The Shah twin diamond. Detective. V. Speys
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Igor took a glass, stirred a drink with a glass.
– Well, now, you can feel the full sweetness of this drink. – And brought the glass clinking glasses with me, – Come on for friendship.
– For friendship! I repeated.
«You know; I won’t open your cognac.» We will now go down to the wine cellar, and I will put this bottle among Armenian cognacs in place of this cognac. Let stored for a long memory.
We also had a drink and had a bite of stuffed fish, which Igor ordered yesterday from a friend of his grandfather’s cook in an Armenian restaurant. The fish was delivered by a waiter in a passenger car, who refused to charge, citing the fact that the cook strictly ordered no charge. Igor said that the cook he knew was a friend of his grandfather, and that they had once fought together.
– Igor, have you tried to engage in your family business directly?
«How do you imagine that?» he asked in surprise.
«Well, by repairing the safes, opening the locks of the apartments, the owners of which accidentally slam the door and cannot get there.»
– You know that such a business is under special control of law enforcement agencies. Every month, I’ll tire of reporting to the tax office, taking permission to open a safe or apartment, and filling out declarations. And in general, more trouble than earning.
– Well, okay, you can still try, participate in any auction. If only the old safe of Catherine the Great.
«For two and a half million dollars?» – Igor said calmly. My hair moved on my head from such an amount.
«Well, this is an antique relic and belonged to your grandfather.»
«It’s not exactly what you think, Valentine.» Grandfather took this safe from Berlin, from a bombed house where our soldiers entered. Grandfather served in the quartermaster service for the export of stolen works of art from Germany. And this safe was delivered to my grandfather for repair, with subsequent transfer to the authorities after its restoration.
«And why did he get stuck here with you?»
– After the restoration, the grandfather turned to different authorities, even went to the historical museum with a request to hand over the relic. But everyone dismissed and did not even want to listen to him. So he took root with us. Imagine we stick with him at an auction. An heir will appear there and for a fee, a meager compared to its real value, he will take it for himself and he will already sell the safe at a decent price. Tell me do you need it?
– Yes of course. I heard that there are many clandestine antique buyers.
– Listen, Valentine, even so, everything is controlled by criminals. And if I declare the true value of the relics, as soon as they are found, the competent sculpted the papers, and will be taken away without delay, I don’t dare to dare to say about the price of this safe.
– And who knows about the values stored here?
– Sanzhik Sarkisovich, this is a grandfather’s friend, a cook. The rest are no longer alive.
«Have you told anyone about this?»
«No, of course, my grandmother, when she was still alive, reminded me of this almost every day.»
«And what prompted you to tell me about these antique relics?»
«I don’t have a friend like my grandfather had, and for some reason you turned out to be such that I can trust you.»
– I can keep my mouth shut so that you were not mistaken.
Igor filled his glasses again.
– Let’s drink for it.
We had a drink. Suddenly the doorbell rang. Igor ran to the door, looked through the peephole.
Then he returned to the kitchen.
«This is my mother’s boyfriend.» Apparently she chatted to him about the cellar.
Outside the door there was a knock on the door and a drunken grunt.
– Open, puppy. Your mother sent me, said that I brought a bottle from the cellar. This is her legacy.
Igor ran to the door and said, without opening the lock: – I’ll call the police and they will put you for hooliganism. Do you want?!
«No, you dare not.»
– Even as I dare! Get away from here! I give three minutes!
There were shuffling steps behind the door, calming in the distance.
– Gone? I asked for order.
– Still, the former prisoner had recently served for hooliganism. Here again for the old.
– Well, Igor, hold on. If they get it, then you can live with me, my mother will be glad. We have a three room apartment. We can provide you one, until all this has died down. Tell me, in the apartment, are there any values?
– No, all the valuables are demolished in the wine cellar. There a couple of Faberge eggs, grandfather brought from Germany, this safe in the corridor. But no one can take it out, because they dismantled the wall to bring it in, then they laid it, a heavy thing, you can’t take it without a crane.
– And in the wine cellar, how?
– There is a special door with double metal armor and a special hard alloy fireproof. So no cutting will take either gas or mechanical. Well, I’m not talking about castles. Come, I will show you my treasures. I got up, took a sip and drained my glass.
He led me to his room and to the wall that I saw in a dream with a portrait of a gray-haired man in a tailcoat. In the corner was a wardrobe. Igor went to the closet.
«Valentine help me push it aside.»
We rested, moved the closet to the side. A massive oak door opened. Igor with the key that he found on the bunch, opened the lock, and we were on the steps leading down. Having descended below the first floor, we stumbled upon a metal door, like a bomb shelter. Igor inserted a long key into the upper well and turned, there was a click, I heard the same click when he turned the key in the lower well of the lock. Then with two hands he began to rotate the wheel sticking out in the center of the door. The oval block of metal slowly opened, forming a fairly wide gap through which we penetrated into the dark basement room. Igor flicked a switch. A light flashed, and a gaze opened up to the space, completely laden with shelves with dust-covered bottles. In the center of the room was a safe on an antique table. Igor opened the lock of the safe with two keys, then the door. Two Faberge eggs stood on a shelf, illuminated by a safe bulb.
– These are two scripts of the famous jeweler Faberge. Nobody knows about these scripts where they are, and who keeps them in their secret collection. And in the closed compartment, in the upper part there is a famous diamond, lost in the Middle Ages. He is called differently by the Star of the East, and Aladdin, and there are still names. – With these words, Igor opened the upper part and took out a red velvet box from there. In it, with all the colors of the rainbow, a transparent rectangular diamond sparkled with a length of about thirty to forty millimeters, a side height of about eleven millimeters. The body of the diamond was engraved in Arabic script.
– This treasure that you hold in your hands is priceless! I exclaimed with admiration. «You, brother, are the richest man in the world!»
– Wow! But I didn’t think that it was so. – Igor smiled.
«Does Grandpa’s friend know about this?» I asked warningly.
– Sanzhik Sarkisovich, no, only I know about it, and now you will know.
«I am worried about these criminal elements your mother is with.» This is where the danger lies.
– Well, in the