Page 4 of Winterveil

Trinity’s headmaster, Dr. Malcolm Fromme, reports that Shimonova was one of the school’s most beloved students.

“There are students who you think you don’t have to worry about,” says Dr. Fromme. “My colleagues and I all considered Klaudia one of those students. We gave her a long leash.”

This “long leash” may refer to Shimonova’s penchant for reading during class, as reported by one of her teachers who preferred to remain anonymous, or the internship that she completed at the consultant firm McKinsey & Company the second semester of her freshman year, for which she was allowed to miss morning classes on Mondays and Wednesdays.

Her coworkers at McKinsey indicated that they never saw her selling or purchasing stocks and did not give her any investment advice. She did not have access to any analyst reports—professional briefs indicating which stocks are likely to turn a profit—while at McKinsey. She also did not invest in any companies with ongoing McKinsey projects.

“We knew she was capable of great things,” says Dr. Fromme. “We just didn’t think she was also capable of criminal action.”

It is unclear exactly how much money Shimonova stole from her father’s accounts, but NYPD reports that she was able to achieve a net profit of $10 million in “no more than two months.”

Mr. Shimonov was alerted to the suspicious activity on his account and advised to contact the police, which he did. After a weeks-long investigation, NYPD arrested Shimonova while she was in her afternoon English class. Her trial is set to begin on December 15 and will be covered in future issues of the Times.

When the police raided Shimonova’s bedroom, they found thousands of dollars’ worth of designer clothes, jewelry, and accessories, as well as a highly venomous black-lipped forest cobra, which was being kept in a tank.

Shimonova and her counsel have refused comment.

More information will be available as the story develops.

Two

Fall 2034

New York, New York

“. . . it may be the fiftieth anniversary of Gorbachev’s assassination, but there’s something else dominating the headlines and the airwaves in New York today: the trial of Klaudia Shimonova, the fifteen-year-old Trinity student who allegedly made $10 million on the stock market by impersonating her father, an analyst with the Quaestor Group. She is now charged with multiple counts of forgery and identity fraud, which carry a maximum penalty of fifteen years in prison. What do you think, folks? Prodigy or criminal? Schoolgirl or swindler? Follow along with our coverage of Ms. Shimonova’s trial here . . .”

The Corinthian colonnade of the New York County Courthouse cast a grid of shadows over the street. Alternating planks of darkness and light, made even more stark by the crisp and unobstructed rays of sun. It was a cloudless day typical of early November, where the air seemed to have a brittle quality, punishingly cold.

Klaudia hadn’t managed to take more than two steps out of the town car before the reporters descended, pens poised over their notepads, shouting until their voices peaked. The flash of cameras blurred the corners of her vision.

The NYPD had cordoned off a section of the sidewalk for her supporters, corralling them behind a web of yellow caution tape. The police presence seemed to have intimidated them: Their shouts of encouragement were more hesitant, their signs hoisted only half-heartedly.

THE CHILDREN ARE OUR FUTURE, one sign read. Another: STOP THE BRAIN DRAIN. For weeks the Post had been circulating rumors that she might be deported.

But the NYPD had not been so solicitous about cowing her detractors. They were mingling uninhibitedly with the reporters, trying to shove their way to the front of the crowd.

“See how her lawyers dressed her up in pearls? All-American as hell; they want to make her look like some little Greenwich debutante, some Hamptons housewife, instead of like a Russian ki—”

The sonorous voice belonged to Felix Fox: conservative webshow host, conspiracy theorist, and self-described “Soviet sniffer,” because he couldn’t come up with anything cleverer and didn’t seem to recognize the double entendre. Joseph McCarthy would have advised him to have a softer touch.

Klaudia resisted the urge to reach for her necklace. Her mother had gifted it to her the day she started her McKinsey internship.

But Fox wasn’t entirely off the mark. She and her attorney had carefully curated her trial wardrobe. The idea was to make her look girlish and innocent. They had even discussed her wearing her Trinity uniform.

They had decided against it, in the end. The last thing she needed was to risk legal action from her high school, too.

“Are you sure your father isn’t going to back down?” Siegel had asked her. “There’s a chance he could make this all go away.”

There was no chance. Siegel knew that, despite his questionable credentials. He was a celebrity attorney, all pomp and showmanship. He had taken on the case pro bono—anything to increase his profile and maximize his chances of getting on television. His last case had been defending a twenty-two-year-old pharmaceutical CEO accused of trafficking endangered pangolins. Afterward, his podcast listeners increased by 180 percent, a metric more valuable to him than his trial victory record.

“My father wants to make sure I’ve learned my lesson,” Klaudia had replied.

“By sending his only kid to federal prison? What happened to a good old-fashioned paddling?”

Truthfully, Klaudia considered that her father had another motive. This was a test, just like the thousands of others that had come before. He wanted to see how she would get out of it. He believed that, if she was clever enough, she could.

Or maybe he didn’t believe in her at all. She had to assign that possibility an equal weight.