m smart.”

Sitting there I anxiously eyeballed the dining room. I looked in the direction of the lounge but couldn’t see Boris. I returned my attention to the table and had a stare down with the bread basket.

Fuck.

I wasn’t going anywhere. I had just driven three and a half hours out of sheer desperation in order to get some answers. Somehow I needed to pry something, anything I could, from the guy. Somehow I needed to get some leverage, I needed to—

A nervous warmth engulfed me as I identified my best shot at success. I jumped from my seat and started back through the restaurant. I came to a fork. Right led back to the establishment’s exit. Left led to the restrooms. The thought of leaving empty handed was near crippling. I reached into my suit jacket and felt for my gun. At that moment, scared shitless, I realized left had never been more right.

Quietly, I entered the men’s room doing my best to control my breathing. The black tiles and art-deco chrome moldings instantly took me back to a time of old-world thugs. A textbook combination of antiseptic and air freshener filled my nose. Straight ahead a scrawny old white guy in a weathered tux was straightening the sink area with his back to me. He had no idea I was there. I swung my vision left, catching my own stare in the mirror along the way.

Derbyshev was facing the wall at a urinal. Once I realized he was the only other one there, I took a deep breath and rushed up behind him. I put the gun directly to the back of his head.

Talk about coming full circle.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” I started, unable to fight an image of Pangaea-Man.

Movement to my right. Leaving the gun in place I checked the attendant. He was tiptoeing toward the door.

“Not another step.”

He gasped, turned to me, and threw his arms up.

“I mean it.”

He couldn’t speak. He just nodded.

I returned my eyes to the Count’s silver hair.

“Tell me about the transaction with Andreu Zhamovsky.”

Nothing.

“Tell me about the transaction and why it involves me.”

Nothing.

“Now!”

Tick. Tick.

I checked the old guy. He hadn’t moved.

I grabbed the back of Derbyshev’s head and put his face into the wall as I simultaneously jammed the gun in farther.

Get what you need.

“A man named Piotr Derbyshev, same last name as you, is believed one of two men who could have crafted eight Fabergé eggs that went missing in the Russian Revolution. Six of those eggs have never been found, but two resurfaced in 1979, one of which is in the news for having been stolen. Andreu Zhamovsky’s company, Prevkos, has subsidiaries named after those eggs, subsidiaries my dead father has a ton of stock in. You and Andreu are involved in a deal.”

I pushed the gun into his hair, skin, skull even further.

“So I want you to start talking. I only said that I didn’t want to hurt you. I never said I wouldn’t.”

Nothing.

Fuck!

Tick. Tick.

Instinct taking over, I moved the gun to his shoulder not easing up even the slightest bit on holding his face to the wall.

“Fuck it,” I gushed dejectedly. “I’m not leaving without information. Maybe you’ll believe this. Three—”

I was in full improvisation mode.

“Two—”

I thought, what happens when I hit zero without a response?

“One—”

Was I more prepared to shoot or not to shoot?

“Different!” he blurted out.

“Different. What’s different?”

“The eggs. We’re dealing with different eggs. I was surprised Danish Jubilee Egg was stolen. I have no idea who you are.”

I moved the gun back to his head.

“Tell me about the deal.”

“I’m selling Andreu a different egg.”

“Which one?”

“Necessaire Egg.”

“You said eggs. Plural.”

“I didn’t mean to. One egg.”

Voices were approaching the bathroom door. I looked to the attendant.

“Lose them, now,” I barked, “Tell them you’re cleaning up some puke.”

The guy was frozen solid.

“Now!” I urged him through clenched teeth.

He moved to the door and opened it a crack like a woman who’d jumped from the shower. To my relief he lost them. He retreated back into the room and resumed his stance.

“You’re selling it to Zhamovsky?”

“That’s right. That’s why I opened the account. You have no idea how many people would like to stake a claim on these items. Andreu knows as well as anyone that these eggs need to stay under the radar, just like any cash associated with moving them.”

“One less transfer of funds between banks means one less stop of the cash on a federal server,” I deduced. “To shift the money from Andreu’s account to yours, in the same bank, is simply a book transfer. No other bank. No federal server.”

“Very good.”

“How did you get ahold of it? I mean, how—if—”

Something wasn’t right. These eggs were said to be worth thirty to forty million each and we were dealing with a substantially larger amount of cash. Then—

“Oh shit! Oh shit!”

It hit me.

Eggs. Plural.

This much money could only mean one thing.

I threw the gun in my pocket as I headed straight past the attendant for the door. I opened it and walked through. Boris was coming my way. I ducked back into the men’s room, gun out again.

The attendant immediately assumed the position. Derbyshev, on the other hand, was now facing me. And he was pissed. Past him I could see a shade, not too far from the ground, pulled over what I figured to be a decent-size window. Life had become all about seconds. I needed to get to that window.

Again, as I shook my suit jacket off while maintaining my aim, I faced that question. Did I have it in me to shoot?

His chauffeur would be coming through the door any moment. Time had run out.

So I let him have it.

Boom!

I kicked him square in the groin sending him crashing to the floor. All it took was the pull of a string to yank the black vertical blinds wide open. I rolled the pistol, like brass knuckles, into my fist, which I then wrapped with my jacket forming a makeshift boxing glove. With a pop, the glass exploded. The center was clear but the frame still contained big chunks of sharp edges. I took a few quick jabs at what remained. Most of the pieces fell just as I turned my head at the sound of the bathroom door opening.

The window was only a few feet off the ground, no higher than my chest, so I literally propelled myself through it like a missile. Unscathed, I hit the ground and bounced up running. I darted around the building then down the street toward my car. Halfway there I looked over my shoulder. Boris was coming after me. Whether he followed me through the window or came back through the restaurant I couldn’t be sure.

Calm, I told myself as I reached the Porsche. Be calm. I jumped in the unlocked car and unwound the jacket from my wrist, throwing it on the passenger-side floor. I tossed the gun on top of it and checked Boris through the windshield. He was gaining. He had a gun out.

“Calm,” I whispered to myself.

I pulled the keys from my pants pocket and started her up. Within seconds I was on my way. I flew past the approaching chauffeur who had his arm extended. I ducked, bracing for impact.

He never fired.

Chapter 39

Around midnight, as I steadily moved up a straight stretch of the New Jersey Turnpike back toward Manhattan, I picked up Pop’s cell phone. I looked at the printout from Ryan again. Derbyshev’s home number. I dialed and hit “send.”

“Hello?”

I wasn’t surprised to hear the Count’s voice. I figured his staff had either left or retired for the night.

“How many eggs is it, Mr. Derbyshev?”

“This is an unpublished number. How…”

He tapered off, probably remembering I had his social security number.

“You said eggs, plural. More than one. How many are there?”

“I have nothing to say to you.”

“Zhamovsky’s going to fuck you.”

“Ridiculous,” he scoffed.

“Is it? How well do you know him?”

No response.

“Mr. Derbyshev, if anyone here should be worried about trusting the other it’s me trusting you. Take my word on that, especially given our little confrontation. Andreu’s going to seriously work you. You give me a couple minutes, answer a couple questions, I think you’ll understand that.”

Derbyshev thought on it.

“You’re expecting close to half a billion dollar payday, aren’t you?”

Silence.

“Mr. Derbyshev?”

“How do you know all this?”

“It doesn’t matter. I’ll tell you what Andreu’s up to if you help me put this together. Tell me about the transaction. Because for the life of me, I can’t figure out how the money lines up. If—”

“All six.”

“All six,” I repeated, knowing full well what he meant.

Six eggs. The six imperial Easter eggs supposedly never found.

“Piotr Derbyshev was the mystery egg maker.”

“He was,” the Count conceded, finally realizing he had too much to lose to not give me a chance. “I have spent my entire life gathering the ones thought to be missing all these years. His grandson, my own father, tracked them for a while and kept records. As a young immigrant I simply made my sole goal in life to get rich so I could pick up where he left off and continue our family’s quest. With so little information or records concerning their whereabouts, it feels like I had to touch every corner of the world to bring them back. But I did. All six.”

“But how? I mean—who, or—where were they? How did they survive? Because it is my understanding that when the royal family was overthrown—”

“Does the name Maria Feodorovna mean anything to you?”

The Russian empress for whom many of the imperial eggs, including all eight that went missing in the Revolution, were made.

“It does.”

“Fascinating woman with a terrific eye for talent. The kind of woman who would fight for what she believed in. The kind of woman who would stand up for those she made a commitment to.”

I didn’t get it.

“Mr. Derbyshev, I’m not following.”

“The Czarina Maria Feodorovna loved all of the eggs presented to her, but it was her keen eye that identified Piotr Derbyshev’s contributions to the eggs as superior. She asked Henrik Wigstrom herself for Derbyshev to have the opportunity to lead the creation of some eggs. When the revolution happened, Alexandra Feodorovna had her servants round up as many of the Derbyshev pieces as she could out of an obligation to someone she believed in. All eight of his creations were saved. Two were stolen soon after, not to be found until 1979 in Yakutsk.”

“The two sold at auction,” I filled in.

“Precisely. That’s how Andreu got to me in the first place. We have a mutual acquaintance who possesses one of the other two—obviously you know which one. I’ve been trying to buy it for years. This person told Andreu where he could find me.”

“But then why would you sell them to Andreu? After just telling me yourself you had to reach to the corners of the world to bring them home?”

“I never planned on it. Andreu approached me about it, but I said no. Unequivocally, no. He said he’d give me top dollar, forty million per egg, and I still said no.”

“So what made you change your mind?”

“His offer doubled. Eighty million per egg.”

Eighty million multiplied by six equals four hundred and eighty million. An amount right around Andreu’s price range for our deal.

“Finally, I thought, what better legacy could my great-grandfather have than that? Than fetching almost half a billion dollars for the craftsmanship of his own hands?”

The count had come through. I owed him.

“Mr. Derbyshev, when did Andreu tell you the transaction would actually take place?”

“He said he couldn’t be sure, but—”

“But within three weeks?” I completed his thought.

“That’s correct. Within three weeks.”

“Did Andreu ever tell you where the cash he would be using to buy the eggs would be coming from?”

“Coming from? How do you mean?”

“Andreu Zhamovsky is the chairman of Prevkos, Mr. Derbyshev.”

“I know this.”

“But did you know he’s using his shareholders’ money to buy your precious eggs, and not his own? Why else would he be funneling a half billion dollars of his company’s funds into this country through a real estate deal with me?”

Nothing. I continued.

“I’ll tell you why. Andreu didn’t tell you to open an account at Salton to avoid another transfer. He did it so he could set you, someone with an account under the same roof, up when the Prevkos cash went missing. Public money supposedly being used for the purchase of New York City real estate and not the purchase of antiques neither of you can talk about but that will already be in his possession. A little matter of them, technically, being stolen property belonging to the Russian government.”

“That can’t be right.”

“Oh no? Why else would he be bringing the perfect amount of cash into this country through the deal we’re working on?”

“Andreu Zhamovsky is a wealthy man. I’m sure he has—”