Page 88 of The Collector
“Unlikely,” she answered, and brushed a fleck of imaginary lint from the leg of her designer black pantsuit.
They passed two more police checkpoints before finally reaching the outer walls of Yuri Glazkov’s gated community, the name of which promised French baronial splendor. The flotilla of luxury motorcars and SUVs lining his circular drive—and the small army of heavily armed security men keeping watch over them—suggested it was no casual dinner party to which they had been invited. Magnus found a place to park and switched off the engine. Ingrid hesitated before opening her door.
“Who do you want me to be tonight?”
“Astrid Sørensen, I imagine.”
“Personal assistant or girlfriend, Magnus?”
“Both.”
“Isn’t that sort of thing frowned upon?”
“Not here. I assure you, mine is the least complicated love life in Rublyovka.”
Ingrid placed her lips against his ear. “In that case, you should probably look at me the next time I get out of the bath.”
It was Anastasia, Yuri Glazkov’s twenty-nine-year-old third wife, who opened the towering golden door to them. The hand she offered Ingrid in greeting was long and slender and jeweled. Ingrid held it lightly for fear of breaking it. Young Anastasia didn’t eat much.
Nor did she speak a word of any language other than Russian. Magnus handled the introductions, and Anastasia bobbed her head agreeably before turning her attention to the newest arrivals, Kremlin spokesman Yevgeny Nazarov and his wife, Tatiana. Mrs. Nazarova, a former Olympic sprinter turned kleptocrat, flung her arms around Magnus as though he were a long-lost relation while her polyglot husband spoke a few words to Ingrid in his Radio Moscow English. A lifelong government employee, he wore a limited-edition Richard Mille timepiece worth in excess of a half million dollars. The watch was still on his wrist when he pulled Magnus aside for a tête-à-tête about the RuzNeft situation—but only because Ingrid had passed up a perfect opportunity to steal it.
Anastasia was not the youngest wife in attendance. That honor went to the child bride of the robber baron whose close relationship with the Russian president had cost him his Spanish football club. His latest wife, the daughter of an oligarch herself, launched into a blistering invective against the Ukrainians and NATO within a minute of shaking Ingrid’s hand—all in the American-accented English she had acquired while earning her degree in sunny SanDiego. Ingrid reciprocated with a tirade of her own, which met with the girl’s approval. She suggested they exchange numbers, and they drew their phones. The girl’s device was gold-plated. Ingrid somehow managed to resist.
She took a selfie with the girl and, turning, realized she had become separated from Magnus. She spotted him across the crowded formal drawing room chatting with Gennady Luzhkov, the much-sanctioned founder and chairman of TverBank. In close proximity were Oleg Lebedev, the much-sanctioned aluminum tycoon, and Boris Primakov, the much-sanctioned owner of Russia’s largest chemical company.
Indeed, Ingrid was hard-pressed to find an oligarch in attendance whohadn’tbeen sanctioned by the United States and the European Union over the war in Ukraine. Just four hundred miles to the south, ill-equipped Russian conscripts were dying horrible deaths in the frozen trenches of the Donbas. But here in Rublyovka, the kleptocrats who had become wildly rich through their association with Russia’s new tsar were sipping French champagne and nibbling on caviar canapés. The comparisons to November 1917 were too delicious to ignore.
Magnus beckoned with a subtle wave, and Ingrid moved discreetly to his side. Gennady Luzhkov, a trim figure with a sharply angled face and white hair combed carefully over his pate, was in the midst of making a point in Russian. He stopped midsentence and waited for Magnus to introduce him to the beautiful young woman who had joined their conversation. Magnus did so in English.
“What brings you to Russia in the middle of a war?” asked Luzhkov.
Ingrid slipped her arm around Magnus’s waist.
“I see,” said Luzhkov. Then he looked at Magnus and murmured something in Russian.
“What did he say?” inquired Ingrid.
It was Luzhkov himself who answered. “I was telling Magnus that some men seem to have all the luck.”
“Have you seen my most recent viral video?” asked Magnus.
“But you have an adoring young woman on your arm,” replied Luzhkov. “And you also have a rather lucrative offer to maintain your joint venture with RuzNeft. At least that’s the rumor.”
“Is there anything youdon’tknow, Gennady?”
Luzhkov’s smile was inscrutable. But then there was nothing about him that wasn’t. He was one of the former KGB officers who had engineered the Russian president’s rise to power, and he had been richly rewarded as a result. His bank was Russia’s fourth-largest privately owned house of finance—and one of its most corrupt. The US Treasury Department had imposed crushing sanctions on TverBank on the day Russia invaded Ukraine. Luzhkov had lost three-quarters of his net worth virtually overnight, along with his private plane, his superyacht, and his Swiss and French estates. His ties to the Russian president, however, were as strong as ever.
“You’ve been a great friend and partner of Russia for a very long time, Magnus. No one realizes that more than Volodya.”
“I hope he understands that I am under enormous pressure to terminate the relationship with RuzNeft.”
“Trust me, he knows.”
“When did you last speak to him?”
“I had lunch with him today at Novo-Ogaryovo. I’m one of the few people he still agrees to see in person. He’s quite isolated at the moment.” Luzhkov paused, then added, “Perhaps too isolated.”
He was interrupted by a round of applause that swept through the room. It had been prompted by the arrival of Dmitry Budanov.He was wearing a designer olive-drab field jacket with a large Z on the left shoulder, the one that faced the camera during his nightly broadcasts.
