“No, he wouldn’t. Ivan’s KGB. If he suspected Sarah and Mikhail weren’t kosher, he’d play it
Gabriel, with his silence, conceded the point.
“Cancel lunch,” said Lavon. “Arrange another bump.”
“If we cancel, Ivan will know something’s not right. And there’s no way he’ll believe that another chance encounter is only a coincidence. We’ve flirted long enough. Elena’s clearly interested. It’s time to start talking about consummating the relationship. And the only way we can talk is by going to lunch at Ivan’s house.”
Lavon picked up a chicken bone and searched it for a scrap of meat. “Do I need to remind you whom Sarah works for? And do I also need to remind you that Adrian Carter might not agree with your decision to send her in there tomorrow?”
“Sarah might work for Langley, but she belongs to us. And as for a decision about what to do, I haven’t made one yet.”
“What are you going to do, Gabriel?”
“I’m going to sit here for a while and think about it.”
Lavon tossed the bone onto the pile and placed his chin in his palm.
“I’ll help.”
40 SAINT-TROPEZ, FRANCE
Next day, the heat arrived. It came from the south on a scalding wind, fierce, dry, and filled with grit. The pedestrians who ventured into the
Villa Soleil, Ivan Kharkov’s estate on the Baie de Cavalaire, seemed to have been spared the full force of the heat’s fury. Immediately behind its twelve-foot walls lay a vast circular drive where nymphs frolicked in splashing fountains and flowers erupted in gardens groomed to hotel brochure perfection. The villa itself stood hard against the rocky coastline, imposing its own beauty upon the remarkable landscape. It was more palace than home, an endless series of loggias, marble corridors, statuary halls, and cavernous sitting rooms where white curtains billowed and snapped like mainsails in the constant breeze. Each wing of the house seemed to have its own unique view of the sea. And each view, thought Sarah, was more breathtaking than the last.
They finally came upon Elena at the end of a long, cool colonnade with a checkerboard marble floor. She wore a strapless top and a floor-length wrap that shimmered with each breath of wind. Ivan stood next to her, a glass of wine sweating in his grasp. Once again, he was wearing black and white, as if to illustrate the fact that he was a man of contradictions. This time, however, the colors of his outfit were reversed: black shirt, white trousers. As they greeted each other with the casualness of an old friendship renewed, his enormous wristwatch caught the rays of the sun and reflected them into Sarah’s eyes. Before treating her to a damp kiss and a blast of his rich aftershave, he placed his wineglass carelessly on the plinth of a statue. It was female, nude, and Greek. For the moment, Sarah thought spitefully, it was the world’s most expensive coaster.
It was immediately clear that Elena’s invitation to a quiet lunch and swim had been transformed by Ivan into a more extravagant affair. On the terrace below the colonnade, a table had been set for twenty-four. Several pretty young girls were already cavorting in a pool the size of a small bay, watched over by a dozen middle-aged Russians lounging about on chaises and divans. Ivan introduced his guests as if they were simply more of his possessions. There was a man who did something with nickel, another who traded in timber, and one, with a face like a fox, who ran a personal and corporate security firm in Geneva. The girls in the pool he introduced collectively, as though they had no names, only a purpose. One of them was Yekatarina, Ivan’s supermodel mistress, a gaunt, pouty child of nineteen, all arms, legs, and breasts, colored to caramel perfection. She gazed hard at Sarah, as though she were a potential rival, then leapt into the pool like a dolphin and disappeared beneath the surface.
Sarah and Mikhail settled themselves between the wife of the nickel magnate, who looked deeply bored, and the timber trader, who was genial but dull. Ivan and Elena returned to the colonnade, where more guests were arriving in boisterous packs. They came down the steps in waves, like revolutionaries storming the Winter Palace, and with each new group the volume and intensity of the party seemed to rise a notch. Several frosted bottles of vodka appeared; dance music pulsated from invisible speakers. On the terrace, a second table was set for lunch, then a third. The vast pool soon took on the appearance of just another of Ivan’s fountains, as nubile nymphs were groped and tossed about by fat millionaires and muscled bodyguards. Elena moved effortlessly from group to group, kissing cheeks and refreshing drinks, but Ivan remained aloof, gazing upon the merriment as though it were a performance arranged for his own private amusement.
It was nearly three o’clock by the time he summoned them all to lunch. By Sarah’s count, the guests now numbered seventy in all, but from Ivan’s kitchens miraculously emerged more than enough food to feed a party twice as large. She sat next to Mikhail at Ivan’s end of the table, where they were well within his sphere of influence and the scent of his cologne. It was a gluttonous affair; Ivan ate heavily but without pleasure, stabbing punitively at his food, his thoughts remote. At the end of the meal, his mood improved when Anna and Nikolai appeared, along with Sonia, their Russian nanny. The children sat together on his lap, imprisoned in his massive arms. “These two are my world,” he said directly to Sarah. “If anything ever happened to them…” His voice trailed off, as if he were suddenly at a loss for words. Then he added menacingly: “God help the man who ever harms my children.”
It was an oddly gloomy note on which to end lunch, though the rest of Ivan’s guests seemed to think nothing of it as they rose from the table and filed down the steps to the pool for a final swim. Ivan released his grip on the children and seized Mikhail’s wrist as he stood. “Don’t go so quickly,” he said. “You promised to give me a chance to convince you to come home to Russia and work for me.”
“I’m not sure I remember that promise.”
“But I remember it quite clearly and that’s all that matters.” He stood and smiled charmingly at Sarah. “I can be rather persuasive. If I were you, I would begin planning a move to Moscow.”
He guided Mikhail to a distant corner of the terrace and sat with him in the shade of a cupola. Sarah looked at Elena. The children were now seated on her lap, in a pose as tender as Ivan’s was fierce.
“You look like a painting by Mary Cassatt.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment.”
Elena kissed Anna’s cheek and whispered something to the child that caused her to smile and nod. Then she whispered something to Nikolai, with the same result.
“Are you saying naughty things about me?” Sarah asked playfully.
“The children think you’re very pretty.”
“Please tell the children I think they’re very pretty as well.”
“They were also wondering whether you would like to see their room. It contains a new painting, and they’re very anxious for you to see it.”
“Please tell the children that I would like nothing more.”
'Come, then,” said Elena. “The children will show us the way.”
They flitted in and out of the colonnade like starlings and hop-scotched along the checkerboard marble floor. Ascending the sweeping main staircase, Nikolai pretended to be a ferocious Russian bear and Sarah pretended to be terribly afraid in return. At the top of the stairs, Anna took hold of Sarah’s hand and pulled her down a glorious corridor filled with buttery light. It ended at the children’s room, which was not a room at all but an elaborate suite.
