Rupen and Bagrat, however, ran into problems almost immediately. The cases of arms were stacked in the paint-smelly rooms of the old house. All of the Richmond, Virginia, area is generally damp to one degree or another, and this area, not too far removed from the river, was especially so, and moisture in the air breeds rust on iron and steel, verdigris on copper and brass. He and Bagrat and two newly hired employees spent one entire weekend at the strenuous, exceedingly messy job of opening crates, unpacking rifles and pistols, coating all the metal surfaces with Cosmoline, then repacking them. Another weekend went to shrink-packing smaller items—powder flasks, bullet molds, reproduction brass belt buckles, hat badges and insignia—in plastic with tiny packets of silica gel.
The initial shipment thus protected, Rupen fired off a cable to the manufacturers requesting similar protective packing for all of the shipments yet to come. Advertising of various natures had been commenced as soon as the two brothers had obtained an area post office box and orders were already trickling in even as the arms crates were winched up out of the holds of the ship. In the beginning, these were mostly on the basis of Bagrat Ademian’s presidency of the company—he being well known in muzzle-loading circles around the country—but the Italian firms contracted by Rupen were producing a quality product, the weapons were well finished, handsomely fitted, and straight-shooting, so soon they were virtually selling themselves to people who had never before met or heard of Bagrat Ademian.
Slightly less than one year after commencing operations, the two knew that the business was a success, and Bagrat left Rupen in sole charge while he was back north to move his family and effects down and into a house he had rented from Boghos, who had started to dabble in real-estate investments. As soon as he and they were back in Richmond and settled, it was Rupen’s turn to leave … for Italy, to award new contracts and arrange for the manufacture of additional items to supplement their line of reproduction weapons and accessories. He also took along a want list of certain weapons-related oddities and rarities desired by one or more of his private file of wealthy American collectors, just on the off chance.
“Flintlock?” yelped Bargrat, holding up one of the roughed-out prototype weapons he had just uncrated. “Are you outa your frigging mind, Rupen? They didn’t use no flintlocks in the fucking Civil War!”
“How would you know?” asked Rupen mildly. “I would imagine that did we know as much as you seem to think you do, those poor, ill-armed bastards of the Confederate States Army used any damned thing they could lay hands to, especially toward the end of the war. But that’s neither here nor there, little brother; that’s not why I got that prototype and a firm quotation.
“We’re doing very well now, even though the actual Civil War Centennial is fast winding down. Apparently, we and the other arms companies that are in this repro business just happened to tap a market that had been lying dormant and unsuspected for years. But, as the song says, there are even bigger things still ahead.
“Think, Bagrat. In about ten years, the Bicentennial of the American Revolution will be celebrated, and. brother, they did use flintlocks in that war. I know—I took the time to read up on it. That’s the Brown Bess British musket you’re holding there. There’s also a Charleville French musket, a Pennsylvania-pattern rifle, and a couple of different flintlock pistols, too.”
Bagrat nodded and grinned, saying. “Now who’s the devious Yankee-Armenian, huh? This does look like a good piece, too.” He drew back the cock of the lock and raised the frizzen to expose the priming pan. “When we got everything uncrated, let’s see if we can find us some flints and cast some balls and drive out to the place near the airport and shoot these some.”
At the end of their second, record-breaking year of unprecedented sales, brother Kogh Ademian journeyed down to Richmond, hat in hand, visibly eating crow and insisting that it was a familial responsibility for Rupen and Bagrat to keep all the Ademian businesses in the family, not to mention taking advantage of the wealth and influence of his Ademian Enterprises, Incorporated.
So anxious was the family tycoon to get in on Confederate States Armaments that he put his normally knife-sharp brain into neutral and allowed his two brothers to horn-swoggle him ruthlessly. He wound up owning three-twelfths of Confederate States Armaments while Rupen and Bagrat both got back the shares in Rappahannock Arms that they had sold in order to finance Confederate States Armaments in the beginning, plus which the small Richmond firm also got access to the immense amounts of Ademian Enterprises’ lines of credit . . . none to soon, either, as it quickly developed early in the third year.
In early February, a section of the first floor of the main mansion collapsed one night, dumping tons of crated weapons into the cellar. A city building inspector gave the brothers the bad news: The contractor—by then bankrupt, out of business, and no longer residing in Virginia—had used substandard materials and done very shoddy work. However, the kind of support that they really needed were they to continue to put the old mansion to the kind of use they had in the past two years would call for such extensive remodeling that they would, should they attempt it at all, run afoul of the Historic Buildings types, which types already had contacted Rupen and Bagrat with complaints and thinly veiled threats relative to their “sacrilege.”
As the large, strong, modern reinforced-concrete-and-brick auto-parts warehouse next door (on the spot whereon had once stood the main mansion’s other wing) was just then for sale. Bagrat phoned a recital of their difficulties to Kogh. and shortly the warehouse had been acquired by Ademian Enterprises. Immediately all of the stock had been moved out of the mansion and into the new warehouse. Bagrat saw most of the clerical staff moved into the small suite of modern offices built into a front corner of said warehouse, leaving only the showrooms and executive offices in the remaining wing of the mansion.
“What are we going to do with that fucking white-ass elephant next door?” he demanded of Rupen. “I can’t see paying what the fuckers we talked to want to repair it just so’s it can sit there and collect more dust. You talked to those Historic Buildings snotnoses—what do we have to do to it to get them off our necks?”
Before his brother could frame an answer, Bagrat went on, “I tell you, Rupen, was that warehouse office a little bigger, I’d’ve moved ever damn thing from here down there. Have you noticed how . . . how weird this place is sometimes . . . ‘specially of nights or dark days? Lotsa times I’ve been working in my office or down here, I’ve got the feeling somebody’s come in and is standing, watching me, but ever time I’ve turned around, looked around, nobody’s been there. Doors seem to open and slam shut for no reason, some of them after they’ve been locked, too, and I’m not the onliest one who’s noticed things like that, either. Ever so often. I get the feeling that there’s a … a something or somebody here that don’t want me or any of the rest of us here.”
Recognizing the look in his elder brother’s eyes, Bagrat said in a defensive tone. “All right, all right, you can think I’m superstitious and nutty all you want to, Mr. Smartass, but I’ll tell you something I never told you before. While you was in Italy last time, I run into a feller trains and sells and rents out guard dogs, lives down in Chesterfield County somewhere, and he offered me a damn good deal on a guard dog to live here on weekends and keep the niggers and all from breaking in. But you know something? He couldn’t come up with a single one of his dogs would set foot on the front porch even, Rupen: and when he tried to drag some in. they fought him and whined and howled and damn near bit him, their trainer and handler, a coupla times. He was the first one told me this place is probably haunted. I didn’t believe him back then, but I sure Lord do. now. In fact. I’m beginning to wonder if half the places in this whole frigging town aren’t haunted, after what me and Rose and the kids went through out there in Boghos’s place on River Road.”
When Dr. Boghos Panoshian and family had moved to an estate overlooking the James River in Goochland County, they had not sold the executive brick home from which they moved, but rather had leased it. So well had they done on the lease that when another of the houses in the same neighborhood had come onto the market. Boghos had bought it and leased it, too. This second one had been leased to his brother-in-law, Bagrat, and his family of two teenagers and four younger children.