Jefferson Blythe, Esquire by Josh Lanyon

Author:Josh Lanyon
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2015-06-14T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twelve

You might think that because Fabergé ultimately relocated to Paris, there would be a number of those fabulously valuable eggs floating around the City of Light. You’d be wrong, though, not least because the selling off of the Fabergé brand is so complicated you’d need a MBA to follow it.

Basically it came down to this: before the Russian revolution Fabergé created sixty-something jeweled eggs considered by the art-collecting world to be unparalleled and close to priceless. Up until 2015 no incarnation of Fabergé had created anything comparable. But in 2015 all that had changed when, according to Wikipedia, Fabergé recreated its tradition of designing eggs for the Al-Fardan family of Qatar.

The new Pearl Egg had been created with pearls acquired by the Al-Fardan family as part of their pearl business in the Persian Gulf area. The egg’s mother-of-pearl exterior contained a superb, one-of-a-kind gray pearl of more than 12 carats, sourced from the Persian Gulf. The carved rock crystal and mother-of-pearl shell were inset with 139 white pearls and 3,305 diamonds. A delicate, invisible mechanism rotated the egg on its base, simultaneously opening the shell in six sections to reveal the treasure.

Meh. Not like the good old days.

The fact that purists claimed this modern egg could not begin to compare to the workmanship and value of the pre-revolution eggs gives you something of an idea about how amazing those original eggs were. And why their collectors might be viewed as just a little bit insane.

A lot insane.

Great-Uncle V. was rumored to own three of the famous Imperial eggs—the eggs created specifically for the Russian Tsars—the Pansy, the Diamond Trellis and the Third Imperial Egg.

Aristov neither admitted nor denied these rumors, but I thought it was probably safe to assume he would be in the market for any Fabergé eggs that might be floating around the fringes of London’s art world black market. And by extension, I thought there was a good chance Bella had also been interested in Fabergé eggs.

So...that was all interesting, but what did it actually mean? What did any of that have to do with me? Specifically, why would this Vispilio character come after me?

If anyone knew for a fact I was completely out of the loop, it would be Mr. Vispilio.

A lot—maybe most—of those original Fabergé eggs belonged to collectors or museums in the United States. My theory was Bella had hired Vispilio to steal one of these eggs, and she had hired or acquired Ray and Norman as backup. Ray was clearly destined to be muscle. If Norman was the Norman Maurois suggested by Grigori, then he was an art dealer, and that was bound to be useful to Bella’s plans, whatever those plans had ultimately been.

That was one big question right there. What had Bella planned on doing with a Fabergé egg? Had she merely inherited the family mania or was she intending to sell it—perhaps to her great-uncle? I remembered the way Aristov’s eyes had lit up at the mention of the egg.

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