“Spare me,” Morgana told her bluntly. “You want your revenge on Gora Maslov. You wouldn’t have agreed to meet me otherwise.”
They were in Kalmar City Park, standing at the apex of a small but beautiful wooden bridge painted a bright Dutch blue. Below them, in the water of the pond it spanned, water spiders skated across the surface, and now and again, a fish would rise, its mouth agape to scoop up unwary insects flying too low.
Natalie stirred uneasily beside Morgana. “Okay, but there’s only so much punishment and humiliation I’m willing to take.”
“Think of your toddler at home,” Morgana said with evident cynicism. “Do you have an ailing mother, as well?”
Fire erupted behind Natalie’s eyes, then just as quickly was extinguished. Her laugh was deep-throated and genuine. “Christ, I can’t get away with anything with you.”
“Better not to try,” Morgana said, her tone lightened considerably by an intimation of friendship. How quickly she had learned from Françoise. It was still difficult to think of her as Alyosha Orlova.
“I like you, Morgana. You’re not like other girls I’ve met.”
“I don’t believe in playing by the rules,” Morgana said, “because they’re all made by men.”
“Men like Gora.” Now Natalie could not keep the bitterness out of her voice. “Corrupt men. Evil men.”
The afternoon was waning, the light richer, deeper, the shadows lengthening, so that the children who skipped along the bridge behind them broke out in laughter, running after each other’s shadow, as if they could actually be caught. To be a child again! Morgana thought. She thought of Peter Pan, whose shadow Wendy had to stitch on him so that he would have one just like everyone else. She felt a bit like Peter Pan now, skimming, like the water spiders, over the atmosphere of Kalmar, seeing the park, the neighboring castle, all the way down to the marina, where Gora’s boat basked in the late-day sunlight like a monstrous beast waiting to tear her limb from limb.
“Time to go,” Morgana said softly. “He was pleased to hear from you, yes?”
“Insofar as Gora can be pleased, yes, I suppose so. I told him I wanted more money.”
“That I’m sure he could understand. And when you told him you might be able to bring a friend this time?”
“He laughed.” Natalie spat into the water, scattering the spiders, who must be thinking, What gods are these? “He laughs like a fucking hyena.”
They had been through all this before, of course, but Morgana’s plan was so acutely calibrated it paid to repeat every step of it multiple times. Plus, it calmed her—like a well-worn prayer before bedtime.
Natalie took Morgana shopping for a dress shorter than any Morgana had ever tried on, let alone worn, heels far higher than any she had ever tried on, let alone worn, and the right pieces of paste jewelry—a bracelet and a necklace just a touch longer than a choker.
“Men like a jewel nestled in the hollow of your throat,” Natalie told her. “It reminds them of where their tongue will be in the middle of the night.”
When she saw Morgana dressed for the evening with Gora, she said, “You look like ten thousand bucks.”
“You mean like a slut.”
Natalie shrugged. “Like everything, it’s a matter of perspective. I think you’re hot; so will Gora.”
Morgana lifted the hem of the dress to reveal the small pistol in its chamois holder strapped high up on her inner thigh.
Natalie winked. “Now for the pièce de résistance. Makeup!”
—
The same two goons Morgana had seen when she had spied on Françoise stepping aboard Gora’s boat were still at their posts, eyeing everyone who came within fifty paces with undisguised suspicion.
Natalie swallowed the pill Morgana had given her. “This had better work,” she muttered under her breath as they strutted down the wooden planks.
“Maybe they won’t pat us down,” Morgana said, out of the corner of her mouth.
“Right. I think this is nuts, but for the money you’re paying me you’re the boss.”
It was dark; the sun had set more than an hour ago, and lights sparkled along the pier. The water around Gora’s boat danced in reflections of the cabin and deck lamps. The sky was a milky gray, the undersides of clouds pale as fish bellies. The goons recognized Natalie, but the one who had hustled her off days ago gave no indication he recalled the incident.
They gestured, and Natalie stood very still. They checked her evening bag, though it was clearly too small to hold a weapon of any serious danger. As they patted Natalie down, quickly and expertly, they flashed glimpses of their Strizh pistols in snug shoulder holsters. Natalie was clean. Then they turned their attention to Morgana. She spread her legs a little, as if she were bracing herself against the rocking of a small boat.
They found the pistol, of course, and grabbing her by the arm, hustled her onto the deck and into the main salon, Natalie just behind.
One of the goons held up the pistol. “Look what we found,” he said in guttural Russian.
“On which one?” Gora said. He had been sprawled on one of a pair of sofas, but now he sprang up. Perhaps deliberately, he was flanked by a pair of marble busts of Roman caesars set on black columns. He wore a cream-colored silk shirt, lightweight slacks, and huaraches. He glared at Natalie. “Is this some kind of payback?”
“It was on the other one,” the goon said, handing over the pistol to his boss. “The new girl.”
“That so?” Gora turned his attention to Morgana. “What’s your name?” he said, switching to English.
“Lana.”
He was standing right in front of her now, close enough for her to smell his scent, part cologne, part sweat.
It was emblematic of how he viewed her that he did not ask for her last name; either he didn’t care or he assumed she would lie. “Do you know who I am, Lana?”
“I don’t care who you are,” Morgana said, “as long as I get paid at the end of the session.”
“The session,” Gora said mockingly. “How professional are we?” With his dark brows knit together, his tone hardened as he brandished the pistol. “What the fuck d’you think you’re doing, bringing a weapon like this onto my boat?”
“Having a little fun.” Morgana’s heart was pounding so hard it was giving her a headache.
“Fun?” Gora echoed. “Okay, bitch, I’ll show you some fun.” He aimed the pistol at Natalie’s forehead.” His eyes never left Morgana’s. “Shall I pull the trigger?”
The point was not to bat even an eyelid. “Go ahead.”
“Blow your friend’s brains out.”
“If that’s your pleasure.”
A flicker of hesitation passed across Gora’s face, like a fleeting shadow, and was gone. His expression hardened like clay in the sun. “If you mean to play chicken with me, you’ve made a serious mistake.” He pulled the trigger.
A spray of water hit Natalie square between the eyes.
The goons looked stunned, Natalie blew water out of her nostrils, and Gora stood still as a statue, while Morgana laughed and laughed until tears came to her eyes. By that time, Gora was laughing, too.
“Jesus Christ,” he said. “Jesus Christ.” Then, waving a hand: “Someone fetch her a towel.”
He handed back the gun, grips first, and watched Morgana tuck it away in its holster, all the while giving him a good look at her creamy thighs and the tip of the shadowed triangle above.
“Natalie, I’ve underestimated you,” he said as Natalie patted her face with the towel she had been given. “You really know how to choose your friends.” He still hadn’t taken his eyes from Morgana. His gaze roamed over her body in the way of ancient Roman slave traders; he did everything but look inside her mouth at her teeth and gums.
“You know, Lana,” he said, “I can see your nipples through the fabric of your dress.”
Like all women, Morgana had been subjected to the male gaze, but never like this. It was like being undressed and evi
scerated. She had been reduced to a piece of raw meat ready to be devoured, without even a single thought as to its effect on her. In that one moment, Gora had stripped her of her humanity. It hurt—it hurt more than she could have imagined, like a knife slash, the first brick in the wall of domination. She wondered how Natalie managed it without curling up like a flower deprived of the elements it needs to survive and thrive.
“Perhaps it’s the trick of the light.”
A wicked smile sprouted on Gora’s face like a noxious weed. “Right.”
Natalie had been completely forgotten. She was old news, used goods, her value greatly diminished. Gora was homing in on the new girl: virgin territory, so to speak.
“Why don’t you lift up your skirt again,” Gora said. “I’d like to see that pistol wrapped around your thigh.”
“You’re the man,” Morgana replied. “Why don’t you do the heavy lifting?”
Gora laughed and reached for the hem of her dress. Morgana stepped back a pace. He came after her, faster this time. As his fingers were about to touch the hem, she swatted them away.
Gora stopped then, looking at her as if through a different lens. “You’re not like the others, are you?”
“I am who I am,” Morgana said neutrally. “Nothing more, nothing less.”
“That’s for me to decide.”
He held out his hand, and when Morgana took it she felt as if she had put her head between the open jaws of a crocodile. Her skin began to crawl.
Morgana could sense Natalie’s jealous gaze, mouth partly open, pearl teeth visible, but she had no idea what she was really thinking. She just prayed to whatever dark gods ruled her new shadowed world that Natalie wouldn’t lose her composure, that she would follow Morgana’s plan to the letter.
She allowed him to draw her down the wood-paneled corridor, past doorways to the formal dining area, the study he used as an office, several guest cabins.
The master suite was enormous, as plush and well appointed as any five-star hotel suite. It was all polished wood and brass fittings. A crystal chandelier hung from the center of the ceiling, and oriental lamps on hand-carved tables that were built into the wall haloed everything in an intimate glow. The king-size bed was covered in Frette linens, the love seat and two club chairs were covered in moiré silk. The teak deck was covered in an antique Isfahan carpet that quite possibly belonged in a museum. On the walls hung a Marilyn painting by Warhol and an early-career one by Jeff Koons, of the provocateur-artist himself entwined lustfully with his former wife, the former Italian porn star, Cicciolina. It was meant to be erotic, but in Morgana’s opinion was just plain crass, which is how she found pretty much all of Koons’s work to be. However, the Warhol’s garish primary colors and Koons’s even more garish subject matter clearly mirrored Gora’s idea of setting the mood for a night of Russian debauchery.
Morgana glanced around. No books, not even a bad erotic novel. Why am I not surprised? she thought. At last, her gaze alighted on Gora Maslov. Natalie had said that in whatever he does Gora tries too hard, and she was right. This was even reflected in his clothing, which was meant to seem casual, but like the bedroom itself, was a self-conscious attempt at aping the hip-hop mogul of current American culture. It was all she could do not to laugh. But, having absorbed the intel on the Maslovs Soraya had sent with the courier, she knew there was nothing amusing about the family’s history of murder, extortion, intimidation, and criminal enterprise. Dimitri, Gora’s father, was especially impressive, until he was gunned down in a barber shop, 1930s Chicago gangster style, by Boris Karpov.
It seemed to her now, regarding Gora’s vainglorious pose, that the son was suffering under an inferiority complex, trying and failing to live up to his father’s image. This was not a good sign. People like Gora tended to be nasty, volatile, aggressive, sometimes violent, beneath their calm, smiling exterior. She needed to be especially careful not to make a false step. This setup could go south in the space of a heartbeat. She took off her heels.
When he grabbed her, Morgana said, “I have to pee.”
“He likes to watch me pee,” Natalie had told her.
Gora pointed to an open doorway behind her: the bathroom glowing like a jewel box. She turned, headed toward it, acutely aware of him following a pace behind.
When she crossed over the threshold, he said, “Don’t you want to close the door?”
“Not especially.” She did not bother to put down the seat; instead she turned back toward him, hiked up her dress, and slowly bent her knees. With her legs on either side of the porcelain bowl and her eyes steady on him, she canted she hips slightly forward.
His gaze burned into her. His mouth was half open. She could see a stirring beneath the zipper of his trousers.
“Ready?” she said. “Tell me when.”
A little animal noise exploded from the back of Gora’s throat.
A high-pitched scream, a loud crash, and the excited voices of the goons raised in explosive Russian curses put an immediate damper on Gora Maslov’s erotic fantasy. With a guttural curse of his own, he ran out of the bedroom, down the corridor.
What he confronted was Natalie on the carpet, beside a pool of stinking vomit and the broken shards of one of the busts of Caesar. The other bust—of Augustus, as it happened—looked down upon this plebian mess with true caesarian disinterest.
“What the fuck happened?” Gora shouted.
“I dunno, boss,” Goon Number One said.
“She clutched her stomach, staggered, knocked the head off its pedestal, and was sick,” Goon Number Two continued.
“Then she collapsed,” Goon Number One concluded.
“Is she alive, dead, or in between?” Gora asked.
“Dunno,” they both said at once.
“We haven’t checked,” said Goon Number Two.
“Well, for fuck’s sake, do!” Gora shouted. Whatever had sprouted in his trousers had suddenly turned inward like a frightened turtle.
Meanwhile, according to plan, Morgana had moved swiftly and silently on little bare feet down the corridor to Gora’s study. She knew she had very little time. She was looking for some proof that linked Gora to the impending auction of the Bourne Initiative, but what form that might take she had no idea.
“Even if you don’t think you have time, take in the whole scene,” her father had taught her. “Nine out of ten times whatever you’re looking for will get caught in the corner of your eye.”
And so it was. Desk, task chair, laptop, mobile phone and sat phone lying side by side, neat as soldiers on guard duty. The laptop was off, the mobile was guarded by a fingerprint reader, the sat phone had no numbers stored in it. Not a scrap of paper on the desktop, and the drawers contained nothing of value. But a blotch of yellow stuck in the corner of her eye: a Post-it note stuck to the left-side bezel of the laptop’s screen. It was curious how many people did that with their most important reminders. So insecure, and yet, like incriminating emails and texts, done all the time.
Moving around behind the desk, she leaned over, took a close look at what was written in the little yellow square: an international phone number and the word Keyre. A name? A place? She didn’t know. Just below, another international number, this one without a name or a place. Using the mnemonic her father had taught her, she memorized the numbers, figuring they must be extremely important if Gora hadn’t stored them in either phone.
“She isn’t dead,” Goon Number One said as he crouched beside Natalie in the salon.
“Well, that’s something,” Gora said distractedly. In his mind’s eye he was seeing the image of Morgana, her dress raised, her knees bent, her white thighs exposed, asking him, “Tell me when.” The frightened turtle had vanished, replaced by a snake, slowly stirring. “Get the cleaning materials,” he barked at Goon Number Two. “Clean up this mess, then get back to your usual post on the dock. At this late stage I don’t want anyone nosing around.”
As Goon Number One lifted Natalie’s head and shoul
ders off the carpet, she gave a tiny moan. Her eyelids fluttered.
“Clean her up, too, then get her to bed in one of the guest suites,” Gora ordered. “And for fuck’s sake get that stink out of here.”
Goon Number One wiped Natalie’s mouth with the still-damp towel from her water pistol experience, then lifted her in his arms, following his boss down the corridor toward the guest cabins.
“Make sure you get her out of those soiled clothes,” Morgana heard Gora say over his shoulder to Goon Number One. “Wash off all the muck. There’ll be something for her to wear in one of the closets.”
Morgana was standing in the corridor outside the master suite when Gora saw her.
“What’s happened?” she said.
“Nothing. Your friend got sick, that’s all.”
Morgana’s brow furrowed. “How sick?”
“I told you, it’s nothing.”
Gora reached for her, eager to return to the image in his mind’s eyes, but Morgana flew past him, running down the corridor.
“Wait!” Gora cried, and then, seeing that she wasn’t listening, “Fuck all.” He headed after her.
Morgana entered the room where Goon Number One had laid Natalie on the bed. He was cleaning the muck off the front of her dress, copping a feel of her breasts whenever he had the chance.
Crossing to where Natalie lay, Morgana swatted the goon’s hands away. “Get out of here. I’ll take care of her.”
The goon stood up, looked over at his boss. Gora gestured with his head, and the goon obediently stepped back.
“Nat,” Morgana said, bending over the bed. “Nat, what happened?”
Natalie stared up at Morgana, mouthed, I’m going to kill you.
Morgana gave her a grin only she could see, before trying to turn her over. Natalie moaned as if she were in great distress. Morgana made a show of putting her ear to Natalie’s chest. “Something’s wrong, her breathing’s labored,” she announced in a voice bordering on hysteria. “She might have inhaled some vomit. If her lungs are filling with liquid we’ll need to get her to a hospital or she’ll suffocate.”