Burying the Dead

Chapter 1

Part 1: Permanent Interests

Chapter 1

He was the kind of person no one noticed—a young man in jeans, hoodie, and sneakers, shuffling through the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington, D.C.—a person of no importance, particularly to the likes of Anatoli Zagrev, whom he nonetheless decided to approach.

Zagrev, who was scheduled to address the World Energy Engineering Congress there later in the day, was too focused on the blonde in front of him to locate the young man on his radar.

“Oh, Mr. Zagrev, I know what a busy man you are,” the young man heard her say, “but I was wondering if you had a moment, a word of advice for those of us just starting out in business who hope to become a great industrialist like yourself.”

The young man observed that Zagrev, who was having a hard time concentrating on anything but her spectacular chest, nonetheless forced himself to look into her gray-green eyes and consider the words being conveyed by a vaguely Euro accent that suggested a Continental upbringing with a bit of British polish. Something about the way she pronounced the word “know” with a tightly closed “o” made the young man think Oxford or Cambridge.

“Certainly, my dear,” Zagrev said, unable to resist a downward glance at the high-breasted, long-legged figure that reminded the young man of a pillow on stilts. “One always has time for young people.”

At least certain young people, for when the young man mumbled, “May I have an autograph?,” Zagrev’s detail said, “Get lost,” and tried shoving him out of the way, which caused a jostled Zagrev to lean happily into the steadying blonde. The young man could see Zagrev wince as if pricked by a needle.

“Oh, I’m so sorry, Mr. Zagrev, I hope I didn’t impale you with these,” she said with a laugh, waving crimson talons. “But I didn’t want you to fall.”

“Not at all, my dear. I tell you what: Why don’t we continue this conversation later some place where we won’t be interrupted by clumsy young men, say, my suite at The Hay-Adams?”

“Oh, that would be beyond my wildest dreams,” she said as the young man shuffled away.

He mosied along to the men’s room where he entered a stall. There he unzipped the hoodie and turned it inside out to become a taupe baseball jacket that now exposed a yellow polo shirt. He removed a pair of fine, brown Italian loafers from his knapsack and, re-zipping it to become a duffel, stored the sneakers he had been wearing. He placed a leather Apple watch on his wrist. He had about five minutes to make his way out of the convention center.

He waited till there were no more watery sounds in the bathroom, then left the stall. When he emerged from the men’s room, he didn’t merely look different. He walked differently, too, with a confident, commanding stride. It was something he had learned from—of all people—Marilyn Monroe. An article in an airline magazine said she could turn Marilyn on or off just by the way she jiggled down the street. Now he turned on his other self.

He was almost at the exit when a voice stopped him. “I know who you are,” it said.

He turned around to see a girl of about twelve, he imagined. “You’re Dimitri Orlov.” She offered him a Hello Kitty pen and journal. “May I have your autograph?”

“With pleasure,” he said, grinning as he took the journal and pen in hand.

“What are you doing here when you’re playing in the Citi Open final today?” she asked in the sharp, cheeky manner of precocious children. “I thought tennis players had to rest before their matches or something.”

He considered her for a moment. You couldn’t bullshit kids, he thought, so he wasn’t going to try, telling her instead something that was at least partly true. “Me, I like to take my mind off things,” he said. “I came to see the exhibits on Nikola Tesla and the new Teslas. I’m a big fan of both.”

Her eyes widened as if she had discovered a soul mate.

“Me, too,” she said. “Without Tesla, there would be no such thing as continuous electricity. And the cars are also awesome.” She took Dimi’s full measure. “I guess that’s why I admire you so much. You’re more than just a tennis player.”

My dear, you have no idea, Dimi thought. But he leaned down to whisper instead, “Well, you need a little something extra to be a champ.”

“Mr. Orlov?” It was the mother poised with an iPhone to record the moment. “May we impose on you for a picture, too?” Dimi posed for two then asked, “Do you have tickets for the match?” He handed the girl a pair, and she clasped them to herself as if they were gold medals, waltzing off with her mother, who cried for joy.

Outside he entered a waiting black SUV on N Street.

“That was close, Dimitri Alexandrovich, too close.” Valerian, Dimi’s “coach,” liked to call him by his first and middle names as if they were starring in some tenth-rate treatment of Tolstoy, Dimi thought. No matter. There was no Dimitri Alexandrovich Orlov. It was a made-up name for, he knew, a made-up, perfectly disposable person. You’re a fraud, Dimi Orlov, he often told himself, nothing but a fraud.

“Well, I thought it went splendidly,” said the woman with the familiar Oxbridge accent seated beside Valerian. That was all that was familiar about her for she, too, had transformed herself in a convention center restroom. Gone was the buxom blonde siren and in her stead appeared a slim, no-nonsense brunette with a pixie cut, her form-hugging, reversible red coat dress now a brilliant green.

“Here,” she said, rummaging through her tote, also reversible, to produce two large fake boobs, complete with n*****s, “you can have these, Valerian Nikolaevich.” She tossed them at him with a laugh. “Honestly, you men are as obvious as your s*x organs.”

“Don’t be smart, Olga Petrovna,” Valerian snapped. “We cannot afford any deviations from the script. That includes encounters with the fans of the great Dimitri Orlov.”

“Would you prefer I be rude to them and arouse suspicion?” Dimi offered. “It doesn’t cost a ruble to be nice and, besides, it only cements my cover.”

“Just as long as you remember it is a cover,” Valerian said with a jerk of the neck and an eye-roll. “Tennis is not your day job.”

Dimi shrugged. Would that it were. But without this “masquerade,” there would be no tennis, he knew. And without tennis there was no money, no real money, to care for Alexey and improve the orphanage where they grew up. He gazed out of the tinted windows as they sped around Dupont Circle and down New Hampshire Avenue onto 16th Street, past the familiar neoclassical and Victorian buildings that housed historic women’s associations and the grand embassies of Third World countries whose economic struggles they belied.

Wedged in between were brick and blue-gray row houses with small but lush gardens. Something about these buildings filled him with longing, as if he had known them in a past life. Perhaps it was the people he glimpsed outside on makeshift patio furniture, flipping through their iPhones and sipping their Starbucks. What must it be like, he thought, to know the quiet pleasure of an ordinary day?

Like all the other players, Dimi used cities to mark the seasons—Melbourne in winter, Paris in spring, London in high summer, New York at summer’s end, Shanghai in fall. Washington was one more marker on the long, sweltering slog through summer that would culminate in the US Open, but one that could prove a turning point. A win today in the finals would poise him for his next goal of cracking the top five.

“I don’t know how you do it, Dimi,” Olga said. “How can you do all this and remain calm enough to play in a final? I’d be quaking in my knickers.”

I can do “all this,” Olga Petrovna, he thought, because I long to do it and because I have no choice.

Indeed, by the time they switched SUVs, leaving Olga to go on to her “job” as an interpreter, Dimi had already slowed his heart rate with the deep yoga breathing that sounded like the ocean echoing in his head and was on the court mentally, visualizing the ideal match against world number two, the American Ryan Kovacs. Alone in the locker room, he changed quickly and did his final stretches, then bounced down the hall on the balls of his feet like a boxer. He fingered the three crossbeams on the gold cross under his shirt and crossed himself right to left in the Eastern manner.

At first the match didn’t go as he envisioned and he dropped the first set, to the delight of the crowd, which offered a double whammy—pro-American, naturally, but also decidedly anti-Russian. Still, Dimi didn’t panic. To do so would have been to invite an outcome he didn’t wish. Instead he kept chipping away, trying to move Ryan around the court, changing the pace and direction, waiting to pounce on the mistakes that the talented but impatient Ryan still made.

At one point, Ryan hit a long shot that Dimi refused to give up on. He ran it down, never losing sight of it over his shoulder, returning it between his legs. Then he whirled around to see Ryan try to put it away sharply. But the ball took too high a bounce, and a scrambling Dimi was able to return it for a crosscourt winner. He dropped his racket then and raised both hands as if to say, “See what I can do. Can’t you love me just a little, too?”

He knew such begging was useless and unseemly. Love was a state of being, not doing or becoming. You were either loved or you weren’t. Nevertheless, the crowd rewarded him with grudging applause that crescendoed into an ovation for the play of the match, which Dimi won 2-6, 6-4, 7-5.

In a way, tennis was no different than his day job: You couldn’t personalize your opponent. So, when Ryan congratulated him at the net with a pat and a “Good job. Drinks after?” he smiled and said, “Flight to catch. Raincheck?” He genuinely liked Ryan and most of the guys on the tour. And he couldn’t afford to like them. He couldn’t afford to like anyone. He glanced at the players’ boxes, where the little girl and her mother were cheering wildly. But Valerian, as was his wont, had already left.

There was, however, someone else who seemed to be rooting for him and was more than interested in meeting him afterward. First lady Catherine Darlington was on hand to present Dimi with the winner’s trophy, a gigantic glass goblet. (Why were tennis trophies always so cumbersome, he wondered as he kissed it for the quintessential champion photo op. It made them seem even less worthy of the affection players bestowed on them.) While the first lady commiserated with Ryan over the upset, her gaze fell on Dimi, who found himself returning her lingering smile with one of his own.

On the flight to Cincinnati for the Western & Southern Open, he double-checked his duffel, in which undershorts, socks, toiletries, and rackets cradled his trophy, and considered how in hell he was going to ship it back to his Palladian-style dacha outside Moscow. He had just won a tune-up to the US Open, and he really had no one to share it with. Well, at least the trophy might engage Alexey—for a minute or so—but in truth it would be another dust collector for the housekeeper Yuliana to take pride in. She was the only one who did.

He ordered the Dover sole with steamed vegetables, adjusted his earbuds, and reclined his seat. All in all, it had been a satisfying day. His “performance” had gone well. He had played the match he had seen in his head. He was en route to the top five. And he had met an intriguing woman in the bargain.

Besides, he knew by nightfall, Zagrev—whose oil tankers often carried arms responsible for the deaths of thousands—would himself be very, very dead.