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After his business meetings were concluded, Paul returned to his hotel suite to find Tatyana napping. She hadn’t closed the drapes, and the amber late afternoon light was pouring in, striped across the bed. In the sitting room, he stood at the window and took in its view of Manezhnaya Square. Too agitated to sleep, he watched some Russian TV, the volume low so it wouldn’t wake Tatyana. He switched from some kind of sketch comedy channel to coverage of ice hockey to a nature documentary, eventually settling on a news program on Rossiya 24. It was, of course, entirely in Russian, and he understood only a phrase here and there. After a few minutes of mute incomprehension, he turned it off.

Tatyana came into the sitting room, stretching, and leaned over to kiss him. She was wearing an oversize T-shirt that hung down to her knees. “Mama wants us to come early so we can take a walk in the woods around her dacha.”

“Okay. How was your time with her?”

“We went to Petrovsky Passage and Tverskaya Street,” she said, “mostly looking at jewelry. We had coffee, then we went to the Old Arbat and looked at antiques. And we talked, Pasha, we talked. I miss her so much.”

“Do you miss Moscow?”

“It’s sentimental for me, you know. It’s my childhood.”

“But you were so young when you left.”

“I know, I know. But it’s in my . . . maya dusha . You know what I mean?”

It meant “my soul.” He understood. She was an American, had lived most of her life outside Russia. But she was at heart a Russian.

“Did you have a chance to take any pictures?” he asked.

She beckoned him over to her laptop and showed him some photographs she’d taken. An old lady in a black coat and gray knit cap squatting before an array of junk spread out on the ground, probably her life’s possessions. A lineup of street vendors in front of a train station. A young man standing in the middle of a dump, garbage as far as the eye could see, birds flying just overhead.

“Remarkable,” he said.

She smiled shyly. “You didn’t see any of these people, did you? In the center of the city, they hide the homeless and the poor. You have to know where to look.” Glancing at her watch, she said, “I should get dressed.”

Half an hour later, they were walking across the opulent lobby and saw her father sitting in one of the plush armchairs, looking impatient. Tatyana hurried over to him and put a hand on his shoulder; he got up, and they hugged. Paul hung back so the two could talk.

A man in a cheap blue suit, clearly security or a driver, approached Galkin and said, in Russian, “Very sorry, sir, very sorry.”

“Let’s go,” Galkin replied sourly. The driver appeared to be late, which Galkin detested.

“Right away, sir,” the driver said.

“Come on,” Galkin said brusquely to him. He hugged his daughter again and then walked with the driver out the front doors. Where Galkin was going, Paul had no idea. Paul had been invited to dinner with his colleagues but had had to pass, for family reasons, he said.

In the car—this one a new Mercedes S-Class that smelled of rich leather—he and Tatyana talked quietly. “Where’s your father going tonight?” Paul asked.

Tatyana shrugged. “He never tells me. Business meetings.”

The driver took Kutuzovsky Prospekt all the way to its end, marking the beginning of a residential area, the Rublyovka. This was no ordinary residential area. It was lined with immense mansions, and some, probably even more immense, hidden behind trees and gates. This was where the Russian elite—oligarchs, generals, celebrities, politicians—either lived full time or kept their weekend dachas.

Galina Belkina’s dacha was at the end of a long, tree-lined dirt road. It was a low, rambling wooden house, its cedar shingles weathered to gray. It looked a hundred years old at least. Galina emerged from the green-painted front door just as the Mercedes limo pulled up, her arms outstretched theatrically. She was wearing a beige quilted jacket with a Burberry lining. “Come, let’s walk,” she said in English. “Are you ready for a . . . pro-gulka po prirode ? ‘A walk in nature’? We will get fresh air.”

Tatyana was wearing flats, which she knew wouldn’t do for a walk in the woods, so she slipped into an old pair of green rubber wellies that had been left on the porch. Paul, who was wearing street shoes, put on a pair of brick-red wellies from the jumble that was probably there for guests.

Galina had several acres of land on the edge of which the forest began. They entered the forest, Galina leading the way through a dense copse of trees, birch and pine and spruce. It reminded Paul of the forests in Bellingham, Washington, where his father would take him on nature walks. She seemed to know the woods well, leading them along paths and well-maintained trails that wound around the trees. Much of the way was shaded by the thick canopy. Galina and Tatyana talked for a minute or two in Russian, then Galina said to Paul, “You see a little bit of Moscow today?”

“Not yet. I think tomorrow we’ll have a little time. I want to see St. Basil’s Cathedral.”

“Inside, it’s nothing. But the domes—do you know why they’re so brightly colored?”

He shook his head.

“It was built during Ivan the Terrible, when churches were painted in bright colors and intricate patterns. You know, St. Basil’s was modeled after the Book of Revelation—it’s what it says the Kingdom of Heaven will look like. They say that Ivan was so pleased with the cathedral that he blinded its architect.”

“Why?”

“So that its design would never be replicated.”

“Some payday,” Paul said.

“Tanya tells me you now work for Arkady Viktorovich?”

Paul nodded.

“You are an investments manager?”

“Something like that.”

“Well, I don’t know what I’m talking about. I just know he has a lot of money. He takes care of me, but only because he has to.” She gave a short, scornful bark of a laugh. “He’s not exactly generous.”

“The rich stay rich by not giving it away,” Paul said.

She laughed again, more openly, and it sounded like Tatyana’s laugh.

*

As the sun went down, they circled back to Galina’s dacha. Inside, the house was open and spacious. Exposed beams on a pitched ceiling. There were old-looking caramel-colored leather couches with rolled arms, Persian throw rugs, and icons hung on the maroon-painted walls. Paul smelled something delicious being cooked. A young man in a white shirt and dark jeans, apparently a member of Galina’s staff, offered them flutes of champagne from a tray.

Mother and daughter were in the middle of a conversation about a childhood friend of Tatyana’s who had gotten into trouble. That was as much as Paul could discern; they were speaking only in Russian. Galina asked for more champagne, and so did Tatyana. Paul didn’t want to get drunk, not in front of his mother-in-law—plus, he had a business meeting in the morning. He asked for mineral water.

Dinner was leg of lamb with whipped potatoes and green beans, simple but savory, all served by the butler, who seemed also to be the cook.

“We are being very rude to your Pasha,” Galina said. She had just told Tatyana a story about a woman with whom Arkady had been conducting an affair when Tatyana was a toddler. Galina spoke in Russian, but Paul was beginning to understand spoken Russian more and more.

He said, in English, “I assume this was after he’d gotten rich.”

“In fact, yes,” said Galina with a grin.

“Arkady says that women are attracted to rich men like flies to shit,” Paul said.

Both women laughed. “He’s very direct, your husband,” Galina said.

They started on the lamb and were silent for a moment as they ate.

“How’d you meet Arkady in the first place?” Paul asked.

“I went to a party with a lot of people from the Bauman Institute, and we were immediately attracted to each other. In those days, he was kind of cute.” Galina took a long sip of red wine. “Forgive me for saying this, but the lady engineers he went to school with were not exactly Playboy centerfolds.”

“Not his type, huh?” Paul said.

“What about that professor?” Tatyana asked. “Didn’t they have an affair?”

Galina’s eyes lit up. “Ah, yes.” Turning to Paul, she said, “One of his teachers took a shine to him. Ludmilla something. A younger faculty member.”

“One of his teachers?” Paul asked.

“I remember she had very thick glasses. Coke-bottle glasses, you would say. But very connected .” A long, significant pause. “She made him rich, you know.” This was directed at her daughter. “She was connected.”

“How’d she make him rich?” Paul asked.

“She knew the right people in the Kremlin. Ludmilla was kind of a recruiter.”

“Recruiting for what?”

Galina shrugged, uninterested in explaining further. “The Kremlin was looking for promising young Russians to take the economy private. All the men who became oligarchs— and they were all men—were well connected to the power structure. You had to know the right people. This is how it is in Russia—who you know.”

Not so different in America , Paul thought.

“Didn’t you say Ludmilla tried to convince him not to marry you?” said Tatyana.

“Ah, yes,” Galina replied. “My biggest enemies were not his girlfriends but the women, his platonic friends he made at Bauman. They thought I was a . . . I believe the term is bimbo , right? Worst of all was Ludmilla. Maybe they were threatened by me.”

Paul was about to ask what Ludmilla’s last name was when Tatyana said, “Polina had her eyes on Papa for years”—and the opportunity passed.

In the car on the way back to the hotel, Paul saw another chance and asked Tatyana for Ludmilla’s surname. Tatyana was drunk, pleasantly so. Too drunk to ask him why he wanted to know.

“I don’t remember,” she said after a moment. “Ludmilla Sergeyevna something.” She remembered only Ludmilla’s patronymic, but maybe that was good enough.

Tatyana crawled into bed as soon as they arrived in their room. Paul brought her a couple of aspirin and a glass of water to ward off a hangover in the morning.

He had begun getting undressed himself when his phone rang. He didn’t recognize the number, which began with country code 44, which he knew was the United Kingdom.

“Paul Brightman?”

“Yes?”

“Dick Foley, I’m a friend of Rick Jacobson’s. Sorry to be calling so late.”

A Brit, by the accent, Paul thought. “That’s okay, I’m up. What can I do for you?”

“Can I buy you a drink?”

“I’m out of the country at the moment.”

“You’re in Moscow. I am, too. We’re at the same hotel.”

“How do you know what hotel I’m at?” Paul had barely seen Rick in months. Had he told him he was going to Moscow? He was sure he hadn’t.

“Long story,” the man said.

“I’d like to hear it.”

“I’m working in Moscow, and I saw Arkady Galkin here, and I know from Rick that you work for him. He gave me your number.”

“He did?” Was this someone from the FBI sent by Addison? Paul wondered. “Okay, well, I’ve got a full schedule of business meetings while I’m here.” Pointless ones , he didn’t add. “When were you thinking?”

“How’s now?”