MARTHA WAS IN THE HOTEL’S FITNESS CENTER WHEN IT HAPPENED. As with so many other important meetings in life, it occurred suddenly and was totally unexpected. Martha had just finished with the dumbbells and looked as if she was about to expire on the hotel’s exercise bicycle when she caught sight of him. A nice-looking man, aged about forty-five, wandered into the fitness center with a towel nonchalantly thrown over his shoulders. He had straight, blonde hair, long eyelashes, sky-blue eyes and a very masculine way of moving. When he saw her, he gave her a friendly nod, pulled out a mat and started with push-ups. After doing fifty or so, he took a little breather and got onto one of the exercise bicycles over by the window. He was wearing red Nike performance shoes and when he pedaled, his thigh muscles tensed up like enormous steel cables. Martha stared. His powerful biceps and well-trained torso without an ounce of fat reminded her of a sculpture by Michelangelo, and the sight of him in all his glory caused her to stop cycling. Confused, she gasped for air, fumbled to find the handlebars and almost fell off.
“Are you OK, my dear?” the man asked in accented English, hurrying across to her. Shaken, she looked up and found herself staring at the shining washboard stomach. Not until he laid his broad, strong hand on her shoulder did she succeed in mumbling something, and, in her confusion, she patted his biceps. Then she realized what she had done and was so mortally embarrassed that she couldn’t manage a single word.
“Should I call a doctor?” asked the man, with a worried look, speaking with what sounded like a Russian accent.
But Martha shook her head, because now she had caught sight of the thick gold bracelet, the gold chain with a cross around his neck, and his gold watch with a compass and diamond inlays. Her brain went on turbo charge. The man had a fortune on him and had a Russian accent, perhaps he was a Russian oligarch? You hardly got richer than that—well, perhaps some Malaysian businessmen and, of course, the eighty or so people in the world who, together, were richer than half of the world’s population put together. Whatever, this man was a possible prey for the League of Pensioners. Many of the Russian oligarchs were in their forties and had made their fortunes during the fall of the Soviet Union in the 1990s. They were men who liked to display their riches, and perhaps he even owned one of the Ferraris outside the hotel. If she had been forty years younger, she would have behaved like the 1970s dames in a James Bond film, she would have swayed her hips, fluttered her eyelashes and taken him up to her room. But she didn’t have much choice. She pretended to faint, fell forwards across the handlebars and waited for him to be chivalrous and save her. And she had not been wrong. The next second she felt his arms around her body and when he lifted her up off the bicycle and stood with his arm around her shoulders and again asked if she was all right, she nodded in relief. Now she had established contact. And she had also acquired a bit of practical information: he stank of vodka. A rich oligarch who drank. It couldn’t be better.
“I’m Martha,” she said and held out her hand.
“Oleg, Oleg Pankin,” said Oleg and he squeezed her hand so that it was almost crushed. Martha beamed. She had insisted that they should stay among millionaires and now this had led to something. Pleased with the result, she went up to tell the others.
“WHAT ARE YOU DREAMING ABOUT, SWEETHEART?” BRAINS wondered a few days later when he and Martha were recuperating at a little cafe in the harbor together with the others. “You’ve been quiet for so long that I’m starting to become really worried.”
The palm trees bent in the wind and the afternoon breeze caused the umbrellas to flutter. All of them had each had a coffee and now they sat gazing out across the water. Martha looked up and felt as if she had been caught. Her thoughts couldn’t leave the Russian. She had told the others about her joy at meeting a Russian oligarch in the hotel gym, but if she had been really honest with herself, that wasn’t all she was thinking about. Business, that is. Even elderly women like the sight of a handsome man, she had realized, and she had never spent so much time in a gym as she had done over the last few days. As nonchalantly as she could manage, she put down her coffee cup and looked out across the water, careful not to look anybody in the eye.
“Oh, what am I dreaming about? Five hundred million kronor, of course—” and this was not a direct lie—“and I’m thinking about Oleg as well, that muscular Russian, you know,” she said.
“Not as a he-man, surely?” Brains wondered suspiciously. “I’ve heard you mumbling about biceps and washboards at night.”
Martha shook her head and tried to hide the fact that she had started to blush. She looked even more intently out across the water.
“Ugh, this is about how we can lay our hands on his fortune, you understand. Five hundred million, you know; not everybody has that sort of money,” she answered, rather stretching the truth. “But, of course, a man who takes care of his body is always nice, no, I mean interesting. That is, it makes you wonder how much he trains and what his diet is.”
“Thought as much,” muttered Brains and he looked down at the roundness that reflected his comfortable lifestyle. “But my belly is a much better pillow, no matter what you say!”
“I know, I know, and don’t think that I fall for appearances,” Martha assured him, but now she had bright red patches on her cheeks. She leaned back in her chair. What heavenly blue eyes the Russian had, and how nice it had felt when he’d helped her up onto the exercise bicycle. It was pleasurable, yes, but it was all about business, except—well, perhaps she did simulate dizziness rather too often, but she wanted him to think that she had problems with her balance. Because she had her plan.
“IS IT REALLY TRUE THAT YOU DON’T FALL FOR APPEARANCES?” she heard Brains ask. But thankfully she didn’t have time to answer before Rake cut in.
“Have you seen that?” he said pointing. A large boat with a wooden deck was making its way to the pier. The yacht didn’t have one helicopter pad but two and an enormous slide down from the upper deck all the way to the sea. On board you could see men in white who were preparing to dock the boat, and some women in their twenties who were waving to friends on land. That was a much finer boat than Bielke’s; indeed, it was one of the finest she had seen since they had arrived in Saint-Tropez. They all stood up at the same time and Anna-Greta waved to the waiter.
“Time to pay,” she said, pulling out her glasses and looking at the receipt. “It’s an expensive view here too,” she grumbled and put the exact amount on the plate. He had been so slow and impolite that he wasn’t getting a tip.
“Come on, let’s go over there,” said Rake.
“Absolutely,” Martha said and got the others to agree. They had only just reached the pier when they heard a car behind them.
“A Rolls-Royce,” Brains noted and he smiled with his whole face, just as if it had been a Harley Davidson. A large black limousine was driving in the direction of the boat. It slowed down and stopped close to the gangplank. A uniformed chauffeur hurried to open the door for a man in his fifties. He had a chinstrap beard, a white suit, light-blue shirt with a tie and a yachtsman’s cap. But that wasn’t what caught Martha’s interest, it was something else. The man who had got out of the car walked with long, bouncy steps and with his arms swinging by his sides. And she only knew one person who walked like that.