Gone Before Goodbye

Chapter Nine

Nadia says that she’s going to say goodnight to Oleg before heading to bed.

“Do you mind if I come with you?” Maggie asks.

Nadia shrugs, so Maggie follows her up the stairs and around the corner. There is a gold door with two beefy bodyguards on either side. Nadia says something in Russian. One of the bodyguards barks something back and points at Maggie with his chin. Nadia explains who Maggie is, or at least, that’s what Maggie assumes. The bodyguard talks into his watch. A few seconds later, the door opens. Nadia enters first. Maggie is right behind her.

The room is done up in a gaudy red velvet that a Vegas brothel might consider over-the-top. The floor is blanketed in beanbag chairs and oversize pillows and various low-level seating, all punctuated by glass-piped, multi-hose/multiuser hookahs. You could probably fit a hundred people in here for an orgy — that looks like the room’s natural use — but right now there is only one person: Oleg Ragoravich. He stands by one long windowed wall. The windows are one-way and at an angle so you can look down at the ballroom, but the ballroom can’t look in on you. Maggie remembers the mirrors lining the top of the wall where the crown molding is. She figures that this is the other side of those mirrors.

Ragoravich doesn’t turn when they enter. He stares down at his ballroom not unlike an emperor at the Colosseum. Nadia says something in Russian. Maggie catches the end, “dobre noche,” meaning good night. Oleg waves and mutters the same words back. Nadia doesn’t wait. She turns and heads back out the door without another word or even a glance, leaving Oleg and Maggie alone.

Oleg still has his back to Maggie.

“Are you going down?” she asks him.

“Later.” He points through the window below. His voice is suddenly soft. “I saw you.”

“In the ballroom, you mean?”

“Yes. How’s the food?”

“Eh, not bad. You could have spent a little more, gone for the upgraded appetizers.”

He still doesn’t turn around, but she can see a small smile from where she stands. “You saw the stage?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know who’s going to play?”

“No.”

“Elton John. Are you a fan?”

Maggie nods. “He’s one of my favorites.”

He finally turns and faces her. “Mine too.”

“I’m almost tempted to stay up,” Maggie says.

“Please do.”

“I have surgery tomorrow.”

“True.”

“So do you.”

“Yes, but I’ll be asleep for it,” Oleg says.

“True.”

He stares down at his guests. “Greed isn’t what you think it is.”

His voice is thick with drink, or maybe that’s just sadness.

“What do you mean?”

“The problem is, you can’t go back. You can try. But human nature never lets you. Wherever you are, that becomes ground zero. Greed is not ‘I need more’ — it’s the fear of losing what you already have. Of going back. So you hold on tighter and keep trying to climb up. Because that’s the only way you can go. Life won’t let you stand still. You are either on your way up or you’re on your way down. And you’ll do anything not to go down.”

“That,” Maggie says, “sounds like the very definition of greed.”

He chuckles without humor. “Or a wonderful rationalization for it.”

“That too. Are you all right, Mr. Ragoravich?”

“I’m fine,” he says. “We all have our moments of melancholy.”

Maggie thinks about what Nadia said, about the rich not having real problems and how their melancholy is a luxury. What must her reaction be when her oligarch gets gloomy?

“When did I first come on your radar?” she asks.

“You mean as a physician?”

“I mean in any way.”

“I don’t know. I leave these affairs to Ivan.”

“I was his choice, then?”

“Why are you asking me this?”

“Have you heard of WorldCures Alliance?”

He frowns. “That was the charitable foundation you ran before... before your troubles?”

“Yes. Did you donate to it?”

“No. I don’t think I ever heard of it until Ivan gave me your résumé.”

“Have you heard of the Kasselton Foundation?”

“No, should I have?”

“You’re not connected to it?”

“No.” He turns back to her. “Did someone at the ball tell you I was?”

Maggie isn’t sure of the right move here. She could lie, of course, or try to back away, but there is a good chance Oleg Ragoravich would figure out where she heard this. He told her already that he’d been watching her at the ball. He may have even seen her talking to Charles Lockwood. Even if he hadn’t, the entire ballroom is probably under CCTV surveillance. He could search the footage for it.

Taking all of that into account, Maggie settles for a half-truth. “Someone hinted it, yes.”

“Who?”

“An American. I didn’t catch his name.”

“From the ball?”

“Yes.”

Oleg smiles. “Every American here is in the CIA.” Then his eyes suddenly darken. “Does he know why you’re here?”

“No.”

“You didn’t tell him?”

“Of course not.”

Oleg Ragoravich takes a second, then seems satisfied with that answer. She should leave it there, let it go, but she can’t.

“Why would someone tell me you finance the Kasselton Foundation?”

“Who? This sketchy American whose name you can’t remember?”

“Yes.”

“I have no idea.” Oleg meets her eyes and holds them. “But I swear on the lives of my children, I don’t know what the Kasselton Foundation is.”

He may be a psychopath, but Maggie believes him.

“Do you mind if I ask you one more thing?”

He gestures for her to go ahead.

“Why are you getting this surgery?”

He frames his face with his hands. “You mean because I’m already so handsome?”

“Ten, maybe fifteen years ago,” Maggie says, “I was part of a group of reconstructive surgeons who were invited to the Marshals Service headquarters in Arlington. They run the Witness Protection Program. You know what that is?”

“Of course.”

“They wanted our opinion on what operations we could perform on the face, so that those who entered the program would be unrecognizable to their enemies.”

“Makes sense.”

“It does,” Maggie agrees, “except our conclusion was, there really was nothing much you could do. You could change hairstyle and color. You could do some eye or ear work, try to give them a rhinoplasty, that sort of thing. But in the end, they mostly looked the same, just with a facelift.”

“Interesting,” Oleg says. “I assume you think this applies to me.”

“Does it?”

Oleg doesn’t answer. “It was nice talking to you, Maggie.”

“And you.”

“Are you going back to the ball?”

She shakes her head. “I have to be up early for surgery.”

“We can push it back a few hours. For Elton’s sake.”

“Tempting.”

“But?”

“But no.”

Oleg Ragoravich turns so that his back is facing her again. “Will it be painful?”

“The recovery? You’ll be a little uncomfortable for a few days. No activity for two weeks. That includes sex.”

He says nothing.

“Anything else?” she asks.

“I see you’re getting close to Nadia.”

Maggie wonders what he means by that. She chooses to tread carefully. “She’s a patient. I need to make sure she’s cleared for this surgery.”

“Seems more than that to you,” he says. He points down to the ballroom. “I was watching.”

“It isn’t more. Why, is there a problem?”

“No, but you don’t speak Russian, do you?”

“No.”

“And of course, Nadia can’t speak a word of English.” His voice has some sarcasm in it, but his tone is closer to regret or even sorrow. “So I wonder — how do you two communicate?”

Oleg holds a hand up before Maggie can say anything. “I know. I’ve always known.”

“Know what exactly?”

“That Nadia tells a lot of stories about herself,” he says. Then he adds: “None of them are true.”