Chapter 17
Everyone gathered in Queens the next morning.
Marcus was diagramming his discovery: “The Japanese police have identified the assailants from the American dorm, the guys who went after Reggie and Andrew. They’ve done previous jobs, off the books, for Jack Stanton, who owns the most extensive cruise line in the world. ”
“Waveriders Global,” Reggie confirmed. “He’s got a fleet of over fifty ships, registered in ports everywhere. It’s a perfect means of transporting contraband and ignoring local law enforcement.”
“Stanton heard we had the diamond, from a source at the Vatican, so he assumed we’d killed Henrik for the ruby, and that we’d have the emerald as well. Because that’s the only thing Stanton’s really after.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Atropos was the Fate who controlled longevity,” said Marcus.
“She’d snip the thread of someone’s life whenever she saw fit.
Her legend says she can end life or extend it as she pleases.
Stanton has pancreatic cancer, with under a year to live.
He’ll do anything for even a few months beyond that.
He’s bought human organs on the black market, paid teenagers for their blood, and backed drug trials in Mexico, with no proven results. He’s a desperate man.”
Which I could understand, except he’d paid to have Reggie and me slaughtered in his quest for a storybook cure-all. There’s desperation and then there’s inhuman desperation with the means to massacre anyone who gets in your way.
“But two days ago, Stanton was contacted by a Russian operative. In the early days of the Revolution, when the tsar and his family were about to be taken prisoner, they’d prepared to leave the country.
The women sewed jewelry into their clothing so they’d have funds close at hand.
The tsarina owned a Fabergé gold bracelet set with the Atropos alongside lesser topazes and citrons.
She believed the emerald could prevent the executions of herself and her husband and children.
But the bracelet was stolen by one of her maids, and the royals were shot by soldiers, in a basement. ”
I recalled this history from Wikipedia paragraphs on the young Princess Anastasia, who was said to have survived the death squad.
There are plays, books, movies, and an animated and ultimately live Broadway musical, mostly fictionalizing Anastasia’s much-argued-over fate.
I’d devoured each telling, because as a child, I’d pined both for Anastasia to have lived and for her to have traveled to America and become a small Long Island boy.
“The maid fled to a village in the Urals, where she died at one hundred and eighteen years old, outliving five husbands. After the funeral, her great-grandchildren brought the emerald, which they thought was glass, to a local jeweler, who was astounded. Being a Putin loyalist, he notified the local authorities. The emerald made its way to Moscow, to the Federal Security Service, which replaced the KGB. An agent was happy to make some extra rubles, and tested the marketplace. Stanton’s name came up, contact was made, and Stanton paid enough money for that agent to retire on, which isn’t all that much.
So Stanton’s overjoyed, but there’s one hurdle left. ”
“Authentication,” said Reggie. “Like most dying madmen, Stanton’s paranoid and single-minded.
He has to be sure the stone is real, so it can increase his lifespan to some unheard-of degree.
Most of us would just whisper a prayer and roll the dice, but Stanton hates being cheated, or taken for a fool.
Which brings us to Lady Marlene Tresselmere. ”
Marcus took over: “Lady Marlene’s one of the top art experts out there.
She’s assessed precious stones, manuscripts, and paintings for the Metropolitan, the Getty, Tiffany’s, you name it.
She trained at the Sorbonne and the Museum of Egyptian Antiquities in Cairo.
She makes a good living, but nothing like the people who hire her. She’s hungry for a major paycheck.”
“I’ve met her,” said Reggie. “There was a Rembrandt that had vanished from an English manor house seventy years ago. The heirs died off but then it surfaced at auction. Everyone wanted it, but legitimate buyers had no interest in a skillful forgery—its provenance couldn’t be questioned.
Marlene swept in, with the latest carbon dating and structural analysis instruments, but mostly her eye.
She can spot a fake at fifty paces, and she’s got an almost infallible track record. ”
“Stanton’s hired her, to verify the Atropos,” said Marcus.
“Where?” asked Brock.
“At sea,” said Reggie. “In the middle of the Atlantic, on board the Empress Olympia, Stanton’s brand-new ship, and the largest in the world.
Making its maiden voyage from Miami to Turks and Caicos next week.
International waters. Beyond the laws of any government.
Stanton will be on board, presiding over the trip, and Marlene will helicopter in, once the ship reaches a midpoint.
There’s only one problem. Marlene got greedy and was arrested yesterday for selling Marie Antoinette’s diary, lifted from an exhibition at Versailles.
There’s been a media blackout because the feds are holding her in an undisclosed location.
She’s a highly valuable prisoner, with plenty of information to barter. ”
“So do we bail her out temporarily?” asked Timothy. “And keep an eye on her? Will she cooperate? If the feds give her a deal?”
“No,” said Reggie. “Her lawyers are meeting with the Department of Justice, hashing out her legal status. But we’re still going to work with her, or a version of her. A perfect replica.”
“You mean, of the emerald?” I asked.
“Of Marlene.”
Elizabeth Grand showed up the next morning, having traveled from her remote New Hampshire cottage.
When I got to the headquarters’ lounge, she was deep in consultation with Reggie, but without the slouched-on-the-couch casualness of other Tuxes.
She was seated on the edge of an armchair, with one leg crossed over the other, wearing an uncreased cream silk blouse and a well-tailored burgundy wool skirt.
Her hair was a rich red, cut in a loose pageboy held in check by discreet tortoiseshell combs.
There was a strand of undoubtedly real pearls around her neck and she wore a pair of burgundy pumps.
Everything about Elizabeth was sophisticated without any unnecessary frilliness, like the smartly turned-out heroine of a Barbara Stanwyck movie, where Barbara is always the smartest person in the room, with an echo of the young Maggie Smith or Glenda Jackson as a formidably capable executive or headmistress.
Nowadays even middle-aged actresses affect a giggling or sultry girlishness, in order to remain “relatable” or “likeable” to a mass audience, but Stanwyck and Elizabeth Grand were comfortable with unabashed and independent female power.
Elizabeth, Brock had told me, was a successful romance novelist, whose books disdained sappiness or dewy-eyed fragility.
Elizabeth was trans, which gave her a comprehensive take on love.
Her novels describe an array of couples, from the most relentlessly cisgendered and heterosexual to mixed throuples and beyond.
There were LGBTQ+ characters, but not exclusively; as Elizabeth later told me, “I’m interested in everyone. ”
When Reggie introduced us, I was, like in most situations, intimidated. Elizabeth was somewhere in her forties and she’d figured herself out on many levels. She smiled, maybe sizing me up as a character in her next book, or more likely a footnote.
“Are we sure about this?” Elizabeth asked Reggie, once a fuller cohort of Tuxes was at hand.
“You tell me,” said Reggie, as Marcus posted a photo, filling the wall of screens.
This was an image of Elizabeth standing beside King Charles and Camilla, at the opening of a show at the British Museum entitled, according to a banner on the wall behind this illustrious group, From Middle Earth to Balmoral: The Country Home.
“You, like, met the King?” asked Timothy. “I always feel bad for him, because he had to wait so long.”
“Exactly,” said Brock. “He spent his whole life signaling to the waiter for the check.”
“I’ve never met the man in my life,” insisted Elizabeth. “Is that Photoshop?”
“It’s Lady Marlene Tresselmere,” said Marcus, “from five years ago.”
The resemblance was uncanny. Marlene looked like a more preening Elizabeth, and a bit older. But I saw where Reggie was headed.
“We’ll helicopter you onto the ship and you’ll examine the emerald. And swap it for the undetectable duplicate Edwin’s come up with.”
There was an image on the screen of a mammoth square-cut stone, the green of some Killarney glen, heightened for an “Ireland Is Waiting” promotional brochure.
Blues and reds can shout, but the richest, most luxuriant greens are verdantly inviting, like a pristine dose of NyQuil or the flashing malachite eyes of a robot Siamese cat in a video game, a feline whose gaze forbids common petting or budget brands of supermarket canned food.
“But once I’ve done my bit,” said Elizabeth, “why won’t Stanton have me killed? As you’ve told me, he hates loose ends.”
“Because once he thinks he’ll live forever,” said Reggie, “he’ll hold off, for future advisories. You’ll be his good luck charm. His in-house sorceress.”
Elizabeth looked at all of us with amusement. “Well,” she said. “At the very least, it’s research. Background material for a new book.”
“We’ll be at your side,” said Reggie. “Every step of the way.”
“When do we leave?” she asked.
But Elizabeth wasn’t the Tuxes’ only secret weapon.
Reggie brought the group into Edwin’s lab, where a tableful of devices were displayed, as if confiscated by airport security.
Because Edwin and I were officially just friends, and an op was underway, we kept things impersonal, while I mentally dressed him in the sleeveless jersey and abbreviated shorts of a rower, flushed with exertion after a regatta.
I was pretty sure that the losers of such a race have to strip off their shirts and toss them to the winners, but I might’ve been making this up.
Either way, it took me a few seconds to hear what Edwin was saying.
“You’ll be on board a ship,” he was explaining, “so be careful about starting fires or puncturing the hull. Stanton will have world-class munitions, so here’s what I’ve come up with.
These look like plastic leis for a Hawaiian luau night.
But the petals can be dissolved in water and knock someone unconscious. ”
“Like a roofie?” asked Timothy. “That’s why I never drink anything I don’t pour. How fast?”
“One sip. And these glittery hats?”
These were an assortment of shiny, conical, old-timey party gear and miniature derbies made of crinkled cellophane.
“You can wear them for fun, but they’re equipped with miniaturized jet packs, lifting you ten feet up and maintaining speed and altitude.”
“Wait,” I said. “If we wear those hats, we’ll be able to fly?”
“Within a limited distance, thanks to a wireless battery in your pockets. And finally we’ve got these New Year’s Eve?style noisemakers.”
He held up a shiny striped tin horn with crepe paper trim fluttering around the wider end.
“These are deceptive. They’ll make a noise but then shoot a blow dart into an enemy.”
Edwin put one of these jubilant party favors into his mouth and turned toward a life-sized inflatable clown I hadn’t noticed, across the room.
As Edwin’s horn made a typical honk, an almost-invisible dart flew across the space and lodged in the clown’s neck, causing the clown to hiss and deflate as I tried not to think of how efficient this technique might become during a mime class.
“Don’t accidentally toot one of these at a midnight Mardi Gras bash, or when someone blows out the candles on a birthday cake. Although I’m also sending along a cake that can do considerable damage.”
“Will it take someone’s head off?” asked Brock.
“No—carbs.”
Edwin smiled, ducking his head. He’d made a scientist joke, the sort of lame gag lobbed by students studying for a Particle Physics exam after not bathing for a week.
The room groaned appreciatively as I saw myself licking frosting off Edwin’s bare chest, in a Madrid hotel suite during our honeymoon.