She was very quiet as she sat in the cabin reading, and glanced over at Vladimir occasionally. He was in constant contact with Russian intelligence and antiterrorist details, and finally after three days, he got a call at four in the morning. Vladimir said very little, and listened, and then spoke in Russian. His questions and responses were curt, but Natasha understood what it meant.
“How many?…Do you think that’s all of them?…The answer to that is simple…kill them. Now. Don’t wait.” He listened again for several minutes, agreed with whoever he was talking to, and hung up. Natasha didn’t dare ask him any questions, and in the dim light of their night lamp, Vladimir looked murderous as he lay in bed and thought about it. And then Natasha fell asleep. In the morning, the wind had finally died down, and she could feel that they were moving.
“Where are we going?” she asked Vladimir when he came back into the room. He had gotten up while she was asleep, and had been awake for hours. He looked more peaceful than he had the night before. But Natasha couldn’t get the conversation she’d heard out of her head. He had given the order to have someone killed, probably the people who were after them, but it was upsetting nonetheless. She had never seen this side of him before.
“Back to Corsica, to stay out of the way for a little while, until everything calms down. The problem is over,” he said quietly, “as of an hour ago, but it’s always good to be sure. And after this we might go to Croatia, Turkey, or Greece. But we might not have to.” He smiled at her then and seemed more like the man she knew, not the frightening stranger she had seen in the past few days. “No shopping for a while. I want you to stay on the boat.” She nodded and went to put on white jeans and a T-shirt and one of the uniform windbreakers the female crew wore on the boat, with the insignia of Princess Marina. It had been a terrifying few days, while Natasha prayed that neither of them would be killed. It brought home to her just how high the stakes were in his new deal, and she wondered if a threat like this was likely to happen again, but she didn’t dare ask him. She didn’t want to upset him further.
Everything calmed down during the five days they spent in Corsica. Several of the crew members took her fishing, and she went swimming several times a day. Vladimir let her go sunbathing while he stayed in his office, in constant contact with intelligence services and the president of Russia, but a week after it had started, the problem was over.
Vladimir took her to Portofino, where they went shopping, and he took her to dinner onshore at a simple pasta restaurant in the port that she loved. They kept six bodyguards with them just in case, and she knew that they were armed. And then they went back to the boat. They had moved back into their cabin, and everything appeared normal except that their security guards were still carrying machine guns on the boat—just to be sure, Vladimir explained to her. “We’re not in danger now.” And she knew by then from what she’d overheard that five people in Russia had been killed in retaliation.
They floated around Portofino for a few days, and all the reports Vladimir got were good, and then they motored back to the South of France. It had been a frightening time. Ten people in all had been killed, the five victims and their five attackers. She was just grateful that she and Vladimir weren’t among them. But she knew as they reached Antibes that she would never feel totally safe again.
Chapter 5
When Gabriel came back to the South of France, he had a surprise for Maylis. He had planned a little trip for them to one of their favorite cities. He wanted to take her to Florence for a week, before the restaurant got too busy during the summer and it got too hot in Italy. June seemed like the perfect month to travel. The only problem for her was that she needed Theo to agree to take her place at Da Lorenzo, and he seemed to be working very hard these days. She had hardly seen him.
She called Theo as soon as Gabriel told her about the trip, and left it up to him.
“I’m so sorry to do that to you, I know you hate standing in for me. But I’d feel bad telling Gabriel that I can’t take the trip. Our trips together mean so much to him.”
“They should mean a lot to you too,” Theo scolded her, and for once he didn’t complain about working at the restaurant for a week. He was secretly hoping that Vladimir and Natasha would come in again. He said nothing about it to his mother, but he accepted willingly. His only caveat was that he was showing two of his paintings with a New York gallery, at the Masterpiece London art fair in late June. They wanted to include his work in their exhibit, although they didn’t represent him, but they might want to in the future. And he wanted to be there to see how they hung his work and the rest of the fair, and make sure his work was well displayed. It was a new gallery for him. He hadn’t signed a contract with them, but he was pleased to show his work with them.
“I promise we’ll be back in time,” Maylis said when he gave her the dates, and she was very grateful that he was willing to cover for her. And so was Gabriel when she told him the good news. She had bought him a beautiful gold watch at Cartier, to thank him for the painting sale he had negotiated, since he no longer took a commission, and he loved it. He loved everything that Maylis gave him, and as unaware as she sometimes was, singing Lorenzo’s praises, she was nonetheless very generous with him. And Gabriel never complained when she talked about her late husband, since he had loved him too.
Gabriel went to visit Theo at his studio, and immediately saw the portrait of Natasha on the easel. It was nearly finished, although Theo insisted he still had to add some final touches. It was a remarkable piece of work, and Gabriel concurred with Marc that it was one of his best.