Taylor
Four days later, everything is gold, cream, midnight blue, and the emerald green of the conservatory.
Through the enormous glass ceiling, stars hang over the upper floor and the dance floor beneath them, helped along by strands of tiny lights woven through the railings and tropical greenery.
Ordinarily, twinkle lights would feel too childish for an event of this magnitude, but tonight they look like they were invented specifically for this room.
Downstairs, people eat at tables dressed in white linens with emerald runners while waiters move through clusters of politicians, businessmen, wives, sponsors, and people whose names I should probably recognize but do not.
The food is almost entirely cold, exactly as I suggested when Viktoriya first told me the conservatory didn’t have an approved catering kitchen: smoked fish, caviar, fruit, elaborate salads, pastries, cheeses, and enough tiny hors d’oeuvres to make everyone forget they’re attending an event designed to raise money.
Everything was prepared somewhere else and brought in through the service entrance.
An orchestra plays from the upper level near the staircase, where the music carries down through the building without swallowing conversation.
A projection screen cycles through photographs of teachers standing in repaired classrooms, children in winter coats crowded around new radiators, a school roof being replaced beneath gray skies, and students grinning beside a freshly painted building.
The Governor’s Winter Education Benefit is raising supplemental money for teacher-retention bonuses and emergency school improvements that can’t wait for another budget cycle.
“Seems inefficient, doesn’t it?” I mutter to Viktoriya as I sip my champagne.
“What?” she asks, swaying faintly with the music and admiring the night sky through the glass.
She looks gorgeous in a crimson dress with a slit almost to her thigh.
Whoever said redheads can’t wear red was dead wrong.
Her copper curls are pinned into a loose bun with sparkling pins scattered throughout.
“Spending an extraordinary amount of money to ask people for money.”
She glances toward the arrangement of white roses towering above the registration table. “That is how fundraising works.” Her eyes move over my dress. “Besides, you get to dress up. You look nice.”
I look down at the dress she helped me choose. It’s dark green with a sweetheart neckline beneath an embroidered high neck. Viktoriya called it elegant. Anya called it dangerous. I still feel like I’m wearing a fancy turtleneck. “So do you.”
She smiles and hands me a stack of seating cards. “You did a good job finding this place. Smile. Be polite. Do not argue about foreign policy.”
“That last one feels targeted.”
“It is.”
I take the cards from her and glance around again.
I hate admitting it, but I am proud. Four days ago, this was still a series of frantic emails, diagrams, catering restrictions, and Viktoriya repeatedly informing me why every idea would fail.
Tonight, the conservatory looks intentional.
The orchestra fits perfectly upstairs. The dance floor is open.
No one seems remotely concerned that the building lacks a commercial kitchen.
People are eating smoked salmon beneath palm trees while Moscow freezes outside, and somehow I helped make that happen.
Across the room, Mikhail enters. I notice him before anyone announces him.
So does everyone else. The shift is subtle.
Conversations continue, but people stand straighter.
Heads turn. A man near the entrance immediately excuses himself from another conversation and approaches him with an outstretched hand.
Mikhail wears a black tuxedo with the same ease he wears a government suit or linen pants in his kitchen. I understand now that they are all suits in the truest sense of the word. He knows exactly what each one is supposed to make people see.
The last time I was with him in his office, he backed me against the door and frightened me badly enough that Arkady told him to stop.
Since then, Mikhail has been impeccably polite.
He approved my work without comment. He attended meetings.
Yesterday he asked whether I had revised a translation and thanked me when I handed it to him. He has not apologized. Neither have I.
I also did exactly what he told me not to do. I Googled Viktor Orlov. In my defense, telling a twenty-year-old political science student not to investigate something is practically an engraved invitation.
Viktor Orlov owns freight companies, warehouses, distribution centers, and enough commercial property to be described in multiple articles as a transportation magnate.
Orlov Transport is only the most visible piece.
His family has been in shipping and freight for decades.
His uncle died in what three newspapers called a hunting accident.
A cousin disappeared during a fraud investigation and was eventually declared dead.
Another relative lost control of two warehouses after a fire that investigators never conclusively explained.
None of that proves anything except that wealthy Russian families apparently have terrible luck.
There are photographs of Orlov shaking hands with politicians, businessmen, police officials, and at least one man I recognize from television.
There are none with Mikhail. Somehow, that feels more suspicious.
What I can’t find anywhere is why Orlov’s name appeared on a page mixed into Mikhail’s paperwork, why Mikhail’s mother was being photographed, or why saying Orlov’s name in his office made Mikhail look at me as though I had wandered onto train tracks.
I have been trying not to think about it tonight. This becomes harder when Mikhail looks directly at me.
I expect a polite nod. Maybe nothing at all. Instead, he changes direction and walks toward me with an older man at his side. “Miss Hayes,” Mikhail says, his expression pleasant and completely unreadable. “This is Dr. Aleksandr Petrovich Malinin, director of the conservatory.”
Dr. Malinin takes my hand warmly. He is perhaps sixty, thin and silver-haired, with round glasses and the slightly distracted expression of someone who would rather discuss plants than politicians.
“She is the brains behind this operation,” Mikhail tells him.
“If it were not for her, we would be standing outside.”
I stare at him. He smiles. Not the slight, private smile that appears when I irritate him. A real one. It changes his entire face, and the realization hits me unpleasantly. He’s a good liar. Like, a really good liar.
Dr. Malinin laughs. “Not outside. We would simply be somewhere less interesting.”
“Maybe the hotel,” I say.
Mikhail makes a face. “God forbid.”
Dr. Malinin laughs loudly enough that a woman nearby looks over. Mikhail does too, and apparently the joke translates. “I was told you were the one who suggested using the conservatory despite our kitchen limitations,” Dr. Malinin says.
“I suggested making the kitchen irrelevant.”
“Exactly. Which is much more sensible than the people who have spent fifteen years asking me whether we can simply install one.”
“I assume there is a reason you cannot.”
He launches into an explanation involving ventilation, preservation standards, and historic structural protections.
I listen long enough to understand approximately half of it before someone touches Mikhail’s arm.
An elderly woman stands beside him. Mikhail turns immediately, takes both of her hands in his, and bends to hear her over the orchestra.
She says something that makes him laugh, then swats his arm like he is a badly behaved grandson. He looks delighted.
I stare in open suspicion. Four days ago, this man frightened me against an office door because I asked about Viktor Orlov. Now an eighty-year-old woman is pinching his cheek. I feel like I’m watching a lion allow someone to put a birthday hat on its head.
A factory worker in an inexpensive suit approaches next and shakes Mikhail’s hand with both of his.
He speaks rapidly. Mikhail listens without interruption.
Not the blank, fixed attention politicians use while waiting for an opportunity to escape.
He asks a question, then another. The man’s shoulders relax.
Mikhail remembers the name of his town, the factory where he works, and that the man’s wife was ill last year. I can tell from the man’s face.
He speaks to wealthy men without seeming impressed by them.
He remembers assistants’ names. He crouches to greet a little girl whose mother works with one of the education programs and accepts a paper bracelet from her as though she has presented him with a state decoration.
It is bright pink and covered in crooked silver stars. He puts it on.
I look at Viktoriya with open shock. “Children like him,” she says with a shrug.
“Why?”
She gives me a look. “Taylor.”
“I’m asking a legitimate question.”
“No, you are not.”
Mikhail keeps the bracelet on during his speech.
He talks about teachers leaving smaller districts because salaries cannot compete with Moscow, children sitting in classrooms where heating systems fail in January, and administrators forced to choose between repairing a roof and replacing equipment.
He doesn’t speak as though the people in those photographs are tragic objects of charity.
“This is not generosity,” he says. “These schools educate our children. These teachers remain in communities where they could earn more elsewhere. Maintaining those communities is not charity. It is an obligation.”