The First Billion

Cate nodded. "When I saw that no matter what I said you wouldn't back away from the deal, I had no choice. If we stayed together, I knew it was inevitable you'd find out the truth, my secret history. I couldn't allow that. No matter how happy we might have been together"- she grabbed Jett's hands and squeezed them lovingly- "I would have been terrified of that day. I can see now that you would have understood… that it's me who's the problem… but I don't care. Even now, I despise you seeing me as his daughter. I hate you knowing. I'm not like him, Jett. Not at all."

"Of course you're not," said Gavallan after a moment.

But he was unable to bring himself to sit next to her.

***

So, is Cate your real name?" he asked. The door to the lavatory was open and he could see Boris wiping a washcloth across Tatiana's face. "I mean, if your last name's Kirov, maybe the rest is different, too."

"Actually, it's Ekaterina Konstantinovna Elisabeth. My mother was a quarter English. Her grandmother married an English soldier who'd come to fight alongside the Whites in 1920."

"Where'd you come up with Magnus?" But even as he asked, the answer came to him. "Oh, I get it. 'Magnus' as in great… as in 'Catherine the Great.' Clever."

A modest shrug. "I had to come up with something."

All you had to do was look and you'd have known, Gavallan scolded himself. The high cheekbones, the Slavic eyes. It was all in front of you the whole time. He remembered how their conversations had always turned awkward when he'd made even the slightest mention of her father, the moderately successful international trader. Never a picture. Never a word.

"And what you said about Kirov- er… your father- it's true?"

"You mean about killing Alexei? Yes. It's true. Pretty awful, huh?"

"It's beyond that."

"All in a day's work for Mr. Kirov," she said, her jaw riding high, eyes to the fore, the soldier bearing up under her ungodly burden. He could tell she was fighting to keep it together, doing whatever jig or two-step she danced to prevent all those jagged edges rustling around inside her from ripping her to bits.

"What hurt most was the betrayal," she went on, the hurt ripe in her voice eight years later. "Learning that your father wasn't the man he'd built himself up to be. He meant everything to me. Mommy was dead. I had no brothers or sisters. He was the world."

"I can imagine."

"Did you know that originally he was a curator at the Hermitage? Icons were his specialty. He was one of the world's leading authorities on religious subjects. When the winters grew cold and the heating in our apartment building gave out, we'd spend whole weekends inside the museum just to keep warm. He would take me through the workshops below the palace and show me how the paintings were renovated- so much paint, so much albumen, so much shellac. You should have heard him preach. 'Art was honest. Art was untainted. Art was the truth. Everything we could be, if only we tried.' This was in '85 or '86. 'Perestroika' was the word of the day. Glasnost was in full bloom. Suddenly, it was okay to admit how worm-eaten the regime was. Art was his way of proving that even in a lousy world, light still shines. Or at least that's what he had me believe. All the while he was smuggling icons from the museum's stock out of the country, building up a fortune on the side."

"What about Choate? What about growing up in Connecticut?"

"Don't worry, Jett, I'm not a total phony. I'm still a Choatie. My father had me thinking that one of his rich American friends was paying my tuition. When he was arrested and the checks suddenly stopped coming, I was able to convince the headmaster to let me finish up my classes and graduate. One semester without tuition, he could let slide. He couldn't kick out the valedictorian, could he?"

"I guess not," said Gavallan.

"Anyway, soon Kirov was back in business. No more skulking through dark alleys. Now he could conduct his affairs in the open. The K Bank, he called it. Finally, he was the businessman he'd always aspired to be. Everything aboveboard. On the straight and narrow. I forgave him. Worse, I believed in him again. 'Katya, we are making Russia great again!' he would say. 'Come join me. Work at my side.' You know how persuasive he can be."

Gavallan nodded. Yes, he knew. He had believed Kirov too. Every word.

"I took a plane to Moscow the same day I finished my exams at Wharton," she continued. "I couldn't wait to get to work. To help make Russia great again. To rebuild my country. The Rodina, we call it. The motherland. And then…"

Behind them the lavatory opened, and Cate clipped her words. The sound of running water mixed with weary sobs drifted into the cabin. Checking over his shoulder, he saw Boris's muscled shoulders easing into the gangway. Cate tapped his knee, and he said, "What?"