The Final Fabergé by Thomas Swan Read Free Book Online Page B

you to have, even on the night you were born.” He gave a warm, paternal smile. “You will be Mike when I go away.”
    Mike glanced quickly at his watch, then at the door to be certain it was closed, and sat back and sighed, the merest hint of an ironic smile on his lips. “Mikhail,” he whispered to himself.
    â€œI knew your mother also,” Akimov continued. “Anna was very pretty, and very proud of you. But there was a bad feeling between your mother and father, so deep it caused them to fall away from each other. Do you know?”
    â€œMy father was never good to her, always forgetting and getting drunk, spending money. There was nothing I could do.”
    â€œToo much of this.” Akimov lifted the bottle of vodka, then set it down noisily. “Do you know what happened to your father?”
    Mike’s eyes strayed from Akimov. “He was sent away, I never knew why. To a Central Asian country I recall.”
    â€œTo Uzbekistan. And for what reason? You know?”
    â€œI never wanted to know. Whatever little scraps of memory I have about my father I have tried to erase. He never knew I was sent to an orphanage, and that’s where they put me when I was eleven.” He turned back to Akimov. “I was in four of them until I ran away, and I kept running until I found my mother’s brother in London. I was fourteen. Did you know that?”
    Akimov nodded. “Yes, and much more. Shall I tell you?”
    Mike had picked up and put down his glass a half dozen times, and now took a long sip from it. The vodka burned going down and seemed to ignite into a ball of fire when it hit his stomach. “Tell me, Sasha.”
    â€œWhen you were about eight, a group of us were transferred to Petersburg. I was assigned to the same department with your father, but within half a year, he was working strictly by himself, including the paperwork that I had been responsible for. I discovered he had been parceling out a portion of each shipment of food received at the commissary, then transferring it to a warehouse in the city where a partner, a local merchant, sold it. They had been stealing meat, liquor, and cigarettes, selling to whoever paid the highest price, always in dollars. Your father was never caught, not for stealing food.” Akimov shook his head slowly. “They arrested him for murder.”
    Mike didn’t like what he was hearing. “Murder?” he said, disbelieving. “I was never told that. Who did he murder?”

    â€œYour father had made a lot of money, but he couldn’t mix any better with money than he could with vodka. I don’t know what happened between your father and his partner. I suspect the partner was cheating. Whatever it was, he was found with his throat cut, and your father was accused of murder. He was drunk when they arrested him. They say he confessed, but I never believed it. There was a military trial, secret as always. A week later I learned he had been given a lifetime assignment to a military department in Uzbekistan. It was like exile. I saw him briefly after the trial, and he would say nothing except he was innocent. Then he was gone.”
    â€œMy uncle never mentioned this.”
    â€œWhat could he know?” Akimov looked carefully at Mike. “He hated your father. Your mother told me that.”
    â€œHow is it that you know so much about my family?”
    â€œYour mother and I are both from Sochi, on the Black Sea. Our families had been friends and it was easy for her to talk to me. I think she liked that. It is also the reason I knew your uncle, though we only talked on the telephone. When the trouble between your mother and father began, she could not deal with matters, and spent days closed off, alone, talking to herself. The navy doctors tried to help and finally she was sent to an institution.”
    â€œMy uncle never told me what sickness she had. Only that she had been sent to a good