We were lying in a heap of tangled sheets, skin to skin, soaked in sweat. I was still inside her. More or less.
She put her lips on mine, kissed me gently, and found my tongue with hers. That’s all it took to reboot my libido.
“We need to go, Matthew,” Katherine said. “We have to get up.”
“As you may have noticed, I’m pretty much up,” I said. “Give me two good reasons why we should leave this bed. Ever.”
“Your mother and your father,” she said. “We’re meeting them for brunch at ten o’clock.”
“We’ll be late,” I said. “They’ll understand.”
Chapter 99
An hour later we were sitting at a sidewalk café, eating duck eggs Benedict and buttery petites brioches, while my mother, giddy on half a mimosa, extolled the joys of Paris. She was like a Colorado schoolgirl on her first holiday. Even my father was smiling some.
It was our au revoir brunch. My folks had spent a week in Paris, and now they were moving on to Rome, Florence, and Venice. They were capping it all off with a two-week Mediterranean cruise. It was outrageously expensive, but it only put a small dent in the seven-figure account I’d opened for them at my Dutch bank.
We drove them to the airport and went back to the apartment, where I painted for six hours straight, breaking only for coffee and a few words of inspiration.
At seven, Katherine and I sat on our tiny terrace, sipping a light white burgundy while watching the steel-gray western sky slowly turn spectacular shades of red, orange, and indigo.
The doorbell rang.
“Poor man,” Katherine said. “I hate to put him through this.”
“It’s good for him,” I said.
We were expecting company, but old habits die hard, so before buzzing our visitor in, I checked the tiny security camera I had installed at the front door.
He tromped noisily up the steps, stopping often to catch his breath or complain.
“My darlings,” Newton gushed as he finally made it to our front door. “You’re coming down in the world.”
“Meaning what?” Katherine said.
“The first time we met, Matthew was a starving artist living on the top floor of a five-story walkup. Today you’re on the fourth floor. I look forward to the day when you are rich and famous, and I can ride the elevator to your penthouse in the sky.”
“You’re full of shit, Newton,” Katherine said. “The day Matthew is rich and famous is the day you’ll go off and find another poor struggling artist with no money and lots of stairs to climb.”
Newton laughed. “She’s right. Now let me see what I came for.”
He stepped in. “Oh, my,” he said as he took in my latest work. “Oh, my, my, my. Genius.”
“Really?” Katherine said. “You think Matthew is a genius?”
“Oh, heavens, no. I’m the genius. I said he’d get better, and he has. The lad has discovered color. And hope. And passion.”
“Keep talking, Newton,” Katherine said. “Every word of praise is going to cost you more money.”
Newton shrugged. It wasn’t his money.
He picked out five paintings.
“Someday these will be worth millions,” he said. “Until then, I’d peg them at ten grand apiece.”
He wrote me a check for fifty thousand dollars. I couldn’t believe it.
“There’s one catch,” he said, waving the check in my face. “You must let me buy you dinner.”
“Shouldn’t I be buying?” I said. “I mean, that check will cover a year’s worth of dinners.”
He laughed. “Not where we’ll be dining, my boy. Have you ever heard of La Tour d’Argent?”
“I have,” Katherine said, gently plucking the check from his hand. “We accept your generous offer.”
“Excellent. I’ll pick you up at eight forty-five.”
As soon as Newton left, Katherine started rummaging through her closet. “I have nothing to wear,” she said. “Rien. Nothing.”
“You look fabulous in nothing. It’s my favorite look for you.”
“You’re not helping,” she said. “Hurry up and get dressed.”
“One question,” I said. “Why is he taking us to dinner?”
“Because he loves to eat, he has a big fat expense account, and he wants to be seen in public with a handsome artiste Américain and his ugly professor who doesn’t have a thing to wear. Why else would he take us to dinner?”
I didn’t know. And that made me nervous.
Chapter 100
La Tour d’Argent has been a Paris institution since the sixteenth century. Perched on the river Seine in the heart of Old Paris, it’s a mecca for people who live to eat. Not exactly the kind of place where you pop in and ask for a table for three.
And not just any table. Ours had a sweeping view of the river and Notre Dame Cathedral.
“How’d you manage to get such a good table at the last minute?” I asked.
“All it takes is charm and money,” Newton said. “I supply the former and my employer has oodles of the latter. Voilà. We’re in.”
The sommelier handed him a wine list.
“This is the manageable version,” Newton said, handing it to me. “They have half a million bottles of wine in their cellar, and the complete wine list is four hundred pages.”
He ordered a bottle of 1990 Louis Roederer Champagne Cristal Brut that cost more than my first car.
“A toast,” Newton said once our glasses were filled. “To our blossoming young artist, Matthew Bannon.”
“And to the beautiful woman who made it all possible,” I said, “Katherine Sanborne.”
“And to Matthew’s generous new patron,” Katherine said. She looked innocently at Newton. “What’s his name, anyway?”
“I’m afraid I can’t say,” Newton said. “He’s a lovely man but rather secretive.” He smiled at me. “I’m sure you understand, don’t you, Matthew? We all have our little secrets.”
“But we’re toasting him,” Katherine said. “He has to have a name.”
Newton grinned. “In that case, feel free to give him one.”
“Copernicus,” Katherine said. “Newton and Copernicus—both drawn to the stars.”
We all drank to Copernicus.
“So, Newton,” I said, “are you as secretive as your boss, or can you tell us a little bit about yourself?”
“Secretive? Moi? Heavens, no. My life is an open book. In fact, I plan to write one someday. I already have the title—Confessions of an Art Whore.”
“I can’t wait for the book,” Katherine said. “Tell us some of the good parts.”
“Actually, my dear, they were all good parts. When I was twenty years old, I fell in love with Andy Warhol. Some people dismiss him, but he was the bellwether of the art market,” Newton said. “Notice I said art market. Andy was the rare artist who mastered the delicate balance between art and commerce. Are you familiar with one of his early works—Eight Elvises? It recently sold for a hundred million dollars.”
“And you knew him personally?” Katherine asked.
“Intimately,” Newton said. “Andy introduced me to Timothy Leary, who of course introduced me to LSD.”
“You took LSD?” Katherine said.
Newton shrugged. “It was just a phase, but who among us didn’t experiment in the eighties?”
“I know what you mean,” I said. “I was hooked on breast milk back in nineteen eighty. But it was just a phase.”
Newton let out a guffaw, and we spent the next few hours swapping stories of our lives. Mine were carefully edited. His were delightfully entertaining, but I’d be willing to bet they were more bullshit than substance.
By one o’clock I felt like I had learned very little about this man whom I knew only by a single name. Hopefully he knew even less about me.
On the ride home, he had the driver open the moonroof. The three of us rode in silence and gazed at the sky.
“For my part, I know nothing with any ce
rtainty, but the sight of the stars makes me dream,” Newton said when we arrived at our apartment.
“That’s beautiful,” Katherine said.
“Vincent van Gogh said it first. Off to bed with you now,” he said with a wink.
Which is exactly where we went.
That night, we undressed each other slowly, gently touching, exploring, caressing. There were no threatening asteroids hurtling toward us. I knew in my heart there would be lots and lots of bright, beautiful tomorrows. At least, that’s what I wanted to believe on that perfect night in Paris.
Chapter 101
It was a warm September evening when Nathaniel Prince set out on his five-mile jog through the streets of Moscow. A half hour into his run, the fine mist that had been in the air turned into a pelting rain. Two minutes later, it stopped as suddenly as it started, but Nathaniel was already soaked to the skin.
He laughed. He didn’t care. Soon he’d be home, and Natalia would draw him a hot bath, and then they would sit down to their traditional Sunday-night meal: borscht, golubtsy smothered in sour cream, and his favorite—sweetbrier berry kissel.
A jog, a bath, a home-cooked dinner, and then a few hours of mindless Russian television before bed. Life was simpler now. Nathaniel found it impossible to comprehend, but for the first time since he was a boy, he was happy. More than happy. He was at peace.
It had come at great expense. His power, his home, and his wealth were all gone. In exchange, he and Natalia had been allowed to live.
That night at the Atlantis Hotel in Nassau, he still held out hope that Chukov would recover the diamonds and he could humble himself to Arnoff and the other members of the Syndicate. But within hours of the meeting, Chukov and five of his men were dead and the diamonds were lost forever.
Nathaniel sold the house in Park Slope, raped his bank accounts, and with Arnoff’s guarantee of amnesty without forgiveness, he and Natalia moved back to Moscow.
Even after forking over the ten million, they were far from poor, and Natalia had found a beautiful apartment in a vintage Stalin-era building on the Frunzenskaya embankment. Six spacious rooms, high ceilings, and a wide terrace with sweeping views of the Moskva River.
It was a family neighborhood, and in another three months, he and Natalia would be pushing a baby pram through the tree-lined streets, over the pedestrian bridge to Gorky Park and the Neskuchny Gardens on the opposite riverbank.
A father again at the age of sixty. Three months ago, he thought the Syndicate would have him killed. Now he had everything to live for. Who knows? he thought as he reached the front door of his apartment building. Maybe that bastard Zelvas did us all a favor.
He stretched his calves and his hamstrings and took the elevator to the tenth floor.
Even before he opened the door, the heady aroma of meat and onions wrapped in cabbage and simmering in a pot of creamy tomato sauce welcomed him home.
He entered the apartment and saw the intruders. Instinctively he reached for his gun. But of course he didn’t have one in his wet jogging suit.
The men in the apartment had guns. All four of them.
Natalia was sitting in the middle of the living room, tied to a dining room chair. Her eyes were red and puffy, her mouth taped shut.
“How dare you!” Nathaniel screamed. “What is the meaning of this? Do you muzhiks know who I am?” He charged forward to untie his daughter.
One of the men slammed him in the face with a gun barrel, and Nathaniel reeled backward, spitting blood and teeth.
Nathaniel studied his attacker. One side of the man’s face was covered with scars and skin grafts. It was a face that was difficult to look at, but Nathaniel knew that if he had ever seen it before, he would surely remember it now. But this man was a stranger.
“Sit,” the man said.
A second dining room chair was pushed under him, and Nathaniel was shoved into it.
“Who authorized this? Who sent you?” Nathaniel demanded as one of the other men tied him to the chair.
The man with the scarred face seemed to be in charge. “Nobody sent us,” he said, winking at the others. “We heard there was a party tonight, so we came on our own—no invitation.”
The other three laughed.
But Prince didn’t see the humor. He was incensed. “I gave those Syndicate assholes ten million dollars, and they agreed to let me live in peace as long as I never returned to the United States again,” he said. “We had a deal. Ironclad. Bound by the Vorovskoy Zakon.”
“I see,” the leader said. “A deal. An agreement between the Diamond Syndicate and the illustrious Mr. Nathaniel Prince. Or should I call you Mr. Nikita Primakov?”
It had been decades since Nathaniel had heard his real name.
“I don’t care what you call me. Just untie me and get out. You’ve made a big mistake. None of the senior members of the Syndicate would ever choose to violate the Vorovskoy Zakon.”
“That may be true,” the gunman said, punching Nathaniel in the mouth and shattering more teeth. “But we are not from the Diamond Syndicate.”
Chapter 102
As soon as Natalia’s father took the blow, muffled screams erupted from under the duct tape that covered her mouth.
One of the men slapped her face. “Shut up, bitch.”
Prince strained against the ropes the men had tied around him. “I’ll kill you,” he screamed.
“Your killing days are over,” the leader said, driving a fist into Prince’s left ear.
Nathaniel could feel the vital tiny bones in his ear splinter. But he couldn’t hear them break. His left ear could no longer hear anything.
The punch perforated his eardrum. Fluid leaked from his inner ear and he became dizzy and nauseated. He tried to focus.
Not from the Diamond Syndicate?
For a moment he felt a flash of justified anger. His gut feeling had been right—the Syndicate would never do this to him. But who would?
“Who are you?” he asked, the bloody shards of his two front teeth flying out as he spoke.
The leader pointed to his men and each one answered in turn.
“Fyodor Dmitriov.”
“Kostya Dmitriov.”
“Leonid Dmitriov.”
“And I am Maxim Dmitriov,” the leader said. “We are what remains of the Dmitriov Cab Company. You murdered my father and my uncles, you killed our brothers, our cousins—”
“And my son,” Kostya growled. “My only son, Alexei. He was eighteen, and he died in the fire that morning in the garage.”
“I was late for work that day,” Maxim said. “By the time I arrived, the garage was an inferno. Twenty-seven of my friends and family were locked in a storeroom. I tried to get to them, and this is all I got for my efforts.”
He rolled up his shirtsleeves. Covered in skin grafts, his arms looked even more gruesome than his face.
“My bride-to-be was locked in that storeroom,” Maxim said. “She didn’t even work there. She came to show me photos of our wedding cake. We were going to be married in two more days. You killed her.”
“Not me,” Nathaniel said. “It was Chukov. Vadim Chukov—”
A swift cuff to the right eye silenced him.
“Chukov was your puppet,” Maxim said. “You pulled the strings. You lit the match.”
“What happened was not my fault,” Nathaniel said. “I swear. I was in the hospital. My own family had just been run down by one of your drivers.”
“One!” Maxim screamed. “Not twenty-seven. Not three generations of an entire family.”
“I know your pain,” Nathaniel said. “We were both injured parties. Let me try to make it up to you. I have money—not a lot, but some. I could make restitution for Chukov’s evil deeds.”
“Money? You think we’re here for money?”
“Everybody needs money,” Nathaniel reasoned. “Tell me what you want.”
“You took what we want. You murdered what we need. Now, like they say in America, you have to fac
e some music.”
He took a cassette player from his pocket and pressed a button.
“Wedding music,” Maxim cried out.
Even with only one good ear Nathaniel could make out the fiddle, the mandolin, and the garmoshka playing the joyful sounds of his homeland’s traditional folk music.
“Everyone,” Maxim said, “a toast to the bride.”
The four men lifted their imaginary glasses.
“Nazdaróvy!” they shouted. Then they began to dance around the bride.
Natalia.
“This is the wedding dance you stole from me,” Maxim shouted.
Fluid was seeping out of Nathaniel’s inner ear. The room was spinning, and watching the four men dance in a circle around Natalia made him even dizzier.
Maxim ripped the tape from Natalia’s mouth, and she gasped for air.
“Raise the bride up high,” he bellowed.
The four men each grabbed a leg of the chair and hoisted it almost to the top of the ten-foot ceiling.
Natalia screamed in terror. “Papa!”
And in that moment Nathaniel knew.
“Please,” he begged. “I’ll give you everything I have. Three million dollars. You can have every penny.”
“This will be payment enough,” Maxim said, as the four men danced toward the terrace door.
Leonid kicked it open, and now Natalia, too, realized her fate. “Please,” she screamed. “You can see I’m pregnant.”
“I hope,” Kostya Dmitriov said, “with a son.”
“Death to the whore,” Maxim yelled, and they heaved the chair, the woman, and her unborn child over the balcony rail.
Natalia’s screams were loud and piercing, but Nathaniel couldn’t hear them. He was vomiting. He was still gagging on his own puke when he realized the chair underneath him was being lifted up. He closed his eyes and felt the cool September air as it penetrated his wet jogging suit.
The last thing he heard was the voice of the scar-faced man.
“Feed this incestuous pig to the pigeons.”