Judgment

78

The car they gave her to drive was a gleaming black Tesla Model S. As requested. She was surprised they’d agreed. Government bureaucracies were notoriously tight-fisted. She had no idea whether it was borrowed or rented, but it was sleek and beautiful, and it looked and smelled brand-new. Maybe it belonged to Giles McNamer. It had an all-glass panoramic roof.

She familiarized herself with the Tesla for about five minutes and then put it into drive. She was headed toward the part of the island called Siasconset, from time to time consulting the large screen on the dashboard, following the spoken directions.

The entrance to Protasov’s property was marked only with a street number. There was a security liftgate across the road. She stopped, and the gate came up and out of the way, and she drove along a narrow unpaved sandy road.

As she drove, she rehearsed what she was going to say. She didn’t know how this whole thing was going to play out. She was improvising. She just knew she had to get him aside and have a talk.

Now she was beginning to get nervous, even scared. Her mouth was dry, and her heart raced. This wasn’t helpful, she knew. Then she reminded herself about what had happened to her in Chicago and ever since, and it was like tapping into a deep reservoir of anger, and she found it calmed her nerves.

The road twisted one way and then another and then she came to a wooden gatehouse, a small shingled structure with a steep roof. Another liftgate blocked the road. A uniformed guard greeted her unsmilingly.

“Good morning,” he said. “A license or some form of picture ID?”

She handed him her driver’s license.

He looked at the license, then at a list on a clipboard he was holding. He looked at her, then at the license again.

“Welcome, Ms. Brody,” he said, and he waved her through.

The road here was paved with crushed seashells, which crunched under the wheels as she drove. After a while the road widened out into a large, circular drive in front of a sprawling three-story shingle-style house that could have been a hotel. It was certainly large enough to be. In front of the house was a lagoon, glistening in the sunlight. She could see a glimpse of sparkling blue ocean through a breezeway. Blue hydrangeas clustered in front of the house.

A valet took the car, and she got out and stepped into the house, where she was met by a pretty young Asian woman in a pale green linen dress.

“Judge Juliana Brody,” Juliana said.

“Welcome. The board members are gathering in the sitting room for some coffee before the meeting.”

“Thank you.” The young woman assumed Juliana was here for the board meeting, a legal adviser or something. But how long could she keep up the imposture?

She was standing in a broad entry hall with floors of mellow antique pine and a skylight above. She could see that a small crowd, maybe thirty people, was gathering in the next room. She walked into the sitting room. She smelled someone’s citrus floral perfume.

She recognized some of the faces. One, shaggy-haired and round bellied, was a former British prime minister. Another was a black woman with lively darting eyes who had once served as Secretary of State. A flame-haired and fiery former United Nations ambassador for the United States. A few people turned and smiled at Juliana, as if they were supposed to know her.

So far no one had called her out, no one had asked her to repeat her name, no one had checked a list to find she wasn’t there. Everyone assumed she was there because she was supposed to be there. Look like you belong and you’ll fit right in, Rosalind Brody used to say.

A waitress in a short black dress offered her caviar and crème fraîche tartlets on a tray. She shook her head. Didn’t seem like breakfast food, and she didn’t care for caviar anyway.

Then she saw, across the room, a handsome blond woman with a hard face who had to be Olga Kuznetsova, the FSB colonel. Kuznetsova was wearing a navy blazer over a white blouse, a pantsuit. A heavy gold chain necklace. She was talking with the pretty Asian girl, who seemed to be telling her something. Olga was shaking her head, scowling, clearly the boss.

Olga then turned around and moved shark-like through the crowd until she reached a couple of men talking. Juliana saw it was the man himself, talking to Senator Hugh Comstock of Illinois.

Yuri Protasov was surprisingly short, or maybe he just looked short next to Comstock. He was a virile-looking man in his midfifties, rugged. Graying sandy hair, a closely trimmed salt-and-pepper beard, a heavy brow. He wore an elegant dove-gray suit, a crisp white shirt, a maroon tie. He laughed at something the senator said, displaying very white capped teeth.

She saw Olga sidle up to Protasov and whisper something. She looked angry. Protasov nodded, furrowed his heavy brow, whispered something back. It looked like she was dressing him down.

Then his eyes searched the room and landed on Juliana.

Their eyes locked.

Protasov did not smile politely. His eyes were cold.

Juliana stared back. Her “objection overruled” stare. Then she smiled.

Now he was angling through the crowd, heading toward her, she realized.

When he reached her, he said, “Please come with me,” and kept striding. “Certainly,” she said, and fell in behind him. She followed him out of the sitting room and across the entry hall into a room with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, dimly lit. The air in there was cool. She looked around, scanned the shelves, saw books by Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Pushkin, Bulgakov, Gogol, Chekhov, Nabokov. Serious Russian literature. These books weren’t props brought in to decorate a room. Protasov was obviously some kind of intellectual.

A bulky young guy in a suit that looked too tight entered the library and approached Protasov. They spoke, quickly and quietly, in Russian. Protasov stood back and folded his arms, watching. The young guy came up to her and said, in a thick Russian accent, “Please stand with arms at side.”

He gave Juliana a long impassive stare, like a zoologist peering at a specimen that might or might not be a new creature to him. “Mr. Protasov will be with you in minute.” Then he produced a metal object somewhat bulkier than a cell phone and proceeded to run it silently over Juliana’s clothing, over her shoulders and arms, and down to her legs.

She was frozen in fear. She was wearing a belt, and a pin, and there was a lipstick in her purse that contained no lipstick but recorded. And her shoes. She had multiple recording devices on her person. Any one of them contained microcircuits and were detectable.

The guy was looking for these devices. If he did find one, or several, what would happen then? The not knowing, the very uncertainty, was terrifying.

Her heart thudded, but her face was composed: calm, triumphant, brassy.

Protasov watched, arms folded.

The guard, or whatever he was, finished running his little device over Juliana; then he looked at it closely. He turned and said something quietly to Protasov in Russian.

She waited. Her heart beat so hard she thought it almost might be audible.

But the young guy just nodded and left the room.

Did that mean the recording devices hadn’t been detected? She wished she hadn’t had so much coffee. On the other hand, she’d needed it to fight the crushing wave of fatigue settling over her from not sleeping.

She could feel her heart dancing in her chest. She had no idea what was about to happen. She didn’t know what to expect.

Yuri Protasov walked slowly up to her. “Judge Brody,” he said boomingly, “I’m afraid you’ve caught me at a very busy time. My board is about to meet, and these are not people you keep waiting.” He spoke fluent English, his accent British.

“We have a little business to discuss, you and I,” Juliana said. “Shouldn’t take long at all.”

Protasov offered his hand formally, bowing slightly. “Yuri Protasov.”

“Juliana Brody.”

“So you just show up here uninvited?” He gave a little smile. A flash of white. “And apparently breeze right through my security?”

“If you can’t get in the back door, try the front.” Another Roz Brody pearl of wisdom.

“Well played. Very clever of you, coming at a time when there are a lot of people around. Protection in numbers, right?”

They understood each other. “Something like that.”

“So what do you want?”

“Actually, I’m here to offer you something.”

“Well, that’s a change. I’m all ears.”

“A decision in a case of interest to you. A motion for summary judgment.”

“Oh?”

“Your people have made it clear what you want. You want all documents sealed that might reveal that you’re the owner of Wheelz. So you want to shut down a sexual discrimination lawsuit against a company you own. I get it.”

“I’m not sure what you’re referring to.” A tight smile. “This sounds like fake news to me.”

“You want this whole Wheelz sexual discrimination case thrown out. Well, let me make it clear to you: I think the plaintiff’s case is quite strong.”

He tipped his head skeptically. “And?”

She said, “And for me to put my beliefs and my morals up for sale, well — that’s going to cost something. It’s not something I do lightly. That’s going to weigh on me for a long time. I’m going to require some serious consideration.”

He said nothing, waiting.

“So you will wire ten million dollars to my account. Which I think is cheap, frankly, for a woman’s honor.”

She opened her purse and located the card that Venkovsky had given her. The business card of an assistant general manager at a Cayman Islands bank. On the other side of the card she’d written out the nine digits of a bank account. She handed it to him.

He looked at it for a few seconds, and then he slipped the card into his front shirt pocket. Did that mean he agreed? She couldn’t tell. She was confident that Protasov’s people — or maybe the FSB? — had monitored the conversation she and Duncan had had in her lobby.

“After what you put me through — put my family through — I call this compensatory damages.”

He blinked a few times, his expression stoic.

“If it comes out that your fund was illegally underwritten by a banned, sanctioned entity, I think it could be ruinous to you. All those fancy board members out there will flee.” She waited. Saw his cold hard stare.

Finally he smiled grimly. “Your justice is expensive.”

Protasov was no longer pretending to be unaware of what she was talking about. They were past that. And he had just surrendered.

“Well, I hope you’re right. I also want it made explicit — and I want to hear you say it, right here — that my family will always be protected. That nothing will ever happen to them.”

Protasov lifted his chin. “You have nothing to worry about,” he said. But his eyes said something different. They were cold and gray and steely. Her stomach turned over.

“You’re going to have to be more explicit,” she said.

“Your family, your husband and your two lovely children, nothing will ever happen to them; you have my word on that.” He spoke gently. “I would never do that.”

“Okay, then,” she said softly. “So tell me something. Why didn’t you try the carrot first, before the stick?”

“You mean why didn’t my people offer you a bribe?”

She nodded.

“We didn’t attempt a bribe, because your reputation preceded you.”

“My reputation?”

“For fierce probity,” Protasov said with a tart smile. “But as it turns out, you are full of surprises. So we will do business, you and I. Ten million dollars into your Caymans account. We have an understanding.”

She smiled, maybe a little too broadly. She didn’t want him to see what she was feeling.

“I think maybe people, maybe they underestimate you, is that right?”

“Occasionally,” she said, and shrugged.

She thought of the lipstick in her purse that wasn’t really a lipstick, and the belt buckle, and the soles of her shoes. No one had taken anything away from her, patted her down. She was recording him, and if any single device malfunctioned, there were plenty of backups.

Had he been explicit enough? Should she press him harder, try to get him to say more?

She couldn’t risk it, she decided. She had enough.

He said, “You know, Catherine the Great was far more ruthless than her husband. First she forced him to abdicate the throne; then she arranged to have one of his guards strangle him to death one night. So then she took over as czarina. She had tens of thousands of her people put to death for daring to rebel against her. Maybe hundreds of thousands. She even executed noblemen. But you know, it’s like they say — you can’t make an omelet without breaking a few Fabergé eggs.”

“Very clever,” she said drily.

“I’m actually in negotiations with the Kremlin to buy her crown, the Great Imperial Crown, the crown of all the Romanovs. But a lot of people don’t want it leaving the Kremlin. Whereas I say, everything has a price. So we have a deal?”

She nodded.

“Good. Now, have you tried the caviar canapés? They’re to die for.”