“This ruby’s as big as a hen’s egg,” she said at one point.
“What an interesting way of putting it,” Lapo told her.
“I can’t take credit for it. It’s a line I remember from a story.”
“What story was that?”
“‘The Diamond as Big as the Ritz,’ by F. Scott Fitzgerald,” Isabella said. Her eyes moistened as she spoke, for it had been her father who had introduced her to Fitzgerald and sparked her lifelong fascination with the sort of breezy, innocently sophisticated Americans who filled his fictions.
“I am afraid I don’t know that story,” Lapo said, then smiled. “I am not very literate, alas.”
“Listen to you,” Isabella replied, dismissing his modesty. “What are your plans for all these stones?”
“It’s your plans that matter,” Lapo told her.
Isabella put down the Burmese ruby she’d been examining. “You’re kidding. You have to be.”
“Not in the least.”
“Then I’d like to know why not. These gems are entirely out of scale with the pieces in my collection. I’d have to make all new models.”
“That thought had crossed my mind,” Lapo said.
“And even if I did, the settings and stones would not be harmonious. My pieces are lighthearted, playful. These are serious gems.”
“They are very serious gems indeed, but tastes do vary, and your settings may be more appealing than you think.”
“To whom?”
“Sheik al-Awad, among others.”
“I can’t imagine why. If I were able to buy stones like these, I would set them very simply, in platinum surrounded by diamonds so that they could speak for themselves, not force-fit them into pieces whose real value is in their design. My collection is based on acrobats who might have come out of the Cirque du Soleil. A carat is an enormous stone in one of my pieces. It’s a different thing entirely. You know that.”
Lapo Guardi folded his arms and leaned back in his chair. “There’s much in what you say, but at the end of the day we must be in the business of accommodating tastes, not dictating them.”
In her imagination Isabella already saw herself in the workshop, making and supervising the making of new wax models. When those figures were complete and judged suitable for the remarkable gemstones before her, rubber molds containing the exact negatives of the models would have to be made and the centrifugal casting done from the kiln exactly as Cellini had done when he introduced the lost-wax method. Yet what was to be the result of all this work? No matter how exquisitely wrought, would the new pieces be as spirited as, would they exist in harmony with, the rest of her collection? The question was not hers to decide, and she modestly nodded her assent to Lapo.
“This is just the beginning,” he said.
“It’s mad. There must be thirty million euros represented in these two boxes.”
“Closer to forty.”
“Don’t get me wrong. It’s wonderful, but why?”
“Shall I tell you the truth?”
“You’d better.”
“It’s because certain people, whom we are fortunate to count among our clients, simply do not trust in the rule of law wherever it is they come from. And they no longer trust either the solvency of Western banks or the secrecy of Swiss banking laws. They worry about the former for obvious reasons: too much risk taken on by bankers better suited for baccarat. And about the latter they worry not only that the names of account holders and the amounts of their deposits might be divulged to authorities but that even the contents of vaults under the Banhofstrasse and in the mountains might eventually be scrutinized—in the name of transparency, mind you, as though that were a sacred and invariably good thing. Added to these concerns is, of course, portability. The amounts in which such people deal have become so large that it would require carloads of gold, even at today’s high price, to move it. Jewelry, however, particularly from a collection like yours, with no mention of a center stone or two, still flies below the radar and remains easy enough to transfer from one generation’s pocket to that of the next.”
“Very interesting, I have to admit,” Isabella said. “When we first talked about my coming to work for you and then about launching my collection, you said stones had become commodities and that in today’s world the real profit was in design. Things seem to have changed.”
“Actually, they haven’t,” Lapo assured her. “What I said then is still true, but these are special circumstances. With one-of-a-kind stones like these, one is less in the jewelry business than in the upper reaches of selling fine art.”
“Or gilts,” Isabella said, and smiled. “Tell me, do I sense the hand of my godfather anywhere in this process?”
Lapo laughed. “Not directly, not that I know of—and I would know. He’s your biggest booster, of course. But people do not buy such treasures as these merely to support a friend’s goddaughter.”
“No,” agreed Isabella, “I’m sure they don’t.”
Chapter Nineteen
Their dinner party was on the balmy and fragrant terrace at Due Ladroni in the Piazza Nicosia. They were twenty-four in all, at three tables of eight.
“Quite a name for a restaurant,” one of Guardi’s best clients, an elderly Roman count who had married an American heiress from Tulsa, remarked to Isabella over a first course of sliced raw sea bass.
“I know,” Isabella said, and beamed an ingratiating smile. “It means ‘Two Thieves,’ doesn’t it?”
“Literally,” the count told her. “After the war, two brothers opened it as what they called simply Tavern. Very few people had money in those days, and the place caught on by offering exceptionally good homemade food for cheap prices. Working people came first, and soon a more fashionable crowd followed. When the brothers began to raise their prices in consequence, their customers gave the restaurant the name it bears to this day.”
With the festivities still going strong nearing midnight, Isabella commenced a circuit of the tables and ultimately found herself seated next to Sheik al-Awad, an elegantly turned-out, not-quite-rotund man of shorter-than-average height, whose soft smile and honeyed voice seemed perfectly matched.
“I am honored,” he told her.
“Queen for a day,” Isabella said. “And I’m twice lucky, as I believe we are lunching together tomorrow.”
“An event to which I very much look forward,” Sheik al-Awad replied.
“Lapo showed me the most amazing stones this morning,” she gushed.
“I trust him implicitly,” Sheik al-Awad said.
“Your wife is a very fortunate woman.”
“Remind her of that when you meet. I beg you.”
“She’s here with you tonight?”
The sheik shook his head. “She is at our home, with the children,” he explained, his eyes then twinkling as he issued a gentle nod in the direction of a celebrated Italian cover girl at the next table.
“Well, at least someone’s lucky,” Isabella came back in a determinedly neutral yet sophisticated tone.
“Oh, no, no, no,” the sheik interrupted. “These jewels are for my collection. Of course, one never knows when he’ll meet a lady he enjoys and when that happens, it’s nice to have something to offer her.”
“Take the pigeon’s-blood ruby,” Isabella said. “I’ve never seen one like it.”
To this Sheik al-Awad replied hesitantly, “You have a lovely way with words: ‘pigeon’s blood.’”
“I wish I could take the credit, but I didn’t make up the phrase.” Isabella started to say that “pigeon’s blood” was a bog-standard professional phrase but quickly stopped herself, feeling suddenly uneasy. “It’s difficult, isn’t it,” she continued, “when one sees so many brilliant stones all together, to remember that ruby and sapphire are practica
lly one and the same?”
Sheik al-Awad nodded. “Yes, it is,” he said.
“Both corundum,” she said.
“Both corundum,” he repeated.
“And yet, now that I think of it, I’ve never seen a red sapphire,” she said, baiting her trap, for there was no such thing. A red sapphire was a ruby.
“Haven’t you?”
“Never. Have you been collecting for a long time?”
“I have been around for a long time. So I suppose my answer to that question must be yes.”
“What other gems have you collected?” Isabella inquired. “There must be so many lovely ones.”
“Yes indeed,” the sheik replied.
“That’s wonderful,” Isabella said, regarding him carefully. She had no idea what sort of game he was playing or who, if not Ian, had put him up to it—nor, so long as he could fund his purchases, had she any business trying to find out. She had seen enough of collectors over the years, however, to recognize that, unlike his intended acquisitions, Sheik al-Awad was not the genuine article.
It was not until a quarter past one that Isabella and Philip were alone in her flat in the Trastevere. “It went well, didn’t it?”
“How could it have gone any better?” he asked as he squeezed her hand. “Another day, another triumph.”
“Are you too tired?” she asked.
“No,” Philip said.
She was wearing a dress of a young designer friend of Balthasar’s, a light jade V-neck with draped shoulder details. Once she had loosened its obi-wrap belt, it was easy to step out of. “When I was at university,” she said, “we used to pull all-nighters.”
“As did we,” Philip said, and then kissed her.
As he disrobed her, Isabella thought, not for the first time, that there was something boyish about him. His natural grace could not disguise impetuousness so fierce and selfish it was almost cruel. In bed he was like a dancer, in control of every muscle and movement of his body. So that when his left hand skimmed the flesh above her rib cage and from there across her breast, it was as soft as a current of air. She loved beauty and from the first had found Philip beautiful. Yet something about his beauty disturbed her, as if he had been sculpted rather than born. Oh, he was alive and knew how to please her, how to seduce and tease, enter and withdraw by surprise. But it was not his skill that had kept her interest, rather the part of him he withheld. She knew he was hiding something. And whatever it was had frightened her before and worried her now. She was not drawn to milquetoasts. A woman who wanted what she did from a man and from life would have to learn to look away from time to time. She understood that and, by now, how to manage the flow of potentially disturbing information from her brain to her emotions. How could she not, with Ian as her formative male role model? Men worth possessing could not be possessed, but acknowledging that truth made it no easier to resist them.
“You missed me?” she whispered with a sudden unease once he was spent.
Philip sighed. “I missed you.”
“I missed you, too.”
“It’s going to be better from now on. We’ll be together.”
“You’ll be in Geneva.”
“I’ll have a desk in Geneva. I told you: I’ll be my own boss.”
“That will be good. How was Geneva?”
Philip touched her shoulder. He had no wish to lie but, for her benefit as much as his, could not tell her that he had been in Vienna instead. Isabella would grasp the reason in time, accept that a man either took or missed his chances. “Geneva was the same as ever: slippery,” he said.
“I know what you mean,” she said softly, sitting up a little. She was too tired to stay awake for long, yet still too excited to sleep. “God, I’m glad you’re here.”
“You’re not the only one,” Philip said. He knew her well enough to know she was game, but before he began again he studied her. Unlike other women whose beds he had shared, Isabella could hold her own anywhere, in any company. She could make him proud. At school he’d had classmates whose mothers, still elegant and enthralling in middle age, were more or less matriarchs of dynasties. Isabella could be such a figure. He harbored no doubt about that and for a moment wondered why he needed anyone else, anything more. The answer, he suspected, was embedded too deeply in his being to be plumbed. He was who he was.
That was the nature of things. Gatherers of power led rapacious, messy lives, but lives that were remembered and important. The dual aspects of his character had long been clear to him, and when the thought suddenly struck him that he resembled that figure of adolescent fantasy, the vampire who yearned not to be undead, he laughed silently. In the beguiling young woman who seemed to love him, he discerned a perfection and normalcy he knew he could never attain on his own.
“Buono?” he asked, as he slipped inside her.
“Sì,” she said, doing her best to disguise the reluctance that had gradually overtaken her mood.
Philip tightened his grip. “Buono,” he repeated.
In the morning she cooked their breakfast in her tiny, ocher-tiled kitchen, placing strips of bacon in fastidious tic-tac-toe patterns in a large skillet and frying fresh eggs up on top of them.
When Philip came to the table, he brought a large box wrapped in lime green paper with a purple bow.
“What’s this?” Isabella inquired.
“A souvenir,” Philip said, “of Prague. I meant to give it to you before your party, but the day got away from us.”
“We were casualties of our own hospitality, as Ian would say.”
“Not quite casualties.”
When Isabella had unwrapped the package and withdrawn the musical jewel box, she lifted the lid and the mechanism within began to play Dvorˇák’s Czech Suite, op. 39.
“It’s divine,” she said. “In fact, perfect.”
“But not big enough for your collection?”
“Perhaps as it once was, not as it’s becoming. That’s another thing. Wait till I tell you what sorts of stones Lapo intends to set in some of my pieces.”
“Large ones, I hope.”
“So large I’ll have to redo some models. They’re lovely, of course, but I’m afraid they overwhelm my designs.”
“What a nice problem to have,” Philip said.
“Yes, I suppose it is,” Isabella agreed as she lowered the top of the music box. “Anyway, thank you, thank you! I love it. You always know just the right thing. You’re amazing.”
“Actually, it’s as much a precaution as a souvenir.”
Isabella could tell he was teasing. “A precaution?” she repeated.
“It can be dangerous to leave a pretty girl alone in Rome.”
“I wouldn’t know. All I do is work.”
“That would be sad if true. Fortunately, I don’t believe you.”
“The only other man in my life in Balthasar.”
“Balthasar is not a man,” Philip said.
“Now, now,” Isabella said. “I suppose the problem is that everyone who might be inclined to give it a go knows I’m taken.”
“That means nothing to Romans,” Philip said. “You know that. For a girl this city must seem to offer an abundance of riches. But if you are a man, there’s so much competition. Elsewhere it’s different. Take New York. Especially if you’re foreign, it’s not difficult to win over girls there. Half the men are gay. The other half care only about money. There is no one left for them. But in Rome even teenage boys sneak their girlfriends into the Forum after dark. In Rome if you like a girl and she’s attractive, you’re up against professionals.”
“There’s no one more professional than you,” Isabella said as the kettle whistled.
She was tending to it when the telephone rang. “You wouldn’t get that, would you?” she asked Philip as she poured
the bubbling water into a cafetière.
“Of course,” Philip said, marveling at the habit English girls had of constructing requests in the negative. “Pronto,” he said into the receiver.
“This is al-Awad.”
Philip hesitated. “I’m sorry. You took me by surprise. How did you know I was here?”
“I didn’t. Who is this?” asked the sheik.
“Philip Frost, of course.”
“Oh, hello, Philip, and very sorry to disappoint you, but I was trying to reach Isabella Cavill.”
“She’s right here.”
When her brief conversation confirmed the time and venue of their lunch, Isabella returned to press the filter of the cafetière.
Philip said, “I didn’t know you knew al-Awad.”
“Yes you did. He was there last night.”
“Many people were there. Do you know them all?”
Isabella ignored the question. “He’s a client of Lapo’s,” she said.
“I’m glad to hear it.”
“Honestly, Philip! He came on with us to dinner.”
“You could have fooled me, but then I don’t know him by sight, only over the telephone.”
“And how, pray tell, is that? Does he collect the nuclear arms you disarm?”
Philip shook his head at the absurdity of such a thought. “He’s an investor in the fund I’m going to be running.”
“Bully for him,” Isabella replied.
Chapter Twenty
To Ty, in the fresh light of the English morning, there seemed something prematurely old about Oliver. Fatalism lurked at the corners of his eyes, the eyes of a man drawn to the edges of things, who had become addicted to shadows and danger. Such a man, Ty recognized, would not find it easy to return to London or Cambridge or Eton for very long.
Spy Who Jumped Off the Screen : A Novel (9781101565766) Page 17
