The Property of a Lady (6 page)

Cal knew that the Russians desperately needed an Ivanoff signature on the title deeds as indisputable proof of their claim. If they found the “Lady” first, they would get that signature. And they would again become the world’s most intimidating power.

He sipped the champagne that had been meant to cheer him up—and maybe bluff the Russians into believing he was celebrating the purchase of the emerald—thinking about the events of the last few weeks. He had asked for and been given carte blanche to conduct his own investigation into the search for the mysterious owner of the Ivanoff jewel. He had requested no CIA heavies, no elaborate FBI investigations … he had wanted this one for himself. He realized its importance and knew it would boost him up the political ladder. Besides, he was already on to a lead. “It’s a simple enough matter,” he had told them easily at the meeting. “All I have to do is find these top gem cutters. They will know who the owner is.”

It had started out like a game. First he had gone to Amsterdam, where he had met Peter van Stalte, the doyen of gem cutters and an honest man. Van Stalte had said the emerald had not been seen in that city and that he personally
would not have liked the job. “Too risky,” he’d said, frowning and pulling on his short pointed beard. “The surest hand in Amsterdam could not have guaranteed success.”

In Jerusalem the Israelis had told him that not only had they not seen the emerald, but they too would never have attempted to cut it. They said there was only one man who could have attempted such a cut with any chance of success: Gerome Abyss. But Abyss had disappeared from Paris and the gem-cutting world years ago after a series of disasters involving large and expensive diamonds. Lifting a cupped hand to his mouth, Stein had said, “Scotch whisky, that’s what ruined Gerome Abyss. Rumor had it he went to Hong Kong, or was it Singapore? Or maybe Bangkok?”

Cal had followed Interpol information that Abyss had last been seen in Bangkok, one of the major gem centers of the Far East, but his search had ground to a halt in a seedy back street in Patpong. He had found himself staring at a stained business card tacked to a peeling door. There was no answer to his ring, and the people at the Therapeutic Sex Clinic on the first floor had told him Abyss had not been seen in weeks. It had taken two days of inquiring from bar to bar along the malodorous network of neighboring streets to find the owner of the building, and when he finally encountered him, he wished he hadn’t.

They met in the man’s office in back of a glitzy neon “massage parlor” and bar. Disco music was blaring from enormous speakers as half-naked Thai girls gyrated lethargically on a small stage while the bored customers lewdly assessed their merits. When Cal inquired for the owner, two muscular guards emerged suddenly from the shadows and, without a word, grabbed his arms. They hurried him along a corridor at the back of the bar, past “massage girls” lounging in front of flimsy-curtained cubicles, smoking and gossiping, waiting to apply their
“skills” to a continuously passing trade. One called out to him, running her hands provocatively across her naked charms. “Try me, Mister, I make you feel good,” she said with a giggle as the two henchmen pushed him into a room at the rear of the building. The girl’s heavy perfume failed to disguise the sickening odors of sweat, ammonia, and strong disinfectant, and he thankfully inhaled a breath of the merely stale air of the office, staring at the little man behind the enormous desk.

The man he had come to see was not Thai. He was Laotian, and he seemed ageless, with an unlined yellowish skin and eyes so narrow it was impossible to tell their color or read their expression. He was tiny, his childlike hands fiddled continually with a string of amber beads, and his immense carved teakwood chair only made him look smaller. Another menacing pair of bodyguards flanked his chair, and Cal’s throat suddenly felt dry. He was aware of the criminal underworld in Bangkok, but he hadn’t expected to stumble on it quite like this. These men meant business and it was a good bet it wasn’t the sort of business he was involved in: They were drug pushers, pimps, loan sharks….

“My request is simple, sir,” he had said, carefully polite. “I am searching for a gem cutter by the name of Abyss.”

The Laotian eyed him silently for a minute, then asked in a high, squeaky voice, “Why?”

“Why?” Cal repeated uncertainly.

“Why you seek Abyss? Perhaps he owe you money?”

“No, oh, no. Abyss does not owe me money. I—I have a job for him.”

“Show me the stone you want him to cut.”

“The stone?” Cal felt the sweat rise along the back of his neck and he wondered how he had managed to get himself into this. “I left it in Amsterdam. It’s a special stone. They told me only Abyss could cut it.”

There was a long silence and he had forced himself to
Stare into the Laotian’s face, wishing he could see his eyes, cursing himself for getting into this dumb situation.

“You are lying,” the Laotian said finally in his thin voice. “Abyss is a drunkard. His gem-cutting days are over, destroyed in Paris many years ago. He has been making just enough to finance his drinking by cutting and polishing minor commercial stones for the cheap end of the market. But not enough to pay me. Mr. Gerome Abyss disappeared two months ago, owing me for certain services. This was an … an oversight. You understand?” His smile was as narrow and expressionless as his eyes as he added, “My collector was remiss; he allowed Abyss to stall him for the money—something that is against my rules. Of course, the collector has now been dealt with. But Mr. Abyss … well, he owes me a total of one thousand dollars. Not a great deal of money, of course … but no one,
no one
ever owes my organization money and gets away with it. So, Mr…. Warrender, since Abyss is a friend of yours, what do you say you pay his debts? Let’s call it a fine, shall we? And in return, I shall tell you what I know.”

The crocodile smile disappeared as Cal stared at him, surprised. What could the Laotian tell him? That for a thousand dollars they had killed Abyss? He wouldn’t put anything past these bastards … death was probably one of their sweeter options. “A thousand dollars?” he said, reaching in his jacket for his wallet.

The thug next to him grabbed him and he felt the smooth, cold steel of a knife against his neck.

“Shall we say—with interest—fifteen hundred?” the Laotian suggested with another smile.

Cal nodded, and with a quick gesture of his tiny hand the Laotian indicated the thug should set him free.

Breathing a sigh of relief that he wasn’t going to end up as another anonymous statistic fished from the deep Chao Phraya River, Cal said nervously, “You guys take traveler’s checks? Just joking, just joking,” he added hastily as
the Laotian’s eyes disappeared into angry slits and his thin mouth tightened. “Fifteen hundred dollars, right?” He took the fifteen bills from his wallet and placed them on the table. “And now you will tell me where Abyss is?”

Waving to one of his henchmen to remove the money, the Laotian said, “Mr. Abyss had been traced from Kuala Lumpur to Singapore, and then to Jakarta, where, I understand from my contacts, he was seeking passage on a freighter heading for Istanbul. My research has gone no further than this. And since the debt has now been repaid, it will no longer be necessary. Good-bye, Mr. Warrender.”

As the guards grabbed his arms and marched him back along the corridor, Cal wondered how he had known his name. He must have heard he was making inquiries and made it his business to find out about him. The Laotian was not the kind of man to let anything pass him by.

The massage girls lurking behind their curtains eyed him silently as they hurried past, and then he was back in the red-and-blue neon glare and heavy disco beat of the bar. A thrust on his back propelled him suddenly into the street and he was breathing Patpong Road’s moist, fetid air as if it was the breath of life itself.

He took the next flight out to Istanbul, the ancient city that was formerly Constantinople and before that Byzantium. It was raining and the beautiful domes and minarets were hidden under a bank of low gray cloud. Even the famous Bosphorus was a depressing gray.

The harbor was surrounded by an area of peeling industrial squalor, filled with Russian freighters and rusting Turkish ships looking ready for the junkyard. Land and sea merged together in the ghostly gray mist and a fine rain soaked him as he walked along the docks, searching for the minor immigration official Interpol had told him might help—for a certain sum, of course. When he finally reached him it took him two more grim, gray
rainy days of searching through papers until he found what he wanted.

He compared the picture of the man on the immigration documents with the one in the photograph given him by Interpol. There was no mistaking the round face stretched tight over layers of fat, shining with a film of sweat under the hot photographic lamps, nor the small eyes and fleshy lips. Abyss’s sparse hair was now dyed a strange reddish color and the mustache was a new addition, but it was the name that confirmed the identity. Gerome Abyss was obviously not very inventive. He had renamed himself simply “Mr. Gerome” … Georges Gerome, clothing manufacturer from Nimes in France. He had stated his business in Istanbul as seeking manufacturers of Turkish cotton goods for sale in Europe. And the address given was a small downtown hotel.

Cal had copied down the information, pocketed the photograph of Abyss, laid an extra fifty bucks on the nervous official who accompanied him thankfully to the door, and headed for the hotel.

A word with the clerk on Reception and another fifty got him permission to search the guest lists for the past two months, but no Mr. Gerome had registered there. A few discreet questions confirmed that no one of his description had set foot through the hotel’s portals, and Cal knew he was back where he started.

Behind the tree-lined boulevards of modern Istanbul a labyrinth of narrow, medieval alleys crisscrossed the city’s hills, filled with tumbling wooden houses and dark mysterious courtyards. It was a city where, if he wished, a man could simply disappear from the face of the earth. Cal knew one thing was certain: Abyss would not be pursuing his trade. He would have been paid lavishly for cutting the Ivanoff emerald and the odds were he was now busy spending it on the best scotch whisky and happily drinking himself to death. He shrugged. Whichever, he had drawn a blank.

Now he was stuck in snowbound Geneva, and without either the emerald or a clue to its owner—old or new. His brooding gaze shifted to Solovsky, still drinking at the bar with his fellow Russians. There was definitely something different about Solovsky. It wasn’t just that he stood head and shoulders above his countrymen physically; there was a sort of old-Russian quality in his bearing and his manner. Confidence combined with courtesy, he decided—the essence of a diplomat. Solovsky turned suddenly and met his gaze. He nodded, unsmilingly acknowledging Cal’s presence, then turned back to the bar and ordered another round of vodka. They knew each other only slightly, though Cal figured he probably knew more about Solovsky than Solovsky knew about him.

Valentin Solovsky had been schooled all his life toward high political office and at the age of thirty-six had already begun to make a name for himself in the foreign service. He had held posts as press attache at his country’s embassy in Paris, as military attache in London, and his latest post was as cultural attache in Washington. Paris, London, Washington, Cal mused, finishing his glass of champagne. Nothing but the best for the son of top Politburo member Marshal Sergei Solovsky and the nephew of the KGB’s feared Boris Solovsky. Nepotism lived, even in the People’s Republic.

Valentin swung around, staring toward the door. Cal followed his gaze. Genie Reese stood hesitantly at the entrance to the bar. She looked beautiful, but moody and unsmiling.

Cal had met Genie Reese several times at White House press conferences and Washington parties. He knew she was a damned good reporter. She was bright, always well researched and unmanipulative with a story. And she was absolutely straight-arrow honest. She was also one of the most attractive members of the Washington press corps—a detail that he noticed had not escaped Valentin Solovsky.

He called out to her as she walked by on her way to a table by the snowy window. “Not thinking of drinking alone, are you, Genie?” He waved at the champagne in the ice bucket by his table. “Why don’t you join me?”

She hesitated, her blue eyes undecided, then she said curtly, “Sorry, I need to be on my own for a bit. I’ve got some thinking to do.”

“Haven’t we all,” Cal murmured, sinking back into his chair, watching as she took a seat at an empty table, shook back her mane of blond hair, and asked the waiter for a glass of fresh orange juice with ice. No booze? he thought, surprised. The work day was over and most other press persons would be hitting the bottle as if it were likely to dry up tomorrow—celebrating, like kids out of school. Genie Reese must have some
really serious
thinking to do.

He sighed as he poured another glass of champagne, wishing she had said yes, noticing that Solovsky had turned back to the bar and was listening intently to something one of his companions was saying. Cal glanced at his watch. Eight-thirty wasn’t too soon for dinner in this city, was it? Well, damn it, even if it was, he was hungry. With a nod to Genie and to Solovsky, he made his way to the restaurant.