Page 135 of Gone Before Goodbye

You are correct. Oleg Ragoravich actively scrubbed a year ago.

He did not want any photos of him out there.

I have only found seven so far. More to come.

But Maggie doesn’t need more photographs. She sees it right away.

“Oh, shit,” she says out loud.

The Groutfit next to her stirs.

The photographs Sharon found are on the older side. At a quick glance, there’s nothing to see here.

Superficially.

It’s the third photograph, the clearest facial shot, that seals the deal for Maggie.

She’s seen this picture before, albeit in a very different form.

It’s an official-looking black-and-white portrait from the military. Maggie would guess that it’s thirty or forty years old, maybe more. Oleg Ragoravich is in uniform. He stares straight into the camera, his expression blank, a stone.

Oh, no. It can’t be.

It’s then that Maggie feels her phone vibrate with a text. It’s from Nadia:

Ivan Brovski just landed. He’s in France.

Nadia included a screenshot of a map. Maggie zooms in with her fingers. When she sees Brovski’s exact location, Maggie’s head starts spinning anew.

Damn, Maggie thinks.I had it wrong the whole time.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Maggie cannot believe what she is seeing.

For the first time in so long, her heart bursts with joy.

An hour later—an hour spent putting so much of it together—she lands at Heathrow Airport. If you are one of those people who want to make sure you get your ten thousand steps in every day, Maggie suggests you fly into Heathrow. You walk left and right. You go upstairs and down. You use escalators and moving walkways. It’s also a “tease” walk—every time you think it’s over, there is just one more turn, one more set of stairs, one escalator, one more moving walkway to go.

Several flights landed at the same time, the passengers disembarking and first flowing and then clogging up the main Terminal 3 artery that leads to the passport and immigration heart.

Maggie feels alone, adrift, and yet there is finally a real sense of purpose. She is putting it together. Not all of it. Not yet. But she thinks she has a big-time lead. Fatigue radiates from every pore in her body as she gets through passport control, bypasses the baggage carousel and customs, steps through the exit door…

She freezes when she sees him, half worried it’s just a mirage.

Cue the bursting heart.

There are a ton of people in the arrivals hall. Chauffeurs with various name signs—some handwritten, some on touchscreen pads—arescattered everywhere. There are loved ones with welcome balloons and friends standing on their tiptoes, craning their necks to see who exits next. There are tour representatives and airport staff—maybe a hundred, two hundred people in all—but Maggie sees him right away.

Porkchop!

When she looks his way, Porkchop lifts his sunglasses and wiggles his eyebrows. Maggie shouts—shouts out loud—“Porkchop!” and breaks into a run. She wonders whether she’s ever been so happy to see someone, and no answer comes to her. He spreads his thick arms, and Maggie jumps into them. Porkchop swallows her up in a bear hug. She welcomes the smell of Marlboro and leather, and then Maggie just lets everything go. She collapses into the bear hug. Her smile gives way to tears. She digs her face into the leather and for a few moments she just cries. Porkchop lets her, holds her up. He cups the back of her head with his big hand. His voice is uncharacteristically choked up as he mutters, “It’s okay now, Mags, it’s all okay.”

She manages to say, “How…?”

“I was flying to Dubai,” he says. “There was a change of planes in London so…”

“I’m so happy to see you.” She hugs him harder. Then: “I think I know where we have to go now.”