But until that happened, I was given strict instructions that any information pertaining to Nick’s whereabouts had to remain our little secret, or maybe our Faustian pact: mine, the CIA’s, and MI6’s. I was not to breathe a word to anyone, not even Nick’s sister or my own family.
I gave notice at IPS, quitting my dream job as a senior photographer, and persuading Perry DiNardo, my boss, that a big good-bye bash wouldn’t be appropriate under the circumstances. Instead I took everyone in the bureau to drinks at Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese on my last day.
If I had wanted to turn the screw any tighter and make my departure more wrenching than it already was, I picked the perfect venue to do it. The sign outside the pub on Wine Office Court listed the monarchs who had ruled Britain since the place had been rebuilt in 1667 after the Great Fire destroyed it. We were given tables in the Chop Room next to the fireplace, something I figured Perry had arranged, since these were the sought-after seats once occupied by Charles Dickens and Samuel Johnson.
The mingled scents of woodsmoke, sawdust, and beer and the centuries of history and tradition that sifted through the air like dust motes assaulted me with a rush of nostalgia as I walked through the door. In a few days I would lose all of this, lose
London,
trading it for the land of strip malls and fast-food chains, where “old” might mean built before 1970.
Perry seemed to sense my melancholy mood because he gave my hand a squeeze and touched his beer glass against mine.
“I’m going to miss you,” he said.
“I’ll miss you, too.” I couldn’t look at him.
He’d been a good boss, who always backed his people, no matter what we did or where in the world we were. His overzealous devotion to the job, to always be where the story was, had come at a price: three marriages that saddled him with enough alimony and child support to keep him paying someone until they lowered his casket into the ground.
“Instead of getting married again,” he told me during yet another acrimonious court battle with an ex-wife, “I’m going to do what Rod Stewart said he was going to do. Find a woman I don’t like and just give her a damn house.”
But the bosses in New York loved him, just as women continued to love him and he couldn’t help loving them back, so the London job was his for as long as he wanted it. He’d been especially kind to me during these last few months, making sure my assignments were relatively close to home in case there was any news of Nick, deflecting questions and criticisms from the big suits, as he called them, about whether I was still up to the job. I heard about the remarks anyway; every newsroom in the world leaks worse than a bad sieve when it comes to office gossip.
There was one night about a month ago when things nearly unraveled between Perry and me, and I suspected he was remembering it now, just as I was. We’d both ended up traveling through Venice for separate reasons, and if there had ever been a moment when vulnerability, loneliness, booze, and recklessness might have intersected in a bad way, it was our unwise decision to adjourn to my room for a nightcap. Perry was between girlfriends; the day before had been my wedding anniversary. It happened so fast, Perry getting up to pour me another glass of wine and then suddenly he reached for me and I was in his arms, just so damn dog tired of keeping up a good front for the world. Missing Nick like crazy and needing someone, anyone, to hold me and make the hurt go away.
Thank God we stopped when we did, because it would have changed everything. I felt him go tense, just as I did, and for a long moment we stood locked in that embrace, his cheek against my hair, his thumb stroking my back, breath warm in my ear. He sighed softly as I struggled to regain my composure and I was grateful he pretended not to notice when I wiped my eyes on his shirt. Then he kissed my forehead, chucked me under the chin like I was a kid, and told me to lock my door after he left. We never spoke about that night again.
Like everyone else sitting around the table tonight, I’m sure he assumed Nick was dead and I was still coming to terms with it.
“It’s not too late to change your mind,” he said to me later, after the others had left, more hugs and good-byes, and it was just the two of us. “I didn’t hire anyone to replace you yet, Medina. Not that you’re easily replaceable, you know? Who else am I gonna find who turns in travel vouchers with mileage expenses for riding a camel?”
I grinned. “Which you unfairly denied.”
“I’m serious,” he said. “You don’t have to go. You’re damn good. It
is
going to be tough finding someone to take your place.”
“Probably because whoever you hire will expect to be paid a living wage,” I said and he laughed. “Thanks for the offer, Perry. I know you’ve taken some heat for me, that I wasn’t pulling my weight lately, and I appreciate it. But I made my decision. It’s time to go home. Besides, the estate agent rented our house the day I gave notice. I’ve got to go through with it now.”
“That must have broken your heart,” he said. “You and Nick loved that cottage. I remember you talking about maybe buying it one day.”
I nodded and concentrated on my beer, trying not to remember the trilling delight of the young woman who came through the house with her husband and baby daughter, listening to her fall in love with its charms, just as we’d done twelve years ago. Our only home as a married couple.
“What are you going to do when you get back to Washington?” Perry asked.
I shrugged. “Look for a job.”
“I wish there was an opening in our D.C. bureau, but they’re going to be making more cuts soon.” He gave me a sideways glance and grimaced. “Don’t repeat that, okay?”
“Leaving the cleaning staff to do our jobs, once they get rid of a few more bodies? Come on, Perry. There’s no more meat left on the bone. There’s not even any bone left on the bone. How can they keep cutting?”
“There’s always the marrow. We can suck that out.” He sounded like he wasn’t joking. “But listen, I know a guy. Old friend from the hood growing up, another
paesano
. Luke Santangelo. He’s a one-man band, owns his own agency, and he’s swamped with work. It might be a good fit for you right now.”
He fished in his back pocket for his wallet, thumbing through a thick wad of bent and tattered business cards and old receipts until he came to a blue-gray card with the words
FOCUS PHOTOGRAPHY
printed in white. The
O
in
Focus
looked like a camera lens.
“Here.” He handed me the card. “I’ll call him, tell him about you, if you want.”
I looked at the address. Cady’s Alley, Georgetown. An upscale address, next to the C&O Canal.
“Thanks. I appreciate this. Let me think about it and get back to you.”
“Look, Medina, are you blowing me off?”
“I would never do that.”
“Oh, yeah? How about, ‘My e-mail wasn’t working so I didn’t see your memo about not being authorized to fly home business class’?”
“I didn’t see it. Give me a break. I was in Ulan Bator. They were using a camping stove in the aisle back in economy and people brought their livestock on that flight.” I drank my beer. “Please don’t take this the wrong way, but that job doesn’t sound like me.”
“How do you know it doesn’t? You think I’d send you to a guy who makes his living taking Christmas card snaps of happy families all wearing the same color clothes?”
“Well, no—”
“Damn right I wouldn’t. Look, Luke called me this morning. You know what he’s got coming up in a couple of weeks? That big exhibit at the National Gallery. The one in D.C., not London. And guess who’s behind it? Arkady Vasiliev.” He eyed me. “Aha. Knew I’d get your attention. Remember those Easter eggs he bought, the Fabergé eggs that nobody knew belonged to the Romanovs? He loaned them and a bunch of paintings some czar used to own to the National Gallery, and he’s throwing a party the night before the opening. Luke’s the photographer.”
Perry had my attention, all right. Arkady Vasiliev owned Arkneft, the biggest oil production company in Russia, and had amassed enough wealth in the past few years to land on the
Forbes
list of the world’s billionaires. The discovery of two previously unknown imperial eggs in an attic trunk in a village near Kent, England, had sent the art world into a frenzy of curiosity about their provenance. Vasiliev had doubled the bid of the Kremlin Armoury, which claimed the eggs belonged in their museum because they were part of Russia’s patrimony, and now he was thumbing his nose by putting them on display in Washington.
Nick had met Vasiliev at an international energy forum in Oslo, plus Vasiliev lived mostly in London these days since he felt safer there than in Moscow, so they’d seen each other at a couple of industry conferences. Last year we’d been surprised to get an invitation to a party at Vasiliev’s tricked-out luxury home in Belgravia soon after he’d acquired the Fabergé eggs. I drew the short straw at work and spent the weekend in Berlin, much to my disappointment. Nick got to see the gaudy mansion and the eggs during a private viewing with Mrs. Vasiliev. The imperial eggs, he said, were spectacular but the house looked like someone’s idea of a Borgia palace with a bit of Disney and Vegas thrown in.
“So,” Perry said, “have you changed your mind about my calling Luke?”
A chance to see the Fabergé eggs and to meet Arkady Vasiliev, who had become something of a recluse ever since a waitress tried to poison him a few months ago at a Moscow discotheque appropriately named Club Decadence, intrigued me. And then there was this: My wedding gift from Nick had been an exquisite Fabergé pink-and-gold guilloché basket-weave snuffbox that had belonged to his grandmother, a gift from Nicholas II himself to Nick’s great-grandmother. The tantalizing history of my own precious link to the vanished world of Fabergé had always seemed like something out of a fairy tale. I had listened for hours to Nick’s babushka’s stories of growing up in Old Russia, tales of sleigh rides and skating parties with red-cheeked men and dark-eyed women, lavish masked balls, all-night feasts where everyone danced and sang while someone played the balalaika—a magical, unreachable land of gaiety and exuberance at the back of the North Wind.
“All right,” I said to Perry. “I’ve changed my mind.”
Perry’s grin said he knew I’d be hooked when he brought up Fabergé. “No problemo. I’ll call Luke first thing tomorrow,” he said. “You owe me.”
“I have no doubt you’ll collect.”
It was the wrong thing to say and I knew it as soon as the words were out of my mouth.
“Bet on it.” He searched my eyes while I struggled to keep a poker face and not look like I understood what he meant. “I know it’s too soon, but I can’t get that night in Venice out of my head.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, “but it just wouldn’t work for us.”
“I’m not rushing you. Just promise me you’ll at least keep my number on speed dial. Maybe someday you’ll change your mind.”
“I won’t change my mind,” I said. “But I will keep your number on speed dial. I promise.”
He leaned close and ran a finger along the back of my hand. “You’re a beautiful woman, Medina. Very sexy and desirable. When you’re ready, at least give me a chance.”
I kissed his cheek. “You’re a good man and a dear friend.”
His eyes locked on mine and that’s when I realized how tough it was going to be to keep the bombshell development that Nick might be alive a secret, especially from people who loved me and loved him. Secrecy, stoicism, and silence, Nick used to tell me. And there was one other term he used that always struck me as odd: face maintenance. Perry believed I was a grieving widow. I couldn’t let the look on my face give me away, couldn’t let Perry see anyone but the woman he expected to see.
“There is something,” I said, to break the awkward silence.
“What? Just tell me. Anything . . .”
I smiled. “You could be like Rod Stewart and just give me a damn house.”
He said nothing for a long moment before he roared with laughter. “In your dreams, Medina. How about a beer, instead?”
*
The next day, as a courtesy, John Brown, one of the men who showed up after I called Nick’s people the night he disappeared, came by with a driver from the embassy to take me to Heathrow for my flight to Washington. When we pulled up to the British Airways entrance at Terminal 5, the driver got my bags out of the trunk of the car as John Brown handed me an envelope.
“What’s this?” I asked.
“Your contact in D.C.,” he said. “His name is Napoleon Duval. If you need anything, call him. If we find out anything, he’ll be in touch.”
“No one’s seen Nick since that one time in Moscow,” I said. “If it was Nick.”
“It was. And, believe me, we’re looking for him and we’ll find him.”
I shivered. “What happens then?”
“I’m sorry, Ms. Medina,” he said. “We can’t say.”
3
WASHINGTON, D.C.
SEPTEMBER
A few days after I arrived in D.C., Luke Santangelo interviewed me in the light-filled industrial warehouse he’d transformed into the studio of Focus Photography and told me I wasn’t the right person for the job. To be honest, not five minutes into our meeting, that had been my gut feeling as well.
Though Luke was drowning in work as Perry had said, he was looking for a fresh-faced kid, someone young, hopeful, and right out of school who would be willing to work like a slave in gratitude for landing a job as a real photographer instead of waiting tables or doing something in retail at the mall. It also explained the modest salary he was offering, a minor detail Perry had neglected to mention.
That Luke was meeting me strictly as a favor to Perry became obvious the moment I realized Perry had given me a recommendation that made me sound like the next Annie Leibovitz. That was strike one why I was overqualified for the position. Strike two was an offhand remark I made about the framed Robert Capa quote hanging above a beat-up black credenza in a corner of the room.
If your pictures aren’t good enough, you’re not close enough.
I told Luke that before I worked for Perry I had a boss who liked to say that if you were sent to photograph a fire, you didn’t get the right shots if you came back and your eyebrows hadn’t been singed off.