“They were beautiful. I loved them, but they were more casual.”
“It seems I’ve gone upmarket since then.”
“All the way up. What caused the sudden change, if you don’t mind my asking?”
“Surely you can guess the answer to that: a client or two. With great wealth goes great eccentricity. My new clients seem to like the idea of mixing style and substance.”
“Sounds like a lucky break.”
“The Guardi brothers are happy about it.”
“What about you?”
“I’m happy enough. Personally, I think we’re mixing apples and oranges, but it’s not my money. And the people whose money it is see it differently. They want me to adapt my collection for their jewels. Who am I to complain?”
“Does this jewelry have a history?” Ty asked.
“Not much of one,” Isabella said. “It was only assembled over the last decade by a tycoon from Malaysia or Indonesia, maybe Thailand. He commissioned it for his wife. She had it with her in Paris when she decided to leave him. He fought that at first, but this sort of jewelry is often the price men pay for their philandering.”
“I don’t want to be crass,” Ty said, “but what are we talking about here?”
Isabella shrugged. “Lapo could tell you that better than I. For insurance purposes, I believe I heard someone say just upwards of fifty million.”
“Dollars?”
“Euros. And this is just what came today. It’s by no means all. There are lots of loose gems still in papers I brought with me from the house.”
Ty’s eyes widened. “It’s a lot to take responsibility for.”
“Actually, the jewelry’s safer here than it would be in Rome. Surpass may look like a yacht, Ty, but just beneath the surface it’s really a battleship, and its crew are warriors. Take Jean-François, for instance. He grew up in Marseilles, along the waterfront. Not too long ago, he was a mercenary in Iraq, then Afghanistan.”
“On whose side?”
“Whose do you think? His own,” Isabella said. “Isn’t that what it means to be a mercenary?”
Dinner that night was served on bridge deck, at a long, candlelit table by the pool. To Ty’s surprise, Wazir and Fateen Al-Dosari had returned and were seated at right angles to each other on the striped U-shaped sofa where the party had gathered for drinks. Also present were the Greek banker Harry Kosmopoulos and his much younger German wife, Anna. Harry, who still retained some of the swagger of the ocean-racing sailor he’d once been, was already engaged in conversation with Raisa Gilmour when Ty appeared. The subject under discussion was gems, for the now-elderly Raisa had inherited both her late husband’s Zurich-based business and his knack for high-end collecting.
“Of course, the difficulty began when the various labs sought to grade precious stones,” Raisa intoned. “Their intentions were the highest, but I am afraid that as they solved one problem, they inadvertently created another.”
“What do you mean?” Isabella inquired.
“Works of art are not commodities,” Raisa explained. “Great gems are like great pictures, each a thing unto itself, not necessarily better or worse, but different from all the others. There is a romance to them that even the finest laboratory’s grade can never hope to distill. That’s why I like so much what I’ve heard about your new designs, my dear, because they are not cookie-cutter, am I correct?”
“Well,” Isabella said sheepishly, “the basic line is a line. We start with a model and cast many identical pieces from it. What I believe you’re referring to are the pieces I’m making for some more important stones.”
“Exactly those,” Raisa confirmed.
“Those will be . . . variations on a theme, yet each one of a kind.”
The older woman smiled, then looked at her glass.
“Have some more champagne,” Ian said as Crispin Pleasant, in a freshly pressed tartan, topped up her flute of Krug 1996.
Harry said, “We opened a bottle of ’85 the other day, and it was surprisingly delicious. I had bought a case, then forgot it was in my cellar and left it to lie down much too long, but it turned out to be lovely nonetheless, sweet if not so bubbly. Of course, the cork didn’t pop.”
Ian’s eyes lit up. “Good bottle of wine like that, the cork oughtn’t to have popped,” he said, “but emitted the sigh of a contented virgin.”
“You’re incorrigible,” Anna told him.
“So I’ve been told,” Ian replied, raising his glass. “‘Champagne to our real friends,’” he suddenly toasted, in a deliberately mysterious key, “‘real pain to our sham friends.’”
Harry hesitated. “A most interesting toast,” he observed.
“It’s all in good fun,” Ian assured him.
“Of course it is. Did you just make it up? You are clever.”
“I wish I could claim authorship, but I fear it goes back at least two centuries—to America, I believe.”
“Does it? I’ve never heard it before,” Ty said, “but I’m going to try to remember it.”
“That shouldn’t be difficult for an actor,” remarked Anna with a seductive smile.
“What an idyllic evening!” Harry exclaimed, as though he had just noticed.
Anna nodded her agreement. “Where are we?” she asked.
“The nearest lights are Melilla,” Ian said.
“Melilla is Morocco?” Anna asked.
“It is. Yes.”
“But we are not going ashore there?”
“I hadn’t planned on it,” Ian said. “If you’d like to, of course . . .”
Anna waved away the thought.
“There’s more to see in Tangier,” Fateen told her.
“Certainly more decadence,” Wazir added. “Tangier is famous for it.”
“Once upon a time,” Raisa said preemptively. “Have you been to Tangier, Mr. Hunter?”
“I haven’t,” Ty said.
“Nor I,” interjected Philip.
“Well, it’s an old haunt of mine,” Ian said. “It elicits a flood of memories every time I go there. I look forward to sharing some of those with whoever comes along.”
“Sadly, we leave you tomorrow,” Harry said. “I believe you are not due in Tangier until the day after, isn’t that so?”
“You are correct,” Ian said. “You’d be welcome to stay.”
“That’s kind, but I’m a slave to my diary.”
“Not as long as you’re aboard Surpass,” Ian insisted, then looked ashore and mused. “Beyond each horizon one encounters an entirely different civilization. Where else is that as true as here? You know, I love the Arab as much as I love the European one, but what I truly love is this sea, the Med itself, with its ebbs and flows.”
“Speaking for myself, I would be content never to leave this ship,” Anna said.
“I know what you mean,” Ian replied. “Here one is away from yet smack in the middle of everything.”
“That could be a perilous place to be in a collision,” Raisa suggested.
“The much-predicted clash of civilizations?” Ian asked. “Not to worry, civilizations don’t collide. Ideas do.”
“Armies have been known to collide,” Philip said.
“Indeed,” said Fateen cryptically. “Both the visible and the invisible ones.”
“Yes, well, there’s always that problem,” Ian said.
After a starter of jamón serrano with chestnuts, then a beautifully cooked fish risotto and assorted cheeses and biscuits, Ian stood and was quickly followed by the other men present. Taking his cue, Ty began to follow them toward the stairway that led to the owner’s deck above but stopped when Jean-François blocked him at the first step. “You’ll excuse us for a few moments,” Ian called over his shoulder, with pleasant firmness.
“Stay with us, Ty,” Isabella added. “Keep us company.”
“Of course,” Ty said.
“Don’t take it personally,” she told him. “Life with Ian is always like this, a sort of kaleidoscope where one minute life is pure pleasure, the next deadly serious business, the one after that a blend of both. No two moments are ever quite the same. Would you like a cigar?”
“No, thank you.”
“Or a glass of orujo?” she continued, with a fresh glint in her eye. “In which case I’ll join you.”
“Ouch,” Ty said, “but sure.”
The orujo, fermented from the skins of pressed grapes, was aged and amber in color. It was also 50 percent alcohol, and later, in his stateroom, Ty sensed it had put him at a sudden remove from the world. He felt insistent throbbing at his temples as he typed out an encrypted e-mail to Oliver. The room was sumptuous and bathed in the soft coral glow cast from its silk lampshades. Ty turned out the lights before texting, not knowing where cameras, as well as microphones, might be hiding. He depressed the H, wondering exactly how a humorously encrypted e-mail to Netty might appear, if intercepted.
“Glamorous, but so far only social, no substance, no idea who anyone is,” he typed, after which he listed the names of those on board.
“If anyone is up to anything, no one talks about, or even around, it. After dinner, men retreated to owner’s quarters. I was barred.”
It was not long before the flashing red light on his BlackBerry alerted him to an incoming from Oliver.
“Use your high-tech charm,” it read. “It’s all we’ve got.”
Lunch was the centerpiece of the next day. Held on the “beach club,” a square of teak, chrome and fiberglass that unfolded from Surpass’s aft starboard hull to float as a pontoon, it featured a Romanian dancer-turned-businessman by the name of Aurelien Strigoi; a Pakistani mathematician, Rahim Kakar; a septuagenarian Indian industrialist, Ajay Prajapti, and his handsome, suspiciously diligent son Akshar; and Ch’ing Shih, a Chinese property developer who had recently been on the cover of the Asian edition of Fortune.
When Philip arrived without Isabella, who was busy working on designs for Sheik al-Awad, Rahim Kakar said, “Well, I suppose this gives new meaning to the term ‘business lunch.’”
“It’s nothing of the sort,” Ian said. “It’s a gathering of old friends.”
“Upon which I fear I’m intruding,” Ty said.
“Quite the contrary,” Ian said. “We all need someone to hear our stories for the first time.”
“He’s not kidding either,” Ajay Prajapti said.
“Take Ian at his word,” Aurelien Strigoi said. “One ordinarily doesn’t wear a swimsuit to a business lunch, after all.”
Ty laughed. “That’s a very good point.”
“The truth is that we are not conducting the least bit of business,” said Ajay. “We have in the past and doubtless will in the future, but today we are here simply to enjoy Ian’s incomparable hospitality. Actually, we’re—”
“More like cardinals paying our respects to the Pope,” Aurelien suggested. “Sorry, Ajay, I didn’t mean to cut you off.”
“One has to pay respect to a man with such a yacht,” Ch’ing Shih said.
“What Aurelien says is true,” the elder Prajapti told Ty. “Our respect for and devotion to Ian are the ties that bind us. Even I’ve learned from him, and I am old enough to be his father.”
“Hardly,” Ian said, then, turning to Ty, added, “They flatter me. Aurelien was my student, you see, a very long time ago. Brilliant, he was; left with a Double First. So brilliant, in fact, that from day one he never bought any of that nonsense about flattery getting you nowhere. That’s true, is it not, Aurelien?”
The Romanian nodded reluctantly.
“Ajay was a client, and Rahim and Ch’ing were my partners when I still had my firm in London. They’ve both gone on to bigger things.”
“Suddenly it’s dawned on me,” Ch’ing said.
“What has?” inquired Aurelien.
“Why Mr. Hunter is here with us, of course. You’re going to play Ian in a film, aren’t you? Ian in his salad days—now, that would be some film!”
“I’m sure it would. I’d love to see the script,” Ty said.
“Problem is, only one man could write it,” Rahim said, “and he won’t. For the life of me, I don’t know why. I’ve been trying for donkey’s years to get him to write a memoir.”
“Too many tales to tell,” Ian said dismissively.
“Nonsense,” Rahim said. “You are a subset of one. Very few great businessmen are also thinkers. Just go back to the articles you published when you were at Cambridge or to those quarterly reports and bulletins your old firm used to issue. They were masterpieces, chock-full of your theories. Even in the prefaces to the catalogues raisonnés of your various collections, you usually found a way to expound one thesis or another. So why not put your memories down on paper, too, preserve them for posterity?”
“They’re too personal,” Ian said. “I have always enjoyed writing about big subjects, not myself. And I haven’t done that in quite a while. The last such piece I published was one the Economist invited me to write in their little book that previews the year ahead.”
“I remember it caused quite a stir,” Aurelien said.
“The truth, any challenge to orthodoxy, often does,” Philip said.
“I admit I enjoy cutting against the grain from time to time and turning conventional wisdom on its head, not so much now as when I was younger.”
“What was the subject of your piece?” Ty asked benignly.
“Weapons of mass destruction,” Ian replied. “All sane people seem to agree that the fewer there are, preferably in the fewest possible hands, the safer the world is.”
“And you disagree?”
“Not entirely. I simply chose to argue the contrary point. Given that inequities among people and nations and groups are inevitable, might not the best way to stop bullies be to empower their potential victims with the tools necessary to protect themselves?”
“At first you read me the riot act, didn’t you, Philip? But eventually you came round.”
“I came to appreciate the argument,” Philip explained, “as an exercise in logic, not necessarily as a prescription for the world’s troubles.”
“The problem, obviously, is that to prove any such thing would require that an experiment be conducted in the real world, something that’s most unlikely to happen.”
“Mercifully,” Philip told him.
Later that evening, after Ian had retreated to his private quarters, he received a call from Aurelien Strigoi.
“Do you have a moment, Ian?”
“Haven’t I always for you?”
“You have. I’d prefer to speak in person, if you don’t mind.”
“Come up to my deck in five minutes. I’ll tell Jean-François to expect you.”
“I don’t want to disturb you if you were doing something important,” Aurelien protested.
“Reading Thucydides is important, but, like almost all the most important things in life, it can be postponed.”
“Thank you.”
Once inside, having accepted both an Armagnac and a small cigar, Aurelien Strigoi said, “Something’s been bothering me. I’m sure it’s nothing, but I wanted your assurance that that’s the case.”
“Go on, please.”
“The other day I was in Vienna. I have interests in several businesses there, as you know. It was toward the end of the day. I was in the Kärntner Ring. I was getting into my car when I saw, or thought I saw, Philip Frost preparing to enter the building next door to the one I had just come out of.”
“What sort of building?”
“An office block,” Aurelian replied, “mostly finan
cial offices. It’s that sort of area. I’d just been to see my bankers, in fact.”
“You didn’t speak to him then?”
“No. Well, yes and no. I mean, I called out to him, but he didn’t reply. He did turn when I said ‘Philip,’ the way one does when one hears one’s own name, but then his face went absolutely blank. I don’t know how to say this, and thus I will do so gingerly. He had the look of a man who has been caught by a close friend prowling a red-light district.”
“Could be you were mistaken.”
“Possibly, or, more plausibly, he truly didn’t see me. I made a joke of it on the way up from lunch.”
Ian took a sip of his Armagnac. “What was his reaction?”
“It was the first time I’d seen his composure crumble. He did his best to hide it, naturally. The man has commendable deportment. But a shock of such magnitude cannot be entirely internalized. I’ll tell you what I said. I told him the damnedest thing happened to me in Vienna. I’d seen his twin brother. Did he have a twin? I asked him. He smiled, shook his head. He stalled while he calculated. I let the matter go. I had no business questioning his movements and wouldn’t have thought twice about it if he’d admitted he’d been there but had not seen me when he’d spun around as he did. Even so, I was nearly certain he was lying. Then it caught me, the detail that made me positive he was: his signet ring. He has it on today. When he’d turned around and looked about in Vienna, he’d shaded his eyes with his left hand. That ring on his pinky caught the sun and reflected a bright beam.”
“You were that close?”
“Yes.”
“Why are you bringing this to my attention?”
“Because many people who engage in financial shenanigans these days find themselves some sort of base in Vienna from which to do so. A man I heard of not long ago employed a secret Viennese account, a secret intermediary in Singapore, and an equally secret trust in Vanuatu. The whole thing came to a bad end for those credulous souls who couldn’t resist involving themselves.”
“How regrettable,” Ian observed.
“My point is,” Aurelien continued, “I don’t invest with you because of whatever your next project consists of or doesn’t. I do so because it’s you. You know that, surely. My trust is in you, not the details, beyond the fact that they are backed by your integrity. What are we up to together at the moment? ‘Beats me,’ as the Americans say.”
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