The Property of a Lady - Elizabeth Adler [51]
Sofia had said it would be unwise to linger in Constantinople; the city was full of Russian agents and they must move on. Missie had been sent to buy them new clothes, simple, cheap, and serviceable, and within days they were at Sirkeci Station boarding the Orient Express en route for Vienna.
They had held their breath as the inspector checked their tickets and travel documents endlessly. But then he had smiled, handed back their papers, and clipped their tickets. “Bon voyage,” he had said, patting Azaylee’s head as they filed through the gate onto the platform.
Sofia held Azaylee’s hand and Missie carried a small cardboard valise containing their new clothes and the Ivanoff tiara hidden beneath a pile of underwear. “If all else is lost,” she had told herself, “we shall still have the tiara. It is our insurance policy for our new life.”
They were elated as the train finally departed, settling into the uncomfortable second-class compartment and telling each other they were finally free. But their troubles were not yet over. The Russian secret police were patrolling the train and their papers were inspected at great length at Kapikule and again at Belgrade, where the stony-faced guards returned them reluctantly as if disappointed to find nothing wrong.
“It’s no good,” Sofia had said. “If they catch us, they will kill us. And you too, Missie, even though you have no real part in Russia’s drama.” She had thrust a wad of money into her hand. “Take it,” she had whispered, “go home to England, milochka, while you can. You are only a young girl, all your life is before you. Forget what has happened, forget the Ivanoffs. Please, I beg of you, go home.”
Missie had stared at the money and then at the rolling Serbian countryside flashing past the window, thinking longingly of Oxford’s beautiful colleges and pretty cobbled streets, the familiar bookshops and the tearooms, and beyond, the green expanse of the Cotswolds. Then she had glanced at Azaylee playing happily with her new Turkish doll and asked herself how she could leave an old woman and a child to fend for themselves.
Sofia had shaken her head despairingly when she had refused. “God knows what will become of us all,” she had whispered tiredly.
Their hazardous journey had continued through Hungary to Budapest and finally to Vienna, where they had taken cheap lodgings behind the Opera House and soon discovered that there was a large transient community of White Russian emigrés. Sofia was still afraid but Missie talked to them in the coffeehouses and learned from them where the best places were to sell valuables such as icons and jewelry, and that they could not expect fair prices because the dealers knew the market was flooded with Russian refugees in dire need of money and were exploiting the situation, just the way the Chinese had in Constantinople. They told her there was no work and that many noble-born people were living in poverty; the lucky ones had found jobs as doormen in nightclubs or as waiters. They said it was even worse in Paris, that the Cheka were everywhere, searching out noble refugees who had managed to slip their net. Every day, they said, you heard of someone else who had just “disappeared.” Vienna was no longer safe for those with something to hide, nor was Paris.
Sofia removed all of the smaller diamonds from the sunburst tiara and sold them cheaply, and with money again in their pockets, they began their long slow trek through Austria to the Italian coast, where they booked the cheapest passage to New York.
The Leonardo, out of Genoa bound for New York, was on its final voyage. It was old, its engines were obsolete, its fittings worn, and its furnishings shabby, but for two short weeks it was their refuge. Five months had passed since they had fled from Varishnya, where, lying in the forest, Missie had thought she was going to die. “I am only eighteen,” she had told herself then. “I’m too young to die.” Now she knew she wanted to live and she would begin her life right there, in New York.
Her long brown hair escaped from its black ribbon, blowing