Page 23 of The Oligarch's Daughter

“You know her podcast?” Mary Louise had a podcast about middle-class people who’d become fentanyl victims. “It just got picked up by Pushkin Industries.”

“That’s fantastic,” Paul said. He knew that Pushkin Industries was some kind of big podcasting enterprise.

Mary Louise shrugged, smiled modestly.

“Oh, and one more thing to toast,” Rick said. “Paul has a new girlfriend.”

“Okay,” Mary Louise said. The way she said it implied great skepticism. “How long have you been going out?”

“Couple months,” Paul said.

“Who is she, what does she do?” said Mary Louise. “Come on, let’s have the full debrief.”

Paul told them the story of how he and Tatyana had met. “She’s a really talented photographer,” he said. “Very smart and very emotionally intuitive.”

“Meaning nice boobs,” Rick said, ribbing his old friend.

Mary Louise smacked Rick’s shoulder, and Paul said, “I love spending time with her.”

“She must be beautiful,” Mary Louise said. “All the women you go out with are beautiful.”

Paul hesitated for a moment. “Well,Ithink so,” he said. “More important, she has a sense of humor, she’s empathic, she’s interesting.”

“Wow,” Mary Louise said. “What’s wrong with her?”

Paul shook his head:nothing.

“What do her parents do?” she asked.

“I have no idea,” Paul admitted. “I know they’re Russian, and they’re a close family.”

“I can see the stars in your eyes,” Mary Louise said. Putting her hand over her husband’s, she said, “He’s in love.” Then, turning back to Paul: “Does that mean you’re going to cancel your Tinder account?”

“Already have,” Paul said. “Anyway, I look forward to introducing you guys to her. She’s something special. I could marry her.”

“Oh, please,” Mary Louise said with the knowing smile of the long married. “Couple months? You hardly know her.”

PART THREE

RED FRED

Present Day

15

He needed, first of all, to disappear into the wilderness. To lose his pursuers. When they stopped where the road ended and found his burned-out hulk of a truck, they would know to look in the forest. So he had to immediately get off the well-marked trail that led into the woods.

Some people were intimidated by being in a dense forest, let alone getting lost in one, but he wasn’t.

In no small part, he grudgingly admitted, because of his crazy father.

Stan Brightman had believed civilization was on the verge of collapse—after which, in the anarchy that would surely follow, we would all have to learn to live off the land, like human beings used to do. So he would take his son on excursions into the woods outside Bellingham, from time to time, where they’d have to forage for edible plants and eat whatever animals they caught, which was mostly squirrels and chipmunks.

These weren’t trips Paul remembered fondly. He did not like squirrel meat. Not because of its gamey taste, but simply because he couldn’t get it out of his mind that he was eating a rodent.

Around the campfire at night, instead of making s’mores, he’d listen to his father rant about how human beings were ruining the planet. Life was better in the Late Stone Age, ten thousand years ago, before the invention of modern agriculture—which he said was “the worst mistake in human history.” A catastrophe, he explained, forefinger crooked as if he were passing along great wisdom. When humans started growing grain, Stan insisted, that led to greed, to class divisions, to the tax man and the birth of the state and eventually even war. He said that humans were a lot healthier back in the days of hunting and gathering, when we chased wild animals and foraged for plants. It was a matter of plain facts: We were less sick, lived longer. Back in the day, humans spent twelve hours a week getting food. Now everyone worked forty hours a week at least.

He had a point, sort of. (His son had, at one point, worked closer to eighty.)

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