Six months after the demise of President John F. Kennedy, Rupen Ademian was back in Italy, but in an entirely different capacity, this time around. The American Civil War Centennial had bred a thriving market for shooting reproductions of nineteenth-century caplock weapons—ranging up from Philadelphia derringers to full-size field cannon—and his firm had sent him over to try to strike a deal with certain of his contacts in the Italian arms manufactories involving production of these reproduction weapons at a cost less than that charged to them by American arms companies, with their millstones of higher overheads and production costs, and grasping, predatory unions.
Rupen was authorized to place orders for revolving pistols of .36 and .44 caliber, a revolving, fixed-stock carbine of .44 caliber, and a .58 caliber rifled musket in two barrel lengths, to start; he also was to keep eyes and ears peeled for anyone with a good idea for faster, cheaper, and safer production of musket and pistol percussion caps.
Bagrat Ademian had become a fanatic enthusiast of black-powder, muzzle-loading shooting, driving or flying off weekend after weekend to meets and shoots and encampments all over the country. His had been the idea—and a very profitable one it had been—to develop a sideline of reproduction bayonets, powder flasks, bullet molds, cap boxes, and other accessories which were sold through the old mail-order retail outlet.
Now, Bagrat wanted his own line of firearms, but the bids he had solicited from American manufacturers had slammed right through the ceiling, and he had strongly doubted that he could have unloaded them even had he sold them at a hefty loss. That had been when he had started to chivvy Rupen into accompanying him to black-powder shooting exhibitions.
At the first, his elder brother had been very skeptical of an involvement of the firm. “Look Bagrat, in another year, this whole Civil War thing will be just a memory, and there we’ll be, stuck with a carload or two of cheap reproduction charcoal burners that won’t even have any collector value. Unless you were thinking of doctoring them to look like originals? Is that what you have on your devious, Yankee-Armenian mind, little brother? Or were you of a mind to convert them all to floor lamps and bookends, huh?”
But gradually, Bagrat had won him over. “Look, Rupen, what you’ve seen is just the tip of the iceberg, man! Its thousands of black-powder buffs don’t belong to clubs or teams or anything, and others—lots of ’em—that collect re-pros and never shoot ’em, because they’re priced out of collecting the originals. Then there’s rich collectors who buy repros so they won’t be tempted to try and shoot their real ones and blow them up, like as not. There’s real moneybags, even, pays an outfit down in Tennessee to cast cannons for ’em—shooting-type cannons.”
“What, pray tell, do these nuts use for ammunition?” asked Rupen dryly, “Old bowling balls?”
“Aw, naw,” replied Bagrat, dead serious. “The cannons ain’t that big. Mosta ’em shoots frozen orange juice cans fulla concrete; the bigger ones uses beer cans.”
“So you want me to stump all over Europe looking up bellfounders, eh? Listen, Bagrat, there are people over there who do not like me at all, but at least they all consider me to be sane, as of now. If 1 start soliciting bids on casting bronze muzzle-loading cannon, the next thing you’re likely to hear is that I’m in a soft room in Switzerland, courtesy of my European friends.”
“No, no, Rupen, I don’t want bids on cannons . . . well, not yet. anyhow,” Bagrat assured him. Then he told him exactly what he did want to start, queried the vastly experienced Rupen as to the best possible bets for reproducing the weapons, and, after some lengthy and detailed discussion, agreed with him that Italian firms might be what was needed in this instance.
Despite Rupen’s misgivings, despite fierce competition for the American market from subsidiaries of massive Interarmco, up in Alexandria, Virginia, and a veritable host of others, the first shipments of Italian-made reproductions sold like the proverbial hotcakes, and the newest branch of the Ademian Enterprises tree. Confederate States Armaments, was off with flying colors.
The eldest Ademian brother had managed to acquire only about twelve percent of the Rappahannock operations in the ten years he had worked for it, but most all of his traveling had been paid by the firm or reimbursed to him later; the vast purchasing power of the U.S. dollar worldwide in the fifties and early sixties had always assured him of first-class accommodations at very reasonable dollar rates on those things he had himself paid, and what with salary, commissions, dividends on his little block of stock, and a few gifts that various customers had pressed on him over the years, he had managed over the decade past to sock away a fair chunk of money, which, as it turned out, was a damned good thing.
For Kogh Ademian, president and chairman of the board of Ademian Enterprises, Incorporated, was dead-set against CSA from the very outset. “Look, fellas, we’re doing damn good on the damn international arms deals, so it’s no need at all for us to keep peddling old guns or new ones, either, by mail around the damn country. Just remember that damn crazy Commie bastard Oswald shot poor John Kennedy with a fuckin’ Carcano 6.5mm carbine—thank God it wasn’t one / imported! Though for all any of us know, it was our ammo the murderin’ lunatic used—and you can bet your sweet tootsie that the damn liberals in Congress aren’t gonna rest til they’ve got it made illegal to sell imported guns to anybody ‘cept cops and the military. Then, I’ll give you odds these damn socialist one-worlder bastards keeps on pushing to where it’ll be illegal for most Americans to even own a gun of any kind.
“So if you wanta do this crazy thing, Bagrat, you better figger on doin’ it without one cent of Ademian Enterprises backing, you hear me?”
Thus, Rupen cleaned out his various accounts of all save a bit under fifty-seven thousand dollars, but he came into Confederate States Armaments, Inc., as a full partner and the executive vice-president of the new firm. He it was who persuaded a not unwilling Bagrat that, as they now were in no way, shape, or form connected to Ademian Enterprises, it might be to their best business interests to move the operation to another part of the state, and what better location for a firm playing upon the Confederate States theme than a location or at least a mailing address in the city that had been the capital of the Confederate States of America: Richmond.
Boghos—now grown chubby and jowly—and Mariya—still slim and toothsome as a girl, despite four children and a regimen of truly epicurean meals—would not hear of his staying at a hotel while looking for a location for Confederate States Armaments in Richmond or its environs. Rupen accepted the hositality with not a little trepidation. It had been around fifteen years since he had lived in a stable, home-type environment with relatives, and he was not at all certain that he could readapt, or sure that he wanted to do so.
Not that he thought he would be in any way cramped in the home of his sister and brother-in-law, fof Boghos’s lucrative medical practice, his astute investments, and the goodly chunk of Ademian Enterprises stock willed to Mariya by her mother had combined to give the family a current net worth of between three and five million dollars, and their present house reflected it.
The house sat on a bluff above the James River. There were two master suites and six bedrooms, each with a private bath. The eight other rooms in the main house included a spacious parlor and formal dining room with a butler’s pantry connecting it to the huge kitchen, a family room, a library, a music room, Boghos’s study, and a sprawling, tile-floored Florida room for Mariya’s legions of plants. Pantry, freezer lockers, and wine cellar were in the basement and connected to the kitchen by both stairs and a dumbwaiter. The basement also housed the laundry room and Boghos’s big-game trophies and guns and cameras.
When Boghos had finished showing him through the two-and-a-half-story brick mansion, Rupen’s first comment was, Talk about flaunting what you got, Brother Boghos, you live in a testament to visible affluence, you know that? I know you’ve got a chef, but how many other servants does it take to keep this museum shipshape? I know Mariya couldn’t possibly do it all alone.”
“Stephanie, the housekeeper, is the wife of Etienne, the chef you just met,” replied Boghos. We had them before this place was even built, but now they live here, on the grounds, in that brick bungalow you passed as you drove in; they’re Algerian-French and more old friends than mere employees. Stephanie has a couple of nigra girls to help her five days a week.