Misha had never worried about being robbed. If the house had been broken into, the thieves would have gotten only the inconsequential stuff – the silver flatware, the tea set, some of May’s day to day jewels – but not this, the secret heart of his life’s work. At first glance the contents of the vault seemed pathetic, for on the left hung a rack of old clothes, a raincoat, suit, and pants for him, a dress, hat, and a coat for Maya. On the right stood a rack of shelves filled from floor to ceiling with boxes, some small, some large. Beneath them, resting on the floor were three bankers’ boxes that contained sundry documents.
In the beginning, May and he had sold hardly any of it, no more than a small bag or two of insignificant diamonds. They’d used that money not only to escape Russia, but to launch their lives in America. Later on, of course, Misha had sold more of the loose gems, none of them of historical value, using the cash to buy sundry Fabergé items that the cash-poor Soviets – not to mention the defrocked Russian princes – were selling all across Europe.
Oh, yes, thought Misha, reaching for a box on the fourth shelf. He quite liked this one, and he pulled the cardboard box halfway out, opened the lid, and revealed a gray jewelers’ bag inside. Flipping that open, he gazed upon a Fabergé box some twelve inches long and four inches deep that was covered with lapis and diamonds. Before it was hidden away here it had sat for several decades on Tsar Nikolai’s desk. Fabergé had been a master of combining styles from different periods, turning objets d’art into functional things of beauty, what he termed objets de fantaisie.
Oh, and this one, thought Misha as he closed up that box and reached for another. This one was May’s favorite. Lifting another jewelers’ bag into his hands, he felt something heavy and egg-shaped, which he slid into his palm. It was a large gold egg encrusted with a multitude of double-headed eagles – the emblem of Imperial Russia – that were fashioned out of platinum and hundreds of diamonds. And like all of the fifty-six eggs Fabergé had created for the Imperial Family, this one too contained a surprise: Misha tipped back the top of the egg and a diamond encrusted Orthodox cross popped up. It made him laugh, just like it always did. Created as an Easter present to mark Aleksandra’s conversion to Russian Orthodoxy, the egg had the year 1896 drawn in rubies on the back.
Upward of twelve Fabergé eggs had vanished during the flames of the revolution, and yet Misha and May had secretly managed to obtain seven of those. And all seven of them were in here. Reaching for the box to his right, Misha opened it, revealing another egg, this one in green enamel atop a solid gold pedestal. Flowers fashioned from gold and platinum, rubies, sapphires and, of course, diamonds, covered the egg. When Misha tipped back its lid he found a gold perfume bottle inside, its cupola top encrusted with a frosting of tiny diamonds. He gently laid it down, then quickly opened the lids of the next two boxes. Opening the inner boxes of each, Misha reached in and felt the shapes of two more eggs swathed in jewelers’ bags. Without even opening them, he turned his attention to the smaller box on the next shelf down. Opening the cotton bag inside, Misha slipped a diamond some two inches in diameter into his palm. He slid the diamond back in its bag and surveyed the wall of shelves. Five shelves, to be exact, all lined with similar boxes, some sixty or seventy. It was all here, the contents of the entire suitcase he and May had carried out of Russia, all of the gems carefully catalogued and packed. Many, he knew, dated back to the time of Peter the Great. One piece of jewelry, an emerald the size of a silver dollar that was in turn surrounded by a halo of 20-carat diamonds, had been a gift to Ivan the Terrible.
Incomparable treasures, all of them. Collecting and guarding them had occupied nearly his entire life, and now that he had succeeded in his duties he felt, surprisingly, a sense of pride. He had pledged to bury these things away not only until the fall of communism, but until his Nikolai and Aleksandra received a proper Orthodox burial. And now that these both had happened – what miracles! – he could rest with a degree of peace. His beloved Kate would have to oversee the final step, returning all of this to Russia, and he had every confidence that she would execute the transfer in a timely manner.
This room held the climax of his story and his life, thought Misha. Everything he recorded on that tape was to prepare his granddaughter for this room and its priceless contents. How much was all this worth, three, four, five hundred million dollars? A billion? Certainly somewhere in that range. And that was his reason for telling Kate his version of the final days of the Tsar – simply so that she could and would understand the meaning, the purpose, and the true value of all these jewels in this room. Misha was laying at Kate’s feet not unfathomable wealth, but overwhelming, mind-boggling responsibility, and he had to make sure she understood every ramification.
As much as he wanted to go through every box and admire every gem, there just wasn’t time. It had taken years for May and him to catalog it all, examining and weighing every stone, describing every objet, and then recording it all in a jewel book. May even insisted on drawing a facsimile of every piece, which she carefully did, and that log was there, right over there on the shelf. Oi, so many memories, mused Misha as he closed the boxes one after the other.
He even started laughing.
Turning, he looked at the rack of old clothes and chuckled aloud. May and he had been so very afraid, not just in the twenties and thirties, but especially right after World War II and into the fifties. Accordingly, they had taken every precaution, and Misha reached for his raincoat, finding it oddly heavy. Squishing the material between his fingertips, he sensed a band of small, hard objects running all the way around the neck. Stones. And not mere stones, but diamonds. Similarly, May’s dress over there held an entire panel of secret brillianty and the hem a great circle of them. Scattered through these clothes were some ten pounds of gems, hidden away like this in case May and he had suddenly needed to flee. In a separate codicil to his will he’d left note of this too, so Kate wouldn’t simply throw these clothes in a bag and drop them at the Goodwill.
But enough of this. He had to be going, his end was imminent. There were but two things Misha wanted from this room, and he reached for a bankers’ box on the floor and pushed aside its cardboard lid. Inside, carefully wrapped in cotton towels, he found a small red tin box, a bit rusty at the edges, its cover embossed with the imperial double-headed eagle and lettering that read TOVARISCHESTVO A. I. ABRIKOSOVA V MOSKVYE – The Goods of the A. I. Abrikosova Company, Moscow. Opening the old candy box, Misha gazed down upon its contents – some bits of wire, a tiny chain, two small rocks, a flattened coin, and some rusty nails – and his eyes blistered with tears. It had been terribly stupid of him back then, but he hadn’t been able to flee Yekaterinburg without these things, so priceless were they to him. Odd, mused Misha, how all of that seemed just like yesterday. He so clearly remembered sneaking late one night into The House of Special Purpose – then deserted by the Reds – and snatching this bric-a-brac, the treasures of a little boy, from its hiding place behind the mopboard.