Uno, of all people, was complaining, saying he’d wanted to knock out the biggest glacier and send all of it sliding into the sea. But then it would have been game over. You needed to leave something on the table in any negotiation. If the Arctic nations didn’t capitulate now, Oleg could use a second Trident II. “It can’t always be instant gratification,” he’d told Uno.
Definitely not instant gratification for Oleg. Police Sergeant Sergey Volkov was dead. Not possible, had been his first thought. Sergey was a police thug, covered in tattoos of snakes and barbed wire and guns. Sergey was a killer. He definitely wasn’t supposed to die. Oleg dispatched him to “dispose” of Galina and whatever else he found in her car — whiny kid, toys, everything. Get rid of it all. Like used tissue — or nasty feminine product. But she had disappeared and left Sergey dumped by the side of the road like refuse. Bullet in his belly. And Oleg was left at his workstation in his penthouse, staring at his monitor and phone and wondering where Galina was. She was number one, too. Number one suspect, he thought.
What kind of person does that to man of the law, Galina?
Oleg would have bet a casino full of cash that PP, his despicable money-grubbing father, had given her millions of rubles because why else would she have gone to him and then—poof—vanished?
Why?
Oleg knew. Because she needed that money. She’d been badgering him for it, whining all the time: Give me money, Oleg. Give me money. But she’d never said it was so she could leave.
She and PP and his lame-brained brother — never had that term held greater meaning — had been up to murder.
Galina girl—No, Galina bitch—hadn’t even had the basic human decency to answer his texts. Calls? Didn’t even pick up.
I give her pretty dresses, fancy underpants, special videos to make her moist, and crazy guy sex, and she can’t even stay in touch? What are friends for?
Worse — yes, worse—she had shut off an app he’d secreted onto her device that had recorded her geolocation, which had then uploaded to an Internet server that sent him the data.
Where’s the trust? Not even for the people closest to you?
Very sad, like the President said.
He could not abide this kind of betrayal because surely she must be in cahoots — how he loved that uniquely American word — with some coldhearted people to kill with a gut shot and a ballpoint pen?
A police officer — nobody Oleg knew — had found Sergey’s body on the shoulder of a highway. Minutes later, Oleg had a medical examiner on the case. Body not even cool. The ME reported the bullet missed the splenic artery, but a Bic pen tore it up like a wood router.
“How do you know it was a Bic?” Oleg had demanded. Very good forensics, he figured.
“It said so right on the side,” the ME replied, “where you click it. The pen was still stuck up in there.”
So absurd. So Russian.
And so very bad of Galina to bring some guy along to do her dirty work.
Oleg stewed in front of his screens. He wanted to kill Dr. Kublakov. If the oncologist had agreed to care for Alexandra, no way would Galina have left. She would have been in her apartment, not going to PP’s for help. And Volkov would have been able to visit her in the comfort of her own home. In fact, if Kublakov weren’t caring for the spawn of high-ranking government officials, Oleg would have had him dropped into the Baltic from thirty thousand feet this very day.
Instead, Oleg had to go see PP to try to find out what was really going on with Galina.
He took the elevator to the lobby, brushing past the wheel beast and his crippled girlfriend. Stalkers!
The girlfriend called him a gandon—condom — and said, “We’re getting you evicted.”
He stopped and stared at the two of them, lined up like they were ready for a race. “You think so. How about I really do buy the building and throw you out? You think I’m kidding? I’ll make sure you live in a box on the street.”
He used the stairs to rush down to the garage. He definitely felt better, glad to have gotten that off his chest. Honesty is the best policy. Good for his health, too. Blood pressure got too high if he didn’t express his innermost feelings. Hadn’t Galina always said, “Oleg, you have to let me know how you feel. It’s a better way to live.”
Look what that touchy-feely shit got him. She left without a word. No good-bye kiss. No good-bye sex.
What had happened at PP’s? That was the mystery.
He called the old bastard as he scurried to his Maserati. “I’m coming over,” he announced when the ex-husband of six women picked up. “We need to have a talk.” Oleg thought he sounded impressively sinister.
“We do,” PP replied simply, which unnerved Oleg slightly.
Not much, really, he assured himself.
What a terrible father PP was. Oleg vowed to be a much better dad. He would sire only sons and bring them up strong. And no dumb beasts like Dmitri.
Can you imagine raising one of them? He shuddered at the thought.
Oleg motored out of Moscow, keeping to the speed limits until he made it past the city’s outer ring of suburbs. Then he raced past the poor peasants in the countryside. He could almost smell them. Not like Galina’s lavender scent, that was for sure. Stink bombs.
The gate to PP’s mansion opened and Oleg gunned his engine, racing down the long driveway, narrowly missing a calico cat that always gave him the evil eye. One day he’d squash that creature, crush him right under his wheels. He’d been trying for at least a year. Quick little devil feet.
No parking elevator for him today. He pulled up by the front door. Would have left the Maserati running, too, if PP hadn’t freaked out last month and threatened to slash the tires if Oleg ever did that again. “It’s patriotic,” Oleg had tried to reason with the old man. “Burn gas, oil, and don’t worry. The planet will be fine for your grandchildren.”
PP was always saying that we had to think about the rug rats. Not those words exactly, but the thrust of his thinking ran in that direction. No wonder Galina liked him.
Actually, it was Oleg taking care of the future, quietly contracting with Russia’s biggest construction firms on secret projects to build AAC plants near nuclear generating stations and hydropower plants. Everything hush-hush, from commissioning designs to wiring money. Scores of AAC plants would rise soon, the pride of Russia, the country that would save the world — what was left of it, anyway.
PP opened the door himself.
“What happened?” Oleg demanded. “She was here. She left. I know that. Now I can’t reach her.”
“Come in, my son. I have long wondered about that question, too. What happened?” PP shook his head. In sorrow? That was what Oleg thought. Well, get over it old man.
But it wasn’t sorrow at all.