The Firebird

Anna had no certain memory, afterwards, of walking from the room, although she knew she must have managed it. She had no memory, either, of the guard escorting her out of the chamber of Prince Menshikov and back to Edmund, waiting in the antechamber.

‘Well?’ asked Edmund, rising to his feet, his dark eyes keen upon her still embarrassed face, ‘what happened? Did she take the letter?’

‘Aye,’ said Anna. ‘Aye, she took it. She—’

I lost her then.

More properly, Rob yanked me clean away from her, and thrust me without ceremony back into the present. He was standing with his back to me, quite close so that he blocked the line of vision of the man and woman just now coming into the Large Corridor. It gave me needed moments to restore my equilibrium.

OK? He asked, not looking at me.

Yes, OK now. Thank you.

Rob stepped away and, with what felt like nothing so much as a friendly hug, wandered off casually into the next room as I turned to Yuri and Wendy Van Hoek.

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

Of all the things I’d been expecting Wendy Van Hoek to be, a kindred spirit wasn’t one of them; and yet before ten minutes had gone by, we’d formed an easy and immediate rapport with one another, moving from topic to topic as though we’d been friends for years. Yuri was watching the pair of us like someone watching the finals at Wimbledon.

Physically, Wendy was not what I’d thought she’d be, either. From how Sebastian had spoken about her, I’d pictured a middle-aged, rigid-faced woman. In actual fact, she was not that much older than me, and incredibly pretty, with eyes that took an interest in the person she was speaking to, and long, straight hair, the lovely golden-blonde shade emblematic of the Netherlands.

Her accent was American, and while it had been clearly shaped by summers in the Hamptons and a college in the Ivy League, its tone was fresh and pleasant. And she laughed more than I’d thought she would.

‘And then he spilt wine down the front of my dress,’ she concluded the count of the many disasters that had marked her first encounter with Sebastian. ‘Red wine, all over my new Valentino,’ she said, ‘and he stood there and laughed. I mean, honestly, you name a boneheaded move, and your boss made it.’

That didn’t sound like the suave man I worked for. ‘He laughs when he’s nervous,’ I offered.

‘Well, I must have made him incredibly nervous, then, because he laughed at me all weekend long. We just didn’t – and don’t – get along very well.’

Just like Anna and Edmund, I thought. Only, their animosity had always masked something else, a much deeper awareness, developing under the surface. I wondered if maybe Sebastian and Wendy were feuding because they subconsciously felt the same kind of attraction.

‘Anyhow,’ Wendy said, ‘he was smart to send you.’

‘Well, I’m better behaved. I’m more likely,’ I said, ‘to spill wine on my own frock. That’s why I drink vodka martinis at parties. They don’t leave a stain.’

She smiled. ‘So go on, make your pitch,’ she invited me. ‘Why does Sebastian St-Croix want my Surikov?’

‘It’s for a client of ours,’ I explained, and while we made our slow way through the ground-floor rooms that had been set aside for temporary exhibitions, watching while museum staff attended to the hanging of the final bits and pieces of The Wanderers exhibit, I tried telling her about Vasily, and why he had always been my favourite client.

‘… and even after that,’ I finished off, ‘with all the things his family suffered in the war, and under Stalin, I don’t think I’ve ever once heard him complain. I asked him, one day, why it hadn’t left him scarred, and he just pointed at his paintings and said that was all the trick of it: he took away the ugliness by choosing to remind himself each day of what was beautiful about his country, and that healed him.’

Wendy sent a thoughtful sideways glance at me. ‘You’re good.’ She gave a little smile and asked, ‘But why the Surikov?’

‘Because the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, down in Moscow, was Vasily’s parents’ church,’ I said. ‘It’s where they met, and where they married, and he told Sebastian that since Stalin blew the church up and the murals were all lost, to have this one small piece would be like saving something of his parents. A reminder of their life, and love.’

She looked at me in what was almost disbelief and groaned and looked away again, her hand upon her heart. ‘And I’m supposed to stand against a tale like that? Of course,’ she said. ‘Of course this lovely man can have my Surikov. But only when the exhibition’s finished. We can sort the terms out then, all right?’

I shook her hand, well pleased. ‘All right.’

‘You’ll have to have Sebastian send you to New York for that,’ she told me. ‘You and I can spend the weekend shopping on Fifth Avenue.’

I was still smiling happily when one of the museum workers} brought the painting out to hang it, and when Wendy asked me if I’d like to take a closer look, and when, at her request, I helped her turn it so that I could see the signed authentication on the back, written by Surikov’s own daughter.

But I touched the canvas. Only very lightly, but I touched it, and inspired by my earlier success at viewing Anna’s life, I closed my eyes to get a glimpse of Surikov himself. For after all, I thought, why not? No one would know, if I were quick about it.