Джозеф Файндер - Judgment

As they got out they were greeted by a pretty young brown-haired woman who introduced herself as Alison and already knew their names. She was the flight attendant and the “concierge,” she called herself. Clearly she worked in some logistical capacity for the plane’s owner, Giles McNamer.

Juliana climbed the plane’s stairs and staggered inside. The cabin was flooded with sunlight. She was momentarily blinded. She smelled expensive leather and great coffee. Then, once her eyes had adjusted, she took in a beautiful interior. It radiated luxury. There were several big, comfortable-looking white leather chairs next to glass pull-down tables. On the walls, mahogany trim. Cool jazz played on a surprisingly good sound system, given the acoustics of the space.

Alison asked her if she wanted a cappuccino and introduced her to Giles McNamer, a tall, rangy, athletic-looking man in his sixties with graying brown hair and an unironic mustache. His hair was parted like a barkeep in a Western. He was wearing faded Madras shorts and a crisp white Oxford cloth button-down shirt, untucked and rolled up to the elbows. He had the permanent air of someone who’d just changed out of his tennis whites. In one hand he clutched a section of the Wall Street Journal .

“All I know is, you’re doing something,” McNamer said, “and it’s government business, and Jordan asked me to give you folks a lift. And I like to oblige my old friends at Treasury.” Jordan Kavanaugh was the Secretary of the Treasury.

McNamer parked himself in a chair at the back of the plane, by a TV screen. A girl who looked to be in her late teens, with glossy black hair almost down to her butt, was scrunched up in one of the chairs, wearing short-short cutoffs and a midriff-baring tiny white ACK T-shirt. ACK, Juliana knew, was the airport code for Nantucket. She had earbuds in and was in her own world, her arms wrapped around her legs.

Juliana took the chair next to Venkovsky’s. The leather was butter-soft. The chair swiveled.

Venkovsky put his battered leather briefcase on the table and took out some papers, which he handed to her.

She wondered if these were more legal forms to sign. Then she saw the name Yuri Vladimirovich Protasov at the top of the first page, along with a photograph.

“We have just enough time for a quick backgrounder on Protasov,” Venkovsky said.

She nodded, skimmed the page. She put on her sunglasses to cut down on the glare.

Alison arrived with her cappuccino. She thanked her and took a sip. She could barely taste it.

Venkovsky was busy sorting through a pile of photographs, eight-by-ten glossies. He slid one across the glass table in front of her. A photograph of an attractive woman — no, more like a handsome woman — of around forty, but a hard forty. Blond, cut in an efficient bob, and careful makeup. High cheekbones. A very poised, controlled woman. She looked like a tough broad. Like nobody messed with her.

“Who’s she? Protasov’s wife?”

Venkovsky chuckled. “Oh, no. She’s Protasov’s minder. She’s FSB.”

“Name?”

“Olga Ivanovna Kuznetsova. She’s a colonel in the FSB. Lethal woman. Part of Protasov’s entourage.”

“Security?”

“Partly, sure. But she’s also there to make sure Protasov comes when he’s called. They own the guy. She’s sorta like his nanny. Watch out for her.”

“Will do. Olga. But I don’t get why the Russian intelligence service has assigned an officer to a private citizen. That seems crazy.”

“A private citizen? You don’t get it. Yuri Protasov is a multi-billion-dollar Russian-controlled entity. You better believe they’re keeping tabs. And no, an SVR officer doesn’t tool around with a vanity license plate saying SPY. They’ve all got covers, bland official jobs, same as our guys. You know there are more KGB agents in Russia today than there were in Soviet days? They just call it by a different name, but same deal.”

“I didn’t know.”

“You know Putin’s ex-KGB, right?”

“Sure.”

“The KGB basically took over Russia when the Soviet Union collapsed.”

She nodded. “I don’t actually care, you know. I’m sorry.” She felt a strange sort of calm inside. An anger that focused her mind. “I don’t care what Russia might be up to, or the KGB or the SVR or the FSB. I care about what happens to my family. My son, my daughter. My husband. That’s what I worry about.”

“I understand,” Venkovsky said. “And I think what you’re doing is really brave.”

“Brave?” she said. “Or reckless?”

Venkovsky shook his head but didn’t reply. She noticed he didn’t meet her eyes.

The car they gave her to drive was a gleaming black Tesla Model S. As requested. She was surprised they’d agreed. Government bureaucracies were notoriously tight-fisted. She had no idea whether it was borrowed or rented, but it was sleek and beautiful, and it looked and smelled brand-new. Maybe it belonged to Giles McNamer. It had an all-glass panoramic roof.

She familiarized herself with the Tesla for about five minutes and then put it into drive. She was headed toward the part of the island called Siasconset, from time to time consulting the large screen on the dashboard, following the spoken directions.

The entrance to Protasov’s property was marked only with a street number. There was a security liftgate across the road. She stopped, and the gate came up and out of the way, and she drove along a narrow unpaved sandy road.

As she drove, she rehearsed what she was going to say. She didn’t know how this whole thing was going to play out. She was improvising. She just knew she had to get him aside and have a talk.

Now she was beginning to get nervous, even scared. Her mouth was dry, and her heart raced. This wasn’t helpful, she knew. Then she reminded herself about what had happened to her in Chicago and ever since, and it was like tapping into a deep reservoir of anger, and she found it calmed her nerves.

The road twisted one way and then another and then she came to a wooden gatehouse, a small shingled structure with a steep roof. Another liftgate blocked the road. A uniformed guard greeted her unsmilingly.

“Good morning,” he said. “A license or some form of picture ID?”

She handed him her driver’s license.

He looked at the license, then at a list on a clipboard he was holding. He looked at her, then at the license again.

“Welcome, Ms. Brody,” he said, and he waved her through.

The road here was paved with crushed seashells, which crunched under the wheels as she drove. After a while the road widened out into a large, circular drive in front of a sprawling three-story shingle-style house that could have been a hotel. It was certainly large enough to be. In front of the house was a lagoon, glistening in the sunlight. She could see a glimpse of sparkling blue ocean through a breezeway. Blue hydrangeas clustered in front of the house.

A valet took the car, and she got out and stepped into the house, where she was met by a pretty young Asian woman in a pale green linen dress.

“Judge Juliana Brody,” Juliana said.

“Welcome. The board members are gathering in the sitting room for some coffee before the meeting.”

“Thank you.” The young woman assumed Juliana was here for the board meeting, a legal adviser or something. But how long could she keep up the imposture?

She was standing in a broad entry hall with floors of mellow antique pine and a skylight above. She could see that a small crowd, maybe thirty people, was gathering in the next room. She walked into the sitting room. She smelled someone’s citrus floral perfume.

She recognized some of the faces. One, shaggy-haired and round bellied, was a former British prime minister. Another was a black woman with lively darting eyes who had once served as Secretary of State. A flame-haired and fiery former United Nations ambassador for the United States. A few people turned and smiled at Juliana, as if they were supposed to know her.