Authors: Warren Slingsby
Two hundred and nineteen days after
Janet woke up late. 10:30am was really late for her. But she’d been drinking Rioja with her mum last night and boy, she could put it away these days. Earlier in the night, they’d been to watch Flamenco and had had a fair few G&Ts. They’d loved the flamenco. Janet had booked them seats near the front, which was brilliant even though her mother mentioned how loud it was at least eight times. She thought it would be all about the dancing, which was amazing to see. The feet were like blurs most of the time. But they both found that the music and particularly the singing, was what did it for them. The hurt and the passion and sorrow in the voice.
At the end of the night, her mum had been bouncing off the walls down the corridor to her bedroom. Like a teenager who’d been at their parent’s booze cabinet. Janet giggled as she watched.
It seemed she was still in bed as there was no noise coming from anywhere in the house. She’d leave her mum to sleep for now. Sleep the booze off. She reached for her book and inevitably, the letter dropped out. It was by design. As a bookmark, it reminded her to read it and think about it every so often. It was scrawled with ideas and theories. She was now fairly sure that the Sea of Galilee referred to the picture
storm on the
Sea of Galilee. But had so far made little headway with the other parts to the puzzle. Still Waters. Research had brought up information about the proverb or fable of ‘still waters run deep’. Meaning that a calm exterior hides an impassioned nature. Or that quiet people can be dangerous. There were pages and pages of this on Google. But it didn’t add up to anything in terms of a breakthrough on the painting. Certainly not to her. She searched again and skipped a few pages and went to search page 4. This brought up more diverse results, pop songs, TV show episodes and design agencies named Still Waters. She tapped the tab at the top to show images. Not surprisingly, lots of shots of water, women in water with their tops wet, yachts, book covers and the Four Tops album cover which seemed to show the band’s reflection in some still waters. Videos? News? She tapped the News tab. This was more interesting. Several stories about a boat or rather a super yacht called the Still Waters which was owned by a Russian billionaire called Nicolay Zhestakova.
She looked up, pondering the ceiling for a second before reading on out aloud. “Zhestakova crashed his yacht whilst docking it into, what a surprise, another Russian billionaire’s super yacht,” and the bill for this little fender bender was nearly $20m. This happened two years ago. They’d probably be patched up by now she thought. “Zhestakova had made his vast amounts of money by owning mines first in Russia but then had expanded to Australia and Africa. As the metal markets had shot up, so had his value of hundreds of millions into tens of billions.” The news article said his current fortune stood at “$35 billion”. She whistled to herself. Owned a football club in Spain. Houses in London, Nice, LA and Moscow. Outspoken against the Putin government.
“So original,” Janet said to herself, “bloody oligarchs.” Reading further down the article. He had also been fined €25,000 by the Port de Nice for dangerous sailing.
Was this the other part of the puzzle? A
boat
named Still Waters which was
Docked in
Nice
?
Joseph’s contact seemed to suggest that this picture was something to do with this yacht.
Could
the
painting
be
on
the
yacht
?
She dug out her iPad, tapped on Safari and Googled Nicolay Zhestakova. There was a Wikipedia page about him. Tons of news articles about him; mainly about his crash in his yacht, but some about him buying a rare Ferrari at auction for some offensive price and then a lot of articles about the football club he owned and players they were buying. She clicked on the Wikipedia page.
Nicolay Rustam Zhestakova was born on June 30th 1967 in Novgorod in Western Russia, between Moscow and St. Petersburg. He looked just like any average guy to be honest, nothing stood out in his looks. He was stylish but when you had that sort of money, that wasn’t necessarily his style; you could pay someone to put your wardrobe together each season. He had started at the bottom, literally. As a miner in one of the mines he would come to own. He worked his way up through the unions and then into management. The first part of this rise, he managed to do with charisma, intelligence and hard work. The second, he managed to get a lot of people to back him financially for a management buyout of the company during the time of Perestroika in the late eighties and then he turned around and screwed them all over. He’d been in court a lot. Most of the people he screwed over tried to sue him, pretty much all unsuccessfully. Much of the page was about allegations of bribery, theft and fraud. Boring, boring, boring, not to mention very predictable oligarch behaviour.
“Oh, here we go - ‘has one of the largest private collections of baroque and renaissance art in the world’. Does that happen to include a stolen Rembrandt Nicolay?”
Behind her, her bedroom door swung open.
“Who are you talking to?”
“Haha no one, just myself mum.”
“Okay, well, I have coffee and toast for you out on the terrace darling.”
“Ok. Thanks. I’ll be out in two ticks.”
She folded the letter back up and stuck it into her book. Her mum had been a very busy bee. The table was all set up with as many preserves as she could find, plus coffee, milk and sugar.
“This is lovely mum. Thanks.”
“Well if I can’t look after my little girl once in a while.” She said with an expression that said, ‘it’s been too long.’
Janet smiled her best ‘I’m a good daughter’ smile. Inside, other things were on her mind. She could feel a trip to Nice in her very near future.
. . .
Nicolay kissed Julianne on her lipstick-free lips one final, final time. He gently bit her bottom lip and felt the plumpness of it against his tongue as he pulled it toward him. Her eyes looked deep into his. He shouldn’t have stayed last night but he couldn’t help himself. She was so exquisite. She did PR or something like that. Maybe PR in fashion. They didn’t talk about it much. The great thing was that she didn’t want him for his money, she saw him for his personality not the gifts he gave her. Her incredible cheek bones, plump lips and beautiful hair were all too much for him and he would find himself day dreaming of her at family meals and whilst on business calls. Dreaming of the next time he could see her. She didn’t pester him about anything. She was just so much cooler than anyone else in his life to date; others by comparison that seemed to cling to him and his money like barnacles to the underside of a boat.
“I will see you when you are back from Paris, my beauty.” he said with his mixed up accent which still bore a strong Russian inflection mixed with hints of French and American. Like an aging MTV Europe presenter.
“You will indeed my little Nicky.” she said cheekily and blipped him on his nose with her forefinger. “Now go on or you’ll never get back and you’ll be in big trouble with you know who.”
He pulled the door gently behind him until it clicked and started across the small graveled driveway to the double car port. His car sat alongside Julianne’s.
He’d not been at the auction at Ferrari’s racing track when his car had been bought, but he had sent Sasha, one of his staff. Sasha had specific instructions on how much he could bid up to to get the car. In the end, the bidding didn’t get quite to Nicolay’s limit of €15million. Sasha had it taken straight to Ferrari’s classic car restoration workshop once the auction was over. It needed a small repair to the driver’s seat leather and Nicolay wanted the engine stripped and tuned. Just to be sure he would get the very best out of it. What would be the point to spend that money on a car and then have it running at 90% of its capacity? Then he would keep the car at his home in Nice. Well, it was a topless car. There was no roof, so it would be useless in Moscow or London and he didn’t spend enough of his time in LA to appreciate it.
He also thought people in LA wouldn’t give it the respect or admiration it deserved. Americans would probably think it was an old Corvette.
He dropped the ‘58 Ferrari 250 Testa Rossa into 2nd for the tight left hander, saw it was clear ahead, straightened the corner out across the apex and floored the accelerator once again as he allowed the steering to right itself. The 12 cylinder engine growling for all its worth. Many said this car should not be driven at all so many years after it was manufactured, let alone at speed but Nicolay hated that attitude, this was a racing car. Several of the 30 or so other cars built in the 50s and 60s won the Le Mans 24 Hours Endurance Race. Racing was at its heart. Of course, even with the overhaul he had had done at Ferrari, this wasn’t a hugely fast car by today’s standards. Compared to most of his other cars, it was slow but that was missing the point, none of them gave you this feeling or made this particular sound. This car did the thing that Julianne did to him, it reached deep into him and stirred his soul. It made his heart beat faster and the hair stand up on the back of his neck.
Much more important than any of that was knowing that none of his contemporaries could get their hands on one. They saw themselves as equals, as their yachts were almost as big as his. As they pulled up in their Mercedes, Bugattis and Rolls. But all of them paled into insignificance next to the 250. Ultimately, the Bugatti was just made by Volkswagen anyway and the Rolls by BMW. None of them had the breeding of the 250 and it showed on their faces when they saw him. The Ferrari said ‘
fuck you all to hell and back’
. Doesn’t matter what you own, you don’t own one of these and the chances of another one coming up for auction are microscopic.
The drive from Julianne’s hill top house down into Nice, especially at 6.00 am when the road was all but deserted was about the most sublime drive you could take. He had a huge smile on his face for most of the drive and especially as he pulled into the Ports car park. He skipped around the port practically to his yacht. He had a little business call to take care of and he liked to do his calls from his private study on his yacht. He especially like to schedule them at this time to keep his people in Moscow on their toes. It would now be about 8:30am there.
His assistant - Alex had made an Americano with an extra shot and cold skimmed milk ready for Nicolay. Nothing to eat. Nicolay never ate breakfast. Alex was on the inner, inner circle. Only very few people knew of the secret study. Alex knew he was never,
ever
, to disclose the existence of this study or, for that matter, any of Nicolay’s secrets to anyone. He knew that his predecessor had been indiscreet about some of Nicolay’s secrets and paid a heavy price. A price Alex would never wish to pay. He took the coffee in to the main study and pulled on the hardback copy of The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoyevsky on one of the shelves. It was a thick book which was hollowed out and contained a mechanism to unlatch a small secret door into the inner study. This room also acted as a panic room should the need ever arise. He placed the coffee on the desk a few minutes before Nicolay was due and went back to the main deck to greet his boss. Alex lived wherever his boss lived. He was at his boss’s beck and call whenever he needed him apart from his bosses ‘downtime’ such as last night when his boss went off to the ‘casino’.
Alex busied himself on the deck. There were always jobs to be done on such a large vessel. He liked to ensure he always looked busy. He was paid a healthy salary and on top of that lived in beautiful villas and yachts. He always knew he was expendable though, so he liked to give the impression that his boss was getting good value for money.
“Dobroe utro Ser.”
“Dobroe utro Alexandre.” came the reply as he walked across the gang plank.
Alex went about his business. No one else was up or around on the yacht at that time. Nicolay took his sunglasses off, went through the doors at the rear of the yacht to the main living area, through there to a door to the study and then to the back wall of the study and accessed the secret door to his private study. He closed the door behind him. The door always remained closed. It was never left open. He sat down behind his desk, took a sip of the coffee and looked back at the wall in front of him. At his pride and joy. Rembrandt’s ‘Storm on the Sea of Galilee’ from 1633. It depicted Jesus calming the storm as set out in the Gospel of Mark from the New Testament. As with many of Rembrandt’s works, he included himself into the painting. He held his salmon coloured cap to his head with one hand and onto a rope attached to the main mast with the other. Nicolay was a religious man and this image of the calming Jesus filled him with a special tranquility. Of course, the painting was a little out of proportion in his secret study, but who cared when you were looking at a painting which only around ten people had seen since its theft in 1990. The value was immense at the time it was taken and had risen since due to its notoriety. It was probably worth $40 to $50 million or more now. Nicolay didn’t have it for its value. He didn’t need it. The painting was in many ways similar to the Ferrari 250. It was his way of sticking two fingers up at the world and saying I did it. On my own. Against the odds. But unlike the very public racing red Ferrari that sat not far away in the Port’s car park, this was his secret two fingers. A large smile spread across his face. He dialled the Moscow office number.
. . .
Charlie pulled up to the curb at the foot of Janet’s road. It was already baking hot. He had the sunroof and windows open. A man was walking up past his car on the opposite side. He briefly glanced over. This was a man who looked totally out of place in this suburban Spanish street. He wore the wrong clothes (a dark long-sleeved shirt and dark jeans). He had a compact backpack and he was so pale, he stood out like a sore thumb. He also had an air of someone who didn’t quite know where he was going. Charlie pulled on the handbrake gently and sat for a moment. The guy was homing in on Janet’s house. No doubt about it. He was on the right side of the road and he looked at the number on each house door. As he reached her house, he slowed slightly and veered off toward the side of the house. In the blink of an eye, he was gone. If this was a friend coming to see her, he would surely knock on the door, not go down the narrow gap between her house and the next house. It was very clear which was the door you should go to as a visitor. Charlie sat for a while waiting to see if the guy came back out. One minute. Five minutes. There was no sign of him. Was this someone Carl had sent? Surely, he’d have told him.