Two young women stride along a New York street, barely breaking step to flash smiles at the camera. One of them is slightly out of focus, but her face — and the face of her friend — is unmistakable. Chillingly so.
The strawberry blonde on the right is Russian bridge player Mila Antonova, the woman alleged this week to have been the former lover of billionaire Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates — as well as an associate and financial beneficiary of the late financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
What makes this photograph sensational, however, is the presence of the flame-haired woman on the left. She is none other than notorious Moscow spy Anna Chapman.
This week, a world exclusive investigation by the Daily Mail has uncovered a potentially disturbing and unexplained link between Gates’s erstwhile Russian ‘lover’ and Kremlin spook Chapman.
While there is no evidence of any wrong-doing on Antonova’s part, it seems to be a connection which raises serious questions for Gates and, of course, for the California-based Russian herself.
Despite repeated approaches this week, it’s still not known whether the 67-year-old Microsoft boss had any knowledge of any potential link between Antonova and Chapman, daughter of a former KGB officer.