She bitterly realized that this modern villa soaring above the sea was lipovyy, literally a lime blossom, but figuratively it meant something false, a fake, a forgery. Her grandmother from Saint Petersburg used to whisper to her stories from the bibliya, the Book, about temptation. This dacha was nothing more than Satan’s plate of silver in the desert that tempted Saint Anthony. Vladimir Putin would trade this house for her loyalty, the Directorship of the SVR for her conscience, and her induction as a silovik for her soul. She stood dripping wet in the shower, shivering. The villa now was gray and ugly, the sunlight harsh and revealing, the cicadas a painful buzzing in her ears. She had come this weekend out of curiosity, to see her dacha, to acknowledge Putin’s gift, to get away from the crenellated walls of the Kremlin. Now she knew there would be no rest in this cement lockbox. She would have to suffer a savorless night and return to Moscow tomorrow on the shuttle flight.
Dressed in a light sweaterdress and wearing flats, Dominika walked at dusk along the paved path toward the massive main house—through the trees she saw its lights ablaze on every floor; the staff would be preparing for the upcoming Unity Day gala. As she walked in the failing light, she saw the cherry glow of a cigarette in the woods, then another on the other side. The grounds were swarming with security. A bruiser sat in a cart where the path crossed another. He watched her walk past him without nodding or acknowledging her.
Putin’s personal bodyguard belonged to the SBP, the Presidential Security Service, which was an autonomous element of the FSO, Federalnaya Sluzhba Okhrany, the Federal Protective Service, a reorganized agency loyal only to Vladimir Putin and tasked exclusively with the protection of the Russian Federation, which meant anything the siloviki wanted it to mean. Dominika had heard the rumors about the president’s outwardly blasé but secret fear of assassination; about the plastic containers of prepared meals, sealed and signed by food tasters; and about the most-trusted men of his protective detail, uncouth new millionaires who had been given blocks of shares in the State-run petroleum, manufacturing, and railroad conglomerates as a reward for their loyalty. She wondered if the towering irony was lost on Vladimir Putin that the leader of a modern nation, with nuclear weapons and a space program, feared political murder as the tsars before him feared the silken strangler’s cord. Even Josef Stalin felt it. He was famously quoted as saying, “Do you remember the Tsar? Well, I’m like a tsar.”
The meticulously manicured inner courtyard of the palace was massive. A white marble fountain bubbled in the center, and ropes of white lights hung from poles and were strung along the second-floor windows of the mansion. Dominika was directed to a small private dining room where she was served in silence by a waitress with downcast eyes. The selection of dishes went on for pages, with ingredients that were not to be found in all of Russia, not even in the five-star restaurants of Moscow or Saint Petersburg. She chose a tuna carpaccio with grapefruit and fennel like she’d had in Rome, just to see what they would do with it. The tuna, sliced paper-thin, came on a large chilled plate dusted with fennel fronds and drizzled with olive oil and balsamic vinegar. It was delicious.
Dominika felt slightly ridiculous sitting alone in a little dining room, but the mansion and the entire compound—including outdoor amphitheater, spa club, screening room, indoor and outdoor pools, library, and massive barbecue deck—was deserted, the lull before the president and scores of guests arrived in November. She was resigned to walk back to her dacha through the dark, watched by eyes in the woods, and go to bed. She would think about Nate, as she always did at night, and wish he were there with her lying on the balcony chaise lounge, working on getting a moon burn. She got up from the table and walked down the hall toward the exit when she heard a voice behind her calling in accented Russian.
“Excuse me, Miss, but do you have the time?” A young man in his twenties with dark hair and blue eyes was standing in an open door. He wore a work shirt and jeans, was muscular but thin, with strong forearms holding up either side of the door frame. His face was ruddy and unshaven, and his mouth was more like a woman’s mouth, with full lips.
“You are wearing a watch on your left wrist,” said Dominika, intuitively replying in English. “An instrument often put to use determining what time it is.” This elicited a thousand-watt smile from the young man, which was, Dominika had to admit, somewhat charming.
“You speak English, good, my Russian’s terrible,” he said, smiling. “I was asking if you had the time . . . to join us for a drink.” Another incandescent smile, naughty, cherubic. “There’s no one around this place and we’ve been here for two weeks.” Intrigued, Dominika walked back toward him and peeked into the door. It was a cafeteria, a dining room for staff. Two other young men and two women were the only ones in the room sitting at a table littered with plates and glasses. Four empty wine bottles were clustered together. They were all smoking and an overflowing ashtray was in the center of the table. The people around the table smiled—they were from Poland—and the young man held out a chair and poured her a glass of wine. Dominika introduced herself as a visiting event organizer, something vague.
The charming young man was Andreas. He was the leader of the team from the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts Department of Conservation and Restoration of Works of Art. He introduced his colleagues, all art-restoration experts, attractive, attentive. Everyone spoke at once, all smart, new generation Poles who knew English well (in the generation since the Soviets withdrew, East European schoolchildren no longer willingly studied Russian). The academy in Warsaw had been hired by Rosimushchestvo, the Federal Agency for State Property Management, to do emergency restoration work in the mansion on a large number of ceiling and wall murals. Pipes in the walls had leaked or burst even as the palace was being completed, requiring restoration on a new building, which Dominika silently thought was a metaphor for the Russian Federation—broken before completed.
The Poles had been working in the empty palace overseen by scowling security thugs and a cavillous Russian foreman, and had cabin fever. They were apparently unconcerned about speaking freely.
“The murals are ghastly,” giggled Anka, a blonde.
“A Sardinian artist painted them when the place was built,” said Stefan, with a serious face. “Russians are the only ones who would think they were elegant.” Anka shushed him with a slap on the arm. Dominika smiled to show she was not offended.
“It turns out that Russian plumbers connect pipes as well as Sardinians paint,” said Andreas. “They’ve had burst water pipes everywhere, a lot of panels were damaged, and we’re here to repair the plaster and restore the paintings.” Dominika sipped her wine, interested.
Sitting at the table with these fresh-faced Poles, their country once a satellite state but now eagerly facing the challenges of a future where many things were possible, Dominika thought of her mother in her tiny State-provided Moscow apartment with the sooty heat-curdled wallpaper over the radiators that were always lukewarm, never hot, and her late father’s university photo on the mantelpiece alongside the photo of her mother standing in the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory, serenely receiving applause, her violin under her arm, and the little wooden box on the outside windowsill to keep food colder than any freezer, and the tiny table with an opened tin of sardinka, sardines in oil flecked with blood, a day-old heel of black bread spread with white lard instead of butter. This is what the munificence of Vladimir Putin had given the people of Russia, while water cascaded down the frescoes of his Black Sea palace.
“How much longer will you be here?” she asked. “They’re getting ready for a big gathering in November.” The Poles rolled their eyes.
“We know. That smelly foreman is always telling us to work faster,” said Stefan. “But there’s too much damage. We’ll probably need more people to come from Warsaw. The Russians don’t care, and they pay what we ask. We’ve heard this is the president’s house.”