Maggie swallows. “Your family sold your kidney.” She doesn’t mean to blurt it out like that, but if she offended Nadia, she can’t see it from her expression.
“You don’t understand,” Nadia says. “We had nothing. Our family was mostly dead. That was our fate too. Starvation probably. Maybe slaughtered in war. My brother, my mother, maybe me. Or maybe my fate would have been worse. I don’t know. So we made a choice. I gave up something I didn’t need. In return, we were saved. We were given a new life. Money. New identities. They sent us... I won’t tell you where exactly. But look at my life. Look where I am now. My mother and brother, they live in an American city. In the Midwest. I won’t tell you which. My brother is in law school. My mother has her own apartment. Can you imagine? A real apartment with electricity and running water. She has a refrigerator and freezer. Do you know what she does every day?”
Maggie shakes her head no.
“She keeps a chicken in the freezer, and every night before she goes to bed she opens the freezer and just stares at the chicken. She can’t believe it’s real. She’s worried one day she’ll go to sleep and wake up and it will all have just been a dream. So you see? All of you who live in comfort can afford your ethics and morals. You want to judge me by them. How, you wonder, could I sell my own kidney? And I am here to tell you that it was the best thing that ever happened to me — and my family. My kidney is in someone else now. It probably saved a person’s life — who knows? — but I know selling it saved three other lives. So don’t you dare judge us.”
“I don’t judge,” Maggie says softly.
But of course, it isn’t that simple. Maggie knows that. You don’t buy and sell human organs. It’s immoral. It’s exploitive. Selling organs commodifies human bodies, reducing individuals to their monetary value. It leads to trafficking and corruption and kidnapping and abuse.
And yet.
“I’m going to bed,” Nadia says.
“Why are you here, Nadia?”
“What?”
“Why aren’t you, I don’t know, in the Midwest with your family?”
“My decisions are none of your business.”
“That’s true.”
“You’re not my psychiatrist or spiritual advisor. You’re just a plastic surgeon.”
“But I want to help.”
“You can’t,” Nadia says. “I told you already. You don’t know my life. Just do your job and leave me in peace.”
Chapter Nine
Nadia says that she’s going to say goodnight to Oleg before heading to bed.
“Do you mind if I come with you?” Maggie asks.
Nadia shrugs, so Maggie follows her up the stairs and around the corner. There is a gold door with two beefy bodyguards on either side. Nadia says something in Russian. One of the bodyguards barks something back and points at Maggie with his chin. Nadia explains who Maggie is, or at least, that’s what Maggie assumes. The bodyguard talks into his watch. A few seconds later, the door opens. Nadia enters first. Maggie is right behind her.
The room is done up in a gaudy red velvet that a Vegas brothel might consider over-the-top. The floor is blanketed in beanbag chairs and oversize pillows and various low-level seating, all punctuated by glass-piped, multi-hose/multiuser hookahs. You could probably fit a hundred people in here for an orgy — that looks like the room’s natural use — but right now there is only one person: Oleg Ragoravich. He stands by one long windowed wall. The windows are one-way and at an angle so you can look down at the ballroom, but the ballroom can’t look in on you. Maggie remembers the mirrors lining the top of the wall where the crown molding is. She figures that this is the other side of those mirrors.
Ragoravich doesn’t turn when they enter. He stares down at his ballroom not unlike an emperor at the Colosseum. Nadia says something in Russian. Maggie catches the end, “dobre noche,” meaning good night. Oleg waves and mutters the same words back. Nadia doesn’t wait. She turns and heads back out the door without another word or even a glance, leaving Oleg and Maggie alone.
Oleg still has his back to Maggie.
“Are you going down?” she asks him.
“Later.” He points through the window below. His voice is suddenly soft. “I saw you.”
“In the ballroom, you mean?”
“Yes. How’s the food?”
“Eh, not bad. You could have spent a little more, gone for the upgraded appetizers.”
He still doesn’t turn around, but she can see a small smile from where she stands. “You saw the stage?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know who’s going to play?”
“No.”
“Elton John. Are you a fan?”
Maggie nods. “He’s one of my favorites.”
He finally turns and faces her. “Mine too.”
“I’m almost tempted to stay up,” Maggie says.
“Please do.”
“I have surgery tomorrow.”
“True.”
“So do you.”
“Yes, but I’ll be asleep for it,” Oleg says.
“True.”
He stares down at his guests. “Greed isn’t what you think it is.”
His voice is thick with drink, or maybe that’s just sadness.
“What do you mean?”
“The problem is, you can’t go back. You can try. But human nature never lets you. Wherever you are, that becomes ground zero. Greed is not ‘I need more’ — it’s the fear of losing what you already have. Of going back. So you hold on tighter and keep trying to climb up. Because that’s the only way you can go. Life won’t let you stand still. You are either on your way up or you’re on your way down. And you’ll do anything not to go down.”
“That,” Maggie says, “sounds like the very definition of greed.”
He chuckles without humor. “Or a wonderful rationalization for it.”
“That too. Are you all right, Mr. Ragoravich?”
“I’m fine,” he says. “We all have our moments of melancholy.”
Maggie thinks about what Nadia said, about the rich not having real problems and how their melancholy is a luxury. What must her reaction be when her oligarch gets gloomy?
“When did I first come on your radar?” she asks.
“You mean as a physician?”
“I mean in any way.”
“I don’t know. I leave these affairs to Ivan.”
“I was his choice, then?”
“Why are you asking me this?”
“Have you heard of WorldCures Alliance?”
He frowns. “That was the charitable foundation you ran before... before your troubles?”
“Yes. Did you donate to it?”
“No. I don’t think I ever heard of it until Ivan gave me your résumé.”
“Have you heard of the Kasselton Foundation?”
“No, should I have?”
“You’re not connected to it?”
“No.” He turns back to her. “Did someone at the ball tell you I was?”
Maggie isn’t sure of the right move here. She could lie, of course, or try to back away, but there is a good chance Oleg Ragoravich would figure out where she heard this. He told her already that he’d been watching her at the ball. He may have even seen her talking to Charles Lockwood. Even if he hadn’t, the entire ballroom is probably under CCTV surveillance. He could search the footage for it.
Taking all of that into account, Maggie settles for a half-truth. “Someone hinted it, yes.”
“Who?”
“An American. I didn’t catch his name.”
“From the ball?”
“Yes.”
Oleg smiles. “Every American here is in the CIA.” Then his eyes suddenly darken. “Does he know why you’re here?”
“No.”
“You didn’t tell him?”
“Of course not.”
Oleg Ragoravich takes a second, then seems satisfied with that answer. She should leave it there, let it go, but she can’t.