“Just enough to make me think, when Mr. Griffith telephoned, that it could be exactly what my investors in the Artists Syndicate are looking for.”

ISAAC BELL ENJOYED A FLIRTATIOUS lunch with Irina Viorets while making it clear he was a one-woman man, and Marion was that one woman. But he had the strong impression that Irina’s smiles, flashing eyes, and light touches on his arm were more for show than intent.

“I meant to ask on the ship, how do you happen to speak such interesting English? Sometimes you sound almost like a native-born American.”

“Almost, but not quite. Though I’m improving. It is a wondrous language.”

“How did you learn it?”

“In Petersburg my father played the piano at the American embassy. I had many friends among the children.”

For some reason, thought Isaac Bell, that was a story he wanted Van Dorn Research to verify. In fact, there was something about this whole setup that rang a little false. Perhaps it was just the incredible speed with which Irina’s good fortune had unfolded, or perhaps the detective’s nemesis, coincidence. Or maybe it was simply a memory of Marion saying that Irina’s story about fleeing the Okhrana changed with each glass of wine, though there was no wine at this lunch, merely orange juice and water.

“When was that?”

“Let me think,” she said. “Oh, Isaac, it’s embarrassing how long ago that was. Bloody Nicholas hadn’t taken the throne.”

“Before, when was that, 1894?”

“Not too far before,” Irina said, her full lips parting in a warm smile. “Allow a woman a certain latitude with her age.”

“Forgive me,” Bell smiled back, satisfied that Grady Forrer—the brilliant head of Van Dorn Research, a large man in whose presence barroom brawls tended to peter out quickly and a hound dog of a tracker—would soon put the question to American embassy officers who had served in Russia when Czar Alexander III still reigned.

“Tell me, Irina, will you miss directing pictures now that you’re running the whole show?”

“Will I miss positioning the camera and waiting for the sun for hours so I may transfer full beauty to the negative? Yes, very much. Will I miss a banker who lent me the money to position the camera for hours telling me that it would be better if I positioned it there, instead of there? No! Not one bit. Now my only ‘boss’ is the Artists Syndicate, and they are three thousand miles away in New York.”

“Who are the investors in the Artists Syndicate?”

“The syndicate is closely held. I met none of them. I don’t even know their names.”

“Why do you suppose they are so secretive?”