My cousin laughed. I was, he said, the same old Max. He suggested we stroll back up to the saloon. He told me that these days he was in partnership with an Odessa acquaintance, the man who had inadvertently been the cause of my first meeting with Mrs Cornelius. S.A. Stavisky was now in Marseilles and chiefly involved in the importation of cocaine which could be processed cheaply and more or less legally in Tangier where it was not against the law to import South American paste. ‘But he’s branching out, these days, into politics, so I handle most of that drug business. Political stuff and the stock market was never my style. But you know what opportunities there are, now! Millions are being made. One of the people helping Stavisky is an old friend of yours, I gather. Another émigré. Remember a Count Nikolai Feodorovitch Petroff?’
By now I was breathless with the shock. But Kolya surely was in Paris, married to an aristocrat?
‘He still travels to Paris, I think. He’s definitely based with the boss in Marseilles now, though.’
‘You are sure it is the same man?’ Pretending to be dizzy from the drug, I rested for a moment against the bulkhead. Only a few steps lay ahead before we ascended to the saloon.
‘Very tall, rather pale. Good-looking in a sort of effeminate way. Excellent tailor. Knew you in Peter? Was in business with you in France?’
It could be no one but Kolya. ‘You say he travels?’ Somewhat falteringly I continued towards the companionway and paused again before I climbed.
‘Yes. He was in Tangier, for instance, only a couple of weeks ago. That was probably politics, too, but he didn’t say. He stayed at the Villa de France.’
‘His wife was with him?’ Almost supernaturally, Esmé had appeared overhead on the deck above, her dress and mood thoroughly changed. Now she was a little Mary Pickford, a Victorian angel - everything I knew her to be deep within herself. ‘No, miss.’ Shura looked up with friendly candour. ‘At least, I wouldn’t have thought so.’
I was delighted to introduce two of my most beloved friends. As we brought ourselves up to stand in formal attention before her at the stairs, she stood there like a queen while I made the proper courtesies. ‘Alexander Semyonovitch Neeva, may I introduce Esmé Bolascovna Loukianoff, my betrothed. Esmé, my cousin Shura.’
Shura kissed Esmé’s tiny hand and murmured some courtesy. Esmé excused herself. She had been on her way to her cabin, she said, and looked forward to joining us later, perhaps at dinner. Our ship was already drawing up her anchor and turning to the open sea. I took Shura into the saloon and found my own bottle beneath the bar. It was Old Beaumont Plantation, the best bourbon in New Orleans. Captain Quelch had a case of it and had presented me with three quarts for myself. Shura was highly appreciative. ‘You get sick of cognac and whisky and the wine here’s dreadful. One longs for the aged golden vodka we used to drink in Esau’s in the Slobodka.’
To be honest, I remembered nothing so wonderful on sale at Esau’s, but I would not have disagreed with my cousin and spoil this reconciliation if he had remembered that the Tsar was a Jew! I drank the bourbon for that very reason, I told him. I described some of my adventures since I had left Odessa on the Rio Cruz, my time in Constantinople, my meeting with Esmé there, our flight to Italy and France, my engineering achievements in Paris and Los Angeles, my film career, which he had already heard about from Captain Quelch. I saw no point in describing the negative parts of my story.
Shura was highly impressed by my success, but for his own part was self-deprecating. Even with one arm, he had been conscripted into various armies before he managed to get first to Varna and from there to Sofiya, where he had, he said, fallen in love for a while. He had gone on to Fiume until D’Annunzio’s antics turned the place into an uninhabitable slum, whereupon he made his way slowly to Marseilles where he had fallen in with our old acquaintance, the dentist’s son Stavisky, now a French citizen. ‘We’re a sort of Old Odessan network,’ said Shura. ‘He even found a job for Boris and Little Grania. She’s in Tangier at this very moment, buying and selling.’
‘And Boris is doing the accounts?’
‘Exactly! Of course, Marseilles isn’t Odessa, though it has certain similarities. I’ve learned to need the heat. I’m not sure I could easily live in Ukraine again.’
I had not thought of that aspect. I, too, had grown used to California and the way that good weather brought out the best in people, as, of course, it had done in Odessa, compared to the rest of the Empire. True to form, Shura was somewhat mocking of my three-piece suit. He said that his own costume was absolutely the latest Paris rage. Americans were so unstylish! I reminded him that I had always found his taste a little flashy. I had been raised in a more old-fashioned tradition. I did not remind him that our branch of the family had always been somewhat more intellectually sophisticated than his own, who were, after all, shopkeepers. I told him instead that I would find myself a good English tailor the moment we docked in Alexandria. I wanted to know what he planned to do in Tripoli. He was looking over, he said, a group of oil-fields being developed there. The ‘firm’ was considering some sort of flotation. Then I understood immediately why Kolya was involved. A wizard who had taken naturally to the mysteries of High Finance, Prince N.F. Petroff had become an eminent member of the Bourse. He would be called to assess the value of the fields and suggest the best way of launching the shares. It was through no fault of his that our Rose of Kiev had rotted in her shed, a victim of Levantine Big Business which wanted our Transatlantic Aerial Navigation Company to fail, which plotted our destruction. I shall never learn the whole of that wretched story. Certainly it was not Kolya’s fault that the burden of the blame for our defeat fell on me and I had been branded a swindler, forced to flee. He, after all, had courageously volunteered to remain behind and fight on. I could only thank heaven that in the end the powers opposing us had chosen not to pursue him. No doubt it was fortunate his wife’s father had been one of the other directors and, anxious to avoid an inter-family scandal, sent him into some sort of exile, but I was rather surprised to hear of Kolya’s sudden change of occupation. Maybe, after all, he had merely grown bored with the routines of the Parisian haut monde. Like me, Prince Nicholai was fundamentally an adventurer, a risk-taker, a restless seeker after fresh experience. This latest news suggested that I might meet him again sooner than I had dared hope. Our paths were sure to cross. I began to nurse the idea of returning to Europe. With my American passport and my credentials as Tom Peters, the moving-picture actor, I was sure I would have little trouble there. After all, the screen confirmed my honest American identity! But I would still avoid France for a while. It would be wonderful, I thought, to see Rome again. I had good friends there. The events of 1922 had heralded the beginning of a great social experiment just being realised to its full potential. Mussolini had brought a wonderful new stability to Italy.
When we had completed our Egyptian picture, I told Shura, I would probably take Esmé on a honeymoon in Europe. My friends da Bazzano, Laura Fischetti and Annibale Santucci must surely still be there, eating fried artichoke and arguing over the future of nations. I would love to see them again. And people told me that Berlin was far more interesting than Paris, these days. We would go over to London, where I still had money awaiting me. I laughed about this. It had seemed such a fortune before I began to earn my own living. But it would be a good excuse to look up Mr Green and Mr Parrot.
‘I heard those two old crooks were doing well for themselves with my dad’s money,’ said Shura cheerfully. We had gone out on deck to enjoy the sunset over the distant city. ‘I doubt if you’ll get what you’re owed, Simka darling. And we’ll never know how much they had. Dad was shot early on. By the Reds, I think. Anyway the pogromchiks changed their name and went out looking for “profiteers”! The results were much the same. You can’t make a Cossack change his hobbies overnight. The female profiteers were mostly raped, the males were butchered along with the children. All in Slobodka. They said Wanda got away.’