Page 194 of Lethal Obsession

“Za zdorov’ye, Alexei.” He touches my cup with his own.

“Za zdorov’ye, Papa.” We drink, and I turn a quizzical eye to him. “Should I ask where we are going?”

“Nyet.” Papa’s lined face is gentle, but solemn. “Let it be a story that unfolds.”

“Very well.” I settle back in against the seat and look out the window as Paris passes us by, the streets still gleaming dully under the nighttime lamps overhead. The city feels both cozy and strange, like a dream faintly recalled. We travel in silence for a while and are past Saint-Denis, heading into the city, before Papa finally speaks.

“When Aleksander and I first came to Paris,” he says quietly in Russian, “we did not wish to be noticed, even by our own people. Especially by our own people. White Russian émigrés, as the French called those who fled Romanov Russia in the wake of the revolution, flooded Paris during the 1920s. By the time we arrived, however, the Second World War was a decade past, and Paris was awash with refugees from all over Europe. It was easier for us to lose ourselves among them, despite our Russian roots. We opened our jewelry and art dealership in a back street in Le Marais, close to the Seine. It was not so far from the 8th arrondissement, where the Russians lived, but far enough to enable us to keep a low profile.” Papa leans forward. “Take a left here,” he tells the driver in perfect French. “Then, two blocks down, a right. After that . . .”

I lose track of the small streets and many turns Papa takes us down, surprised at how clear the directions remain in his mind. When the car finally comes to a halt, we are in a small cobblestoned street set among medieval buildings, crisscrossed by old timbers reminiscent of their wattle-and-daub origins.

“Come.” Papa opens the car door and steps outside with remarkable agility, given his age. “We will be some time,” he tells the driver. “Please wait here.” I follow him halfway down the deserted lane, until he stops opposite a shop with oriel windows extending into the street and a blue door set back into an alcove.

Leaning back against a stone wall, Papa pulls a packet of cigarettes from his jacket pocket. “Don’t tell Rosa,” he says, flashing me a smile as he lights one, cupping his hand around the flame. “But in Paris, one must smoke, no?”

There is something about his stance, the way one of his feet reaches for stone wainscoting on the wall behind him, that makes me think he has stood smoking in this same place many times, just as he is now.

“This was our first shop,” he says, confirming my thoughts. “We lived above it.” He points to the upper level. “Aleksander had a workshop at the rear, where he made safes and repaired jewelry. I made the front into a shop for his pieces and also dealt art. We began with no more than a few small pieces. But, you know, we had come from the gulag, which meant we had certain skills.”

His mouth slants in a smile, his eyes cutting sideways to me. “It was not long before people began bringing pieces to us to trade for them. Some were legitimate, of course; in those days, selling what small treasures might have survived the war and its aftermath was often how people survived. But other pieces were . . . less honorably acquired. Aleksander and I began to earn a reputation for being men who could find buyers for such pieces, or offer a good price for them.”

He lifts a shoulder, his mouth quirking at the edges. “We’d intended to go straight, as the Americans might say. That had certainly been what our fathers wanted for us. But our fathers were also the same men who instructed us on how to break into the Naryshkin vault, which Aleksander’s father had built for my family—the vault containing the combined treasures of a hundred fleeing Russian noble families.” He nods, remembering. “A replica of that vault stands still in our Miami compound,” he says quietly. “Because sometimes, despite our best intentions, the past remains with us. Come,” he says again, flicking his cigarette into the gutter and pushing off the wall. “Walk with me.”

Gesturing to the driver to follow us, he takes another series of small turns with the certainty of familiarity, and we walk through the light drizzle until we find ourselves outside an apartment block a few streets from the river. It looks like a conversion, modern apartments set behind an old stone industrial facade.

“After we became established, we began to import Graf vodka into France. It was, of course, the vehicle by which we smuggled the Naryshkin treasures into the country, but nobody knew that back then. Even so, we needed to be careful. We couldn’t risk bringing such treasures into our business, so we bought a warehouse.” He stares up at the dark windows set into stone. “Two floors of this building belonged to us.” He half smiles. “There was a food importer below us and a wine importer above. We used to joke that a man could live his entire life in our building and die a happy man.”

Taking a last look at the building, he walks us back to the car and gives the driver more directions. “We had been in Paris for almost a decade by now,” Papa goes on as we drive through the old streets, “and had both married. We were no longer bachelors, able to sleep on the floor above our shop, or fall down drunk in the warehouse on top of whatever woman happened to be nearby at the time.” He casts me a slightly wicked look that makes me smile. “No,” he goes on. “We were husbands now. Fathers.

“We bought two shops with apartments above them,” he goes on as we take innumerable turns through the streets. “Proper homes, with enough room for our growing families. Stop here,” he commands, as we turn into a quiet residential street made up of small shops with multilevel apartments above them. Papa orders the car to park where the line of shops and buildings abruptly stops.

We get out in front of a long, tall construction fence in dull khaki aluminum that blocks any view of what lies beyond. Barbed wire runs loosely across the top of the fence, and two faded signs nailed to the aluminum warn of hazardous materials and that trespassers will be prosecuted. Next to the signs are a set of padlocked gates.

Taking a key from his suit pants, Papa pauses in front of the gates. “This,” he says quietly, “is where those shops and the apartments above them once stood.” Slipping the key into the padlock, he opens the gates, and we step inside. He locks them behind us, and despite the fact that we are in the heart of the Marais, it feels as if the world beyond the tall fence has simply disappeared, leaving us surrounded by nothing but heavy silence. The stillness in the air is almost expectant, as if the space itself is silently waiting for something.

Or perhaps it is more like a nightmare that has been frozen in time.

We are standing amid the undisturbed rubble of what must have been a catastrophic fire. Twisted metal thrusts through the remains of charred, rotten beams. Grass grows between broken brick and crumbled tiles. A chimney still stands at one end; an old porcelain sink lies cracked and broken on the ground nearby.

My shiver has nothing to do with the dull rain and everything to do with the eerie sense that I am standing amid ghosts.

“You told me your first family, and Aleksander’s, died in a fire.” My voice sounds unnaturally loud in the dead stillness. “Is this the place where they died?”

“It is.” My father lights another cigarette and draws deeply on it. The plume of smoke wends through the wreckage like it belongs there. “My wife, Camille; Aleksander’s wife, Caroline; and all five of our children. Forgive me.” Raising his fist to his mouth, he clears his throat and glances at me. “I have not spoken these names aloud in many years.”

“Papa.” I shake my head, looking at him with concern. “You don’t need to—”

“Yes, syn moy,” he cuts me off. “I do.”

He continues after a moment. “The night Ilyan Fedorov came for our families, my eldest daughter, Irina, was eight. My sons, Nik and Pyotr, were five years and three, respectively.” He takes a deep breath. “Aleksander’s eldest son,” he says, “was five, like Nik.” His mouth tightens. “Eduard, the youngest, was only six months old.”

Ilyan Fedorov.

Of all the names my father has mentioned, that is the one I do not need my imagination to see.

Fedorov’s dead black eyes still haunt my worst nightmares. Not because of the many times he stood silently watching as Vilnus Orlov either cut me with his knife or forced me to cut others.

What sends cold sweat down my spine even now is the recollection of him standing in the door of Ofelia and Masha’s cell. The sound of his silky voice saying coldly to Vilnus, “When this is done, you can do whatever you wish to Roman’s daughters . . .”