I found myself trudging along my home street toward my familiar building, not remembering how I had made it there from the park. I remembered the boy, my conversation with him, and how the few steps down to the road had felt as if I’d been pushed down from somewhere high. The stones of the steps had shifted, the asphalt had broken, the ground had disappeared from below me, and I had fallen. I had felt the same when I saw, through my office curtains, Viktor lying lifeless in the back courtyard of the agency. The seconds were endless, and the floor didn’t materialize under my feet again until I understood that I had to flee without delay. At first, I didn’t know how I would get out of the building. My office had only one door, which led into the corridor and the reception room. I heard people rushing around out there. My solution was the street-side window, and this plan got my blood circulating again. I tossed out my fur coat, my handbag, and my shoes before climbing after them, protecting my belly. After I hit the ground, I looked up. I saw the angel wings of the drapes flying in the draft but none of my pursuers. Ignoring the ankle I’d sprained in the jump, I walked into the middle of the road and stopped a battered oncoming car. I’d been so resourceful then. Of course, I had money and the backbone money imparted, along with the prestige of my position. But still. I didn’t even ask the driver if he would take me to the airport. I just ordered him to do so and tossed a wad of cash onto the front seat. The vehicle took off immediately, and I wrapped my scarf around my ankle. Before I threw my phone away, I sent a short message to my mother and looked at the mute screen for a moment. I remember thinking that no one would dare to call a dead woman, and that’s what I was now. I didn’t understand what had happened at the office. Viktor had died, that much I realized, but that was all. Despite everything, I acted logically, finding that I’d prepared surprisingly well: in case of a sudden departure, I’d hidden a bag at the apartment of one of my little birds, and I ordered the driver to make a detour there.
The girl may have realized that something was wrong. Still she didn’t ask any questions and left me to root through my suitcase, from which I retrieved boots to replace my high heels, and a new burner. I let it charge for a moment while I went to tell the driver that he would have to throw away the spare tire in the back seat. Because of the natural gas tank, my luggage wouldn’t fit in the trunk. The man refused and seemed to be starting to doubt the profitability of the whole gig. I didn’t give up. My ankle ached, my head hurt, and my escape was seeming like it might get bogged down by a spare tire. Something in it made me laugh, the absurdity of it all. However, I noticed the driver eyeing my wolf fur, and I whispered to him that his wife would look like a queen in it. He must have been thinking the same thing. That settled the matter, and the man tried harder to get everything to fit in the car, eventually managing it. During the delay, I had time to think about my flight in more detail and decided to head to Kyiv. You could close the Dnipro airport if you wanted. Maybe you had already done so. I promised the driver more dollars, and he didn’t complain about the change of destination, even though he would have to drive through the night.
On the way, we stopped at a gas station, the same one you and I had visited together before my first meeting with Lada Kravets. Now I was there but in a car I wouldn’t have touched before, which ran on natural gas and was saving my life. I listened to the tank fill, which sounded like the rumblings of hungry intestines, or no, it was a wheezing, and I covered my ears as I watched my surroundings. I saw the driver give the man filling the tank a reasonable tip, not in dollars, and after the driver left to get a bite to eat, I climbed out to stretch my legs. I saw that the car had been blessed, which I took as a good omen, and bent down to open my bag so I could change my wolf coat for my fox vest. I remembered that I had to eat because of Olezhko and followed the driver into the convenience store. There I found him waiting for his order at the counter, apparently calling his wife. His voice purred with satisfaction, and I guessed the wife was on the verge of learning about the gift he would be returning home with.
On the way back to the car, a pack of stray dogs loped toward me, after some food. I was about to throw a sandwich to them when one grabbed it right out of my hand. Startled, I jumped back, dropping the rest of my meal, and hid in the back seat. I didn’t belong at this service station, not surrounded by mangy mutts and not in this natural gas–powered car. But no one seemed to pay any attention to me, nor to the car or the driver, and that was the main thing. I didn’t cry. We were alive, Olezhko and I, and we still had a chance at a future. Everything wasn’t over yet. Even so, that journey led to the loss of my son. My final journey home from the dog park would have the same result, even though the situation and the country were different.
But you don’t care to hear about my escape. It doesn’t interest you. You and Veles want Viktor’s killer, and the only currency I have left is the identity of the perpetrator.
I’ve been considering for years how to tell you about the day Viktor died. You’ve heard lies from his widow and from Daria: neither of their stories is the truth. What is true is that all three of us were there. Before he drew his final breath, Viktor met with his wife, Daria, and me.
Everything was still fine at the point when Lada Kravets booked a time to discuss her next round of treatment. She made the appointment directly with me, announcing in a voice brimming with pride that she and her husband would be coming together. I immediately cleared my calendar and told the remodeling crew to keep away to ensure that the atmosphere in the office would be peaceful, because the new mother needed to be confident that the embryos stored in our nitrogen tank were safe, even though she wanted to do a fresh transfer again. I couldn’t tell her I had no idea where the donor she worshiped was.
As the agreed time approached, my anxiety grew. I set out fruit, Swiss chocolate, napoleon pastries, and Lomonosov china. I did everything myself, because I needed small, simple tasks that didn’t require concentration, and I was thinking about the heartbeat of the fetus growing inside of me. I rearranged the napkins again, straightened the saucers, mixed myself sugar water in a teacup, and cursed the fact that because of my condition I couldn’t calm my nerves with anything stronger. However, I felt emboldened by the cobalt blue tea set my mother had given me. It was the only truly personal thing in my office, and the forget-me-not patterns on it reminded me of something I couldn’t precisely describe. Maybe it was the time they came from, when acquiring each translucent piece of the set had required work at building and maintaining relationships. The lightness of the bone china in my hand made me stand up straighter: I’d made it far after all. I had a car, an apartment, a job, and my own credit cards. I had a man, and I had this heartbeat. I had a full place setting of life and a lot to lose. I didn’t intend to lose any of it, though.
A few hours before the Kravetses arrived, you sent a message confirming that you would be returning to the city the following evening. You missed me, and I missed you. I still do. Mixing more sugar water, I considered what to wear when I went to meet you, and I absentmindedly browsed our list of clients, from which I intended to choose a couple of limited means. Many of our clients were short on money after having pumped their savings into our services, and I chose one of the most desperate examples to deliver to my boss the story I’d invented. They would claim that Daria had offered to donate to them for a reduced rate, and I would reward them with a few free rounds of treatment. To my boss I would lie that Daria had obtained the couple’s contact information through my own carelessness. Admitting this small mistake would make my fabrication more believable. Aleksey would be dispatched to find Daria wherever she was hiding, and no one would believe her no matter how she tried to defend herself. It would be straight off the balcony. Off the top of a tall building. My worries would be over.
At precisely four o’clock, the secretary escorted the Kravetses into my office. Viktor and Lada could have been mistaken for newlyweds, sitting side by side with their thighs touching. The new mother had a glow in her cheeks. She was more feminine, her breasts full and her shirt open, her previous garden sorrel delicacy now gone. The scarf around her shoulders slipped repeatedly, and she didn’t seem like she was trying to hide beneath it anymore. She carried her larger body with dignity, and the strength in her was something new.
Viktor complimented the remodel of my office. Soon the entire premises would be ready for sale.
“By the way, I paid a visit to our new space in the Menorah Center,” I said. “It definitely leaves this place in the dust.”
“Nice, isn’t it?”
“Dazzling.”
I felt lively movements in my womb. I forced a smile onto my face. Sometimes I got the impression that Olezhko wanted to run away. Maybe he did. I still hadn’t told you about our son, but the risky months were behind me now, and I was just waiting for you to return to the city. I intended to reveal the news when we saw each other the next night.
In the middle of the meeting, the secretary knocked on the door, even though I’d forbidden her from interrupting. Irritated, I marched over to her, and she whispered in my ear that I had a visitor who had been trying to force her way into my office. Even the obvious anger on my face didn’t make the secretary slink away.
“Go ahead and straighten it out,” Viktor called. “We’re not in any hurry.”
As I followed the secretary into the kitchen, she finally whispered to me who it was. The news made me lean on the door frame for support. As I held on to it firmly, I looked at my hands, which momentarily reminded me of my mother, because the tips of my fingers had gone white.
“Does she know who’s in my office right now?”
“I doubt it. At least I didn’t tell her,” said the secretary. “She probably came for her bonus. We haven’t paid it yet.”
Of course. That was it. Daria was finally broke. My fright turned to relief. I wouldn’t have to set her up. Contrary to what I’d imagined, she wasn’t above taking money. That could still work. The winter sun sprinkled holy oil into the room, and I felt like gathering it in my palm. I would forgive her for her stunt. I would be merciful because I could afford it now. I was going to survive this. We were really going to survive.
“Bring Daria into the kitchen. Ask the guard to help you and tell Daria that she has to wait or she won’t get any money. Is that clear?”
As the secretary repeated my orders back, I watched her expression. She seemed to understand the instructions, so I sent her to the reception room. I didn’t dare imagine what would happen if Daria caught even a glimpse of Viktor Kravets and recognized him as the son of the Man from Donetsk. But that wouldn’t happen.
I returned to my office as if to a kingdom I had just recaptured, now able to return Lada Kravets’s smile with an effortlessness I haven’t felt since that day. She was waiting for me alone, because Viktor had gone out to smoke after receiving an important call. I nodded in approval of Lada’s attempt to teach the new father to smoke outside for their child’s sake, and I sat down on the chair that had transformed into my victor’s podium. I felt as if I could bend fate with my fingers like an aluminum spoon.
Even though the back courtyard was fenced, sometimes a dog or a cat would get in, so I immediately thought of a stray dog when our tea was interrupted by a scream from outside followed by a clatter. I pinpointed the sound as coming from behind the building.
“What was that?”
Lada Kravets looked at me. Suddenly I shivered, and my legs felt like they were being filled with cement. I couldn’t stop Lada from rushing to the window. After glancing out, she sprinted for the reception room, and a strange wailing came from her mouth, intensifying after she reached the back door. I heard her try to wrench it open. It was locked. Who would have locked it?
Slowly I stood. Before I could see what was happening outside, Lada Kravets crashed back into my room, shoving me out of the way and ripping the window open. I looked down. Tea had spilled on my dress. A cup with a forget-me-not motif was in shards on the floor. My hand was still in the same position as before, holding the cup that had fallen from it. My fingertips looked dead, like marble. Forcing them into a fist, I pushed aside the curtains wafting in the breeze and saw Lada Kravets, who had climbed out, slipping toward her husband where he lay on the ground. Daria was holding one of the electric cords that was usually hanging over the back door. There was blood on the snow. The concrete trash bin had fallen. If I was seeing right, there were stains on it as well. It seemed as if Viktor’s head had been bashed against it. But it didn’t just seem that way. It had happened.
Viktor wasn’t moving.
Lada made her decision in an instant and grabbed Daria’s shoulders, wrapping her arms around her. At first, I thought she was attacking Daria, until I heard her words ring out clearly—“catch the killer, catch the killer”—and the howl that followed. Lada Kravets pointed at me, and her howling seemed to increase her height. There was a steely quality to her voice. She looked like the Motherland Monument in Kyiv, her sword in one hand and her shield—Daria’s head—in the other. The back door was finally open, and the guard rushed out from wherever he had been loafing as the people crowding into the courtyard tried to understand what had happened. All of them turned to stare in the same direction as Lada: at me. I was still leaning against the window frame, and my blood had stopped circulating. No one looked at Daria, who now seemed to wake up and smile. She was smiling at me, and that was what made me move.
Locking my office door, I kicked off my shoes. I had a few seconds. Someone would have to call an ambulance, examine Viktor, and then check on the condition of the women wailing outside. Only then would someone think to come after me. Opening the street-side window, I prepared to jump.
I remember every detail from that day, even the list of departing flights glowing on the screen of my new phone, the destination of each flight, and that all of them seemed impossible: all of the Ukrainian airlines that operated out of Kyiv were owned by Vekselberg, who was close to Viktor. Finally, I noticed the other airlines, but I remember the despair when it felt like every road I turned onto seemed to be rising to block my way. After Daria arrived in Helsinki, I felt that again.
I should have realized earlier. Maybe my realization took time, because in Ukraine I’d become lulled into complacency by a life in which money grew on trees. In the natural gas–powered car, I grasped that my assets would melt away in an instant. So how had Daria and her whole family been able to hide for so long? They must have had help.
Suddenly I was certain what had happened.
That was why I hadn’t found the Sokolovs.
That was why they had money to get away.
I had never been their target, Viktor had.
I recognized the genius of the plan. The men who had invaded Daria’s home had turned her into a projectile that had slowly and surely flown toward Viktor. No one would question Daria’s motives. She had reason to be angry based solely on her family background. But above all, she was a donor, and there were plenty of mentally disturbed donors. No one would suspect there was anything behind Viktor’s death other than the emotional collapse of one woman who had lost her mind.
Without Lada, Daria would be in prison.
If you wait long enough to let me tell you who killed Viktor, you could look for the people who received the Kravetses’ information. You could force Daria to describe the intruders. The Sokolovs must know something about them, because the family went underground with their help. You could track down the real enemy, the one who has been more cunning than all of us. Wouldn’t your boss like that more than anything else? Wouldn’t that be enough to buy my freedom?