Лия Криз – The Amber Heart (страница 3)

Polina turned. Liza stood in the doorway, in the same plain black dress, holding a tray with two steaming cups of coffee.

"I thought you'd want coffee. Galina Stepanovna usually brings it, but today she's been... I don't know. Not herself since this morning."

"Thank you."

Liza put the tray on the windowsill. She went over to one of the cases and gazed for a long time at a little amber frog, carved so skilfully that it seemed about to jump.

"Arkady taught me to tell them apart," she said. "At first they just looked like yellow pebbles to me. But he'd tell me about each one. Where it was found, who carved it, what its story was. He could talk for hours." She smiled faintly. "His children think I married him for money. But I married him because he was the first person who ever talked to me. Really talked. Do you understand?"

Polina didn't know what to say. She looked at this pale girl with tired eyes and tried to work out whether she was telling the truth. Stones were easier. A stone can't pretend.

"I understand," she said at last.

Liza nodded and left, leaving behind a faint scent of lavender.

Polina worked all day.

She began at the far end of the gallery, methodically, case by case. Every piece into her hands, onto the scales, under the loupe. Colour, transparency, inclusions. The ultraviolet lamp: real Baltic amber glows bluish under it, sometimes greenish, while fakes — plastic, glass, artificial resins — behave differently. Then the microscope. Then notes in a thick notebook, in the neat hand her grandfather had taught her as a child.

By three in the afternoon she had described a hundred and twelve pieces. All genuine. Arkady Stern knew his amber.

At four Zaretsky came.

"Well, Polina Lvovna? Ready for the main event?"

He went to the wall at the very end of the gallery and moved aside a small painting, a seascape with a lighthouse. Behind it was a safe door. Zaretsky entered the code, shielding the keypad with his palm, and turned the handle.

Inside, on black velvet, in a small mahogany case, lay the Amber Heart.

Polina had seen it in photographs hundreds of times. But the photographs lied. In real life the brooch was far more beautiful. The cherry-red amber glowed so deeply and brightly it was as if a tiny fire burned inside. The gold setting, delicate and lacy, studded with small diamonds, embraced the stone the way palms cup a candle flame. And at the very centre, at the heart of the heart, hung the mosquito. Thin legs, transparent wings, a curved body.

"My God," Polina whispered.

"Yes," said Zaretsky proudly, as if the brooch were his. "Shall I leave you alone with it?"

"If I may."

"Of course. I'll be in the study. Call me when you're done."

He left. Polina put on white cotton gloves, carefully lifted the case and carried it to the table by the window where she had laid out her equipment.

First she simply looked. Long and carefully. That was what her grandfather taught her: before you ask a stone anything, you must get acquainted with it.

The setting was genuine. She saw that at once. St Petersburg gold of the old 56 standard, the maker's mark barely visible under the loupe — initials and a tiny double-headed eagle. Old rose-cut diamonds, cut the way they were more than a century ago. Tiny worn spots on the gold where the brooch had rubbed against the fabric of a dress. Everything was right.

Then she switched on the ultraviolet lamp.

And something inside her quietly clenched.

The amber glowed. But not the right way. Not with that soft bluish, milky radiance she had seen in a hundred and twelve pieces in a row today. This glow was flatter, denser, with a barely perceptible chalky tint. If she hadn't spent the whole day with genuine Baltic amber, she probably wouldn't have noticed. The difference was tiny. But it was there.

"No," Polina said aloud. "No, it can't be."

She turned off the lamp. Put the brooch under the microscope. Adjusted the focus.

The bubbles. In real amber, air bubbles are irregular in shape, elongated, flattened, like frozen drops. These were too round. Too neat. The way they are in resin that has been heated and pressed.

And the mosquito.

Polina looked at it for a long time. At its wings, its body, its thin curved legs. And suddenly she saw something that turned her fingers cold.

The mosquito's legs had white stripes. Thin, sharp, like rings.

She knew this mosquito. Anyone who worked with amber inclusions knew it. The Asian tiger mosquito. Black, with white stripes on its legs and back. A species that came to Europe from Southeast Asia only a few decades ago. You could meet it in summer in Sochi or in Italy.

But it could never have been in Baltic amber. Baltic amber is forty million years old. And this mosquito had most likely been buzzing over someone's veranda some fifteen years ago.

Polina leaned back in her chair. Her heart was pounding so loudly she thought the whole gallery could hear it.

It was a fake. A superb, masterful, very expensive fake. Someone had taken the genuine antique setting, removed the real stone and put an expert copy in its place: young resin, pressed and dyed cherry red, with a modern mosquito inside. Done so subtly that it could fool almost anyone.

Almost.

But that person hadn't known about the stripes on a mosquito's legs.

Zaretsky listened to her in silence.

He sat at his enormous desk with his fingers laced together, and his face was motionless. Only when Polina got to the mosquito did he slowly take off his glasses and rub the bridge of his nose.

"Are you sure?" he asked at last. His voice had grown duller.

"Absolutely. I can show you under the microscope. And the ultraviolet. And the bubbles. That's not Baltic amber, Rostislav Olegovich. It's a copy. The original has been switched."

"When?"

"I don't know. Maybe a year ago. Maybe ten. You can't tell from the fake itself." She paused. "Could Arkady Germanovich have known?"

Zaretsky shook his head.

"If he had known, he'd have turned the whole house upside down. That brooch was like... a child to him." He put his glasses back on. He gave Polina a long, attentive look. "Who else knows about this?"

"No one. Only you."

"Good." He nodded. "Very good. Polina Lvovna, I beg you: not a word to anyone. Not the heirs, not the staff, no one. You saw what goes on at the table. If it comes out now that the collection's greatest treasure has been stolen, they'll tear each other's throats out. Accusations, scandals, police... And there are only five days until the will is read. Let's wait until then. Meanwhile I'll contact the security service, my people in Kaliningrad. Quietly, carefully. Agreed?"

Polina hesitated. She didn't like it. Switching an object like that was a crime, and crimes should be reported. But Zaretsky was the family's lawyer, he had officially hired her, and the last word was his.

"Agreed," she said reluctantly. "But I'll carry on valuing the rest of the collection. If this isn't the only substitution, I need to know."

"Of course." Zaretsky gave his soft smile. "You're a remarkable specialist, Polina Lvovna. Arkady Germanovich would have been so happy that it was you who took on his collection."

As Polina left the study, a navy dress flickered at the end of the corridor. Galina Stepanovna. The housekeeper quickly turned the corner onto the stairs, and her footsteps faded below.

Polina stopped. Had she been standing at the door? Had she heard?

She didn't know. But all evening, at dinner, she felt the housekeeper's intent gaze on her. A gaze in which there was something like fear.

At night Polina couldn't sleep.

She lay under the heavy canopy and stared into the dark. Outside the sea roared, the wind droned in the chimneys, a shutter creaked somewhere. The old house lived its night life: sighing, crackling, whispering.

The same thoughts kept circling in her head. A fake. A tiger mosquito. A genuine setting that someone had held in their hands, prised open with tiny tweezers, removed the stone. Who? Someone with access to the safe. Someone who knew the code. Someone who knew exactly whom to commission for such a delicate copy.

Shortly after midnight she gave up. She got up, pulled on a cardigan and went to the window.

The night was clear and cold. The moon, nearly full, hung over the sea, and a silver path stretched across the water from it. The garden below looked cut from black paper: bare lindens, bushes, paths.

And the greenhouse.

There was a light in the greenhouse.

Not electric. The weak, jumping glow of a torch. It moved behind the glass, slowly, from one end to the other. Stopped. Moved again. As if someone were searching for something among the plants. Or cutting something.

Polina froze at the window, her forehead pressed to the cold glass.

The light went out.

A minute later the greenhouse door opened and a dark figure came out. In a long cloak or coat, with a hood. Impossible to tell whether it was a man or a woman. The figure stood, looking around. Then walked quickly along the path. Not towards the house. Towards the cliff, where the long wooden staircase to the sea began.