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But Anna had refused. She said Tariq Pasha had already repaid the Kazahn debt of honor and this was her responsibility. And then she had told Leyla about the jewels.

It had all seemed so easy, the way she explained it, and when the diamond had sold so easily, they had dared to go further. Leyla had quite fancied her role as courier, slinking around Bangkok in dark glasses and making deals with the shady Mr. Abyss. Now she knew that had been the easy part. The hard part was yet to come: She had to face Kazahn Pasha’s wrath alone.

Düsseldorf

The Arnhaldt mansion dominated the forested landscape, towering over the trees from the crown of its hill like a great gray mausoleum. It had been built by Ferdie’s great-great-grandfather as a tribute to himself and the success that, in 1825, had taken him from his mother’s smalltown drapery business to the pinnacle of fortune as one of Germany’s elite new steel barons.

By the time he had made his fortune and gained his title, Ferdinand Arnhaldt had had enough of making do with cheap gimmickry. He had built his mansion to last. It was of solid gray stone, with turrets and battlements, arched gothic windows and columned porticos, surrounded by gardens in the French style but lacking their charm and by hundreds of acres of parkland and forest. Indoors, the walls were paneled in rich woods; there were marble floors and onyx fireplaces, a carved Jacobean oak staircase taken from an English manor, and tall stained-glass windows that let in little light, giving it a gloomy, churchlike atmosphere.

Ferdie Arnhaldt sat in the oak-paneled study that had been his great-grandfather’s, his grandfather’s, and his own father’s, in the same big burgundy leather swivel chair they had sat in, at the same massive partners’ desk they had once used. On a pad of dark velvet in front of him lay the emerald. There was no question in his mind that it was the Ivanoff jewel, and the fact that it had been cut and that he had paid a great deal of money for it did not give him any cause for concern. In fact he considered it a triumph: Hadn’t he snatched it from beneath the very noses of the competition? And the competition was as tough as they came. What did worry him was that he was over nine million dollars poorer and the identity of the “Lady” was still a mystery. The auctioneers had said they didn’t know and the Siss bank refused to tell him.

The metal castors on the chair screeched as he pushed it back, and he made a mental note to inform the housekeeper of the fact. The Arnhaldt household had always been run like clockwork, and he was not about to let standards slip. He could still remember his great-grandmother firing the butler for not being quick enough at opening the door when her automobile drew up outside. The fact that the man had been with the family for twenty years and suffered from arthritis had concerned her not at all. “I will tolerate nothing but the best,” she had snapped when his father had protested that he liked the butler and he was used to him. “If he is no longer the best then he goes.” And he had, only to be replaced by a succession of new butlers, none of whom could live up to his great-grandmother’s tyrannical demands, nor to the old butler’s qualities.

Still, Ferdie had learned his lessons young, and even today, when good staff was harder to find, it was impossible for him to let such things as a table improperly set or a telltale layer of dust on the tops of the picture frames or squeaking castors go without comment. He knew he was not popular with his household staff, or with his workforce at the five huge Arnhaldt engineering factories and at the ironworks, the smelting plants, the foundries, and the offices. He knew what they whispered about him: “The steely image of his father,” they said, “and the iron fist of his great-grandmother.” It was true, he did look like his father: the same light-blue eyes and blond hair brushed neatly back from the broad brow,