Page 81 of The Oligarch's Daughter

Maybe his father-in-law was still asleep, Paul thought. It was clear that he kept his own schedule. Paul and the two Russian American guys were on their own.

They met in one of the hotel’s conference rooms with five people from Propulsion, a Moscow-based firm that was pitching ideas all over the place. At one point, the lights went out so they could watch a PowerPoint presentation, and Paul came close to drowsing, but instead he poured himself a fourth cup of coffee. The Russians—two women, two men—spoke English fluently with British accents. They also used the jargon of the corporate world: “boil the ocean” and “robust” and “best practices.”

The meeting with Propulsion broke for lunch. Paul was slowly coming to the realization that their meetings were pointless, just for show. Nothing more than busywork for him while the real show took place. And the real show must be whoever Galkin was meeting with. Paul and Matlovsky and Orlov were there only to provide a pretext for Arkady’s Moscow trip.

Paul went out to the hotel lobby. It was spacious and stunning: high ceilings, ornate chandeliers, polished marble floors, and plush carpets in beige and cream. He was waiting for Tatyana; they would be meeting up with her mother. Soon he noticed an elegant, slim-hipped woman in her late fifties standing off to the left of the front desk, wearing what he knew from Tatyana’s closet was a St. John suit in a powdery olive hue. She could have been a retired model. She had silver hair and very red lipstick.

Just then, Tatyana emerged from the bank of elevators and, seeing the silver-haired woman, half-ran toward her. “Mámochka!” she called out. There were tears in her eyes.

The two embraced tightly, for a long time. This was Galina Borisovna Belkina, Arkady’s first wife and the mother of his two children. Speaking in machine-gun Russian, Tatyana introduced Paul. He extended a hand, but Galina leaned in and kissed him on both cheeks.

“Wonderful to meet you,” she said in Russian. “Moi zyat. My son-in-law.” She spoke with the deep rasp of a longtime smoker. “Will you come with us or . . . ?”

“I can’t join you for lunch, I’m sorry,” said Paul. “Business meetings.”

More rapid-fire Russian.

“She wants to invite you to dinner at her dacha tonight,” Tatyana said.

“I’d love it,” Paul said.

“Have you ever been to Moscow before?”

Paul said he hadn’t.

“You should be a tourist for a while. Will you have a chance? Hire a guide from the hotel.”

At that moment, Arkady Galkin emerged from the elevator bank. He was wearing a blue suit, a silver tie, and very shiny black shoes, more dressed up than Paul had ever seen him. He smelled of cologne and cigars. Galkin approached Galina, kissed her chastely on her cheeks three times. Tatyana was holding onto her mother’s hands as if afraid she would leave.

Galkin and his ex-wife spoke for a few minutes, civilly. At one point, Paul understood him to say that he was visiting a friend’s dacha on the Rublyovka. Paul knew that was a tony area west of Moscow where the rich had dachas, or country houses.

Galkin turned to Paul and said, “So you want to see Moscow.” Sardonically he added, “I suppose you will see Lenin Mausoleum.”

“Maybe.”

“No Muscovite goes there. Only for tourists.”

“Just like I’ve never been to the Statue of Liberty. Is the great man’s body really there?”

“Looks like wax, but really is his . . . body. At least head. How you get around?”

“What do you advise?”

“Take company car. Driver is also security guard.”

54

After his business meetings were concluded, Paul returned to his hotel suite to find Tatyana napping. She hadn’t closed the drapes, and the amber late afternoon light was pouring in, striped across the bed. In the sitting room, he stood at the window and took in its view of Manezhnaya Square. Too agitated to sleep, he watched some Russian TV, the volume low so it wouldn’t wake Tatyana. He switched from some kind of sketch comedy channel to coverage of ice hockey to a nature documentary, eventually settling on a news program on Rossiya 24. It was, of course, entirely in Russian, and he understood only a phrase here and there. After a few minutes of mute incomprehension, he turned it off.

Tatyana came into the sitting room, stretching, and leaned over to kiss him. She was wearing an oversize T-shirt that hung down to her knees. “Mama wants us to come early so we can take a walk in the woods around her dacha.”

“Okay. How was your time with her?”

“We went to Petrovsky Passage and Tverskaya Street,” she said, “mostly looking at jewelry. We had coffee, then we went to the Old Arbat and looked at antiques. And we talked, Pasha, we talked. I miss her so much.”

“Do you miss Moscow?”

“It’s sentimental for me, you know. It’s my childhood.”

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