(#2)
Format: Hardcover, 352 pages
Release Date: March 14, 2023
Publisher: G.P. Putnam's Sons
Source: Publisher
Genre: Thrillers / Suspense / Espionage
CIA agent Lyndsey Duncan's newest asset might just be her long-needed confidante...or her greatest betrayal.
After
her role in taking down a well-placed mole inside the CIA, Agent
Lyndsey Duncan arrives in London fully focused on her newest Russian
asset, deadly war criminal Dmitri Tarasenko. That is until her MI6
counterpart, Davis Ranford, personally calls for her help.
Following
a suspicious attack on Russian oligarch Mikhail Rotenberg's property in
a tony part of London, Davis needs Lyndsey to cozy up to the
billionaire's aristocratic British wife, Emily Rotenberg. Fortunately
for Lyndsey, there's little to dissuade Emily from taking in a
much-needed confidante. Even being one of the richest women in the world
is no guarantee of happiness. But before Lyndsey can cover much ground
with her newfound friend, the CIA unveils a perturbing connection
between Mikhail and Russia's geoplitical past, one that could upend the
world order and jeopardize Lyndsey's longtime allegiance to the Agency.
Red London
is a sharp and nuanced race-against-the-clock story ripped from today's
headlines, a testament to author Alma Katsu’s thirty-five-year career
in national security. It’s a rare spy novel written by an insider that
feels as prescient as it is page-turning and utterly unforgettable.
Red London, by author Alma Katsu, is the second installment in the authors Red Widow series. After her role in taking down a well-placed mole inside the CIA, Agent
Lyndsey Duncan arrives in London fully focused on her newest Russian
asset, deadly war criminal Dmitri Tarasenko. That is until her MI6
counterpart, Davis Ranford, who she had an affair with that nearly destroyed her career and made sure she could never go undercover again, personally calls for her help.
Following a suspicious attack on Russian oligarch Mikhail Rotenberg's
property in a tony part of London, Davis needs Lyndsey to cozy up to the
billionaire's aristocratic British wife, Emily Rotenberg. Fortunately
for Lyndsey, there's little to dissuade Emily from taking in a
much-needed confidante. Even being one of the richest women in the world
is no guarantee of happiness. But before Lyndsey can cover much ground
with her newfound friend, the CIA unveils a perturbing connection
between Mikhail and Russia's geopolitical past, one that could upend the
world order and jeopardize Lyndsey's longtime allegiance to the Agency.
The other main POV character is Emily Rotenberg. As a mother
to two young children, Emily finds herself in a very precarious
position once her husband’s misdeeds against the Russian ruling party
become known. Emily's willful ignorance made her a difficult
character to really feel for. Emily and Lyndsey's relationship is made that much harder when Emily feels as though she is being pushed out of the way by her powerful husband who the current Russian President, Viktor Kosygn, who dethroned Putin, is trying to giving up all the billions he stashed away over the years.
Ah, yes, let's address that issue shall we? In this book, Putin has been removed from power after his disastrous invasion of Ukraine. If only that would happen in the real world, the US could stop trying to go to war with both Russia and China, let alone Iran and North Korea who hate the US and see the leadership of this country focusing on anything but protecting the country from invasions, or China's threats. Anyway, Katsu is someone you should take seriously. She really understands the intricacy's of the spy business, as well as what is happening in London.
Katsu spent thirty-plus years as a senior intelligence analyst (8 years
with the CIA, twenty-four years with NSA), and is currently an
intelligence consultant for a think tank for emerging technologies. She
knows the ins and outs of some of the most elusive agencies in the
nation, and has received raves for her real-world depictions of how the
CIA actually works. She's a rare author of spy novels who actually
worked in intelligence, and who knows her stuff.
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Chapter 1
London
It starts after midnight, when most harrowing and horrifying things seem to take place.
Emily
Rotenberg has been in bed for about an hour but is still awake. It
takes her hours to fall asleep these days, no matter how hard she tries.
And she has tried everything to fix the situation, but nothing
works-not a dreary book, not prescription pills. Not even a couple
glasses of wine.
Emily has no reason to believe that anything was
different about this night. After all, she lives at the most desirable
address in London. That's what the newspapers say, anyway: the way the
media fusses over The Bishops Avenue you'd think God himself lived
there. She read about the mile-long stretch just north of Hampstead
Heath years before she met her husband, Mikhail, breathless stories in
the color Sunday magazines when she was a little girl. It all sounded so
grand, like something out of a fairy tale, and she would wonder what it
would be like to live there.
She doesn't have to wonder anymore.
A huge mansion on Billionaires Row is one of the things her husband, a
Russian oligarch, has given her. Though she would say that the only
thing of worth he's given her are the twins, Kit and Tatiana, asleep in
the adjacent wing.
Mikhail is home. She knows this, even though
he is not in bed with her. The fact that he's home is by no means a
given: as often as not he spends the night without her at the
Knightsbridge apartment, his in-town residence closer to business
associates, but that night he is in the house they share. He is
downstairs somewhere in the rambling mansion, still awake. The man is
famous for never sleeping. When they were dating, Emily used to joke
that he was secretly Count Dracula, that he slept during the day and
rose refreshed and ready for an evening of wining, dining, and dancing.
Though she knew that he'd been working because she saw the evidence of
it in the news. He seemed to have a finger in every pie in Russia, not
to mention his international interests. Mikhail Rotenberg is a machine
for making money.
She hears a muffled noise toward the back of
the property. That in itself is a rarity worth noting, but they do live
in London, albeit a quieter, sleepier area to the north. It is a
Saturday evening-technically, Sunday morning-so you can't rule out the
occasional odd bit of noise. Only a curmudgeon would complain on a
Saturday night.
What happens next, however, never happens.
There is a burst of gunfire.
She bolts upright in bed. It's just a couple shots but that sound is unmistakable. Pop, pop, pop.
While Emily was not wealthy growing up, she came from an upper-class
family. She has been to her share of hunting parties, spent many an
autumn weekend slogging through the woods of a family friend's Scottish
estate, a rifle in her hands, once she was old enough to participate.
She wasn't a bad shot. The father had proclaimed her a natural, marked
her forehead with the bright vermillion blood of the deer she'd taken
down.
The gunfire tonight is nothing like the quaint old hunting
rifles she'd used for pheasant or grouse. These first shots are
deceptively quiet, however. Nothing like what will happen next.
She's
reminded immediately of a murder on Billionaires Row she'd read about.
It took place almost four decades ago, a foreign businessman shot dead
in his home on New Year's Eve. What made the case so fascinating is that
it didn't fit the usual pattern for home robberies. The robbers locked
the wife in an upstairs bathroom instead of killing her alongside the
husband. The gun used to kill the man was one of those tiny ladies'
pistols, the kind that was designed to fit in an evening bag,
and-curiouser still-the bullets were made of silver. This last
bit makes the whole thing ludicrous, as far as Emily is concerned. They
had to be decorative or a conversation piece, unless the man was
suspected of being a werewolf. Somehow, the wife managed to escape from
the bathroom and run for help, but the assailants were never found.
Because
the wife survived, there were rumors that she was involved-of course.
Even when a woman is the victim, she can't escape suspicion.
That
infamous house is a few doors down. It was eventually sold and now,
predictably, stands empty, another of these absentee owners who only
comes to London once or twice a year.
It's the peculiar sound of the gunshots that make Emily think of the unsolved case she'd read about. Is that what the ladies' handgun sounded like, soft and dainty? Emily can't help but wonder.
Her
first, wishful thought is that it has to do with one of the neighbors.
Some have their own security, just as they do-though, unlike the
Rotenbergs, the neighbors' security tends to amount to nothing more than
one or two personal security guards. One for the husband, maybe one for
the wife and children. The bodyguards are discreet and professional,
almost always former military. Many are Israeli, the preferred source
for security at the moment-though Mikhail uses Russians, of course. The
Rotenbergs have more security than most of their neighbors, but that's
only to be expected, given who Mikhail is and his special circumstances.
Igor Volkov, their chief of security, lives with them. I like to keep my important people close
is how Mikhail explained it to Emily when they first started dating.
She'd never known anyone as wealthy as Mikhail, so she took the
otherwise bizarre situation as a given, assumed that all rich people had
a clutch of people following them like a comet's tail. Volkov is an old
family friend, to hear Mikhail tell it, and he has been with Mikhail
from the very beginning. He is only a few years older than Mikhail but
looks a hundred times tougher. Tall and wiry, and covered with scars.
One circles his left eye, the circumference of a beer bottle. Like most
Russian males, Volkov went right into the army after school. In
contrast, Mikhail, due to family connections, avoided conscription and
went to college, where he started to build his business empire.
Who
else is on duty? she wonders. There's always three or four twitchy
young Russian men at the mansion. Emily is never told their full names
and refers to them by Anglicized nicknames she gives them. That night,
it is Leo, Max, and Mikey.
Then comes the second round of shots,
much closer to the house and altogether different in character. They
must be automatic-something the police will confirm later. Short bursts
of fire-bang, bang, bang, bang-much louder now.
Emily trembles. What is going on? she asks even though deep inside, she knows. Has always been expecting this, if she is honest with herself.
Her
first thought is of her babies in the children's wing. Alice Wilkinson
is with them, of course, her bedroom next door to the nursery. It is her
responsibility to get up in the middle of the night when one of the
children coughs or cries or is wakened by a bad dream. But, given the
circumstances, it doesn't matter that help is in the same room with
them. A nanny isn't enough: Emily has to be with them, to make sure they
are all right.
It's funny, the stupid things one does in a
moment like this. She takes a few precious seconds to put on a dressing
gown. In her defense, what is she wearing is rather sheer and hardly the
kind of thing you want to be caught in when armed gunmen descend on
your home. She hopes, as she yanks on the dressing gown and ties the
belt, that she will be locked in one of the bathrooms. Maybe it is only
Mikhail they want.
The house is dark. Why hasn't anyone turned on
the lights? Have the burglars cut the power? You hear of robbers doing
that sort of thing. Where is everyone? Igor, undoubtedly, has gone to
check with his men. Two are supposed to be posted at the back of the
estate, but it is ominously quiet back there. Perhaps Igor is taking
Mikhail somewhere safe. Where is Mikhail? You'd think he'd be on his way
to check on his wife and children but there is no sign of him. Still,
she tells herself that he is coming for them and pictures him running
down the hall, running toward them, as though she could will it into
being. She thinks, too, of Westie-Arthur Westover, Mikhail's funds
manager-arguably more important to Mikhail than his wife. Maybe her
husband is taking a moment to make sure he is safe.
As she
stumbles down the dark hallways, she curses Igor. Isn't it his job to
make sure there plans for exigencies like this, for exactly this sort of
thing? They have active shooter drills in primary schools, for god's
sake, but since moving in she cannot remember being told what to do in
the case of emergency. This seemed like a huge oversight on the security
chief's part.
It is then Emily remembers the panic room. Of course
there is a panic room in this giant, sprawling behemoth of a house;
with his typical foresight, Mikhail had had it installed when he'd
acquired the place over a decade ago.
Emily hurries through the
halls, her dressing gown fluttering around her like a shroud, as she
makes her way to the next wing. Noises drift up from the great open
foyer in the middle of the ground floor, commands issued in Russian
(naturally: it is always Russian) that she doesn't understand. Still,
she recognizes the voices. Igor's mostly. Strangely, Mikhail is silent
and he is never silent. Where is he?
She has just crossed
the main hall when she hears breaking glass below, high and bright and
jangly. To Emily, the sound of breaking glass is one of the scariest in
the world. It means that they-whoever "they" are, though she has a good
idea-have reached the house and successfully breached the outer
defenses. The invaders are about to come inside.
Surely, we'll hear sirens soon.
This is London, after all. Even though the houses here sit on several
acres, sound travels, especially loud, angry sounds like gunshots. Their
neighbors will have heard and called the police immediately. That is,
if the guards hadn't alerted the police already. (But would they, given
that their damnable Russian pride is on the line?) Either way, the
police should arrive any minute. All Emily has to do is get the children
to the panic room.
She arrives at the unlit nursery to see Miss
Wilkinson standing between Kit's and Tatiana's tiny beds. She looks
utterly distraught, unraveling from indecision.
The children seem
to still be asleep. Emily doesn't want to jump to conclusions about
Miss Wilkinson's grasp of the situation. Children can be such heavy
sleepers at that age.
"What in the world is going on?" the nanny asks in a loud, frightened whisper.
What
does the silly girl think is going on? Surely, she can't be that naïve.
She knows whom she works for. "I'll take Tatiana, you take Kit and
follow me," Emily says, not bothering to answer the question. Had either
she or Mikhail told the nanny that there is a panic room in the house?
Probably not. No sense scaring the girl.
Emily picks up her
daughter. She snuggles instinctively against Emily's chest in a drowsy
half sleep, burying her face into her mother's clavicle. Drinking in the
warm, soft baby smell of her daughter, Emily nearly breaks into tears.
To think bad men with weapons are converging on the house at that very
minute... Coming for them... The children are innocent. She's
innocent, for that matter. Isn't she? Emily thinks again of the dead
businessman's wife, locked in a bathroom, forced to shimmy down a
drainpipe. There had been no mention of children in the newspaper
stories.
She runs through the hall, Tatiana clutched to her
chest. Two-year-olds are heavier than you might think. Kit is even
heavier than his sister, and Miss Wilkinson, a slight thing, struggles
to keep up. Emily probably should've taken Kit, she realizes in
hindsight, and left the smaller Tatiana to the nanny, but she'd acted on
instinct. She always worries more about Tatiana because she is the
girl. Emily knows how hard the world can be on the fairer sex.
The
panic room sits on the ground floor next to the kitchen. It is not a
family kitchen, not the sort of well-decorated, lived-in room you see in
magazines. It's a big industrial place, more the domain of staff, like a
modern Downton Abbey. They'd put the panic room there, she supposes,
because it was easiest for the builders. She'd been in it once: Mikhail
had shown it to her shortly after they were married. He had been leading
her around the huge mansion that had become her home. Showing her all
the nooks and crannies that he didn't show most people: his second
office, the real one with its documents' safe, and the armory in
the basement where his bodyguards kept their auxiliary weapons. "God
willing, we'll never have to use it," he'd said as they stood in the
panic room that night.
There was no panic room in Downton Abbey, she is certain.
Now
here she is in the dark with her daughter in her arms, ready to
activate the heavy steel doors for the first time, with only the nanny
for company. Where is Mikhail?
"Let's go in," Emily says to Miss
Wilkinson, whose teeth chatter like she'd seen a ghost. It's
understandable, under the circumstances, but a bit surprising,
nonetheless. She'd struck Emily as quite no-nonsense when she'd
interviewed her.
Wilkinson reads her employer's mind. "What about your husband? Shouldn't we wait until-"
"I'm
sure he'd prefer that his children be made safe," Emily says, snapping a
little. She is more desperate than she first thought to get behind
those bulletproof walls and seal the door. Hand hovering over the
keypad, she notices that the gunfire has stopped-for the moment, anyway.
"Would
you really close the door without me?" Mikhail's deep voice is beside
her, cutting through the darkness. Suddenly, he is standing next to her
with Igor behind him holding a gun high, cradled in two hands.
Surprisingly, in that moment, Igor seems very nervous. She's never seen
him betray even a hint of nerves, and her stomach drops to her feet. It
must mean they are in real trouble.
"Thank god you're safe."
Emily presses her face to her husband's chest as best she can while
holding a child in her arms. She wants to shout at him-Where were
you?-because she is afraid and it would be an easy way to vent her fear,
but she knows it's better to look like she'd been worried and
frightened without him. Tatiana mewls slightly, like a kitten fighting
to remain asleep.
A radio crackles to life somewhere on Igor and
he steps away, the better to hear. Mikhail begins to shepherd her and
Miss Wilkinson into the safe room. His demeanor hits Emily as all wrong.
He is angry rather than seriously frightened. Whatever is bothering
him, however, he clearly is not about to discuss it in front of the
nanny. Emily knows that much about her husband.
Mikhail looks
from Kit, now awake and blinking owlishly at his father, to the sleeping
Tatiana, and then to his wife, and Emily is grateful for that rare,
tender moment. She trusts that means everything will be okay. Then he
steps over to a control panel, a large, awkward thing affixed to the
wall, incongruous among the bookcases and tufted leather armchairs. He
presses the touch screen once to light it up, then holds a finger above a
prominent red circle on the screen, the button that would send the room
into lockdown.
She realizes in that second that he never taught
her how to use the control pad. Perhaps he’d assumed she’d never need to
use it—or was it because he didn’t want her using it on her own? Maybe
he considers it his panic room, which she and the twins are welcome to occupy only with him.
Where does this strange, uncharitable thought come from?
Mikhail is ashen and grim. He is shaken up. His house—which is
definitely his castle, Englishman or no—has been breached. They both
understand that, considering his position, this violation can mean many
things. The implications must be running through his head.
Someone wants you dead, Mikhail.
Before
he can press the button, however, Igor is back and at Mikhail’s elbow,
walkie talkie in hand. "I was just informed that the police have
arrived. The intruders left when they heard the sirens." Mikhail and his
chief of security step aside to confer before he releases Igor to go
speak to the police, who are ostensibly rustling around on the floor
above them. When he turns to Emily, he looks greatly—but not
completely—relieved.
She starts toward the hall. She wants to get
the children to the nursery. Tatiana is heavy in her arms; the twins
are awake now and fussing to be let down.
He draws her aside."Let the nanny take them upstairs. You and I must talk."
Emily resists."They’ll be upset. They’ll have questions. I need to be with them."
"That’s the nanny’s job. You can go up in a minute, but right now we need to talk."
She
does as he asks. She always does. A lump forms in her throat as she
watches Miss Wilkinson lead her children away. The sight of another
woman caring for her children in that moment tears her heart in two. Never again.
London
It starts after midnight, when most harrowing and horrifying things seem to take place.
Emily
Rotenberg has been in bed for about an hour but is still awake. It
takes her hours to fall asleep these days, no matter how hard she tries.
And she has tried everything to fix the situation, but nothing
works-not a dreary book, not prescription pills. Not even a couple
glasses of wine.
Emily has no reason to believe that anything was
different about this night. After all, she lives at the most desirable
address in London. That's what the newspapers say, anyway: the way the
media fusses over The Bishops Avenue you'd think God himself lived
there. She read about the mile-long stretch just north of Hampstead
Heath years before she met her husband, Mikhail, breathless stories in
the color Sunday magazines when she was a little girl. It all sounded so
grand, like something out of a fairy tale, and she would wonder what it
would be like to live there.
She doesn't have to wonder anymore.
A huge mansion on Billionaires Row is one of the things her husband, a
Russian oligarch, has given her. Though she would say that the only
thing of worth he's given her are the twins, Kit and Tatiana, asleep in
the adjacent wing.
Mikhail is home. She knows this, even though
he is not in bed with her. The fact that he's home is by no means a
given: as often as not he spends the night without her at the
Knightsbridge apartment, his in-town residence closer to business
associates, but that night he is in the house they share. He is
downstairs somewhere in the rambling mansion, still awake. The man is
famous for never sleeping. When they were dating, Emily used to joke
that he was secretly Count Dracula, that he slept during the day and
rose refreshed and ready for an evening of wining, dining, and dancing.
Though she knew that he'd been working because she saw the evidence of
it in the news. He seemed to have a finger in every pie in Russia, not
to mention his international interests. Mikhail Rotenberg is a machine
for making money.
She hears a muffled noise toward the back of
the property. That in itself is a rarity worth noting, but they do live
in London, albeit a quieter, sleepier area to the north. It is a
Saturday evening-technically, Sunday morning-so you can't rule out the
occasional odd bit of noise. Only a curmudgeon would complain on a
Saturday night.
What happens next, however, never happens.
There is a burst of gunfire.
She bolts upright in bed. It's just a couple shots but that sound is unmistakable. Pop, pop, pop.
While Emily was not wealthy growing up, she came from an upper-class
family. She has been to her share of hunting parties, spent many an
autumn weekend slogging through the woods of a family friend's Scottish
estate, a rifle in her hands, once she was old enough to participate.
She wasn't a bad shot. The father had proclaimed her a natural, marked
her forehead with the bright vermillion blood of the deer she'd taken
down.
The gunfire tonight is nothing like the quaint old hunting
rifles she'd used for pheasant or grouse. These first shots are
deceptively quiet, however. Nothing like what will happen next.
She's
reminded immediately of a murder on Billionaires Row she'd read about.
It took place almost four decades ago, a foreign businessman shot dead
in his home on New Year's Eve. What made the case so fascinating is that
it didn't fit the usual pattern for home robberies. The robbers locked
the wife in an upstairs bathroom instead of killing her alongside the
husband. The gun used to kill the man was one of those tiny ladies'
pistols, the kind that was designed to fit in an evening bag,
and-curiouser still-the bullets were made of silver. This last
bit makes the whole thing ludicrous, as far as Emily is concerned. They
had to be decorative or a conversation piece, unless the man was
suspected of being a werewolf. Somehow, the wife managed to escape from
the bathroom and run for help, but the assailants were never found.
Because
the wife survived, there were rumors that she was involved-of course.
Even when a woman is the victim, she can't escape suspicion.
That
infamous house is a few doors down. It was eventually sold and now,
predictably, stands empty, another of these absentee owners who only
comes to London once or twice a year.
It's the peculiar sound of the gunshots that make Emily think of the unsolved case she'd read about. Is that what the ladies' handgun sounded like, soft and dainty? Emily can't help but wonder.
Her
first, wishful thought is that it has to do with one of the neighbors.
Some have their own security, just as they do-though, unlike the
Rotenbergs, the neighbors' security tends to amount to nothing more than
one or two personal security guards. One for the husband, maybe one for
the wife and children. The bodyguards are discreet and professional,
almost always former military. Many are Israeli, the preferred source
for security at the moment-though Mikhail uses Russians, of course. The
Rotenbergs have more security than most of their neighbors, but that's
only to be expected, given who Mikhail is and his special circumstances.
Igor Volkov, their chief of security, lives with them. I like to keep my important people close
is how Mikhail explained it to Emily when they first started dating.
She'd never known anyone as wealthy as Mikhail, so she took the
otherwise bizarre situation as a given, assumed that all rich people had
a clutch of people following them like a comet's tail. Volkov is an old
family friend, to hear Mikhail tell it, and he has been with Mikhail
from the very beginning. He is only a few years older than Mikhail but
looks a hundred times tougher. Tall and wiry, and covered with scars.
One circles his left eye, the circumference of a beer bottle. Like most
Russian males, Volkov went right into the army after school. In
contrast, Mikhail, due to family connections, avoided conscription and
went to college, where he started to build his business empire.
Who
else is on duty? she wonders. There's always three or four twitchy
young Russian men at the mansion. Emily is never told their full names
and refers to them by Anglicized nicknames she gives them. That night,
it is Leo, Max, and Mikey.
Then comes the second round of shots,
much closer to the house and altogether different in character. They
must be automatic-something the police will confirm later. Short bursts
of fire-bang, bang, bang, bang-much louder now.
Emily trembles. What is going on? she asks even though deep inside, she knows. Has always been expecting this, if she is honest with herself.
Her
first thought is of her babies in the children's wing. Alice Wilkinson
is with them, of course, her bedroom next door to the nursery. It is her
responsibility to get up in the middle of the night when one of the
children coughs or cries or is wakened by a bad dream. But, given the
circumstances, it doesn't matter that help is in the same room with
them. A nanny isn't enough: Emily has to be with them, to make sure they
are all right.
It's funny, the stupid things one does in a
moment like this. She takes a few precious seconds to put on a dressing
gown. In her defense, what is she wearing is rather sheer and hardly the
kind of thing you want to be caught in when armed gunmen descend on
your home. She hopes, as she yanks on the dressing gown and ties the
belt, that she will be locked in one of the bathrooms. Maybe it is only
Mikhail they want.
The house is dark. Why hasn't anyone turned on
the lights? Have the burglars cut the power? You hear of robbers doing
that sort of thing. Where is everyone? Igor, undoubtedly, has gone to
check with his men. Two are supposed to be posted at the back of the
estate, but it is ominously quiet back there. Perhaps Igor is taking
Mikhail somewhere safe. Where is Mikhail? You'd think he'd be on his way
to check on his wife and children but there is no sign of him. Still,
she tells herself that he is coming for them and pictures him running
down the hall, running toward them, as though she could will it into
being. She thinks, too, of Westie-Arthur Westover, Mikhail's funds
manager-arguably more important to Mikhail than his wife. Maybe her
husband is taking a moment to make sure he is safe.
As she
stumbles down the dark hallways, she curses Igor. Isn't it his job to
make sure there plans for exigencies like this, for exactly this sort of
thing? They have active shooter drills in primary schools, for god's
sake, but since moving in she cannot remember being told what to do in
the case of emergency. This seemed like a huge oversight on the security
chief's part.
It is then Emily remembers the panic room. Of course
there is a panic room in this giant, sprawling behemoth of a house;
with his typical foresight, Mikhail had had it installed when he'd
acquired the place over a decade ago.
Emily hurries through the
halls, her dressing gown fluttering around her like a shroud, as she
makes her way to the next wing. Noises drift up from the great open
foyer in the middle of the ground floor, commands issued in Russian
(naturally: it is always Russian) that she doesn't understand. Still,
she recognizes the voices. Igor's mostly. Strangely, Mikhail is silent
and he is never silent. Where is he?
She has just crossed
the main hall when she hears breaking glass below, high and bright and
jangly. To Emily, the sound of breaking glass is one of the scariest in
the world. It means that they-whoever "they" are, though she has a good
idea-have reached the house and successfully breached the outer
defenses. The invaders are about to come inside.
Surely, we'll hear sirens soon.
This is London, after all. Even though the houses here sit on several
acres, sound travels, especially loud, angry sounds like gunshots. Their
neighbors will have heard and called the police immediately. That is,
if the guards hadn't alerted the police already. (But would they, given
that their damnable Russian pride is on the line?) Either way, the
police should arrive any minute. All Emily has to do is get the children
to the panic room.
She arrives at the unlit nursery to see Miss
Wilkinson standing between Kit's and Tatiana's tiny beds. She looks
utterly distraught, unraveling from indecision.
The children seem
to still be asleep. Emily doesn't want to jump to conclusions about
Miss Wilkinson's grasp of the situation. Children can be such heavy
sleepers at that age.
"What in the world is going on?" the nanny asks in a loud, frightened whisper.
What
does the silly girl think is going on? Surely, she can't be that naïve.
She knows whom she works for. "I'll take Tatiana, you take Kit and
follow me," Emily says, not bothering to answer the question. Had either
she or Mikhail told the nanny that there is a panic room in the house?
Probably not. No sense scaring the girl.
Emily picks up her
daughter. She snuggles instinctively against Emily's chest in a drowsy
half sleep, burying her face into her mother's clavicle. Drinking in the
warm, soft baby smell of her daughter, Emily nearly breaks into tears.
To think bad men with weapons are converging on the house at that very
minute... Coming for them... The children are innocent. She's
innocent, for that matter. Isn't she? Emily thinks again of the dead
businessman's wife, locked in a bathroom, forced to shimmy down a
drainpipe. There had been no mention of children in the newspaper
stories.
She runs through the hall, Tatiana clutched to her
chest. Two-year-olds are heavier than you might think. Kit is even
heavier than his sister, and Miss Wilkinson, a slight thing, struggles
to keep up. Emily probably should've taken Kit, she realizes in
hindsight, and left the smaller Tatiana to the nanny, but she'd acted on
instinct. She always worries more about Tatiana because she is the
girl. Emily knows how hard the world can be on the fairer sex.
The
panic room sits on the ground floor next to the kitchen. It is not a
family kitchen, not the sort of well-decorated, lived-in room you see in
magazines. It's a big industrial place, more the domain of staff, like a
modern Downton Abbey. They'd put the panic room there, she supposes,
because it was easiest for the builders. She'd been in it once: Mikhail
had shown it to her shortly after they were married. He had been leading
her around the huge mansion that had become her home. Showing her all
the nooks and crannies that he didn't show most people: his second
office, the real one with its documents' safe, and the armory in
the basement where his bodyguards kept their auxiliary weapons. "God
willing, we'll never have to use it," he'd said as they stood in the
panic room that night.
There was no panic room in Downton Abbey, she is certain.
Now
here she is in the dark with her daughter in her arms, ready to
activate the heavy steel doors for the first time, with only the nanny
for company. Where is Mikhail?
"Let's go in," Emily says to Miss
Wilkinson, whose teeth chatter like she'd seen a ghost. It's
understandable, under the circumstances, but a bit surprising,
nonetheless. She'd struck Emily as quite no-nonsense when she'd
interviewed her.
Wilkinson reads her employer's mind. "What about your husband? Shouldn't we wait until-"
"I'm
sure he'd prefer that his children be made safe," Emily says, snapping a
little. She is more desperate than she first thought to get behind
those bulletproof walls and seal the door. Hand hovering over the
keypad, she notices that the gunfire has stopped-for the moment, anyway.
"Would
you really close the door without me?" Mikhail's deep voice is beside
her, cutting through the darkness. Suddenly, he is standing next to her
with Igor behind him holding a gun high, cradled in two hands.
Surprisingly, in that moment, Igor seems very nervous. She's never seen
him betray even a hint of nerves, and her stomach drops to her feet. It
must mean they are in real trouble.
"Thank god you're safe."
Emily presses her face to her husband's chest as best she can while
holding a child in her arms. She wants to shout at him-Where were
you?-because she is afraid and it would be an easy way to vent her fear,
but she knows it's better to look like she'd been worried and
frightened without him. Tatiana mewls slightly, like a kitten fighting
to remain asleep.
A radio crackles to life somewhere on Igor and
he steps away, the better to hear. Mikhail begins to shepherd her and
Miss Wilkinson into the safe room. His demeanor hits Emily as all wrong.
He is angry rather than seriously frightened. Whatever is bothering
him, however, he clearly is not about to discuss it in front of the
nanny. Emily knows that much about her husband.
Mikhail looks
from Kit, now awake and blinking owlishly at his father, to the sleeping
Tatiana, and then to his wife, and Emily is grateful for that rare,
tender moment. She trusts that means everything will be okay. Then he
steps over to a control panel, a large, awkward thing affixed to the
wall, incongruous among the bookcases and tufted leather armchairs. He
presses the touch screen once to light it up, then holds a finger above a
prominent red circle on the screen, the button that would send the room
into lockdown.
She realizes in that second that he never taught
her how to use the control pad. Perhaps he’d assumed she’d never need to
use it—or was it because he didn’t want her using it on her own? Maybe
he considers it his panic room, which she and the twins are welcome to occupy only with him.
Where does this strange, uncharitable thought come from?
Mikhail is ashen and grim. He is shaken up. His house—which is
definitely his castle, Englishman or no—has been breached. They both
understand that, considering his position, this violation can mean many
things. The implications must be running through his head.
Someone wants you dead, Mikhail.
Before
he can press the button, however, Igor is back and at Mikhail’s elbow,
walkie talkie in hand. "I was just informed that the police have
arrived. The intruders left when they heard the sirens." Mikhail and his
chief of security step aside to confer before he releases Igor to go
speak to the police, who are ostensibly rustling around on the floor
above them. When he turns to Emily, he looks greatly—but not
completely—relieved.
She starts toward the hall. She wants to get
the children to the nursery. Tatiana is heavy in her arms; the twins
are awake now and fussing to be let down.
He draws her aside."Let the nanny take them upstairs. You and I must talk."
Emily resists."They’ll be upset. They’ll have questions. I need to be with them."
"That’s the nanny’s job. You can go up in a minute, but right now we need to talk."
She
does as he asks. She always does. A lump forms in her throat as she
watches Miss Wilkinson lead her children away. The sight of another
woman caring for her children in that moment tears her heart in two. Never again.
