FINDING KATARINA M. Page 8

  “I didn’t know buying diamonds could take that long,” I replied.

  “It does if you work for Tiffany.” Tiffany purchased a large percentage of its diamonds from Siberian mining and processing companies, she explained. Her job was to evaluate the gems, supervise the cutting procedures, maintain good relations with Russian diamond suppliers, and generally keep her ear to the ground. On the basis of her reports, Tiffany estimated yields for the upcoming year and renegotiated its annual contracts accordingly.

  “It sounds more interesting than it really is,” she said. “I spend most of my time inspecting the mining operations of Alrosa subsidiaries and the other, smaller companies. Needless to say, accommodations in the Russian Far East aren’t what you’d call deluxe: I’m lucky if I get a decently cooked chicken breast and vodka that isn’t home-brewed. When I’m not travelling, I’m usually here in Yakutsk attending horribly long meetings and very dull cocktail parties.”

  I’d perked up at the name of my aunt’s employer. “I wonder if you ever met Lena Tarasova,” I said. “She’s secretary to the president of Alrosa.”

  “Oh, him,” Meredith groaned. “Boris Mendevez. A total sleaze who kisses me on both cheeks and slips his hand over my ass whenever we meet. He works hard to keep me happy, I will say that for him. Tiffany is one of his top buyers, along with DeBeers and a few others.”

  “Did you ever meet his secretary?”

  She frowned thoughtfully. “I don’t think so.”

  I sighed. I was beginning to wonder if Lena even existed.

  “Why? Is something wrong?” Meredith asked.

  “I was supposed to meet her, but the plans got screwed up somehow.”

  “You poor thing,” Meredith said with a sympathetic shake of her head.

  Sergei appeared with a bottle swaddled in a linen napkin. I didn’t have much patience for the smelling of corks and the swirling of wine in the bottoms of glasses, but Meredith Viles seemed in her element. “Fabulous,” she concluded, smiling up at suitably nondescript Sergei, who poured the wine and disappeared.

  Turning to me, she raised her glass, the diamond on her finger magnifying the candle’s flicker. “Cuvee D’Amour is a very unique vintage—the grapes are native to southern Siberia and northern China. It’s bold and fragrant like a Bordeaux, but with a crisper finish. Tell me what you think.”

  Its dark red color, almost black, gave me the slightest hesitation. I tasted it, and it was good.

  “You like?” Meredith asked.

  “I like.”

  “Horosho,” she said in triumph, the ubiquitous Russian term of approval.

  The caviar arrived in a crystal bowl set on a plate of shaved ice, with small squares of buttered toast and a flat spoon made of reindeer antler. With Meredith’s encouragement, I seconded her order of reindeer steak. Sergei took our menus and went away.

  Meredith leaned forward, her voice dropping to an intimate timbre. “If you don’t mind my asking, what happened with your aunt?”

  “I don’t mind at all. The whole thing’s making me a little crazy, actually, and I’d just as soon get it off my chest.” I only meant to explain my immediate quandary, but Meredith was a keen, empathic listener, the kind of person who made you feel sane and perfectly reasonable however zany your tale might be. She asked one good question after another, and before long I’d spilled the entire story, starting with my mother’s apparently orphaned state and ending with my apparently ruined trip.

  “What on earth are you going to do?” Meredith asked, refilling our glasses.

  I shrugged and gave a helpless laugh. “Sightsee for a few days and see if anything changes. Then, I guess I’ll just go home. I dread seeing my mother. This is going to be hard on her.”

  “I can imagine,” Meredith said.

  We talked about Russia after that. Meredith didn’t hold back. “It’s a maddening, exhausting country. You spend half your life waiting in one place and the other half waiting someplace else. Bureaucracy changes on a whim. And the Russian people, you may as well know, have two very different faces. The public one, which is cold and inscrutable. And the private one, which can be very warm and loyal if they like you. You can’t blame them for being wary, though. They’ve faced so many hardships and betrayals; I don’t think we in the West can truly fathom it. Raped by the Soviets for seventy years, then wrung out by the oligarchs. And now? Well, now, global capitalism has come storming in. Did you know that sixty percent of Alrosa is owned by foreign investors? You can’t tell by looking, but billions of dollars are changing hands in this part of the world. Right here, in fact. In Yakutsk. In this hotel.”

  She topped off our glasses. “There’s no trickle down, by the way, unless you’re talking payoffs to corrupt officials. That’s the one thing that hasn’t changed in Russia: the people are left to rot. They mine the resources at low wages—not just diamonds, but gold, titanium, timber, oil—while the billionaires fly in and out, and the politicians live like kings. Meanwhile, apartment buildings all over the city are crumbling to dust, the schools and healthcare are below horrible, and you can’t even rely on the utilities to work properly. Even in this hotel, the best in the city, the heat may suddenly fail. If you complain, they tell you to put on a coat. Gas is controlled by the city, you see, so there’s nothing they can do.”

  I listened, fascinated by the stories she went on to tell of her exploits in the Russian Far East, which she compared to the old American West. Lawless, violent, everything up for grabs. Yet for all that, she seemed quite at home. The reindeer was surprisingly good—like beef with a hint of venison—and the flavor of the wine grew richer with each glass. I noticed that the edge of her left hand was lightly ink-stained. Southpaw, I thought. The ink smudges as they push the pen from left to right.

  She sipped her wine. “Now you. What do you do?”

  I described my work at the hospital, and we spent another leisurely span of time over coffee and dessert, sharing our life stories. She’d been raised in Las Vegas by a single mother, a croupier at one of the big casinos. After Georgetown, she went on to a career at the US State Department and the American Embassy in Moscow before moving to the private sector. She was married briefly, no children, and described herself as happily addicted to her work. I was struck once more by her resonant voice. She had a kind of earthy charisma, the ability to effortlessly cast a spell of intimacy, and I found myself easily drawn in. Her different facets flickered like the diamonds she trafficked in—hard-nosed grit vied with cultured sophistication, friendly warmth with aloof independence, Las Vegas glitz with Manhattan elegance. I was willing to bet that she was ruthless in her business dealings, and probably a loyal friend.

  Back in Washington, I spent most evenings either on-call or exhausted. Usually alone, and in company limiting myself to one or two glasses of wine so as to be clear-headed the next day. This night was a welcome novelty for me. There was no bothersome black pager hooked to my belt, and to the extent that my mother was being taken care of, no patient to worry about. I returned to my room pleasantly inebriated, my head full of the wild stories of a woman who seemed a lot like me but whose life was so richly different from my own. As I flopped onto the anemic mattress in the circus-colored room, it occurred to me that I’d had a wonderful night despite my troubles. Maybe being a tourist in Siberia for a few days wouldn’t be so bad.

  I slept late for the first time in ages and blithely skipped my morning run. After a leisurely breakfast in the dining room, even more garish in sunlight, I consulted my guidebook and plotted out my day. I decided to put Lena out of my mind. If she wanted to reach me, she could call. In the meantime, I would trek around Yakutsk like a typical American visitor, in Nike sneakers and a baseball hat.

  The eerie turquoise ice caves at the Permafrost Institute were worth the trip, and the woolly mammoth replicas at the Mammoth Museum were fearsome indeed. I decided to skip my mother’s third suggestion, the allegedly world-famous Khomus Museum, in favor of lunch at a cozy resta
urant in the historic section of town and a two-hour boat ride on the sparkling Lena River. On my way back through the downtown area, I saw a banner advertising The Festival of the Northern Peoples, which was taking place that very day in a festooned public squre. Drawn in by the bright spectacle, I wandered amid hundreds of short, dark-haired Siberians who were ducking in and out of teepees made of stretched animal hides. Tourists fingered handmade goods arranged on tables, and a small crowd sat before a low stage, on which grandmothers in elaborate beaded and fringed costumes banged drums and chanted long, haunting phrases. The air was filled with the earthy smells of dung, cured hides, and hay.

  I bumped into a herder standing between two reindeer, holding the bridle of each. “Excuse me,” I blurted in English. And corrected myself, “Izvenitya.” He remained impassive, his face brown and leathery, with grime in the creases and an oily sheen. He wore an old wool cap from which tufts of black hair stuck out like feathers, and had soft, thick-toed, animal-skin boots on his feet. The reindeer flanking him seemed placid enough, but I knew from my guidebook that these animals had snarly, unpredictable dispositions. One stepped forward and bumped me with its long, bony snout, bowed low by the weight of elaborate antlers. It blinked bulging, fly-swarmed eyes at me, its long, curling eyelashes giving it a disconcertingly coquettish air. Startled, I said izvenitya to the reindeer as well, and saw the herder smile.

  In the middle of the plaza, a pair of newlyweds was being paraded around in a red cart pulled by two reindeer. The bride was resplendent in wedding white, the bashful groom in a stiff gray suit and slightly askew lavender tie. A herder carrying a long switch led the plodding animals forward, while wedding guests and random passersby clapped and cheered. Sitting rather dazedly amid the hoopla, the young couple wore happy, innocent expressions on which no trace of self-consciousness could be found. I purchased a silver bracelet for my mother and a horsehair talisman—the kind of campy thing I never usually bought—for myself.

  It was after six when I arrived in the lobby, sore-footed and just the right amount of tired. To my surprise, the stone-faced concierge waved me over and wordlessly presented me with a dainty cream-colored envelope.

  I tore it open eagerly, hoping for an apologetic explanation from Lena. Instead, the handwritten message read Drinks at 8? Suite 501. Meredith.

  THE BAR WAS well-stocked with fresh ice and cut lime, the lights were low, and smooth jazz guitar—Pat Methany, I guessed—was emanating softly from an iPad on the coffee table next to a flickering candle. The stage appeared to be set for a seduction. I felt a quick flush of embarrassment—had I given out the wrong vibes last night? Should I start talking about a boyfriend back home?

  “How was your day?” Meredith asked, handing me a vodka over ice. She was wearing tight white jeans and a white sleeveless blouse set off by a long turquoise necklace and a stack of gold bracelets. And the ring, of course, glittering like a miniature beacon on her long-fingered, manicured hand.

  Perching on a gaudy white vinyl sectional, I recounted my tourist adventures, helping myself now and again to to cheese and olives from an hors d’oeuvre plate set on an incongruous blue-tiled coffee table. Meredith’s penthouse suite was just as ugly as my single room: brown shag rug, saggy gold curtains, a murky abstract painting comprised of numerous pointy angles staring down from an otherwise barren wall.

  We talked for a while pleasantly, sharing a few laughs over some of the odder (to us) aspects of Russian life. But I felt uneasy. Was it just my imagination, or was she gazing at me a little too intently, as if unwilling to let me out of her sight? Just as I was about to mutter something about not being able to stay very long, a key turned in the lock, the door swung open, and a man entered the suite.

  In his late sixties with a bald head and a long gray beard that fanned out onto a stained T-shirt, he had the gnarled, ancient look of an Old Believer—the Russian orthodox who’d escaped the Bolsheviks a century before by wandering far into the Siberian wilderness, building wooden shacks by streams, and subsisting on berries and bear meat. Broken capillaries spread like webbing through his ruddy cheeks and up the broken terrain of his bulbous nose. His pot belly was high and taut, like a pregnancy, while his arms were thinner than you’d expect a fat man’s to be. There was a tincture of yellow in the whites of his bleary eyes. Cirrhosis, probably. I wished I could order a liver function test—the whole battery of blood tests, in fact, plus an electrocardiogram.

  Meredith introduced him as Oleg. She didn’t introduce me, which likely meant that Oleg already knew who I was. He stared at me with a weird sense of ownership, as if I were a prize pig being hauled to a county fair. I glared at him to get him to back off. Our eyes met and locked. He was practically leering.

  I looked at Meredith, who sat swirling her drink so that the ice clinked in the glass. “What’s going on?”

  “I’d like to talk to you, Natalie, about something important.”

  A quiver of nerves ran through my body. “What?”

  She gave a long, capitulating sigh, like someone embarking on an unpleasant task. “There’s nothing to worry about.”

  The words slammed into me like a punch. There’s nothing to worry about meant there’s everything to worry about.

  “What?” I repeated.

  “I need your help. Your country needs your help.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I know you have some questions—suspicions—about your cousin’s murder. Well, I have the same questions and suspicions. I’m hoping we can work together.”

  “Who are you?”

  “I work for the CIA.”

  I had a rush of emotions: fear, mostly. Then relief: at least we were on the same side. Then anger: she’d lied to me last night. Then fear and relief combined: Saldana. This was about justice for Saldana.

  “So you’re not really a diamond merchant.” She’d done a pretty good job convincing me.

  “I am, actually. I’m also a CIA case officer.”

  I jerked my thumb at Oleg. “And him?”

  “A foreign agent. We’ve worked together for years. I trust Oleg completely.”

  “I thought handlers and their spies weren’t supposed to be seen together.”

  “There are exceptions to every rule, especially in this part of the world. Oleg’s my driver, pilot, protector, assistant. He helps me get around and generally takes care of things.”

  “Can you get him to stop staring at me?”

  She laughed a little and told him to mix himself a drink. When he went to the bar, she said quietly, “He’s got some rough edges, but he’s one of the good guys, and a lot smarter than he looks. He’s motivated to work with the US out of ideology, not greed or revenge like most others are. You may come to appreciate him in time.”

  “That depends on whether I ever see him again, which hasn’t been decided.”

  She leaned back, crossing one long leg over the other. “First let me say that if there were any question about your character or loyalties, any at all, this conversation would not be taking place.”

  “What do you mean? You did a background check?” Whom had they talked to? How much of my life had they ransacked?

  “You passed with flying colors. You’re a very straight arrow, Natalie. No criminal record, no history of drug use, no extremist political activity or questionable companions. Your colleagues think highly of you. Most everyone thinks highly of you. You’re hardworking, honest, ethical. Completely dedicated to your profession. You’re almost as clean as they come.”

  Almost? I blinked. Too rapidly. Don’t react. It’s just a word.

  She continued, “You live well but not extravagantly. No debt, other than your mortgage, which you pay on time each month. You don’t do social media, and most of your internet searches are medical topics.” She looked at me deeply and thoughtfully, as if I were a rare species to be studied and admired. “You’re a remarkably independent woman, Natalie. Almost solitary, in fact. Your only deep relationship ap
pears to be with your mother. You’re unmarried, no children. No lover. No church. Not even a book club. You have a few old friends, but you don’t make time for them, do you? You wait for them to reach out to you.” She smiled with what looked like admiration.

  “You seem pleased by that.”

  “There are times when a lack of connections is an asset.”

  “I suppose this is one of those times.”

  “It could be. That’s up to you.”

  “What else did you learn about me?” I said, trying for nonchalance. She must know. How could she not?

  “Let’s see. You’re in excellent health. You eat well, jog every morning, lift weights three times a week. Minus the one day you spent in New York to ID your cousin’s body, you haven’t missed a day of work in years.” She sipped the vodka. “You’re also fluent in Russian—a critically important skill from the agency’s perspective.”

  “Right. Is that all you’ve got?”

  “Is there more?”

  “No. Nothing more.” I let out the breath I’d been holding. They’d missed it, thank god.

  Oleg returned with a bottle of beer. He sat and tipped it up, glugging. Wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. He had tattoos on each knuckle. When he clenched his fist, they probably lined up and made a statement I wouldn’t be interested in.

  “I’m sure you understand why we had to take precautions. The important thing is, I believe we can help each other, and I think that when you’ve heard what I have to say, you’ll agree. What I’m about to tell you has to be kept in complete secrecy. No one must ever know what’s said here today. That includes friends, family, lovers, even a future spouse. Do I have your word?”

  “If I say no?”

  “Then our little drinks party will be over, and Oleg and I will leave you to enjoy a few days of sightseeing before you return to the States. Without locating your aunt.”