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But all the pleasantries came to a screeching halt when Blaise asked about Russia. “How are things in Russia? It’s a place I can never understand.”

“What’s so difficult about understanding us?” answered Daniel. “Do you think we’re that different from you?”

If Blaise had known Daniel better, she might have been able to read the defensiveness in his voice.

“No, of course not.” Blaise laughed. “It’s just that Russia is a box of contradictions. Lots of money. Lots of poverty. Lots of sophistication. Lots of authoritarianism. It’s a strange place.”

“What are you talking about?” Daniel’s voice now turned to frost. “Did you talk this way when you were in school with my wife? Grow up. Life is not perfect. Things are tough in the real
world. There are enemies. Opponents. People who want to set us backward.”

Blaise’s face said it all. She was totally taken aback by the huge personalization of Daniel’s attacking response.

“Please…please forgive me if I’ve offended you,” Blaise stuttered.

Anne-Sophie stepped in. It wasn’t right of Daniel to unleash an attack against an old friend. It was embarrassing. Maybe she would have felt differently had things been normal at home. Who knows? But a deep anger rose from within.

She reached out to touch her husband’s arm. She enunciated gently. But firmly.

“In my little existence in Kursk, I don’t see a lot of the big-city things in Russia. But I’m different from most people there because I also read the
New York Times
and the
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
online every day. Many foreigners—and many of them are friends of Russia—are worried that the promises of democracy and reforms are being disappointed.”

Blaise now felt empowered by Anne-Sophie’s defense.

“There is concern, Daniel,” said Blaise, “that your country is being taken over by dark interests. The oil and gas industry and the government seem to be merging into a single, monolithic entity. And oil and gas monies are used for payoffs. For pressure. For foreign policy. For buying people. For politics. For power.”

The veins on Uggin’s neck became enlarged. There was no longer any way to stop the blowup. It had begun with Blaise’s innocent, offhand comments and was now going over the edge with no warning, no flashing signals.

“Here you are, an American and a German, lecturing me on Russia,” Uggin spat out. “You want to understand our history? Just look at what is happening in this living room. If you want to understand us, to interpret our desires and fears, all you have to do is eavesdrop on this conversation. Four hundred years of chiding, lecturing, wars, and condescension. We have had enough.”

Blaise hesitated at first. But she couldn’t stop herself. “Daniel, give me a break. No country is perfect. This is not about comparing one place with another. I’m an American and I live my life complaining about U.S. policies. Good Lord, I spent the last twenty-five days saying that the horror we Californians just went through was a direct result of our government’s twenty-year lack of leadership.

“But open your eyes. You guys want to get rich without making anything. When is the last time you bought something with a ‘Made in Russia’ sticker on it? You don’t make textiles. You don’t make computers. You don’t make cars. You don’t make refrigerators. You just sell oil and gas to pay for huge numbers of government workers. After losing fourteen republics, the new Russia has a smaller population than the old Soviet Union. And yet there are more government employees today than there were under communism. More than half of Russia’s middle class is employed by the state or by state-run corporations.”

“If we are so inept,” snapped Daniel, “if we don’t produce anything, if we don’t merit your attention, why the hell are Americans putting missile-defense structures in countries at our borders? Why does your press spend so much time criticizing us? Why are French troops in Chad or American troops in Iraq all right but having Russian troops near Estonia is a danger to worldwide stability?”

Anne-Sophie was having a hard time with his Russian defensiveness. “I love my life in Russia. I love my children, my neighbors, and my home. But why is it that Russians react to criticism by criticizing others? You have to see the bad things too. One hundred protesters were arrested in St. Petersburg last week. In most countries, protests of that size don’t even make the newspaper. But in Russia the government can’t even tolerate a hundred people with placards. Journalists are intimidated. From one day to the next, news programs that have been on the radio for years don’t broadcast any longer.”

Daniel Uggin shot up from the table, knocking down his empty glass. “Anne-Sophie, this is a personal affront to me. You have been living in my country for ten years and suddenly I’ve discovered that
you seem to hate it. Where has this come from? Are you so angry that Volga Gaz has made me a busy man and that I’m at home less than in the past? Remember, the company you find so dangerous is now providing you with a much better life. Instead of appreciation, you and your school friend are attacking my country, my job, and me.

“I’m going to bed,” Uggin declared. He looked at Anne-Sophie and raised a warning index finger in the air. “And I expect you to get up now and come with me.”

She got up, but was going nowhere.

“Daniel, please sit down,” Anne-Sophie said, her voice flat to restrain the incredible surge of bitterness. “You know better than anybody that since I was eighteen years old, I’ve spent whatever few years of my short life fighting the blind greed of multinational corporations. They use people, abuse the environment. They are oblivious to everything but profit. And Volga Gaz is a multinational corporation on steroids, Daniel. In a year, Volga Gaz will be the publicly traded company with the world’s highest market cap. It’s just paying for the worst habits of the Russian State.

“I’m glad you are happy working for them.” Anne-Sophie was punching out the words. “But don’t ask me to admire the company just because it pays your salary.”

Daniel Uggin and his wife were standing up in Hermann Perlmutter’s living room. Blaise was unsure whether to stand or remain seated. The scene was horrible.

“Please sit down,” Anne-Sophie begged him.

Without a word, Daniel Uggin turned around and walked up the stairs to the bedroom.

FRANKFURT
JULY 14, 12:40 A.M.

Blaise looked over toward Anne-Sophie, aghast. All she could see was Anne-Sophie’s glassy stare.

“I’m so sorry. This is my fault. I had no idea that I was going to ignite this storm. You had told me that things weren’t going well. But I never imagined this. Please, Annie, forgive me,” said Blaise.

Blaise had known that, after nearly a decade of envy-generating, problem-free matrimony, Anne-Sophie’s marriage was suddenly suffering a dark turn. Anne-Sophie’s increasingly alarming calls and e-mails had given her ample warning. But marital difficulties were one thing. Daniel’s aggressive attacks were an entirely different matter.

Anne-Sophie’s eyes looked toward Blaise’s.

“Can I walk you back to the hotel?”

“Are you nuts? It’s at least an hour’s walk and it is past midnight. You’ve put this amazing party together. Let’s get you to bed. I’ll call a cab and we’ll talk tomorrow.”

Anne-Sophie laid her hand on Blaise’s arm. “No, I want to talk to you now. I want to walk.”

Blaise quickly understood that this was not a polite gesture. Anne-Sophie needed to unload.

The two women left the house and turned left. They walked slowly.

“Blaise, the last thing I want to do is burden you with problems. But I don’t know who else to turn to.”

Blaise stopped cold in the street. The breeze whipped her red hair across her face.

“Talk, girl,” she ordered.

Anne-Sophie sucked in a breath of the cool evening air.

“In a way, I’m glad this happened. I had already told you a lot in
our phone calls. But now you have seen for yourself what I’m going through.” Anne-Sophie paused a long moment before continuing.

“Ten years ago, I made a choice. I knew what I was doing. I agreed to become a foreign wife in a tough place because I felt with all my heart that Daniel was the man I wanted to spend my life with. You know the beginnings, Blaise. I moved to Kursk and Daniel took a job with Volga Gaz.

“For nine of the ten years of our marriage, we were a happy family. Katarina and Giorgi were born. We lived comfortably. There was no way to save on Daniel’s Volga Gaz middle-management salary. But ours was a family that thrived on closeness and intimacy as internal combustion. We weren’t concerned about money because there was never any realistic expectation that meaningful resources would ever enter our lives.”

Blaise felt her soul tightening. She could see where this was going. Daniel had a lover. Goddamnit. How could Daniel do that to her friend!

“It isn’t what you are thinking, Blaise. I don’t think he has another woman.” Anne-Sophie smiled weakly. They knew each other well.

“Over the past year and a half, things have changed. Slowly at first, then faster. Daniel was suddenly called to Moscow by Piotr Rudzhin. Remember, you met him at the wedding; he was Daniel’s best man. Rudzhin has become a government big shot. When Daniel returned from Moscow, he announced that he had been promoted to district director. Two deputy directors were hired under him.”

“So what’s the problem? All this sounds good,” Blaise said, interrupting her friend and instantly regretting it. Anne-Sophie needed time to get it out.

“I was ecstatic too. We got a new house. I drive a Saab now. It all seemed too good to be true. But within months, Daniel began to travel—first a little and now up to three weeks a month.”

Anne-Sophie described the changes in her husband. When he was home, Daniel often spoke to Piotr Rudzhin, long evening con
versations, and then went to bed exhausted, hardly able to speak a word to the woman who only a few months earlier had been his best friend. Anne-Sophie felt her husband was sliding away from her.

“Wait, wait,” Blaise interrupted, irritated by what sounded like the prototypical whining-wife syndrome. She could hardly believe it. Anne-Sophie was a strong woman; what was wrong with her? “Anne-Sophie, you can’t blame him for throwing himself at his job. I’m an expert. I know what it is like to be obsessed by work.”

“No, you wait, Blaise. Let me finish.”

For the second time, Blaise regretted her inability to keep her thoughts inside her head.

“Okay, sorry. I will shut up. I promise.”

“It’s not the absences,” Anne-Sophie continued quietly. “It’s the fact that the man has changed. He has become obsessed with Russia—you just heard it. He spouts conspiracy theories about how the world wants to damage his country. He didn’t even want to come to my father’s party and only changed his mind at the last minute.”

For a moment, Anne-Sophie stopped walking.

“No, Blaise, I’m not a simpleminded, complaining wife. I’m a wife who is worried that her husband is mixed up in something beyond his control. And within just a few hours of our arrival here in Frankfurt, things became worse, not better.”

“What happened?” asked Blaise. The two women resumed walking past Schweizer Strasse’s shop windows.

“Two things. On the airplane, I saw Katarina and her father quarreling across the aisle about his passport as the plane was descending. He was organizing his papers and I guess Katarina took his passport to look through it. She’s nine—she’ll grab anything. I couldn’t hear what they were saying. But she told me later on in the bathroom that her father had gotten angry when she asked why he had a Bolivian visa. That’s when he grabbed back the passport.”

Anne-Sophie saw the quizzical look in her friend’s eyes.

“Blaise, look, maybe you need to be married to understand this. But for ten years I had a husband who told me everything. And
now I discover that he is something very different. Bolivia? Give me a break, why would he not tell me this? Sure, he told me that he was traveling beyond Moscow—to St. Petersburg, Yekaterinburg…even as far as Vladivostok. But why would he keep Bolivia a secret?”

“Maybe he will tell you this weekend?” Blaise did not sound very convinced.

“So here is the second thing.” Anne-Sophie rolled on, ignoring Blaise’s vacuous comment. “Within an hour of arriving at my father’s house, he makes a call. At first, I was really irritated because I thought he had used Hermann’s phone to call Russia. Christ, my father is a retired tax collector. He can’t afford extra expenses. So I went to the phone and punched redial. It was a local number. The woman on the line answered in German, ‘Mr. Pieter Schmidt’s office.’”

Now Blaise was looking far more interested. They had stopped at a crosswalk to wait for the traffic light to change. It had turned green but Blaise wasn’t moving.

“Does he know anybody here?”

“He knows my family. That’s it.”

“Who the hell is Pieter Schmidt then?”

“I don’t know, Blaise, but before dinner this evening he told me that he was going to go shopping for a present for my father tomorrow morning, at ten
A.M
. He didn’t ask me to come. He didn’t ask me what I thought he should buy.”

Blaise didn’t know what to say. So she asked an obvious question.

“And you are thinking that he didn’t really come to Frankfurt for your father’s celebration, but rather to see this Pieter Schmidt, right?”

“Yes.” Blaise thought it was unusual that Anne-Sophie was not looking at her. She was staring out into the night’s dark distance.

Then Anne-Sophie’s reluctance hit her.

“And you want to know who he is, right?”

“Yes.”

“And you are asking yourself how you accomplish this, right?”

“Yes.”

“And you’ve concluded that the only way to do it is to follow your own husband.”

Anne-Sophie looked at her. A single tear was streaking across her left cheek.

“Yes.”

Blaise took a deep breath.

“Here is what we’re going to do, sister. You are not going to follow him. I will. If he catches you behind him, it’s the end of your marriage. If he catches me, it will be serious, but you can steadfastly say that you knew nothing. You can blame me for ruining our friendship. You need to keep open a viable option to deny that you had anything to do with this.”