“Good. Bring her over here, Nina. I’m right where you left me. I’m just over here.”

Chapter 49

Chapter 49

THIS IS THE BLIND date from hell.

Orlov is not at all what I was expecting. I assumed he’d be broad, heavy, brunette. A middle-aged thug. Instead he is slim and fit, almost young. But his hair is white. The shade of Anderson Cooper’s. His suit is light in color, too, either very expensive and chic or very cheap and chic.

We face each other; perhaps a few feet separate us. We stand in a sort of hazy spotlight. Then I realize it is the woman, Nina, who is holding a simple household flashlight on both of us. Orlov’s face betrays nothing, communicates nothing. He has no smile, no sneer, no grin, no wrinkle. I want to take my cues from him, but the man offers no expression. I strike a kind of random pose, hands at my sides, one hip slightly extended. I’m trying to look solemn but accessible, whatever that means.

“You are here with a proposition that in no way interests me, Lucy Ryuan,” he says, with the same very faint accent I remember from our phone conversation.

“Then why am I here at all?” I snap back at him. I have no idea where my courage is coming from. But I’m certainly happy that it showed up.

“I very much wanted to meet you, Lucy Ryuan,” he says. “I wanted to see the woman who is brave enough to bring babies into this world but cruel enough to be willing to give them away.”

I am ready to give him the planned explanation—I need money, my son is terribly ill, the hospital is about to fire me—but Orlov is clearly in charge of the conversation. Before I can say anything, he speaks again.

“And on the subject of this meeting, you have been fortunate enough to meet my colleague, the indispensable Nina.”

He does not offer a last name. I am struck by the use of the word indispensable.

My courage continues. “We have met already, before tonight, although she doesn’t know it.”

The beam from Nina’s flashlight quivers.

“No. We have never met, Lucy Ryuan,” she says.

“Oh, but we have. I’ve seen you. Seeing you was as good as meeting you.”

Nina looks alarmed. Orlov’s face betrays nothing.

I continue. “I saw you on film, a security video. I saw you fleeing from the crime scene, the day that you—or some butcher who was with you—slashed Katra Kovac’s belly.”

Nina looks quickly at Orlov. Then she steadies the flashlight.

Orlov looks at me and speaks. “Quite frankly, no one gives a good fucking goddamn about what you’ve seen, what you know.”

I am looking straight at Orlov. So I cannot tell whether Nina shows relief at Orlov’s words.