When she reached the historic Hotel National, within sight of the Kremlin, she stopped for a moment and just stood there, staring at the building’s facade. She remembered all too well the bitterly cold December day nearly a decade earlier when the hotel had been the target of a suicide bombing. Polonskaya had been browsing the stores nearby along with thousands of other Christmas shoppers and was one of the first on the scene. She remembered the heavy snow and whipping winds. Much more vividly, she remembered the smell of blood and burnt flesh and the sight of severed body parts. It was another bloody day in a city that had seen too many of them over the years she had been reporting.
Feeling spontaneous, she entered the lobby, looked around, found the café, and asked for a table near a window. She ordered a cup of chai and stared out at the traffic and the shoppers and didn’t want to go home.
She couldn’t exactly explain why. She wondered if she simply couldn’t bear the thought of being alone in her big, drafty, empty house on the east side of the city, missing her husband and feeling sorry for herself. She preferred drinking in the hum and rhythm of this metropolis. She sat there for close to an hour, people-watching, returning a few emails, sipping tea, and avoiding the inevitable.
The gaping chasm in her soul was physically excruciating. She had met her husband at Moscow State. He was in medical school. She was studying political science and journalism. They had fallen madly in love and had remained so for almost thirty years. She couldn’t remember a fight and barely a quarrel. Now he was gone. His family wouldn’t talk to her. His parents had cut her off, accusing her of costing their only son his life because of what they called her “vain ambitions.” That had wounded her the most, not because she felt the stab of injustice but because she feared they were right.
The only solace she seemed to find was not lying down and surrendering in the face of the czar rising in their midst. She had to keep digging, snooping, reporting, exposing. If she stopped now, she thought, her husband’s death—his cold, calculated, premeditated, and utterly unnecessary murder—would have been in vain. She had no doubt the Kremlin had killed him. Very likely Luganov had ordered the hit himself. She couldn’t say this, of course. She certainly couldn’t write it. She had no proof. Not enough to publish. Not yet. So she had to find other ways to punish Luganov. The man was a monster. He had to be stopped.
Polonskaya finished her tea, paid her bill, gathered her handbag, and stepped outside. The sun was beginning to set. A full moon hung in the sky. The air was sweet and fresh with no humidity and a slight breeze from the west. She closed her eyes and drank in the moment. Then she walked two more blocks to the garage, fished her keys out of her bag, got in, and turned the ignition.
The explosion could be heard for miles. Every windshield in the garage was blown out, and more than forty cars were completely demolished. The force of the blast could be felt throughout the city. Many people thought it was an earthquake.
Oleg knew instantly it was not.
He still hadn’t gone home after being kicked out of the Kremlin by Zakharov. He was just driving aimlessly. He wasn’t listening to the news. Rather, he was trying to drown his sorrows with Tchaikovsky when the violin concerto was abruptly interrupted by an announcer with breaking news.
He couldn’t pretend he was surprised. The pattern was becoming obvious, though no one spoke of it. To do so, he suspected, would be to pronounce one’s own death sentence, and Oleg didn’t want to die. Even so, the moment he heard that Galina Polonskaya had been murdered—blown up in her own car in the heart of Moscow, just blocks from the Kremlin—he pulled his car onto the shoulder, leaped out, and vomited repeatedly.
Traffic continued to rush by. No one stopped. No one seemed to notice or care. Not a fellow driver. Not a policeman. No one.
That’s when he made the decision not to go home. It wasn’t a terribly well-thought-through plan. He was going on instinct now, and his instincts told him to flee the city. But where?
He remembered that his parents were out of the country—in Hong Kong on business for the next week—so he drove out to their multimillion-dollar home in Rublyovka. It would be quiet there. He’d have time and space to think. To be sure, he’d need to call Marina, and soon. He didn’t want her to be worried, alone with Vasily. But he couldn’t bear to face them. Not yet. Not until he knew what he was going to say.
34
A patrol car was waiting at the entrance to his parents’ gated community.
The first thought that crossed Oleg’s mind was that he was about to be arrested. But the two uniformed officers merely asked for his ID, then ordered the gate to be opened and waved him through. When he reached his childhood home, there were several more squad cars parked out front, along with two black Mercedes limousines and four black SUVs. Oleg blanched. Marina was here. Was the president with her?
There was no way he could turn around and leave now. So Oleg found a place to park away from the motorcade, shut down the engine, took a deep breath, and walked up the front steps and into the house. He knew these agents, and they knew him. This was not Luganov’s detail. It was the first lady’s.
He crossed through the foyer and headed toward the rear of the house. When he got to the kitchen, he noticed agents on the back porch. Through various windows, he saw others patrolling the grounds. Then he entered the den and realized why. Marina and her mother were curled up on the couch in flannel pajamas, holding each other and sobbing.
“What is it?” Oleg asked immediately. “What happened?”
He assumed they had learned of the accusations against him. But then why were they crying? Why weren’t they angry? And why were they here? How could they have possibly known he was coming when he himself didn’t know until he started driving?
Upon hearing her husband’s voice, Marina turned quickly, jumped up, and ran to him. With mascara streaked down her face, she threw her arms around him and sobbed all the more. Oleg held her and noticed the floor was littered with used tissues. A wastebasket near the couch where Yulia was curled up in a fetal position was overflowing. There was an empty bottle of red wine on the coffee table, another half-empty bottle, and two empty but lipstick-smeared goblets nearby. Clearly these two had been here for hours. But why?
For several minutes, neither woman could speak, so Oleg just held his wife and let her cry. Eventually Marina wiped her eyes and her nose and tried to compose herself. It was difficult, but she had something to say and was determined to say it.
“It’s Father,” she finally said.
“What about him?” Oleg said, bracing himself.
“He…” Again Marina became choked with emotion.
Rather than becoming flush with anger or fear or even revulsion, Oleg found himself oddly empathetic. Had Luganov just been diagnosed with some life-threatening and incurable disease? Was he dying? Were both the family and the nation about to endure a wrenching upheaval?
“Father wants a divorce,” Marina suddenly blurted out.
The word left Oleg unable to respond. Marina wiped her eyes again. She poured herself another glass of wine and took several large sips.
“He says he does not love Mother anymore,” Marina continued, pale and shaken. “He says he has never loved her, that he loves someone else.”
“Who?” Oleg asked, immediately wishing he had kept his mouth closed.
Marina answered the question before he could apologize. “That skater, that whore!”