Winter Palace

by T. Davis Bunn

  “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.”

  “This is not necessarily all bad,” the director offered. “Having an occupant means that vandalism is kept down. This has been quite a serious problem recently with vacant buildings.”

  “All renovation must maintain the external facades,” her associate continued. “No expansions will be permitted unless they retain the original architectural style and are accepted by the local council. You would be amazed, some Western groups have wanted to transform our priceless heirlooms into warehouses.”

  “That won’t be a problem here,” Jeffrey murmured. Ivona did not translate.

  “Here is a list of all the documents we require, legal and financial, before the purchase can be cleared,” she said, handing him a two-page register. “And this is a translated description of the main house.”

  “What about the evaluation of the property from your side?” Jeffrey asked, folding the papers and sliding them into his pocket for future examination. “Can you give me some idea of the price you’ll be asking?”

  She smiled for the first time. “What is the value of such a property in the Russia of today? Do we take the cost of building another, the cost when it was built, the value today in rubles, the value ten years ago, or the value tomorrow?”

  She shrugged. “It is up to the potential owners to make a bid, and that bid will be taken into consideration by the privatization committee. On the basis of the financial documents and proposed purpose, the committee will decide if the bid is acceptable. A formal notice will be posted in the Saint Petersburg Gazette and at the mayor’s office, and thirty days will be allowed for any other parties to submit a competing bid. At the end of that thirty days, if no other bid is received, the notaries are instructed to draw up the lease documents.”

  Jeffrey sat up. “Lease?”

  “Lease-purchase,” the associate corrected. “The new Russian parliament has still not passed the necessary laws to allow us to sell these properties outright. At the same time, our city government is fighting off bankruptcy, and we cannot afford the upkeep.”

  “So we have reached a compromise solution,” the director continued. “We are offering thirty-year leases with the proviso that the tenant has the first right of purchase at the stated price, with all rent payments going toward the purchase, once the ruling is made law.”

  “That sounds more than fair,” Jeffrey said. “I guess the next step is for me to take a look around.”

  “My assistant will take you over immediately,” the director replied, rising to her feet and offering Jeffrey her hand as Ivona translated. “She speaks some English and will be your contact here if there are any questions. I shall await word from you.”

  Once they were back downstairs and waiting for the assistant to locate the necessary keys, Ivona said, “If you will permit, I shall leave you here.”

  “Of course.”

  “The bishop has arranged an appointment for Yussef and me this afternoon. I know the gentleman’s family, and Yussef does not.”

  “No problem,” he said.

  Ivona continued her scrutiny of the gardens beyond the door. “I shall be taking whatever time possible to continue our search. Naturally, I will be available whenever you require my assistance.”

  “Naturally,” Jeffrey replied dryly. “I am most grateful.”

  “Until later, then,” she said and strode away. Jeffrey watched her hasten toward the taxi rank, wondered if it was just his imagination, or if she really was running away.

  Chapter 21

  The same woman who had brought them upstairs appeared soon after Ivona had departed and announced in heavily accented English, “I am responsible for your file.”

  “Great,” Jeffrey replied.

  “Come,” she said, heading for the door. “We take taxi.”

  She led him out to the taxi rank on overly tight, high-heeled shoes, her feet crammed in so that the flesh puffed out around the edges and threw her weight forward. She slid into the taxi with difficulty, her dress being far too tight for her girth.

  “Bottom floor of palace was warehouse for metal pipes,” she said, propping the folder open on her knees as the taxi drove them to the estate.

  “So they told me.” He watched a throng of people moving slowly past a group of old ladies selling everything from cold potato pancakes to shoe polish on the street curb. “I wonder what happened to all the people who worked for the company that was upstairs.”

  “Who’s to say?” She did not raise her head from the file in her lap. “Now is no more socialism. Now all is private initiative. Fine. Let some private initiative find people more work.”

  The taxi turned from the main thoroughfare onto a boulevard lined with old apartment houses and shadowed by the past. They swung around the corner and stopped beside a small caretaker’s lodge. It was built into an outer wall constructed of brick and hand-wrought iron. Huge, rusty hinges, now broken and twisted, had probably once held impressive gates. Through the sweeping entrance, Jeffrey could see what once must have been a formal garden and now was little more than a jungle.

  His attention was caught by the sight of a large American car parked along the curb opposite the estate. The black Chevrolet totally dwarfed the little plastic cars near it, including their own taxi. Jeffrey paid the driver and got out in time to see a tall, lanky man with a blond buzz-cut, his tie at half-mast, saunter out through the main gates.

  Jeffrey’s guide did not like this development at all. She clambered from the taxi and paraded toward the blond man. Jeffrey was right behind her. The woman shouted a full blast of rapid Russian.

  “Sorry, lady,” the man drawled in English. “I don’t speak the lingo.”

  Jeffrey stepped forward, unaccountably irritated by the intruder’s air of nonchalant superiority. “She wants to know what you’re doing here,” he said. “And so do I.”

  That startled him. “You American?”

  Jeffrey nodded. “I asked what you are doing here.”

  The guy flicked a glance at something behind them, and sidled swiftly back into the estate. “What’s it to you?”

  “He official bidder,” the woman answered, following the man’s backward movement, her tone rising indignantly. “He have right to ask. I am ministry official. I have more right. Now you say, what you are doing here?”

  “Just havin
g a little look. No harm in that, is there?” Keen eyes flickered back from their inspection of what was behind them and rested on Jeffrey. “That right, what the lady said? You want to buy this place?”

  “I don’t see how that’s any business of yours,” Jeffrey retorted. “And you still haven’t said what you’re doing on this property.”

  He shrugged. “Maybe I’m thinking about buying it too.”

  Just as Jeffrey had feared. A competing bid. “Who for?”

  The guy shook his head. “You first.”

  “This private property,” the woman said sharply, almost dancing in place. “You must have proper authority to enter. Mr. Sinclair has authority. You have nothing. You leave. Now.”

  “I was just on my way out,” he replied. “That your name? Sinclair?”

  “Who else wants to buy this place,” Jeffrey demanded.

  “See you around, Sinclair,” the guy said, and ambled off.

  “Come,” the woman insisted to Jeffrey. “We go.”

  “I don’t like the look of him,” Jeffrey said quietly, watching the man’s slow progress down the street.

  “I am also not liking,” the woman agreed. “Is much in Russia today I am not liking. People with no proper authority do much, too much. No respect for anything.”

  Jeffrey followed her down the drive. “Have you had other bids for this palace? Any from Americans?”

  “No, no bids from anywhere. Is just another winter palace, one of thousand. More. City full of old palaces.” The woman walked the rubble-strewn path on feet that clearly pained her. “We need many buyers with proper authority. Not men who walk where they like and speak without respect.”

  She fished through a voluminous purse and came up with a series of heavy, old keys wired to a piece of cardboard. “How long you take?”

  “This afternoon,” Jeffrey mused, craning to get a look at the exterior above his head, “three or four hours. I suppose I might as well start on a floor plan, then finish that up tomorrow. And I’ll need a local architect to look over the foundations and the roof.”

  “Yes, yes,” she said impatiently, climbing the rough stone stairs. “But such time I don’t have. I give you keys, yes?”

  “That’s fine with me.”

  “You let no one in without proper authority?”

  “Not a soul,” he promised.

  “I come and check on you,” she warned.

  “I will look forward to it,” he replied.

  She harrumphed, unlocked the door, pushed it open, and handed him the set of keys. “You now responsible.”

  “I’ll guard them with my life,” he replied. “Thank you.”

  ****

  Everywhere were remnants of the past, whispers of the mansion’s former glory. The dual entrance halls were floored with marble mosaic, now cracked and pitted and dulled by ingrained dirt. Hallways were floored with rough-worn hardwood overlaid with cheap, peeling linoleum.

  The ground floor chambers had been whitewashed, but so long ago that the paint was falling in a slow-motion snowfall upon the pipes and sheet metal and bent steel rods scattered over the scarred floors. The back garden doors had been enlarged with a sledgehammer, then fitted with a rusting warehouse-type truck door.

  Upstairs the linoleum gave way to laurel-wreath carpet that smelled of damp and age. The first great hall was lined in what once had been royal-red silk wall covering and now was a dull pinkish-gray. The fireplace was large enough to stand in upright and was flanked by two ancient Greek statues. This had been a common practice in many great royal houses, when conquerors returned home with spoils that were then fashioned into their villas as decoration. The ceiling was a full thirty feet high and decorated by a hand-wrought wooden frieze, now completely covered with water stains and mold.

  Opening from the hall’s far end was a smaller room that testified to Russia’s former love affair with the Orient; it was a gilded chamber in the best Islamic style, the intricate geometric designs on the walls rising to lofty heights, where they joined to a gold-leaf ceiling shaped like the dome of a mosque. Beside the main doors, where the family’s crest had once been carved, former Communist occupants had painted crude hammers and sickles.

  Beyond this chamber began, if Jeffrey correctly read the cursory description supplied by the ministry, the rooms of the head of the house, Prince Markov’s grandfather. As befitted a distant member of the royal family, the suite consisted of a dozen chambers—billiards, music, library, reception, study, and so on. Across the main hall, his wife had struggled to make do with a mere seven rooms of her own. His work set aside for this first viewing, Jeffrey walked through the rooms in a reverie of what life in this great house once might have been.

  The third floor was an almost endless series of connecting rooms for younger children, with separate halls for honored guests. After a brief inspection, Jeffrey returned to the ground floor. The kitchen and galleys had been stripped and filled with the warehouse’s rubbish. Jeffrey went back to the central room, which clearly had been sort of a glorified waiting salon, not nearly as grand as the upstairs chambers. Leading from that was the apartment of the family’s eldest son, Markov’s father. It consisted of a large sitting room, a study, a dressing salon, a bath, a toilet, a second private salon, a long hall lined with closets and wardrobes, and a bedroom.

  Four hours later, Jeffrey had completed the initial floor plan and seen about all he cared to for one day. He left via the front entrance, carefully locking the door behind him.

  A voice from the bottom of the stairs asked, “Is the dragon lady still around?”

  Jeffrey bristled at the conspiratorial tone. “Whether she is or she isn’t,” he retorted, “the situation’s the same. You have no right to be here.”

  “Proper authority,” the young man scoffed. “What a joke. Proper authority’s sent this country to the bottom of the economic scrap heap.”

  “So why are you here?” Jeffrey stalked down the stairs and strode up close to the other man, trying to make him give ground. “Better still, why don’t you leave?”

  The man backed up a step. “Hey, did it ever occur to you that maybe we got started on the wrong foot?”

  Jeffrey pressed forward. “Now.”

  Another step. “I got a better idea. How’s about you ask me one more time who I’m with?”

  “I don’t care anymore.”

  “Hey, but you should.”

  “I just want you—”

  From the other side of the high outer wall came the sound of several men’s voices approaching. The man’s casual attitude vanished. Quick as a cat, he grasped Jeffrey by his shoulder and arm, pushing him across the driveway and up against the wall. There wasn’t much force behind the movement, and the contact was softened by a thick overgrowth of hanging vines. Still, the jolt was enough for his neck to give a lancing ping. Jeffrey groaned, or started to, but the man stiffened and hissed and silenced him.

  The voices receded. The man released Jeffrey, craned to see through the open gates, said softly, “You ever heard the name Tombek before?”

  Jeffrey rubbed his neck. “Would you mind telling me what’s going on?”

  “I asked you a question, Sinclair.” His attitude was casual again, but his voice was distant as last winter’s frost.

  “I couldn’t care less. Who are you?”

  A swift motion brought forth a leather ID, which was flashed open so fast that Jeffrey only caught sight of a photograph and official printing. “Name’s John Casey. I’m here with the U.S. consulate. Cultural Affairs, if you want to be technical, which I’d advise you not to be. Now, Sinclair, have you ever heard the name Tombek?”

  “No.” Consulate. It didn’t make sense. Jeffrey felt his anger subsiding into embarrassment. “Why push me around like that?”

  “A couple of their goons followed you here.” He watched Jeffrey continue to massage his neck. “Hurt yourself?”

  “No. You did.”

  “Sorry.” He eased into the gate
way and searched the road outside the gates. “I think it’s okay.”

  Jeffrey remained unconvinced. And hot. “If they were already following me around, why try and hide me?”

  “Can’t say for sure that they were. But their car pulled up right as you and Miss Proper Authority got out.”

  “And?”

  Casey shrugged. “Why take chances?”

  His neck subsided to a dull throbbing. “So who is this Tombek?”

  “Tell you what,” Casey replied, leading Jeffrey over to the large American car. “Why don’t we take a little drive and let the Consul General decide how much you ought to know.”

  * * *

  “The place you’ve been looking over backs up on the Fontanka Canal; that’s the water trough running down the middle of that street over there,” Casey said as he navigated the heavy car along the rutted pavement. “Used to be one of the best neighborhoods the city had to offer. Over across the street is the former royal stable. It runs a full city block and has an interior courtyard over two acres in size. Now it houses the city’s garbage trucks, police vans, and some of the smaller buses.”

  Jeffrey reached past his growing annoyance and confusion in an attempt to gain more information. “How do you know so much about this area?”

  Casey shrugged in reply. “Boredom, I guess. Had to have something to do in my off time, so I studied some of the local lore.”

  “Off time from what?” Jeffrey probed.

  “That’s for the Consul General to say.” He pointed through the front windshield at a beautifully restored church with six multicolored onion domes. “That’s the Church of the Resurrection. Alexis II, the czar who abolished serfdom in 1861, was assassinated on that spot by nobles who weren’t too happy to lose all their slaves. The local folk, though, they wanted to honor the guy who gave them freedom. After Alexis was killed, it became a crime to speak his name. So they always called that church the Cathedral of the Spilled Blood.”

  “I’m not in any trouble, am I?” Jeffrey demanded.

  “You might as well save your breath,” Casey replied. “Why don’t we just give it a rest and enjoy the ride?”