Whirlpool

by Elizabeth Lowell

“The missing egg—” Cruz began.

  “It is called the Ruby Surprise,” Novikov interrupted, a pained look on his face.

  “Whatever. It was there when you packed up in Tokyo?” Cruz asked.

  “Yes. We used a commercial air freight company which specializes in such shipments. Terribly reliable.”

  “You’re certain the egg you shipped was the right one? No substitutions?” Cruz asked almost idly.

  “Quite certain. The entire exhibit arrived in Los Angeles yesterday. As soon as everything passed through your very efficient Customs personnel, we began checking for shipping damage.”

  “And you found the egg gone,” Cruz said.

  “Yes.”

  “How much is it worth?”

  Novikov seemed unhappy at having to put a monetary value on the egg. He looked at Redpath.

  She looked back at him.

  “The egg is priceless, both as history and as art,” the Russian said finally. “The House of Fabergé was the leading designer and manufacturer of art objects in imperial Russia. It created all manner of extraordinary trifles which have little intrinsic use.”

  “The kind of things that are more properly called objects of fantasy than art,” Redpath said to Cruz.

  “Precisely,” Novikov said, his voice approving. “Although many art historians would be pleased to argue that in the imperial eggs, the House of Fabergé transcended craftsmanship and became true art.”

  “Not a popular point of view in Russia for the past seventy years,” Cruz said blandly.

  “Fashions change with politics,” Novikov said with an elegant shrug. “When the czar fell, Fabergé was doomed. The Ruby Surprise was the last imperial egg to be commissioned. In fact, no one even knew the Ruby Surprise had been completed until recent exhaustive inventories of state assets.”

  Redpath nodded. It was an open secret that Russia was scrambling for every possible source of cash, including selling off works of art that had been hidden away for generations.

  “So some hero of the Revolution overcame his proletariat prejudices and stashed the Ruby Surprise in his concrete villa,” Cruz summarized. “Then some other hero of the masses pried the egg out of him when the people rebelled again.”

  Novikov’s jaw tightened. “I do not know how the egg came to be in the treasury. It was discovered during a thorough inventory of other state treasures.”

  Eyes half closed, Cruz absorbed information like a computer. When he reached for his lemonade glass, Novikov stared. Cruz knew exactly what had caught the Russian’s eye. Cruz’s left index finger had been severed about an inch from the palm.

  Novikov realized he was staring at the stub and Cruz was watching him over the rim of his glass. Deliberately the Russian stared for a few moments more before he resumed his story.

  “The exhibit is made up of a cross section of pre-Soviet art and artifacts, but its heart is the Fabergé objects,” Novikov said. “There are crystal and lacquer flowers, exotic animals carved in crystal, twenty magnificent lacquered cigarette boxes, and gilt picture frames encrusted with diamonds.”

  “So what’s the provenance on these goods?” Cruz asked. “Bills of sale from previous owners and such?”

  Redpath shot him a sideways glance.

  Cruz smiled. It wasn’t a gesture of goodwill or humor.

  “Hundreds of such objects were seized from the aristocracy by the Bolsheviks,” Novikov said.

  “Diamonds, too,” Cruz added. “Buckets of them.”

  “The spoils of war,” the Russian said, dismissing it with a wave of one beautifully manicured hand. “During the most difficult years, the Soviet state liquidated much of the treasure in order to raise hard currency.”

  “And the rest was looted by corrupt communist officials and cultural bureaucrats, right?” Cruz said.

  “Possibly.” Novikov smiled as coldly as Cruz had. “My exhibit represents the best of what remains in the state treasury. Some of the pieces are truly exceptional. The Ruby Surprise is one. The St. Petersburg egg is another.”

  “Easter eggs,” Cruz said.

  “Glorious ones,” Redpath pointed out mildly. “Alexander the Third commissioned the first one for his wife. It was such a success that he made it a tradition.”

  “Indeed,” Novikov said. “His son, the last czar, commissioned two a year, one for his mother and one for his wife. A number of others were made for Russian industrialists over the years.”

  “Why is it called the Ruby Surprise?” Gillespie asked.

  Novikov glanced at the big man, startled that he’d dared to speak. A single look into those fierce, intelligent eyes made the Russian revise his estimate of Gillespie. Whatever the color of the man’s skin, he wasn’t simply a houseboy or a gigolo.

  “Traditionally,” Novikov said, “each of the eggs contains a secret inside.”

  “State secrets?” Gillespie asked immediately.

  “No,” Redpath said. “Some very clever baubles.”

  “Precisely,” Novikov said. “Sometimes the surprise is a series of miniature portraits framed in diamonds and concealed behind jeweled panels. Sometimes the surprise is a single miniature landscape, which rises out of the center of the egg on exquisitely concealed watchworks. Sometimes the surprise is an animal with a windup mechanism which allows it to walk.”

  Gillespie’s black eyebrows lifted. Without a word, he withdrew to refill the lemonade pitcher. The look he gave Cruz told him to keep an eye on Gapan.

  It wasn’t necessary. Cruz knew a thug when he saw one.

  “How many eggs are there?” Cruz asked.

  “One hundred and fifty eggs were made in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries,” Novikov said, looking at Cruz.

  “Who bought them?”

  “Some were acquired by the British royal family,” Novikov said. “Others disappeared during the Bolshevik Revolution. The rest have become the most expensive collectibles in the world.”

  “Who owns them outside of Russia?” Cruz asked.

  Though he still looked relaxed, there was an intensity in Cruz that hadn’t been there earlier. Whoever owned a Fabergé egg now would be a likely candidate to buy another one, no matter how suspect the egg’s provenance might be.

  “Damon Hudson, the industrialist, has several,” Novikov said. “Malcolm Forbes, the American publisher, acquired a dozen in his lifetime.”

  “What did he pay for them?” Redpath asked.

  “More than one and one half million dollars American for the last egg to become available,” Novikov said. “That was some time ago. No one knows what such a piece would be worth in today’s international art market.”

  “And you’ve managed to lose one,” Cruz said. “No wonder you’re sweating.”

  “I am not nearly as concerned about personal responsibility as I am about a great cultural loss, and the political ramifications of that loss.”

  Cruz wasn’t impressed.

  “As you have pointed out,” Novikov said, “I work for a government which is balanced on the crumbling edge of disaster. Democracy is under siege from all sides. The Communist Party is still powerful.”

  Novikov switched his intent gray glance from Cruz to Redpath.

  “The men you call hard-liners,” the Russian said, “would destroy all the progress of the past several years in order to regain power.”

  “Don’t forget the right,” Cruz said, biting into a cookie with a flash of healthy white teeth. “The military and the former state bureaucrats have gotten in bed together.”

  “Never count out the lure of White Russian nationalism,” Gillespie added, appearing in the doorway with another pitcher of lemonade in one big hand. “There are old families who got their money out before the Revolution was over. They would be delighted to go fishing in troubled Russian waters. More lemonade?”

  Novikov blinked, then gave Gillespie the kind of look a woman gives a man she suddenly finds interesting.

  “Thank you,” Novikov murmured, ho
lding out his glass. “You are correct. My country is a sad mixture of forces with the potential of exploding without warning.”

  “It happens,” Cruz said.

  Novikov glanced disdainfully at him and then at his left hand.

  “A social and political disaster might amuse a cowboy such as you,” Novikov said, “but men—and women—of intelligence understand how terribly serious the situation really is.”

  Cruz crunched into another cookie.

  Novikov looked at Redpath. “Unless, Ambassador, you have lost interest in world stability since you left government service?”

  “My colleagues and I aren’t in the business of carrying out national policy anymore,” she said. “But we’re human beings. We do concern ourselves with the state of the world, just as any citizen should.”

  “Then you will help Russia?”

  “I think Customs or LAPD might get the job done quicker,” Cruz said to no one in particular.

  “The loss has not been reported,” Novikov said.

  Cruz didn’t bother to act surprised. He wasn’t.

  “Surely other people have noticed that the egg is not with the rest of the exhibit?” Redpath asked.

  “Yes, but when I discovered that the egg had gone missing,” Novikov said, “I took the liberty of signing it out to myself.”

  “So you’re the only one who knows the Ruby Surprise is gone?” she asked.

  “Mr. Gapan, who was in charge of security, knows. Now, of course, you three know.”

  “Don’t get set to blame any leak on us,” Cruz said. “At least one other person knows about the egg.”

  “What? Who?” Novikov demanded.

  “The thief.”

  8

  Aboard Hi-Flyer One

  Monday afternoon

  Damon Hudson glanced impatiently at his watch. Surely it couldn’t take his chief security officer much longer to update Claire Toth’s file. He paid enough to buy the best.

  Or at least the most available.

  Hudson stretched out on a red velvet chaise. Before he was comfortable, there was a smart knock on the door.

  “Come in,” Hudson said, knowing who it was.

  Bill Cahill opened the door and stuck his head in. He was the image of a retired FBI special agent—good-looking in a generic, square-jawed, all-American-tackle sort of way. He was still at his playing weight, beefy enough to stop a bullet, but his real appeal for Hudson wasn’t as a bodyguard. Cahill was Hudson International’s liaison with the national law enforcement and intelligence apparatus. He could produce more information with two phone calls than most investigators could learn in a week of hard work.

  “You rang, boss?”

  Cahill still used the kind of gruff, shouldering, man-to-man style that the Bureau encouraged. Hudson found the familiarity irritating.

  “I need a briefing on our guest,” Hudson said.

  Cahill smiled and pretended not to understand. “Which one? The redhead or the blonde?” he asked, referring to the gorgeous prostitutes who awaited Hudson’s pleasure.

  “The journalist,” Hudson said impatiently. “Claire Toth.”

  “Oh. That one.”

  Carefully Cahill closed the door behind him and walked to the red chaise. He looked at home in his charcoal gray suit, white shirt, and burgundy tie. The only false fashion note was the bulge beneath his arm.

  It wasn’t an oversight. Cahill knew Hudson enjoyed having an armed man on his payroll.

  “Do you want the long form or the short one?” Cahill asked. “There’s a lot of ground to cover on this piece.”

  “She’s just a freelance reporter. I’m not even sure why I agreed to see her.”

  “Her voice?” Cahill asked with a wink.

  Hudson grimaced but didn’t disagree. Claire Toth had the kind of voice that made a man aware of his prick.

  “Short form,” Hudson said. “If I need more, I’ll tell you. Just be sure to give me the most recent information.”

  Cahill unbuttoned his tailored coat and stuffed his hands into the slit pockets of his trousers.

  “Well, Ms. Toth is a freelancer,” Cahill said, “but that’s because she likes it, not because nobody would put her on staff.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “According to the IRS, she makes more than three hundred thousand bucks a year. Anybody who makes that much is good enough to work anywhere.”

  Hudson grunted. “I buy people for a good deal less than that.”

  And Bill Cahill was one of them.

  “I’ve been meaning to speak to you about that, Mr. Hudson,” Cahill said smoothly. “Prices are going up. My old group leader just got hired by American Airlines as head of security. With his stock options, he’s making almost a half million. And all of his duties can be spelled out in his job description.”

  Hudson studied the former agent until even Cahill’s FBI training in command presence gave way to unease.

  “Is that a reference to the work you did in sabotaging the so-called ‘public interest’ law firm that was harassing us?” Hudson asked.

  “They were a decent enough bunch of kids. I kind of hated to dry up their donations with that phony Bureau investigation.”

  “But you did it.”

  Cahill looked grim. The longer he worked for Damon Hudson, the less he liked the man. But the Bureau had taught Cahill that he didn’t have to like his boss. All he had to do was shut up and obey orders.

  “And you’ll keep on doing things like that for me,” Hudson said softly, “because you’d find it very difficult to land a job at American Airlines or anywhere else if word got back to the Bureau that you were the source of the false allegations which triggered their probe.”

  Cahill straightened up and took his hands from his pockets. He met his employer’s cold, steady gaze with one of his own.

  “I do what I have to do,” Cahill said.

  “You do what I tell you to do.”

  “I just want to make sure you understand what the marketplace is like out there,” Cahill said evenly. “A former federal agent with good ties to the Bureau and Customs and the Agency is worth a lot of money to corporate America. Particularly if the former agent is willing to use those ties.”

  Hudson smiled. “Of course. Do the job I’ve hired you for, and I’ll see to it you’re well paid. Now tell me more about this high-priced purveyor of journalistic truth.”

  Cahill thrust his hands back in his pockets. “Claire Toth has all the moves. Columbia Journalism, London School of Economics graduate degree, an internship with a senator on Capitol Hill, and then an apprenticeship at the New York Times.”

  Hudson nodded. It was a typical background for powerful journalists.

  “She’s been around Washington and New York for about ten years,” Cahill said. “She was on the staff of the Washington Post’s investigative unit for a while and broke a couple of scandals involving international diplomats and the like.”

  Hudson’s dark eyes narrowed, but he didn’t say anything.

  “The only real knock on Toth is that she had to give back a Pulitzer prize early in her career,” Cahill said.

  “Oh? Why?”

  “Seems she wrote a story about thousand-dollar-a-night whores that didn’t exist. They were composites rather than real people. According to the guardians of media ethics, that’s a real no-no.”

  Hudson laughed coldly. “Getting caught is the no-no. The rest is window dressing for people who still believe in Santa Claus.”

  “Toth has been involved in a number of PBS documentaries on diplomatic stuff,” Cahill continued.

  “Any particular area of expertise?”

  “Whatever makes the U.S. look bad.”

  “Examples.”

  “She uncovered the FBI’s infiltration of Latin American refugee groups. She did an exposé on ties between the State Department and drug gangs in Panama and El Salvador.”

  “Perhaps she has sources on the left.”

 
“Yeah. All the way to the Eastern Bloc,” Cahill muttered.

  “Proof?”

  “Nothing that will stand up in court.”

  “How about enough to embarrass her?”

  “No.”

  “Interesting.”

  Hudson sat up, selected an apple from the basket of fruit on a table beside the chaise, and buffed it on the sleeve of his sweater.

  “She’s a Bob Woodward wannabe,” Cahill concluded.

  Hudson bit into the apple with the strongest, whitest teeth that money could buy. He chewed thoroughly and swallowed, enjoying the knowledge that few men his age could bite into, chew, and digest a fresh apple with pleasure.

  “What does she want from me?” Hudson asked.

  “My guess is she’s on a fishing expedition.”

  “What makes you think so?”

  “Normally a freelancer has to submit a query to whoever is commissioning the piece,” Cahill said. “Sort of an outline of the proposed article.”

  “What did Ms. Toth’s query say?”

  “Well, she has a letter of introduction from the editor of the New York Times Sunday Magazine, like she’s working for them. But when I checked, I found out she hasn’t submitted a query, a proposal, or anything else.”

  “Is the letter valid?”

  “Yeah. She called the editor and told him she was thinking about writing a profile of Damon Hudson. He took the piece, sight unseen.”

  Hudson shifted on the lounge, thinking quickly. In many ways, he knew more about how journalists worked than Cahill did. For one thing, they screamed like babies when you checked into their background.

  “You have to be very careful when you start digging up stuff on reporters,” Hudson said.

  “Don’t worry. I was real titty-fingered.”

  Saying nothing, Hudson bit savagely into the apple.

  “I had your public relations department make the inquiry,” Cahill said. “They hinted you might not cooperate if you thought the piece was going to be antagonistic.”

  Hudson decided that was harmless enough. Most truly newsworthy figures avoided the press, unless they had something to sell to the public.

  “And?” Hudson asked around a mouthful of apple.

  “The Times told them anything Claire Toth wanted to write was okay with them, with or without your permission.”