Page 107 of The Cellist

He picked her up like a rag doll and forced her head beneaththe water a second time. She was scarcely conscious when he finally lifted her face above the surface.

“What is your name?”

“Isabel. My name is Isabel.”

“Who are you working for?”

“I used to work for RhineBank. Now I work for Martin Landesmann.”

He gave her an openhanded blow that filled her mouth with blood and sent her tumbling to the floor.

“Why are you doing this?” she sobbed.

He shook her violently. “What is your name? Your real name.”

“Isabel,” she shouted. “My name is Isabel.”

He released her and left the dressing room—for how long, she did not know. A few minutes, an hour. When he returned, he was holding an enormous fixed-weight dumbbell. He waved it about effortlessly, as though it were fashioned of papier-mâché.

“Which hand would you like to keep?”

“Please,” begged Isabel.

“Right or left? It’s up to you.”

“I’ll tell you everything.”

“Yes, I know.” He seized her left hand. “This is the most important one, isn’t it?”

He pressed her palm to the limestone tile and placed a leaden foot atop her forearm. Isabel could feel her radius bending to the point of fracture. She pummeled his leg with her right hand, but it was no use. It was as if he were made of stone.

He raised the dumbbell above his head and aimed it toward Isabel’s splayed left hand.

“Don’t drop it,” she pleaded.

“Too late.” He raised the weight a few centimeters higher. “You might want to close your eyes.”

She looked away and saw Arkady standing in the doorway of the dressing room, a look of revulsion on his face. He spoke a few words icily in Russian, and the man Isabel knew as Fletcher Billingsley of Goldman Sachs lowered the weight and removed his foot from her forearm.

Arkady was now frowning at the droplets of Isabel’s blood on the tile floor, as though concerned about their adverse effect on the property’s resale value. He covered the blood with a plush white towel and poked at it with the toe of his shoe.

“You’ll never remove it that way,” said Isabel.

“Don’t worry, we’ll give it a thorough cleaning when you’re gone.”

She wiped the blood from her face and rubbed it into the cushion of a reclining lounge chair. “What about that?”

Arkady gave her a humorless smile. “He never liked that chair to begin with.”

“Who?”

Ignoring her question, he spoke a few additional words in Russian, and Isabel’s assailant withdrew.

“I don’t suppose his name is really Fletcher Billingsley.”

“Felix Belov.”

“Where did he learn his English?”