Fardwor, Russia!

XL

“KARPOV, HEAD TO the exit with your things,” reported, grimacing, the same FSB agent who had rung at his door two months ago after Elena Nikolaevna had left. Karpov was standing in the corridor naked to the waist, looking not at his guest but at a mirror—while detained in this apartment, not shaving, he had grown a funny-looking beard. “Where are we going?” he asked while dressing. “Where do you wanna go?” the chekist answered lightheartedly, and Karpov for some reason immediately believed that he was being released.

“Do you have money for a taxi?” his companion asked when Karpov, squinting in the daylight, looked around as trying to figure out where they were waiting for him.

“I’ll take a marshrutka,” he snapped and marched down Dzerzhinsky Street. The chekist silently watched him walk off.

When he put the key in the door, it turned out that the apartment was locked from the inside. He was hesitant to ring the bell—the events of the last month had made him kind of nervous. But the door opened on its own, and there, smiling and crying, stood Marina.

“Karpov,” Marina said, “We’re having a boy, though it apparently isn’t yours.”

“You’ll have mine someday,” Karpov stepped across the threshold and hugged his wife. The prospect of raising an heir to the oligarch bloodline of Magomedovs seemed even funny to him, and all in all, he was terribly glad to see his wife. He loved her, by the way.