Page 94 of The Oligarch's Daughter

“Oh, very impressive,” the librarian said, smiling. “What did he study?”

“Chemical engineering. I was hoping to see his yearbook entry.”

“Come with me.”

The man led Paul up a set of stairs and through the stacks to the yearbook section. In short order, the librarian located and pulled off a high shelf a book entitledScientific and Technical Bulletin of Bauman Moscow State Technical University 1969. Which was presumably a yearbook. Paul thanked him, took the book over to a table, and began to look through it. The librarian had told him to come find him if he had any questions.

Paul skimmed through the book. How many of the Class of 1969 would still be alive after fifty-six years? he wondered. That would make them seventy-six, seventy-seven years old. Most of them were men, and the average lifespan for a Russian man—Paul had looked this up—was sixty-eight. But the classes were small, he saw. Around two hundred students.

Once he figured out how the book was laid out, he located Arkady Galkin. A small, square black-and-white photo showed a young man with a head of curly hair and an unsmiling face. No question it was Galkin.

Then he went through the faculty pages, looking for Ludmilla Sergeyevna, the surname Tatyana had mentioned, or Ludmilla S. Something.

There were five Ludmillas on the faculty. Paul jotted down their full names on a piece of scrap paper, the five Ludmillas. One was high in the administration, a majestic-looking blonde named Ludmilla Aleksandrovna Khramova. Too beautiful and too senior to be the right one. And besides, Tatyana had given the patronymic “Sergeyevna.”

Then there was was Ludmilla Artemevna Sidorova. And Ludmilla Maximovna Mikhailova.

And then Ludmilla Sergeyevna Zaitseva. A picture of a dark-haired young woman with very thick black-framed glasses.

That was his Ludmilla. The right name, the right look.

On one of the computer terminals in the Reference Room, he opened a Russian search engine and entered her name. It popped up with a Moscow address: 322 Kedrova Street in the Chertanovo District. He entered her address and phone number into the iPhone the FBI had given him.

If he was able to find out who she was and what her role was in Arkady Galkin’s rise, he would then own information the FBI didn’t.

And information was power.

63

On the street outside the institute, where there was decent mobile phone reception, Paul called the number for Ludmilla Zaitseva using the FBI’s iPhone. If she wasn’t there, he wouldn’t bother with the long journey to her apartment. But if she answered . . .

A brusque “Allo?”

“Ludmilla Sergeyevna?”

“Da? Kto eto?”

He switched to English, hoping she spoke it, too. “I am a friend of Arkady Galkin’s,” he said.

A long pause. “Yes?”

“I need to talk with you.”

Another long pause. Paul thought she’d hung up. Then: “Who is this?”

“My name is Robert Langfitt.”

“Yes?”

“Will you be there in an hour? Something I’d like to speak with you about.”

Before she could demur, he hit End.

It was a long Metro ride to the Chertanovo District, on the outskirts of the city. The Metro station there was plain and unadorned, probably built recently. When he emerged from it, he saw that he was in a very bad part of town. No tourists here. An apparently homeless man slept on a park bench. Garbage was strewn across the ground. The asphalt was full of potholes. Paul passed a monument honoring the Soviet space program and quickly found Ludmilla Zaitseva’s address, a decrepit-looking high-rise. The main doors to the building were unlocked, and the entryway was littered with vodka bottles and discarded hypodermic needles. In the lobby, he found a row of intercom buttons labeled with surnames; he pressed the one that read, “Zaitseva, 6F.”

He waited for the inner door to be buzzed open. And waited. He rang again. Still no answer. Maybe she was out. Maybe she was at work, if she still worked.

A woman entered the lobby from outside and keyed open the inner door. Paul followed her inside.

---