Page 143 of Gone Before Goodbye

Maggie wonders about that.

Ivan Brovski stops at a metal door. No windows. No door handle—handles carry germs. Yet another faceless individual approaches her with a blue isolation gown, disposable gloves, and face shield.

“Put them on over your clothes,” Brovski orders.

“What about you?” she asks.

“This is as far as I go. Put them on.”

Maggie does as he asks. When she’s done, Brovski waves his handin front of a screen. Everything is touchless. The door opens with a sucking hiss. Maggie tentatively steps inside, and the door reseals behind her.

A deep voice says, “Hello, Doctor McCabe.”

A big man sits in some makeshift throne on a riser in the middle of the room. A nasal cannula—the kind of mask you always see on television shows—delivers oxygen. There’s an IV in his arm. A medical monitoring device displays his vitals—heart rate, blood pressure, oxygen saturation. He wears what is either a smoking jacket or a velvet robe—hard to know which—like something from a Playboy Mansion documentary. His is appropriately enough bloodred.

There is aMona Lisaon the wall behind his head.

Oleg Ragoravich.

He smiles and spreads his thick, soft arms. “Surprised?”

Maggie takes a step toward him. “Would it hurt your feelings if I told you I’m not?”

“It would indeed.” Ragoravich’s breathing is labored, his chest rising and falling with a little too much drama. “Tell me how you knew.”

“Lots of little things—why you threw the ball, the timing of the surgery—but the big thing is, I found an old photograph of you online.”

“They’re supposed to have all been deleted.”

“Yeah, but you know there are always ways.”

Ragoravich nods. “I do. Which photo?”

“Your military portrait.”

“That has to be forty years old.”

“I was given two photos to replicate before the surgery—Photo A and Photo B. Both were grainy black-and-whites. Photo A was the chin. Photo B was, well, your prominent nose. Both, I know now, were blowups of that military portrait. You wanted me to think the surgery was to change your identity. But in reality—”

“It was the opposite,” he finishes for her. “You were making him lookmorelike me, not less. Fattening him up for the kill.”

Awful way of putting it, Maggie thinks,but not untrue. “The Oleg I knew—the one I did surgery on and got murdered in Dubai—he was some kind of imposter or body double.”

“Body double,” he says. “Or decoy. Not an imposter. His real name was Aleksander, by the way. He was my cousin. We look alike, no?”

Maggie nods. “Similar enough. From a distance.”

“Aleksander has been my double for the past twenty-three years. Can you believe that? He played the part well.”

“He did,” Maggie agrees.

“Lots of powerful men have had doubles. Stalin. Noriega. Saddam Hussein. Some say Putin, but I think he’s too paranoid to allow someone who looks like him that close. I had two others over the years, but Aleksander, he was the best. I loved him, really.”

“And yet,” Maggie says.

“And yet he had to die, yes. I need the world to think I’m dead—too many people are after me.”

“So you sacrificed your cousin?”