Page 57 of Gone Before Goodbye
“Yes.”
Oleg smiles. “Every American here is in the CIA.” Then his eyes suddenly darken. “Does he know why you’re here?”
“No.”
“You didn’t tell him?”
“Of course not.”
Oleg Ragoravich takes a second, then seems satisfied with that answer. She should leave it there, let it go, but she can’t.
“Why would someone tell me you finance the Kasselton Foundation?”
“Who? This sketchy American whose name you can’t remember?”
“Yes.”
“I have no idea.” Oleg meets her eyes and holds them. “But I swear on the lives of my children, I don’t know what the Kasselton Foundation is.”
He may be a psychopath, but Maggie believes him.
“Do you mind if I ask you one more thing?”
He gestures for her to go ahead.
“Why are you getting this surgery?”
He frames his face with his hands. “You mean because I’m already so handsome?”
“Ten, maybe fifteen years ago,” Maggie says, “I was part of a group of reconstructive surgeons who were invited to the Marshals Serviceheadquarters in Arlington. They run the Witness Protection Program. You know what that is?”
“Of course.”
“They wanted our opinion on what operations we could perform on the face, so that those who entered the program would be unrecognizable to their enemies.”
“Makes sense.”
“It does,” Maggie agrees, “except our conclusion was, there really was nothing much you could do. You could change hairstyle and color. You could do some eye or ear work, try to give them a rhinoplasty, that sort of thing. But in the end, they mostly looked the same, just with a facelift.”
“Interesting,” Oleg says. “I assume you think this applies to me.”
“Does it?”
Oleg doesn’t answer. “It was nice talking to you, Maggie.”
“And you.”
“Are you going back to the ball?”
She shakes her head. “I have to be up early for surgery.”
“We can push it back a few hours. For Elton’s sake.”
“Tempting.”
“But?”
“But no.”
