We now knew, through Allison’s chats with Kaylee, that the name of Boris One, Grigor’s guardian, was Pavel. Boris Two, who watched over little Leo, was Lev. Boris Three, Tomas, did the night shift and was the swing man when it was necessary to cover for one of the others. The Borisova was Yvetta. She was the boss of the crew, outranking them here, just as she had in the Russian military.

There was also a nanny. A Frenchwoman with a White Russian background. Political White, not racial white. From one of those families who’d fled the Bolsheviks, the Reds, back in 1917, and ended up as impoverished exiles in Paris. Something that’s sadly no longer possible. You’d best be wealthy if you’re going to be an expat in Paris today. She had a growing obsession with the Romanovs and was convinced that after Putin, Russia would go back to the tsars. The aristocracy would be revived, and she was awaiting the day when she would be called back to the life she’d been born for. Nonetheless, she was good with Leo, and Grigor wanted his son to be fluent in French as well as English and Russian.

The rest of the staff was local. A chef with an assistant who doubled as a bartender. A maid to fetch and to pick up after everyone. A pair of cleaners who came in every morning, just as they would in a hotel, to do the beds and the laundry, to vacuum, scrub, and scour.

Something was going on with Grigor. Kaylee didn’t know what. It had become much more intense. He was skiing less and on the phone a lot more. He was also drinking more. Sometimes alcohol made him loquacious and grandiose and he was likely to give away a diamond or a sports car. Sometimes drinking made him silent and brooding. Sometimes horny and he’d insist on sex with whomever was nearest, Kaylee or the left-hand wife or one of the fortune-hunting whores that thronged around him and his rich friends.

The rich Russians notoriously favored Courchevel. They all went there on the same dates. They went out to the clubs every night for what Kaylee called whore-parties with gaggles of skimpy-clothed wannabe models flown in like it was school holidays for Russky rich dicks. Coming to St. Anton instead had been a favor to Kaylee. To make it a “family” holiday. But she suspected he’d brought the left-hand wife. Since Kaylee hadn’t actually spotted her, she thought he was keeping her in one of the nearby villages, Zürs, Oberlech, or St. Anton. That might have explained the impatience and the urgency with which Grigor had raced into St. Anton when we’d followed him.

Other times, the drinking made him raging and violent.

He always insisted it barely affected him and that he never got drunk.

“Do you have a plan?” Allison asked.