He had always been such an old father: he was fifty-six when Elena was born, her mother thirty-five. She was an only child. Her parents had divorced when she was eight, and it had been nasty. Their marriage couldn’t survive the crazy amounts of money he made when, as a former KGB officer with boxes of surveillance files at his disposal, he was allowed to buy thousands of shares of the Yukos oil conglomerate at a fraction of their real value. He’d then invested in real estate in St. Petersburg, New York, Doha, and Dubai. There was the fund, some of which was fueled by all that bricks and mortar and some of it—and she didn’t believe this—pilfered from the Russian treasury in a complex tax scam. She didn’t believe that because she knew how close her father was to the president of the Russian Federation. The president had been a protégé of her father when they’d both been KGB. But then there were those who hinted that the president, too, had been involved.
Even years later, when she left her Swiss boarding school for college in America, her parents still spoke mostly through their few mutual friends. Neither remarried. And so she was the one who had had to figure out what to do with him when he had that stroke when she was twenty and it was clear he could no longer live alone in the apartment in Moscow or the dacha in Sochi. She’d come home from school and stayed nearly six months. She brought in Spartak and Spartak was wonderful. He was perhaps a decade older than she was, and he had sobbed and sobbed at her father’s small memorial for his Black Sea acquaintances in the woods behind the house. (The funeral had been in Moscow and it had been considerably larger. The Russian president himself hadn’t attended, but he had sent staff.) Spartak had cried in ways that she hadn’t; she had cried only when she was alone, because in public she felt the need to represent the strength of the Orlovs. But alone she had wept. She had loved him the way a girl can love both her father and her grandfather. She had loved him because he had spoiled her as his only child and because he had respected her intellect and her resourcefulness; he saw so much of himself in her and always, no matter what, had been proud of her.
Elena knew instantly why she was thinking of her father this evening, alone in her bed in Dubai. Part of it was the no-win situation that had greeted her when she had gone to Sokolov’s hotel room that first time. Yes, she could have killed him and that flight attendant together when she’d had the chance. Just taken the twenty-two and been done with it. The problem was that while Sokolov had to die, the flight attendant didn’t. The stakes were high and she probably could have rationalized the double hit. But there certainly would have been fallout from killing Bowden, too. In hindsight, the double bind was unsolvable.
Still, if Bowden hadn’t returned, she wouldn’t now be facing this fiasco. That was a fact. She honestly wasn’t sure how long she could forestall the inevitable.
Moreover, Elena knew there would be consequences for her, as well—mistakes were seldom forgiven in her line of work—and in the end the flight attendant might still be dead.
Be realistic: one of you has to die. I think it’s your choice.
Had her father been as cold-blooded as Viktor? Without a doubt. She just never saw that side of the man. She saw the doting father who would deny her nothing.
That afternoon she’d been scrolling through news stories on her phone and come across the assassination of a prominent Russian opposition leader on a sidewalk in Kiev. She had known it was coming. The victim had been a member of the Russian Parliament before defecting. His killer was a little younger than she was: twenty-seven years old. He’d shot the politician and his bodyguard on the street and disappeared. But he’d been recognized by a nearby politician, and a spokesperson for Ukraine’s interior ministry alleged that he was a Russian agent. The Russian president said that was absurd.
It wasn’t. She knew the executioner.
She turned over her pillow to the cool side, and rolled over. She wanted desperately the escape of sleep. But whenever her mind roamed from the flight attendant, it landed once more on her father. She missed him. She missed him as much as she missed anyone. And she always seemed to think of him when she was given an assignment like this. He was the first person she may have killed.
No, she had only finished him off. Maybe she hadn’t even done that.
She knew the real truth of that first stroke. It was why she did what she did. It was why she was who she was.
Nevertheless, memories of her father and the things she had done because she was his daughter kept her tossing and turning into the small hours of the morning.
12
Cassie awoke just before four in the morning, recalled where she was, and reached out to the side of the bed where Enrico had been. She knew she would feel only empty sheets there: he’d been gone for seven hours now. It had been a little before nine at night when she’d been resting beside him, her head on his chest, and she’d heard herself murmuring that she was exhausted and should get some sleep. He was so young that at first he hadn’t understood this was her way of gently excusing him. He’d pulled her closer to him. She’d had to explain that she preferred sleeping alone (which wasn’t always the case, but was last night). She’d reassured him that she’d see him again in a week or so, when she was back in Rome, but in her heart she doubted she would. The airline would most likely be using the same hotel, but she’d steer clear of the bar. Now that she was sober, she wondered what in the name of God she’d been thinking picking up the bartender at the hotel where she was staying, but she knew the answer: she wasn’t thinking. She was on her third Negroni. By the time he had finished his shift and they went upstairs to her room, she’d finished five.
Negronis in Rome. Akvavit in Stockholm. Arak in Dubai. Her life was a drinking tour of the world.
If only she had brought Sokolov back to her hotel room in the Emirates and then kicked him out. If only she had followed through on her intentions to leave his. Instead she had blacked out. That was how much she had drunk that night last week.
And it was last week. God. Somewhere the hyenas were circling…
She understood enough about her body clock to know that she probably wasn’t going to fall back to sleep now, but she wasn’t due downstairs in the lobby for hours. And so she climbed out of bed, switched on the light, and pulled the terrycloth robe from the closet. She didn’t mind the sight of her naked body in the mirrors—and this hotel room indeed had a lot of them—but the room was chilly. The digital thermostat was set for Celsius, so she upped it a few digits and hoped she wasn’t going to cook herself.
She saw she had phone messages. Her lawyer again. The FBI again. Her sister. She listened only to the one from Rosemary, just to make sure that nothing horrid had happened to her nephew or niece. Nothing had. Rosemary was calling to say hello and remind her that she and her family were coming to New York that weekend. She wanted to know if Cassie could join them at the Bronx Zoo on Saturday and then go to dinner in Chinatown.
She couldn’t bring herself to listen to the messages from Ani or Frank Hammond. But she didn’t delete them either. Perhaps she should splurge and have some oatmeal and an Irish coffee sent up to her room. The kitchen was open twenty-four hours. Even if they didn’t have someone in the kitchen who could properly top the drink at this hour—the thick cream was actually her favorite part—they could toss a shot of Jameson’s into the coffee. Then, properly fortified, she could hear what Ani and Frank had to say and take stock of her situation.
* * *
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