John Ringo: Kildar

Vadim led him to a door on the south side, then down a short corridor to another heavyset door with a locking bar on the house side. Beyond that was a long corridor with doors on either side that led to an open area that was more or less circular. There was a stairway spiraling up on the west side and a balcony circling the room with more doors off of it. On the south side of the room was a heavy door with metal filigree on it and barred windows following the line of the balcony. The floor was marble, in much better condition than in the foyer, and the walls were tiled in mosaics. Many of the tiles had fallen off but they appeared to depict pastoral scenes of woodlands and fields with wild animals and cattle browsing placidly. In the center of the room was a fountain but there was no visible furniture.

“Harem?” Mike asked after a moment.

“You figured it out,” Vadim said, nodding. “It was the Ottoman harem quarters. The commissar used it for barracks.”

“Silly commissar,” Mike said, looking around. “Does the fountain work?”

“No, more’s the pity,” Vadim said. “The door leads to a walled garden. Very nice. Even has fruit trees. Needs to be cleaned up, though.”

“I’m looking at it, not buying it,” Mike said, turning back to the main house.

The second floor had the best bedrooms, fourteen in total, and four bathrooms, including the one off the master suite. The master suite was on the south side and had glass doors that led to a balcony. From the balcony Mike could look down into the garden of the harem and out across the valley. It was covered and fairly deep so there was only a light dusting of snow.

There was furniture in some of the rooms, but with the exception of the master suite it could better be described as “ruined” rather than “antique.” And the few bits which were in good condition, including in the master suite, were Soviet era. From experience, Mike knew the beds and chairs would be uncomfortable as hell.

“Bit much for even a casual stay,” Mike noted as they walked back down to the foyer.

“There are more bedrooms for servants on the third floor,” Vadim said, shrugging. “And an attic that’s packed with rubbish. The cellars are as well, as I mentioned. But it’s awfully interesting, don’t you think?”

“Very,” Mike admitted. “You can tell it was renovated by the tsars at least. But the foundations aren’t Russian or Ottoman. I don’t know why I can tell that but they’re not.”

“No,” Vadim said. “I think the building was originally more of a fort. Look closely at the windows on the ground floor; I think they were chiseled out at some point. Probably the upper stories were rebuilt or renovated by the Ottomans to make it more of a house.”

“This foyer isn’t Ottoman,” Mike said, looking at the flying buttresses. There were six of them, made of sandstone that had been later reinforced in patches with concrete. But the base sandstone in places still had a trace of carvings. They had been very deep but time had worn them away, especially at levels where hands could touch. The best description he could come up with was “lace.” They definitely weren’t grape-vines although there were some bits of that in there. In a few places it was clear that something had been chiseled out and roughly sanded over. From the shape it might have been crosses.

Mike took a bit more of a look around, finding a large room in the south wing that was on the opposite corner from the harem. It had high windows that let in a fair bit of light and had once had fixtures on the walls.

“Library,” Mike said, shaking his head. “Even the bookshelves were removed. I wonder why?”

“The Soviets probably didn’t like the books,” Vadim said, shrugging. “They might have cut up the bookshelves for firewood for that matter. And used the books for kindling.”

Mike suddenly had a vision of the room filled back up with books. SEALs were generally thought of as slope-browed adrenaline junkies, but he’d found them to be well above the norm in intelligence. And he, personally, liked books. But he also could see using it for a workout room. He missed workouts; he hadn’t been able to do any regular ones since leaving the states.

The place was way, way, way more than he’d ever need. He had no family and, given his security situation, no interest in starting one. And this was the home of a feudal lord, not a former SEAL. It was designed to hold dozens of servants and hangers on, not to mention guards.

On the other hand… it would be a damned good place to go to ground. Nobody would be looking for the guy named “Ghost” in this remote spot. And the place was designed for defense. The long yard on the south side would make an adequate pistol and short-distance rifle range. There was plenty of room for workout equipment. Weapons would be easy enough to obtain, legally or illegally, and if Vadim wasn’t willing to be on the take he was a monkey’s uncle. He’d turn a blind eye to anything short of a tank that Mike “obtained” and he might not even blink at a tank.

“How much…” Mike said, then paused and shrugged. “How much do you think the bank wants for this place?”

“A million dollars?” Mike said, his eyes wide. It was far less than he’d expect to pay in the states or western Europe, but in Georgia that was beyond a fortune. And the location was unusual to be asking that much money for a half-ruined fort.

“The caravanserai is entailed with the farms in the valley,” Mr. Mironov said, shrugging. “It cannot be sold without including those farms.”

“What about the farmers?” Mike asked. “The Keldara.”

“They are tenants,” Mironov replied, shrugging again. “They pay rent in a portion of the crops to the owner of the caravanserai. One of the reasons I’d like to get it off my books is that they’re not very good farmers; the farms are not very productive at least.”

“With nothing but horse-drawn plows what do you expect?” Mike asked disparagingly.

“I tried to get permission to purchase better equipment,” Mironov said, defensively. “But the bank owners considered it just pouring good money after bad.”

“Well, I don’t want to be the lord to a bunch of sharecroppers,” Mike said, shaking his head. “I don’t know anything about running farms.”

“There is an overseer,” Mironov pointed out.

“I believe you met him at the tavern,” Vadim said dryly. “Otar Tarasova. Large loud fellow. Hard to miss.”

“I can imagine how well the Keldara work for him,” Mike said, looking at Mironov. “I’m really not interested in becoming a gentleman farmer.”

“It is a pity,” Mironov said, sadly. “Frankly, the million is simply to clear the debts on the farm. We bought it as a lot with a number of other properties from the government and haven’t been able to unload it. Among other things, the way that it’s entailed it cannot be broken up. Buy the caravanserai and you get the valley. But nobody wants both.”

“Hold on,” Mike said. “The whole valley? For a million dollars?”

“Euros,” Mironov pointed out. “But, yes. The whole valley.”

Mike leaned back in his chair and steepled his fingers for a moment, tapping the balls and thinking. A million dollars was a lot of money to most people, but he had thirty mil, close enough, just sitting around. Okay, euros, say a million and a half. Most of it was invested here and there but the investments had been going well. In fact, he probably could close out everything and walk away with more than thirty mil. And it was a bunch of land.

But that led to the question of the Keldara. If he bought the land he’d feel a very real sense of responsibility about a bunch of red-neck farmers. But, then again, there was that one farmer’s daughter…