Gone Before Goodbye

Chapter Five

Maggie stares out the window of what could inadequately be described as a “private plane.” Not that she’s had a lot of experience with private planes, of course. When she boarded, the flight attendant introduced herself as Hannah and then proceeded to give Maggie an orientation tour of a full-size 180-seat Airbus A320 renovated for private use. The new interior more resembles an upscale Manhattan penthouse than anything in the aviation family. The décor is gold with leopard prints. Flight Attendant Hannah leads her through a curving open floor plan with two lounges, a dining room, a gourmet kitchen, a theater room with a 65-inch contoured TV (“One of our four large-screen TVs,” Hannah had told her), and a primary suite with a king-size bed and a marble ensuite bathroom, including one of those oversize rain showerheads.

In the primary bedroom, there is a Matisse oil of a woman reclining on a couch.

“Is this a real Matisse?” Maggie asks.

Hannah’s reply is a simple smile.

Two hours earlier, she and Ivan Brovski finish their meeting at Barlow’s, and Ivan leads her back toward the elevator.

“Before we leave,” Maggie tells Ivan, “I’d like to speak to Doctor Barlow.”

“He’s in surgery.”

The elevator opens. Maggie gets inside.

Alou and the Mercedes await them in the basement garage. Alou opens the back door. She slides in. Her phone is there. Ivan gets in the other door and sits next to her. She picks up her phone. No service in the garage’s underbelly. When the Mercedes finally reaches street level, six notifications for unanswered calls pop up, all from Sharon.

Ivan sees the notifications over her shoulder and smiles.

“What?” Maggie says.

“Your sister,” he says. “Call her back.”

She does. Sharon answers immediately, before the first ring finishes, and asks in a harried voice, “What the hell’s going on, Mags?”

“Meaning?”

“The bank called. My debts have been paid. All of them.”

Sharon keeps babbling excitedly as Maggie looks up at Ivan and that no-teeth grin.

When Sharon stops to take a breath, Maggie explains. “I was just hired for a job.”

That silences Sharon for a moment. Then: “And this job paid off my debts?”

“Yes.”

“What kind of job?”

“A high-paying one.”

“Well, I knew that already.”

“I’ll be gone for a week, maybe two.”

“Doing what, Mags?”

“Don’t worry, okay?”

“Good thing you said, ‘Don’t worry,’ because no one ever worries after someone says that.”

“I can’t say more.”

“Why not?”

Maggie switches the phone from her right hand to her left. “It’s confidential. There are privacy clauses and HIPAA and all that.”

“So, wait, you’re working as a physician again?”

“What part of ‘it’s confidential’ is confusing to you?” Maggie half snaps. “Look, it’s all fine, trust me. Please just let me do this.”

Sharon has more questions, but Maggie dodges and weaves and gets her off the phone. When she hangs up, she tells Ivan, “I need to go back to the hotel to check out and pack—”

“Done.”

“That ‘done’ stuff,” Maggie says. “It’s getting annoying.”

Ivan Brovski sits back and smiles. The car turns north on the Henry Hudson Parkway.

“Suppose I change my mind,” Maggie says.

He tilts his head the smallest amount.

“Suppose I want out.”

“Your phone,” Ivan says, pointing at it with his chin.

“Yes.”

“You have your banking app, no? Check your balance.”

Maggie knows or at least suspects what’s coming when she uses facial recognition to open the app, but her eyes still bulge.

The five million dollars are already there.

“Call your financial advisor before we get to the airport,” Ivan says. “He may have to report such a large deposit.”

“She.”

“What?”

“She may have to report, not he,” Maggie says. “My financial advisor is a woman. I would have thought your research would have told you that.”

“The first name Leslie threw me off,” Ivan says.

Man, they really do know everything.

“Also call your attorney,” he says. “The suit against you is being settled as we speak.”

Maggie sits back. The implications are overwhelming. No more malpractice suit. Wow. “You didn’t answer my question,” she says.

Ivan glances out the window, then back at Maggie. “The ‘suppose I change my mind’ question?”

“Yes.”

He shrugs. “You can give us the money back, I suppose. The debt relief and the malpractice settlement might make the rest of the recompensation unwieldy and arduous, but let’s not go there quite yet, shall we? I want to assure you that this is all on the up-and-up. My client is a very important man. Because he has the means and craves secrecy, he is hiring you as” — Ivan looks up as though again searching for the right words — “the ultimate concierge physician. Please don’t worry.”

“Good thing you said, ‘Don’t worry,’” Maggie mutters, echoing Sharon.

“Pardon?”

But there it is — that whole thing about recompensation being unwieldy and arduous. It’s too late. She is in it now. There is no way out. It is how they do it. Ivan Brovski might smile a lot, but that smile never reaches his eyes. You don’t cross these people. She should have learned that a long time ago.

Marc’s voice: “I have a bad feeling about this...”

She should have listened. Or maybe not. Nothing has changed. Ivan is right. It is a job, a good one, ridiculously well paid, and really, she had heard rumors about this kind of private surgery for years. Like he said: She is being hired as a concierge doctor. It’s not uncommon.

In the end, this patient, like any other patient, is hiring her to perform specific services, and — not to toot her own horn — he can afford the best.

It’s a win-win.

“Once you board the plane,” Ivan Brovski says, “we will insist on no communications with the outside world. This was explained to you before, but to reiterate: No calls, no emails, no FaceTime, no messaging apps like WhatsApp or Signal or Telegram or—”

“Yeah, I know what a messaging app is, thanks.”

“Wonderful. So if you have any more calls, you should make them now.”

Sure, she thinks. Make more calls now so Ivan can hear every word.

She hits the call button for Porkchop’s payphone and is surprised when the man himself answers.

“Talk to me,” Porkchop says.

“I have a job.”

She again vaguely explains that she will be traveling and will be well compensated for a work assignment she can’t disclose. She throws in the HIPAA and confidentiality talk. Porkchop says nothing. He doesn’t interrupt. He doesn’t ask follow-up questions. He doesn’t argue.

That surprises her.

When Maggie finishes, Porkchop finally breaks his silence and says, “Put me on speakerphone.”

“Why?”

Silence.

That’s Porkchop. She bites back a sigh and hits the appropriate button and says, “Okay, you’re on speaker.”

“M47-235,” Porkchop says.

Ivan smiles.

“What’s that?” Maggie asks into the phone.

Ivan answers. “This car’s license plates.”

On cue, two motorcycles, one on either side of them, roar past the Mercedes. Pinky buzzes them from the driver’s side, Bowling Pin Guy — she never caught his name — from the passenger’s.

“I expect my daughter-in-law to remain safe and happy,” Porkchop says. “Are we clear?”

Ivan says, “Of course, Mr. Porkchop.”

“Don’t make me have to find you.”

“And vice versa,” Ivan says.

Porkchop disconnects the call.

Ivan Brovski is still smiling. “Your father-in-law has a flair for the dramatic.”

You don’t know the half of it, she thinks, but maybe he does. Still, it is comforting to know Porkchop is on this.

On the plane, Maggie takes a seat in an oversize leather-stitched recliner with a built-in massage function. She has learned something very fast and obvious in the past twenty-four hours:

It’s good to be rich.

Flight Attendant Hannah comes over and offers her “traveling sweats” from Brunello Cucinelli. Maggie accepts. Hannah asks whether she’d like a drink from the bar. Maggie is tempted, but for right now she wants to keep her wits about her, so she takes a water with a slice of lime.

She sits back and watches as the plane takes off from Teterboro Airport. Again she is met by the spectacular skyline of New York City. They don’t tell you this on tour websites, but if you want the best view of Manhattan, you have to go to New Jersey. The plane reaches its cruising altitude of, according to the pilot over the speaker system, thirty-seven thousand feet. The flight time, he tells them, will be eleven hours and twenty-three minutes.

“We have a large selection of films and television programming,” Hannah tells her.

“I just want to get on the Wi-Fi, thanks.”

“Oh, sorry, the Wi-Fi is currently unavailable.”

“Why’s that?”

Another nervous smile. “Here’s a menu of gourmet dishes we serve on board. Let me know if there is anything else I can do for you.”

There is only one other person on the plane — a large man with a scowl who speaks no English. He sits up front, near the pilots. Security, she assumes. Package delivery — and she’s the package.

Maggie heads back to the primary bedroom. The bed looks inviting. She decides — why not? — to lie in it and watch some television. There is no way, she figures, that she will actually sleep, but the blend of exhaustion and stress must be playing games with her. She falls asleep in minutes.

At some point, Hannah wakes her. “Are you hungry?”

She blinks her eyes open. “I am.”

“Our chef Gregor makes wonderful omelets.”

Remembering the Aman, she half jokingly says, “Florentine?”

“Of course.”

“How long was I asleep?”

“I’m not sure. But we land in about an hour.”

No way. No way she slept that long.

“Your luggage is in the corner, but there is a change of clothes waiting for you in the closet if you prefer. There is also a warm coat, hat, and gloves for you. You will need them.”

Hannah leaves, sliding the door closed behind her. Maggie manages to sit up and stumble to the bathroom. She sees the empty glass of water on the night table.

Did they drug her?

In the closet, she finds Loro Piana cashmere loungewear and puts it on. She can’t tell whether the full-length coat is real shearling fur or not — she suspects that a Russian oligarch doesn’t buy fake furs — but ethics aside for the moment, it’s too warm in the plane, so she carries it with her out of the bedroom. She sits at the plane’s dining room table, and Hannah serves her the omelet. It’s delicious, and she can’t help but wonder how Plane Chef Gregor’s compares to the one she refused at the Aman. Inane thoughts like this circle her head because, as the kids say on social media, it’s about to get real.

They touch down at a small airport. Private, she assumes. No other planes in the air. Nothing lands immediately before them or after. She spots only a handful of other planes on the ground, all looking like rich people’s toys. They taxi to a stop. Maggie reaches into her purse. She has her passport with her. She always carries it, a habit she picked up during her many years working humanitarian crises overseas, when you never knew when you’d be traveling on a moment’s notice.

When the plane door opens, Maggie feels a crushing burst of cold air. She buttons up the coat — definitely real shearling — and slips the matching hat over her head. She finds fur-lined leather gloves in the coat pocket and slips them over her hands, flexing the fingers into place.

Hannah shouts over the howling wind, “Thank you for flying with us.”

“Thank you,” Maggie shouts back.

She expects a black car to be waiting, but across the tarmac there’s a helicopter instead. A man waves her toward it. She climbs into the back. It’s a six-seater, but she’s alone. Two pilots sit up front. One turns around, hands her a black aviation headset, and mimes that she put it over her ears. When she does, she hears the pilots converse in Russian with a woman she assumes is an air traffic controller. In moments they are up in the air. They fly over a vast landscape, a forest really, blanketed in snow.

Maggie has not been in a helicopter since she was crammed into the medevac ones during the war. It feels absurd to be so comfortable in one. There’s a twinge of something like guilt here.

Through the headset, one of the pilots switches over to broken English and says, “Flight time just six minutes, Doctor.”

He turns and looks at her to make sure she understood. Maggie gives him a thumbs-up in reply.

She sees very few buildings, even in the distance, which is odd. Rublevka, she knows, is only a few miles outside of bustling Moscow. That’s part of its draw for the überwealthy — it is private and protected and ultra-exclusive, but it is not remote.

At least, not remote like this.

The copter veers toward a snow-capped mountain. When it makes its way over the fir trees, Maggie sees a clearing in the distance. Not a natural clearing. It looks to be a perfect rectangle cut out of thick woods and taking up acres.

In the middle of the rectangle, equidistant from the property’s borders, stands a palace out of some long-ago fable. She looks down on it. “Palace” is really the only word for it. A term like “mega-mega mansion” is inadequate here. The palace is too sprawling, with too many interconnected branches to be anywhere near the mansion family.

The copter starts to descend about a hundred yards from the front door. The lawn isn’t just green — it’s perfect green, flawless, seemingly painted green. Maggie wonders whether it’s real grass or something artificial. The copter sets down gently, the rotor blades decelerating to a stop. When the pilot opens the door, the frigid air hits her in a rush. She steps out, the wind biting her face.

The palace gleams — actually gleams — in the sunlight. She wonders whether the entire edifice is marble, though that seems unlikely. The architecture is overwhelming and heady, much too much, a garish and almost grotesque blend of Italian Renaissance, French Rococo, and mostly Russian Baroque. The windows are tall and thin. There are reliefs and carvings on the walls. Overly ornamental domes and gold-trimmed cupolas line the roof.

It all feels, if not fake, not authentic either. The beloved palaces Maggie has been lucky enough to visit in her lifetime — Versailles, Pitti, Abdeen, Buckingham, Mysore, the Alhambra — none of them are this pristine. None gleam like this, probably because they have aged and been ravaged by time and history. People have lived and died there, history has happened, and when you visit, even if you stand at a safe distance or are surrounded by clamoring visitors, you can feel the ghosts that still haunt the place. This palace feels more like what it is — a reproduction, a showpiece, unblemished in every way.

Maggie stands there, unsure what to do, when the front door opens. A man steps into the doorframe. She is at a pretty good distance, at least a hundred yards, but she sees him raise his hand and beckon her toward him. She huddles up against the biting wind and starts down a green path. The grass feels real and even warm beneath her feet.

How?

There are white marble statues, lots of them, forming a gauntlet for her to head down. She recognizes many — Michelangelo’s David, Myron’s Discobolus, Puget’s Milo of Croton, Rodin’s Adam — all too white, all too pristine, all too obvious and soulless replicas.

The palace — she will just keep calling it that for now — has four soaring floors. Everything here is big and obvious and unsubtle — not so much an attempt to classily suggest opulence and power as to batter you with it.

The man at the door stands and waits.

Despite the frigid cold, the man is not wearing a coat. His shirt is gaudy maroon and silky and too tight. His belt line is hidden by an unapologetic gut. His jeans are skinny jeans in the sense that they seem much too small. His hairline is somewhere between receding and surrender, slicked back with something oily.

Oily.

If she was asked to describe him in one word, “oily” would seem apropos.

He smiles and waves at her with childlike enthusiasm.

“Come, come, Doctor, you must be freezing,” he says with a thick Russian accent.

Maggie hurries her step. He whisks her inside and closes the door. Despite the massive entrance hallway — soaring ceilings four stories high, a grand marble staircase in the center that branches to both sides, a crystal chandelier the size of that helicopter — the warmth from the heating system is immediate. She quickly takes off the hat and gloves, and unzips the fur coat.

The man spreads his arms. “Welcome, Doctor McCabe!”

She is not sure of the protocol here — he looks ready to hug her — and when she puts out a hand to shake, he looks a little disappointed.

“Thank you,” Maggie says. “And you are?”

He rubs the greasy stubble of his chin with one hand, uses his other hand to shake hers. “My name,” he says, “is Oleg Ragoravich.”

She can tell that he is scrutinizing her face to gauge her reaction. She tries not to give one, but she knows the name. Ivan Brovski had insisted that there was no need for her to know until arrival, but before the plane took off and she lost service, Maggie googled “Russian billionaires” and “Russian oligarchs” and then added words like “clandestine” and “reclusive.”

Oleg Ragoravich was one of about a half dozen possibilities she crossed when doing this. She hadn’t had time to do a deep dive, but there wasn’t all that much anyway. Of the top ten Russian billionaires, he is listed as “one of the most reclusive” and rumored for many years to be in poor health. He looks fine to her, but that doesn’t mean much. There are almost no photographs of him online, suggesting that he’s had them scrubbed from the internet. Most people don’t realize how easy it is for the über rich to do that, to control their online existence, how often you will google someone superpowerful and what comes up through search engines is only what that superpowerful entity wants you to see.

In Ragoravich’s case, there are a few old grainy black-and-white photographs. His age is listed as “between 61 and 64 years old.” Birthplace: Unknown but perhaps Tbilisi. As with many of his fellow Russian billionaires, the story of how he amassed his fortune is murky — something to do with the “chaotic privatization” of state-owned assets when the Soviet empire crumbled, along with currying favor with current government leadership.

Ragoravich’s “source of wealth” is listed as “metals.”

Vague enough?

“This isn’t Rublevka,” Maggie says to him.

“Pardon?”

“I was told I was going to Rublevka.”

“No, no. I mean, yes, that’s my main residence, but we thought it would be more comfortable and private at the Winter Palace. You like?”

She doesn’t know how to answer that, so she just gives a nod.

“You must be exhausted after such a long flight. Would you like to see your room or—?”

“I’d like to inspect the medical facilities right away.”

He grins. “You’re no-nonsense. I like that. Come. I’ll give you a tour on the way.”

Oleg has a walk that proudly leads with his protruding belly, his arms behind him, chin high, a little bounce in the step. They head down a wide corridor lined with oil paintings, some of which she recognizes. When Maggie hesitates as they pass one set, Oleg spreads his arms and says, “You recognize them, yes?”

She does. Three Rembrandts (A Lady and Gentleman in Black, Christ in the Storm on the Sea of Galilee, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man), a Manet (Chez Tortoni), and of course the pièce de résistance, Johannes Vermeer’s The Concert.

“Cute,” she says.

“How so?”

“Reproductions of the masterpieces stolen in the Gardner Museum heist.”

“Very good.” He looks pleased. “May I tell you a secret?”

She gives him a baleful eye. “You’re not going to tell me that they’re the real thing.”

“No, no,” he says. Then he leans toward her. “Well, except for one. I bought it from a Connecticut mobster five years ago.”

“So one is genuine,” she says, trying to keep her sarcastic tone to a minimum.

“Yes.”

“Which one?”

“I don’t tell.”

“Uh-huh, sure. So you could be pulling my leg.”

“I could be, yes.” He starts up again. “You’re a fan of art, no?”

“Truth? I’m more a fan of art heists.”

“True crime,” he says.

“Yes.”

Oleg is almost giddy as he stops by a closed door. A blank screen of some kind is mounted to the right of it. “I want to show you something. I think you will find it compelling.”

He sticks his face near the screen and stays still. Facial scan, Maggie assumes. She hears the click-click-click of a lock’s tumblers. Then a buzzing noise. Oleg grabs hold of the knob and pulls the door open.

Total darkness.

They step in. Oleg waits a moment, as though building suspense, then he flicks a switch against the wall inside the door. The lights come on. And there, on the far wall, hang three identical — or at least identical to her eye — reproductions of the world’s most famous painting.

The Mona Lisa.

Maggie frowns at him. “Let me guess,” she says. “The Mona Lisa in the Louvre is a forgery. One of these is the real one.”

Oleg can’t stop smiling. “You find that so hard to believe?”

“Pretty much.”

“You know, of course, that the Mona Lisa was stolen from the Louvre in 1911.”

She nods. “By Vincenzo Peruggia. It was also returned in 1913.”

“Very good, Doctor McCabe, and yes, that’s the official story.”

“Official story.” She again tries to keep the sarcasm from her tone. “But, uh, you know better?”

“Better, worse, who’s to say? But here is what we both know: The Mona Lisa was stolen from the Salon Carré at the Louvre on August 21, 1911, by Vincenzo Peruggia. For the next two years, there wasn’t a clue what happened to the Mona Lisa, despite an obviously thorough police investigation. You know all this, correct?”

“Correct.”

“So how does Peruggia, who had been so so careful, get caught? The official story, I mean: Two years after stealing it, Vincenzo Peruggia travels with the Mona Lisa from France to Italy, where he contacts an art dealer named Alfredo Geri. Peruggia says to Geri, ‘Oh, I have the Mona Lisa.’ Just like that. Out of the blue. After being so careful for two years, Peruggia just up and tells someone he stole it. And what happens next — after Peruggia shows Geri the Mona Lisa? Alfredo Geri asks permission to contact the director of the Uffizi Gallery, a man named Giovanni Poggi, to authenticate the stolen painting. Can you imagine this conversation? ‘Hi, I stole the world’s most famous painting, what do you think?’ ‘Oh, is it okay if I show it to the director of the famous art gallery in Firenze?’ The utter stupidity.”

Oleg shakes his head. Then he asks her, “Do you know what happened next?”

“They call the police,” Maggie says. “Peruggia is arrested. The Mona Lisa is returned.”

“Precisely.” Oleg tilts his head. “Does that sound plausible to you, Doctor McCabe?”

“So you don’t buy the official explanation,” Maggie says.

“I don’t, no.”

“You think Peruggia made a perfect forgery and gave that back instead — and now the original is hanging in your home.”

“No.” Oleg grins, rubs his hands together as though warming up for his tale. “Again, let’s stick to facts. In 1932, Karl Decker wrote an article for The Saturday Evening Post after speaking to an Argentinian con man named Eduardo de Valfierno. Valfierno claims that he was the mastermind behind the theft. He hired Vincenzo Peruggia to steal the painting and then he commissioned an art forger named Yves Chaudron to make six identical copies of the Mona Lisa. The genius here is that with the real painting gone, potential buyers had no original to compare with it. According to Decker’s article, Valfierno sold the forgeries to über-rich collectors who believed it was the stolen masterpiece for a total of ninety million US dollars. It was the perfect crime.”

“I know the Decker article,” Maggie says. “It’s a conspiracy theory. Decker has long been discredited.”

“Correction,” Oleg says, raising a finger. “Decker was ‘discredited’ because none of the six forgeries has ever been found. The logic went that if six forgeries were out there, surely one of them would have surfaced in the twenty years between the time of the robbery and the time of Decker’s exposé. But now...”

His eyes slowly move back to the far wall.

“You’re saying these are three of the six Chaudron forgeries?”

Oleg nods. “One of these was in the hands of a Saudi prince. He kept it on a yacht. Another was kept in a safe by an American oil magnate’s grandfather living in Tulsa. I had both paintings examined with modern technology. It’s been confirmed that despite attempts to make them appear older, they were both very good forgeries painted in the early twentieth century.”

“What happened to the other three?”

Oleg shrugs. “I haven’t found them yet, but I have a theory. Once Vincenzo Peruggia was arrested and the ‘real’” — Oleg makes quote marks with his fingers — “Mona Lisa was returned and those superrich buyers realized they’d been easily swindled, they either destroyed the paintings or hid them out of embarrassment.”

Maggie steps closer. She stares at the three paintings, looking for differences. She can’t see any. She notices the familiar craquelure in all three paintings. These forgeries are indeed well done. “So if Decker’s theory is true,” Maggie says, “you have three excellent and perhaps famous forgeries.”

Oleg could not look more pleased with himself. “No,” he says.

She turns to him. “No?”

“According to Decker’s article, the forger Yves Chaudron took his massive share for the crime, changed his name, and vanished into the French countryside, where he lived out his days in quiet luxury.”

“Okay,” she says.

Oleg gestures toward the paintings with his chin. “One of these three Mona Lisas was found in a château near Chamonix. According to what I learned, a sketchy French art restorer named Philippe Canet hung it over his fireplace for years. When Canet died, his daughter took it down, finding it tacky to be hanging up what she thought was just a normal reproduction of the old masterpiece. She sold it to my dealer. But you see, in 1913, when the Mona Lisa was returned to the Louvre, the science behind authentication was far more primitive, especially in terms of the aging process. Now we have pigment analysis, X-ray fluorescence, Raman spectroscopy, ultraviolet lights, chemical analysis, carbon dating, all that. I was able to test all three of these Mona Lisas. Two of them, as I mentioned before, date back to the early twentieth century, which fits Decker’s time period for when the forgeries were being created.”

He takes a step closer to the wall.

“But one of the three, the Mona Lisa hung above art restorer Philippe Canet’s fireplace, dates back to the early sixteenth century — the time that Leonardo da Vinci painted the Mona Lisa.”

He turns and looks back for Maggie’s reaction. She tries to keep her expression neutral.

“So what’s the most likely theory on what really happened? Vincenzo Peruggia stole the Mona Lisa. How he did it has been well documented. He brought the stolen masterpiece, per Valfierno’s plan, to Yves Chaudron, so Chaudron could use it to make the best possible forgeries. But instead of giving Peruggia back the original, Chaudron gave him one of his forgeries and kept the original for himself. Who would know? Then he changed his name to Philippe Canet, moved to a humble château outside Chamonix — and hung the original Mona Lisa above his fireplace, where it remained for the rest of his days.” He grins and shakes his head in awe. “Think about it. How marvelous that must have been for a master forger like Chaudron.” He turns and meets Maggie’s eye. “Every day, Chaudron stared up at the original Mona Lisa in his own den while the world clamored and still queues up for hours to glimpse — not a da Vinci but an Yves Chaudron forgery. That, my dear doctor, is magnificent. That, my dear doctor, is immortality.”

Maggie’s eyes move back to the wall. She steps closer, seeing whether her very amateur eye can spot any differences. She doesn’t buy his story, but she also can’t deny that she feels a deep chill being in this otherwise barren room.

Still staring at the wall, with her back to him, Maggie asks, “Which one?”

“Does it matter? You are one of the very few people alive who have seen the real Mona Lisa. The rest of the world gawks at a fake. It’s like religion when you think about it: Only one faith can be correct. The rest of the world worships a forgery. You, my dear, now get to be the enlightened.”

Maggie frowns. “So you’re not going to tell me?”

“No, not yet.”

“Why?”

He doesn’t answer. He opens the door and leaves the room. Maggie stares for another moment, meeting the eyes of all three Mona Lisas as though one of them might reveal some inner truth to her. None do. She follows Oleg back into the corridor. The lights go out. The door closes and locks.

Maggie lets loose a long breath.

“Shall we continue?” Oleg asks.

He shows her other valuables on the way — more artwork, a Qianlong vase, a fifteenth-century tapestry, sculptures — but after the Mona Lisa story, the other collectibles seem almost passé. Oleg eventually leads her down a long corridor into a glass-enclosed walkway — no need to experience the elements. As they cross through the snow, Maggie notices a large pile of firewood up against the side of the glass. They are now in a see-through tunnel behind the palace. At the end of the tunnel, Oleg opens a door. Maggie senses a cavernous space. He hits a switch on the wall, revealing an enormous garage/showroom loaded with cars. Collectibles, she is sure.

“Look at my baby,” Oleg says, walking serpentinely through the collection. “A 1962 Ferrari 250 GTO, the greatest Ferrari of all time, a grand tourer with a V12 engine, three hundred horsepower. Only thirty-six were ever produced over a two-year span...”

Maggie tunes him out. Men and cars. She has zero interest. She has also had enough with the estate tour. She wants to get to work and start prepping for the surgery. Oleg shows her the key is in the ignition. When he jumps in and says, “We can take it for a quick spin. Just open the sliding doors and we can vroom around the property,” Maggie cuts him off: “You were going to show me the medical facilities, remember?”

Oleg’s hand drops off the ignition key. “Ah yes, I do prattle on, don’t I?”

Maggie chooses not to answer. Oleg slides back out of the car.

“Shall we?”

He exits the vast showroom through the same door where they entered. He takes her back through the glass walkway, past the firewood, and turns left at the foyer when they are back in the main house. When Ragoravich opens another door — she gets this is all to impress, but it’s still difficult not to be floored — there is an Olympic-size indoor pool. Only one person is in the giant pool right now, someone who knows how to swim, slicing through the water with barely a ripple.

“Nadia!” Oleg calls out.

The swimmer — Maggie can only really see the bathing cap and the arms doing a picture-perfect crawl — does not slow down.

“Nadia!”

Still nothing as she glides through the water with a smooth stroke that is almost hypnotic to watch.

“Nadia,” Oleg says to Maggie, “is your other patient.”

“I’ll need to examine her before the surgery. You too.”

Oleg does the head tilt again. “We’ll see.”

“No, we won’t see. I’m not performing surgery without examinations and consultations.”

Oleg just smiles.

“What?” she says.

“Please, Doctor McCabe, can we stop the posturing? You are here. You are being well paid. I understand that there are certain protocols. I am paying a great premium to avoid some of them. Like when you flew here on my private plane. Did you have to arrive at the airport two hours early? No. Did you have to go through a metal detector or wait for your boarding group to be called? No.”

“This isn’t the same thing,” she says.

“But it is, my dear.”

“I won’t do it then.”

He doesn’t bother replying anymore. He grabs a towel and waits for Nadia to reach the edge of the pool. When she does, he calls out her name again. This time she hears and stops. He barks something at her in Russian. She nods and makes her way to the ladder. When Nadia gets out, it almost seems like she’s moving in movie slow motion. Nadia reaches up, pulls off her swimming cap, and shakes out her long black hair as though she were appearing in a shampoo commercial. Oleg hands her a towel. She takes it and then she turns and looks at Maggie.

Nadia is, no way around it, gorgeous.

Blue-aqua eyes that sparkle off her sun-kissed skin, raven-black hair, the lithe and long body of a swimmer. She also looks, Maggie can’t help but notice, young. Very young. Oleg appears to be around sixty. Maggie pegs Nadia somewhere in her early to mid-twenties.

Does it surprise her that a billionaire oligarch has a young...

girlfriend, bae, boo — what other bizarre terms had Porkchop used?

It does not.

When Oleg puts his arm around Nadia’s back, Maggie cringes for her. Keeping his hand on her lower back, Oleg leads Nadia to where Maggie is standing. In the pool, Nadia was poetry in motion. On land, with Oleg touching her, Nadia’s movements are more tentative and awkward — gangly even in a way that reminds Maggie of her teenage nephew.

When they stop in front of Maggie, Oleg doesn’t introduce Nadia. He just says, “She’s too skinny, no?”

“No,” Maggie says.

Maggie steps toward Nadia and puts out her hand. Nadia looks toward Oleg as though seeking permission to respond. Oleg nods that it’s okay and Nadia hesitantly sticks out her hand for a quick shake.

“I’m Doctor McCabe. You can call me Maggie.”

Maggie locks her gaze onto the blue-aqua eyes, but Nadia quickly turns back to Oleg.

Oleg says, “She doesn’t speak a word of English. But she’s too skinny. I like a woman with a bountiful bosom.” He gestures this with both hands in a hopefully exaggerated way. “You understand?”

“Oh, I understand,” Maggie says. “Do you understand that I’m not performing any surgery on Nadia without her permission?”

“Permission?” Oleg repeats with a laugh. He starts waving his hand theatrically. “Of course! You must have her” — he laughs again — “‘permission.’ I wouldn’t dream of having Nadia do anything against her will.” Oleg rips off some Russian in Nadia’s direction. Nadia listens obediently. When he finishes, Nadia nods at him. Oleg says something else in Russian, a bit more animated now, and points at Maggie. Nadia turns so that her entire body faces Maggie. Their eyes meet again.

Nadia nods at Maggie and says, “Okay.”

Oleg spreads his hands. “See?”

“See what?” Maggie says. “What was that?”

“You wanted Nadia’s permission. I asked her if she wanted you to give her bigger boobs — oh, and maybe a rounder ass. It’s too flat right now. Nadia is saying okay, that’s what she wants.”

“What she wants,” Maggie says, “or what you want?”

Oleg looks perplexed for a moment. “Why does there have to be a difference? She wants, I want — why can’t we all get what we want? Don’t make life a zero-sum game, Doctor McCabe. That’s how you create losers. The world is a series of negotiations — and the best negotiations are when both sides win. We’ve made a deal, Nadia and me. She gets, I get. Same as you and me, no?” Oleg grins again.

“Come, I want to show you your operating room.”

He steps toward the exit. Maggie stays where she is. He waits a moment. Nadia tightens the towel around her as though she wants to hide. For a few moments, the three of them stand there in silence. Oleg breaks it.

“Fine,” Oleg says with a melodramatic sigh. “My personal physician is expected in an hour. He can tell you everything you need to know about my medical history.”

“And Nadia?”

“What? I told you what she needs.” He arches an eyebrow and gestures at Nadia as though she were an appliance on a game show. “And come on, you can see she’s very healthy, no?”

Maggie crosses her arms. “I’ll need to examine her. Alone.”

“But Nadia doesn’t even speak English.” Then Oleg stops and raises his hands in mock surrender. “Fine.” He barks some more Russian at Nadia. Nadia nods and scurries away. “I’ll show you your operating theater. Then you can” — he makes quote marks with his fingers — “‘examine’ Nadia — alone — before my physician arrives. Okay?”

Maggie is about to accept, but Oleg sees no need to wait. He is already on the move. She follows him into a corridor with tile flooring. Their footsteps echo. When they reach the end, Oleg opens a door and steps aside.

“Your operating theater,” he says with a deep bow.

She enters, blinks, looks again.

Oleg is enjoying her reaction. “I trust you find it satisfactory?”

Maggie swallows and manages to say, “It seems fine.”

“Oh, it seems more than ‘fine,’” Oleg replies. “It is an exact reproduction of the operating room you used at Johns Hopkins. Our people measured yours, took videos and pictures, asked your former staff for details. You’ll find every instrument and machine in the exact places, though, not to boast, our equipment is more up-to-date.”

He isn’t exaggerating. It feels as though she were back in Baltimore. She wants to ask about the how and why, because she had just agreed to take this job, what, thirteen, fourteen hours ago?

How had Oleg built this so fast?

Answer: He couldn’t have.

Had he already known — or at least, assumed — that she’d agree to come? That seems more likely. Dr. Barlow came down from New York City to Johns Hopkins for the award ceremony. He had to have known by then, at the very least, that he would be asking Maggie to go to Russia to do this surgery. Taking it a step further, it seems unlikely that Barlow didn’t first consider Maggie for this surgery at least a few days before he came to campus. It probably took some time and thought on his part. Backing up even further for a moment: Ivan Brovski — or maybe Oleg Ragoravich himself — would have approached Barlow. Maybe they offered the job to Barlow first, but Barlow wouldn’t need the money. Or maybe Barlow didn’t want to go at his age or with his reputation. Whatever. They would have then discussed with Barlow who would be a good candidate for the job. Somewhere along the way, it would occur to Barlow that the perfect person — someone who desperately needed money, who would be discreet, who had the necessary skills, who would not worry about career repercussions — would be Maggie McCabe.

And continuing to follow this road, someone like Oleg Ragoravich or Ivan Brovski wouldn’t just accept Barlow’s recommendation without doing due diligence. They’d run a thorough background check. They’d have learned about her schooling, her surgical expertise, her finances, her malpractice suit, her work with WorldCures, her now-tattered (though once-pristine) reputation.

All of that, even with the power and money behind Oleg Ragoravich, would take time.

Time enough to build an operating room.

And if she had said no? Well, so what? The operating room would be at the ready for the next potential doctor. They could then quickly redesign, if need be, to suit the next candidate. Who knows? Perhaps Maggie wasn’t their first choice. Perhaps this wasn’t the first time they’d done surgeries out of Oleg’s compound. Perhaps this room was originally bigger or smaller or the anesthesia cart was placed on the left instead of the right or was painted cool blue instead of the muted green Maggie preferred.

Or perhaps they knew she would say yes.

It all feels very surreal.

There are three men in the operating room. They all come toward her.

“Your two nurses per your request,” Oleg says. “And your anesthesiologist.”

Oleg’s watch buzzes. He squints at the screen and frowns. “I must leave you now. Nadia should be in the other room waiting for you by now. Then my doctor will be here. I’m sure you’ll then need to rest before tonight’s ball.”

“Ball?”

“Yes. A massive one, here at the palace. Five hundred people. I expect you to be there.”

“I thought you were a...” She stops.

“Private?” Oleg finished for her.

She was going to say “recluse” but close enough. “Yes.”

“I am. Very.”

She doesn’t ask the obvious “Then why a ball?” follow-up because it’s already unspoken and he’s choosing not to reply. She instead stays in her lane: “As your physician, I want to warn you that if you want to have surgery tomorrow—”

“I know, I know.” He holds up his hand. “‘Nil per os’ — Latin for ‘nothing by mouth.’ So nothing to eat or drink after midnight.” His watch buzzes again. Oleg heads toward the door. “We can talk more tonight at the ball. But now? I promised you could examine Nadia alone. She is waiting for you in the room across the hall.”