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In the late afternoon, he texted Special Agent Mark Addison and told him he’d found something of great importance. Addison had assured Paul that it was safe to text him on the office Wi-Fi as long as he used Signal.

Addison replied at once. Can you meet at 9 tonite?

Paul thought for a moment. He couldn’t stay late at work again. He decided to go home at the regular time, have a quick dinner with Tatyana, tell her he had to go back to the office for an hour or so. He’d meet Addison at nine, hand him the flash drive, and go back home.

When he got home, Tatyana was cuddling Pushkin as she looked at photos on her computer. “Oh, I’m glad you’re home,” she said. “I have a surprise for you.”

“Uh-oh,” he said, leaning over to kiss her. He was wary: a surprise? Since Moscow, he’d been feeling strangely awkward around her, like some kind of impostor. A traitor, to be more precise. He was betraying her father; there was no way around it.

“Let’s get some takeout, and then we can head over to Park Avenue and meet my father and Polina.”

“Park—our new apartment? Is that the surprise?”

“I guess I’m not so good at keeping secrets.”

“So it’s finished?”

“We’re going to meet them at eight thirty or nine.”

Which was when he had to meet Addison. “That was when Rick and I are supposed to have a beer,” Paul said. “Can we do it tomorrow instead?”

“We can’t blow off my parents.”

“I’m not blowing them off. I just want to reschedule.”

“Out of the question,” she said firmly. “Papa’s going to London on business tomorrow. We can’t reschedule.”

“Okay,” Paul said, defeated. “We’ll meet them tonight.” He would have to text Addison and postpone.

*

They took a Lyft to Park Avenue and pulled up beside their new building, its facade a graceful limestone. They greeted the doorman and took the elevator to the ninth floor. Paul felt a weird skirmish of emotions: he was excited to see the place, but a little apprehensive that, after his in-laws’ renovations, it would be dripping with gold.

The elevator doors opened, and they saw not their old apartment door but large, ornate brass-filigreed double doors. These were flung open, and Arkady and Polina bustled out, both of them crying, “Welcome!” Arkady was wearing his blue-and-white bird’s-eye L.L.Bean sweater, and his wife was in a tight-fitting black dress. They hugged Tatyana, then Polina hugged Paul, and Arkady shook his hand firmly.

“Welcome to your new apartment!” Galkin said.

“What—what the hell did you do?” Paul yelped. The words escaped before he could bottle them up. “The door . . .”

“Is salvage from sacred mosque in Morocco. Apartment is nice, yes? Is very simple and spare. The way you both like it, yes?”

But everything looked different. For one, the apartment seemed much larger.

“I don’t understand,” Paul said. “What—what happened to the apartment next door?”

“I buy out neighbor,” Galkin said gleefully. “Pay them to move very fast. Everyone has price.” He’d hired the celebrity Japanese architect Tadao Ando to combine the two apartments into one gracious, high-end home in the minimalist style. Now the apartment went on forever. It was a blend of old New York architecture and modern interior design. The walls were white and gray and beige and pale yellow. The carpets were an indeterminate shade between gray and beige. The sofas were long and gray and comfortable looking. Everything was done in a neutral palette. It was tasteful and simple but not boring. There was no gold plating, no ticky-tacky.

Tatyana’s eyes were wide, her mouth agape, then smiling. She seemed stunned and delighted. She, who rented an apartment in the East Village with a problematic toilet, was now thrilled with this beige Versailles of the Upper East Side, this modernist Taj Mahal.

Paul was silent as he looked around. The apartment was now two classic sixes combined, immense. Inside, he seethed. He had gone to the mat to buy this apartment, had maxed out his finances, had spent everything he had—and now his father-in-law was making him look like a pissant.

One of the many rooms was set up as Tatyana’s photography studio. Another, Polina told them, could be used as a gallery to show her photographs. “Pápachka,” she said, visibly moved. She spoke to him quickly in Russian and then said, “Thank you.”

“I am impressed,” Paul said tightly. “Thank you.”

“If you don’t like,” Arkady said, “you can redo how you want.”

“But it’s perfect,” Tatyana said.

*

Pushkin was yapping when they arrived home back at their old place. Tatyana took him out for a walk while Paul poured himself a large glass of bourbon. He took a big gulp.

Tatyana returned with the dog. He and she collapsed on the couch. Pushkin scrambled into her lap. After what they’d just seen, this place really did seem like a shithole, as her father had said. Paul poured her a glass of rosé.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Tatyana said. “Nobody could do a reno so fast—board approvals, certificates from the city planning office? Impossible, right? But Papa has his ways.”

“Meaning substantial payoffs.”

Tatyana shrugged. “Papa has his ways.”

A long silence passed between them.

“Well, what’d you think?” he said.

“What did you think?”

“You seemed ecstatic.”

“It was so generous of my father. I don’t just mean the money. I mean the time and attention he must have put into the renovation.”

“He didn’t ask me about enlarging the place. Did he ask you?”

“He wanted it to be a surprise, Pasha.”

“Explain something to me. You’ve lived here for five years.” He waved his hands around, speaking softly but with a burning intensity. “You don’t want to show off your wealth. Yet now you’re happy to live in the . . . the Winter Palace. I don’t understand the contradiction.”

She looked distraught. “Why are you so, I don’t know, so angry about this gift?”

“Your father turned the nice apartment you and I bought together, which was in need of a lot of work, into a place twice the size.”

“Yes, but there’s a photography studio and a gallery. And if we have kids—” They hadn’t talked much about kids, though Tatyana always smiled and cooed at babies they passed on the street.

“I get it,” Paul said. “Your father is acknowledging your art. You feel seen .”

“Exactly! And there’s no gold anywhere. It’s incredibly beautiful. How can we say no?”

“It’s a beautiful apartment, yes, but it’s not our apartment.” Paul was reminded of the old saying “Happy wife, happy life.” The enormous, sprawling, yet tasteful apartment seemed to make Tatyana happy. Or maybe it was the thought behind it that made her happy. He wasn’t sure.

She nodded. She had half her wine left, and he’d finished the rocks glass of bourbon. “I get it,” she said.

“You always shun that kind of opulence. I don’t think you really want to live in a place like that. I don’t want to.”

“It’ll hurt his feelings,” she said. “He’ll be crushed.”

“Your father?” He couldn’t imagine Arkady Galkin having bruised feelings. He wasn’t that sensitive. Paul shook his head. “Will you explain something to me about him?”

“I can try.”

Paul’s friends on Wall Street who’d grown up poor and then gotten rich always had the biggest, showiest houses in the Hamptons, the most impressive apartments or town houses. Great novels had been written about the struggle between old and new money. But for Galkin, it was more complicated than that. “Your father has one of the biggest town houses in New York City, a giant yacht . . . yet he’s always wearing the same clothes, and they’re not very expensive. He buys them from catalogues.”

Tatyana laughed, her laugh high and lilting, always lovely. “Oh, my pápachka . You know, in Soviet times, before I was born, he was poor. He lived in a communal apartment with his mother and his grandparents and his sisters. And now that he’s rich, he wants to enjoy it. But he still loves a bargain. He doesn’t care about what clothes he wears, or shoes, or watches.”

“Huh.”

“But he always wants his opponents, his adversaries, the people he’s negotiating with . . . he wants them to see how successful he is. So he shows off. I know people in Russia, who are even richer than we are, who live much more modestly.”

“Okay.”

“So what are we going to tell him?” Tatyana asked.

A long, awkward silence passed between them.

How can I accept this gift from Arkady? Paul asked himself. He wanted to refuse, to insist that they sell what Arkady had created for them, get their money back and buy another place, their own place. But he was immediately suffused by a flush of guilt for having betrayed Tatyana and her father. No matter the reason, how would she ever forgive him?

“How can we tell him no?” Paul finally replied.

Tatyana beamed and clasped his hands and kissed him. Tears were in her eyes. “So now I can tell you: he invited us to join him on his yacht this weekend,” she said.

“His yacht ? Why? What’s the occasion?”

“I don’t know. He does that sometimes. Invites you at the last minute.”

“Do we have to go?”

“You don’t want to? I love his yacht.”

I love his yacht . Who is this woman? Paul wondered. This woman who lived in the apartment of a struggling artist, who disdained displays of wealth, but who also now exulted in a ridiculously big Park Avenue apartment and her father’s yacht.

Which Tatyana was the real Tatyana?

“Then we’ll go,” he said.