Page 129 of The Oligarch's Daughter

“Her people, her . . . subjects? Their faces are all so blank. They’re perfect screens.”

“In a way.”

“We want them to have the aura of authenticity, you would say?”

“Yes.”

“But they’re too perfect. Everything is too posed, too machined, too . . . perfect. You know?”

“I can’t agree with you there.”

“Tatyana has a way of seeing people that’s also a way of seeing past people.”

She placed her hand on his thigh again and, this time, let it linger there.

She was indeed putting the moves on him.You wouldn’t even call her a cougar, Paul thought.She’s around my age.

With a finger, she traced a design on his inner thigh.

“Polina . . .” he began. Arkady Galkin was probably a very jealous man.

“My husband is a very interesting, very deep character. He is playing multiple games, but I know this. He is . . . You know what is matryoshka?” She gestured with her hands, the figure of a roundish doll, and Paul got it at once.

“Is that what you call those Russian nesting dolls? One inside the other?”

“Exactly.”

“Arkady is a matryoshka.”

She was by now tracing higher up his inner thigh.

The whirring and whapping and whumping overhead grew suddenly louder, and Paul saw a white-and-red medevac helicopter touch down on the foredeck helipad, illuminated by bright lights from around the landing pad.

Polina withdrew her hand. At that moment, the doors from the yacht’s interior slid open and a couple of white-uniformed officers, a man and a woman, sped through carrying a stretcher.

85

Sunshine flooded the suite the next morning. They had left the drapes open. The light glinted on the ocean waves. The light was different at sea. The water looked dark blue.

Paul kept thinking of Ilya Bondarenko’s gray face as they loaded him onto the chopper, and he wanted to obliterate the image. He looked to see if Tatyana was awake. In the old days, they would have made love. But he couldn’t imagine doing that right now.

She opened her eyes, smiled at him. “Is this whole thing just crazy to you?”

“This . . . ?”

“This . . . What can I say? This boat, this food, this suite . . . this luxury . . . ?”

“It’s crazy, yes. It’s very alien to me.”

“You could get used to this, no?”

“No, I don’t think so. I don’t think I could ever get used to this.”

She kissed him. “And this is why I love you. Mmm. I want some coffee.” She picked up the phone on her side table. “Yes,” she said, “coffee for me, black.” She looked at Paul. “And you, darling?”

Paul was hungry. He ordered an omelet, bacon, multigrain toast, orange juice, and coffee. “You’re not eating?” he said to her.

“I’m going to work out first. What did you do last night? Where’d you go? You weren’t in bed.”

---