Page 78 of The Cellist

“He’ll use it to keep Martin in line. Who knows? He might even use it to sweeten the deal if he thinks Martin’s taking too big a cut.”

“So we’ve got him? Is that what you’re saying, Eli?”

Lavon hesitated, then nodded.

Gabriel raised the volume on the feed from Isabel’s compromised mobile phone. “What’s she humming?”

“Elgar, you rube.”

“Why Elgar?”

“Perhaps she’s trying to tell you that she’d rather not have lunch with a Moscow Center–trained hood.”

“There’s no way he’ll kill her in Switzerland—right, Eli?”

“Absolutely not. He’ll drive her across the border to France,” said Lavon. “Then he’ll kill her.”

39

Féchy, Canton Vaud

Saturday dawned overcast and gray, but by late morning the sun shone brightly upon the pavements of the rue du Purgatoire. Isabel waited on the steps of the dun-colored Temple de la Madeleine, one of the oldest churches in Geneva. Her clothing, all newly purchased, was appropriate for a lakeside luncheon with a crowd of grotesquely rich Russians—Max Mara trousers, Ferragamo pumps, cashmere sweater and jacket by Givenchy, a Louis Vuitton tote bag. Inside was a detailed proposal to launder and conceal eleven and a half billion dollars in looted Russian state assets. She and Martin had put the finishing touches on the document late the previous evening during a marathon session at GVI headquarters.

She checked the time on her wristwatch—a Jaeger-LeCoultreRendez-Vous, diamond accent, a gift from Martin—and saw that it was noon precisely. Looking up, she spotted a sleek Mercedes S-Class sedan approaching along the narrow street. The driver stopped at the base of the steps and lowered the passenger-side window.

“Madame Brenner?”

She settled in the backseat for the thirty-minute drive to Féchy, a wealthy wine-producing village in Canton Vaud, on the northern shore of Lake Geneva. Not surprisingly, Arkady’s villa was the largest in the municipality. The garish entrance hall was a replica of the Andreyevsky Hall of the Grand Kremlin Palace, smaller in scale, but no less ornate.

“What do you think?” he asked.

“Words fail me,” said Isabel truthfully.

“Wait until you see the rest of the place.”

They passed through a pair of golden doors and entered a reproduction of the Alexandrovskiy Hall. Next came a series of formal drawing rooms, each with a distinct motif. Here a country house, here a palace by the sea, here the book-lined study of a great Russian intellectual. Only one of the rooms was inhabited, a luminous parlor where three long-limbed young girls were posed as if for a fashion shoot. They eyed Isabel with obvious envy.

Eventually they emerged onto a large terrace where a hundred Russians sipped champagne in the chill autumn sunlight. Isabel had to raise her voice to be heard over the music.

“I was expecting a small luncheon.”

“I don’t do small.”

“Who are all these people?”

Arkady directed his gaze toward a well-fed man with his armaround the waist of an impossibly pretty young woman. “I assume you recognize him.”

“Of course.”

The man was Oleg Zhirinovsky, chairman of the Russian state energy giant Gazprom. The young woman he was pawing was wife number four. Getting rid of number three had cost him several hundred million pounds in a London courtroom.

Arkady pointed out another guest. “What about him?”

“Good heavens.” It was Mad Maxim Simonov, the nickel king of Russia.

“Or him?”

“Is that—”