“Yeah, I know what a messaging app is, thanks.”
“Wonderful. So if you have any more calls, you should make them now.”
Sure, she thinks. Make more calls now so Ivan can hear every word.
She hits the call button for Porkchop’s payphone and is surprised when the man himself answers.
“Talk to me,” Porkchop says.
“I have a job.”
She again vaguely explains that she will be traveling and will be well compensated for a work assignment she can’t disclose. She throws in the HIPAA and confidentiality talk. Porkchop says nothing. He doesn’t interrupt. He doesn’t ask follow-up questions. He doesn’t argue.
That surprises her.
When Maggie finishes, Porkchop finally breaks his silence and says, “Put me on speakerphone.”
“Why?”
Silence.
That’s Porkchop. She bites back a sigh and hits the appropriate button and says, “Okay, you’re on speaker.”
“M47-235,” Porkchop says.
Ivan smiles.
“What’s that?” Maggie asks into the phone.
Ivan answers. “This car’s license plates.”
On cue, two motorcycles, one on either side of them, roar past the Mercedes. Pinky buzzes them from the driver’s side, Bowling Pin Guy — she never caught his name — from the passenger’s.
“I expect my daughter-in-law to remain safe and happy,” Porkchop says. “Are we clear?”
Ivan says, “Of course, Mr. Porkchop.”
“Don’t make me have to find you.”
“And vice versa,” Ivan says.
Porkchop disconnects the call.
Ivan Brovski is still smiling. “Your father-in-law has a flair for the dramatic.”
You don’t know the half of it, she thinks, but maybe he does. Still, it is comforting to know Porkchop is on this.
On the plane, Maggie takes a seat in an oversize leather-stitched recliner with a built-in massage function. She has learned something very fast and obvious in the past twenty-four hours:
It’s good to be rich.
Flight Attendant Hannah comes over and offers her “traveling sweats” from Brunello Cucinelli. Maggie accepts. Hannah asks whether she’d like a drink from the bar. Maggie is tempted, but for right now she wants to keep her wits about her, so she takes a water with a slice of lime.
She sits back and watches as the plane takes off from Teterboro Airport. Again she is met by the spectacular skyline of New York City. They don’t tell you this on tour websites, but if you want the best view of Manhattan, you have to go to New Jersey. The plane reaches its cruising altitude of, according to the pilot over the speaker system, thirty-seven thousand feet. The flight time, he tells them, will be eleven hours and twenty-three minutes.
“We have a large selection of films and television programming,” Hannah tells her.
“I just want to get on the Wi-Fi, thanks.”
“Oh, sorry, the Wi-Fi is currently unavailable.”
“Why’s that?”
Another nervous smile. “Here’s a menu of gourmet dishes we serve on board. Let me know if there is anything else I can do for you.”
There is only one other person on the plane — a large man with a scowl who speaks no English. He sits up front, near the pilots. Security, she assumes. Package delivery — and she’s the package.
Maggie heads back to the primary bedroom. The bed looks inviting. She decides — why not? — to lie in it and watch some television. There is no way, she figures, that she will actually sleep, but the blend of exhaustion and stress must be playing games with her. She falls asleep in minutes.
At some point, Hannah wakes her. “Are you hungry?”
She blinks her eyes open. “I am.”
“Our chef Gregor makes wonderful omelets.”
Remembering the Aman, she half jokingly says, “Florentine?”
“Of course.”
“How long was I asleep?”
“I’m not sure. But we land in about an hour.”
No way. No way she slept that long.
“Your luggage is in the corner, but there is a change of clothes waiting for you in the closet if you prefer. There is also a warm coat, hat, and gloves for you. You will need them.”
Hannah leaves, sliding the door closed behind her. Maggie manages to sit up and stumble to the bathroom. She sees the empty glass of water on the night table.
Did they drug her?
In the closet, she finds Loro Piana cashmere loungewear and puts it on. She can’t tell whether the full-length coat is real shearling fur or not — she suspects that a Russian oligarch doesn’t buy fake furs — but ethics aside for the moment, it’s too warm in the plane, so she carries it with her out of the bedroom. She sits at the plane’s dining room table, and Hannah serves her the omelet. It’s delicious, and she can’t help but wonder how Plane Chef Gregor’s compares to the one she refused at the Aman. Inane thoughts like this circle her head because, as the kids say on social media, it’s about to get real.
They touch down at a small airport. Private, she assumes. No other planes in the air. Nothing lands immediately before them or after. She spots only a handful of other planes on the ground, all looking like rich people’s toys. They taxi to a stop. Maggie reaches into her purse. She has her passport with her. She always carries it, a habit she picked up during her many years working humanitarian crises overseas, when you never knew when you’d be traveling on a moment’s notice.
When the plane door opens, Maggie feels a crushing burst of cold air. She buttons up the coat — definitely real shearling — and slips the matching hat over her head. She finds fur-lined leather gloves in the coat pocket and slips them over her hands, flexing the fingers into place.
Hannah shouts over the howling wind, “Thank you for flying with us.”
“Thank you,” Maggie shouts back.
She expects a black car to be waiting, but across the tarmac there’s a helicopter instead. A man waves her toward it. She climbs into the back. It’s a six-seater, but she’s alone. Two pilots sit up front. One turns around, hands her a black aviation headset, and mimes that she put it over her ears. When she does, she hears the pilots converse in Russian with a woman she assumes is an air traffic controller. In moments they are up in the air. They fly over a vast landscape, a forest really, blanketed in snow.
Maggie has not been in a helicopter since she was crammed into the medevac ones during the war. It feels absurd to be so comfortable in one. There’s a twinge of something like guilt here.
Through the headset, one of the pilots switches over to broken English and says, “Flight time just six minutes, Doctor.”
He turns and looks at her to make sure she understood. Maggie gives him a thumbs-up in reply.
She sees very few buildings, even in the distance, which is odd. Rublevka, she knows, is only a few miles outside of bustling Moscow. That’s part of its draw for the überwealthy — it is private and protected and ultra-exclusive, but it is not remote.
At least, not remote like this.
The copter veers toward a snow-capped mountain. When it makes its way over the fir trees, Maggie sees a clearing in the distance. Not a natural clearing. It looks to be a perfect rectangle cut out of thick woods and taking up acres.
In the middle of the rectangle, equidistant from the property’s borders, stands a palace out of some long-ago fable. She looks down on it. “Palace” is really the only word for it. A term like “mega-mega mansion” is inadequate here. The palace is too sprawling, with too many interconnected branches to be anywhere near the mansion family.
The copter starts to descend about a hundred yards from the front door. The lawn isn’t just green — it’s perfect green, flawless, seemingly painted green. Maggie wonders whether it’s real grass or something artificial. The copter sets down gently, the rotor blades decelerating to a stop. When the pilot opens the door, the frigid air hits her in a rush. She steps out, the wind biting her face.