"You could have told me. I would have understood."

"I don't want you to understand! That's the whole point." Cate squirmed in her seat, and he could sense the frustration that was consuming her. "For me, he does not exist. Or do you think I should have given up everything I'd built, all I had become, to help you avoid a bad business deal?" She stopped, staring hard into his eyes. "Besides, Jett, I did tell you. You just weren't listening."

"I didn't listen? To what?" And then it hit him. He exhaled grimly, stunned. "You said no because he was your father."

Cate nodded. "When I saw that no matter what I said you wouldn't back away from the deal, I had no choice. If we stayed together, I knew it was inevitable you'd find out the truth, my secret history. I couldn't allow that. No matter how happy we might have been together"- she grabbed Jett's hands and squeezed them lovingly- "I would have been terrified of that day. I can see now that you would have understood… that it's me who's the problem… but I don't care. Even now, I despise you seeing me as his daughter. I hate you knowing. I'm not like him, Jett. Not at all."

"Of course you're not," said Gavallan after a moment.

But he was unable to bring himself to sit next to her.

So, is Cate your real name?" he asked. The door to the lavatory was open and he could see Boris wiping a washcloth across Tatiana's face. "I mean, if your last name's Kirov, maybe the rest is different, too."

"Actually, it's Ekaterina Konstantinovna Elisabeth. My mother was a quarter English. Her grandmother married an English soldier who'd come to fight alongside the Whites in 1920."

"Where'd you come up with Magnus?" But even as he asked, the answer came to him. "Oh, I get it. 'Magnus' as in great… as in 'Catherine the Great.' Clever."

A modest shrug. "I had to come up with something."

All you had to do was look and you'd have known, Gavallan scolded himself. The high cheekbones, the Slavic eyes. It was all in front of you the whole time. He remembered how their conversations had always turned awkward when he'd made even the slightest mention of her father, the moderately successful international trader. Never a picture. Never a word.

"And what you said about Kirov- er… your father- it's true?"

"You mean about killing Alexei? Yes. It's true. Pretty awful, huh?"

"It's beyond that."

"All in a day's work for Mr. Kirov," she said, her jaw riding high, eyes to the fore, the soldier bearing up under her ungodly burden. He could tell she was fighting to keep it together, doing whatever jig or two-step she danced to prevent all those jagged edges rustling around inside her from ripping her to bits.

"What hurt most was the betrayal," she went on, the hurt ripe in her voice eight years later. "Learning that your father wasn't the man he'd built himself up to be. He meant everything to me. Mommy was dead. I had no brothers or sisters. He was the world."

"I can imagine."

"Did you know that originally he was a curator at the Hermitage? Icons were his specialty. He was one of the world's leading authorities on religious subjects. When the winters grew cold and the heating in our apartment building gave out, we'd spend whole weekends inside the museum just to keep warm. He would take me through the workshops below the palace and show me how the paintings were renovated- so much paint, so much albumen, so much shellac. You should have heard him preach. 'Art was honest. Art was untainted. Art was the truth. Everything we could be, if only we tried.' This was in '85 or '86. 'Perestroika' was the word of the day. Glasnost was in full bloom. Suddenly, it was okay to admit how worm-eaten the regime was. Art was his way of proving that even in a lousy world, light still shines. Or at least that's what he had me believe. All the while he was smuggling icons from the museum's stock out of the country, building up a fortune on the side."

"What about Choate? What about growing up in Connecticut?"

"Don't worry, Jett, I'm not a total phony. I'm still a Choatie. My father had me thinking that one of his rich American friends was paying my tuition. When he was arrested and the checks suddenly stopped coming, I was able to convince the headmaster to let me finish up my classes and graduate. One semester without tuition, he could let slide. He couldn't kick out the valedictorian, could he?"

"I guess not," said Gavallan.

"Anyway, soon Kirov was back in business. No more skulking through dark alleys. Now he could conduct his affairs in the open. The K Bank, he called it. Finally, he was the businessman he'd always aspired to be. Everything aboveboard. On the straight and narrow. I forgave him. Worse, I believed in him again. 'Katya, we are making Russia great again!' he would say. 'Come join me. Work at my side.' You know how persuasive he can be."

Gavallan nodded. Yes, he knew. He had believed Kirov too. Every word.

"I took a plane to Moscow the same day I finished my exams at Wharton," she continued. "I couldn't wait to get to work. To help make Russia great again. To rebuild my country. The Rodina, we call it. The motherland. And then…"

Behind them the lavatory opened, and Cate clipped her words. The sound of running water mixed with weary sobs drifted into the cabin. Checking over his shoulder, he saw Boris's muscled shoulders easing into the gangway. Cate tapped his knee, and he said, "What?"

When he turned back, he saw that she'd opened her purse and was handing him her pink compact. "What should I do with these?" she asked, a thumb flicking her makeup kit open. Tucked inside were the minidiscs Pillonel had given them from Silber, Goldi, and Grimm.

"Jesus, you still have those?"

Cate nodded eagerly, her eyes darting over his shoulder. "Take them. Quickly."

Gavallan recalled the painstakingly correct and intimate strip search to which he'd been subjected in Geneva. He'd assumed Cate, as a fellow prisoner, had suffered like treatment. "No. They're better with you," he said, glancing over his shoulder. "If anything happens, get them to Dodson."

"But-"

"Cate. Keep them. Use them if you get a chance." He held her eyes, signaling he had no illusions about what awaited him when they landed.

Rising, he headed aft, loitering in the cramped gangway long enough to allow her to conceal the financial records that were their only proof against Konstantin Kirov and the key to the salvation of Black Jet Securities.

49

What do you mean he's not in your booking facility?" Howell Dodson demanded, the phone to his ear. He was very angry. His cheeks had points of red in them, and he jabbed at his distant interlocutor with the arm of his bifocals. "You only got him yesterday. Would you be so kind as to tell me what goes on in the Swiss penal system between Saturday night and Sunday afternoon?"

"He was released on order from the government," responded the unnamed party who had fielded Dodson's call. "I am sorry."

"Released? To whom? When? I'm the government who wants him. Do you mean to tell me some other country has issued a warrant for Gavallan's arrest?"

"Non, non. You misunderstand," the polite French-accented voice chirped. "Our government ordered his release. The Swiss government, Monsieur Dodson."

Dodson chewed on his eyeglasses, fighting a rearguard action against fury, guilt, and incredulity. Gavallan was gone? It couldn't be. Lord help him, it just couldn't be. He looked toward the matching strollers parked in a corner of his office. The boys were having their morning nap, bless their souls, while their mother attended a Baptist service in Georgetown. Outside, a cloudy sky promised rain. At nine-thirty on a Sunday morning, the streets of the nation's capital were asleep.