Pipeline (19 page)

As Anne-Sophie talked, Blaise noticed how her friend, in only thirty minutes, had imperceptibly moved the conversation from a
sad recount of a dying relationship to a discussion of how to end a marriage.

“What kills me is that the gentle, idealistic man I loved has replaced me with an infatuation for the bureaucratic equivalent of the caveman—the Russian State,” said Anne-Sophie. Her sadness was pierced by a bitter sarcasm.

“My husband is the only university graduate to be found in Russia’s eleven time zones who believes the government is honest and well-meaning. There are two Russias, Blaise. One is the Russia of the new capitalism—it’s a treacherous cauldron of oligarchs, gamblers, and real entrepreneurs who are changing the landscape, creating jobs and wealth. And the other Russia is the state. It is made up only of thugs and the mafia.

“Nobody with an education wants to work for the government. Nobody. Except for Daniel.”

“So, since that disaster at your dad’s house five weeks ago, are you any clearer on what he does for Volga Gaz?” asked Blaise.

“I know you think I’m stupid, Blaise. But I don’t know. They have something planned against the Americans. I don’t know what it is, but yesterday he was bragging about pushing the Americans ‘down a few notches.’

“I find everything out by accident. I know about Anfang because my best friend spent a morning spying on him. I find out about Bolivia from my nine-year-old daughter. I discover he is moving to Moscow over breakfast in a café. Everything is smoke and mirrors.”

For once Blaise Ryan didn’t have words. It didn’t matter because Anne-Sophie had more to say.

“Sit with me here. Let’s take this bench and look at the view.” Anne-Sophie guided her friend to the wooden seat directly overlooking the river. The old city, drenched in the waning sun’s orange light, dazzled, in front of them.

“I need to confess something. You have come such a long way,
but I asked you to meet me not only because I need a good shoulder to cry on. I also need Blaise Ryan’s creative mind. You see, I’ve come to realize that I need to get out. Out means out of Russia. Out from under his constant paranoia. But I can’t go without the kids; I won’t leave my children in Russia, Blaise.”

“Did the kids come up in yesterday’s conversation?” asked Blaise, putting a gentle hand on her friend’s shoulder.

“No. If I tell him I want to leave, I am afraid he will divorce me and keep the children. He will say that it’s important to ‘make them Russian.’ That is what he is about now. Russia! Russia! Nothing else matters.”

Anne-Sophie looked at Blaise, her eyes hard. “To get out with Katarina and Giorgi, I need to find out more about what my husband does. I need leverage. Negotiating power. I need to force my husband to choose between job and family. Once he is face-to-face with those stark options, he’ll choose the job.”

Blaise looked at her friend quizzically, surprised that this was not turning out to be the two-day, tear-filled consolation session she had expected. Instead, her friend sounded like a determined woman with a plan.

“How are you going to do that?”

“Well, I think that this German company, Anfang, is the key. Two months ago, you already found out a lot on the Internet. But we need more. And companies here are like companies in the United States. They need to abide by the law. They need to file statements. Documents are public.

“Yes, Blaise, I need to start by knowing everything there is to know about Anfang. And that is why you’re here, my dear friend. I will need advice about how to handle the information we get.”

Anne-Sophie’s eyes shifted forward in a determined stare. “And I have a plan to get the information. Want to hear it?”

Blaise Ryan was too taken aback to say anything intelligent. Eyes wide open in utter astonishment over her friend’s hard-hearted conspiratorial tones, Blaise just nodded in the affirmative.

Anne-Sophie outlined her plan in twenty minutes. Blaise Ryan was rarely surprised by life. But today she was flabbergasted. She had come halfway across the world to console a dear friend who had married into a Russian world that had suddenly locked her out. She had fully expected to see Anne-Sophie near an emotional breaking point.

Instead, she now faced a woman determined to go to war with Russia’s most powerful elements.

FRANKFURT
AUGUST 24, 1:00 P.M.
HERMANN PERLMUTTER’S HOME

Three days later, Blaise sat alone at the dining table of Anne-Sophie’s childhood home watching her friend talking in German on the telephone and scribbling notes. Until today, she had never previously bemoaned the fact that German was not one of her languages.

Surrounded by half-eaten sandwiches of Appenzeller cheese and Black Forest ham, Blaise desperately tried to discern the gist of Anne-Sophie’s half-hour phone conversation with her father. Each furrow of Anne-Sophie’s brow, each movement of her hand, each muttered “ja, ja” exasperated her further. It drove her crazy not to understand.

Finally, Anne-Sophie put down the phone. She walked back to the table in deep thought. She was clearly not happy.

“So? Did he find out anything? He must have because you were on the phone with him for thirty-five minutes,” Blaise blurted out.

“You know my father. He can charm everybody, make anybody talk.” Anne-Sophie smiled sadly. “Yes. He found out what we needed to know.”

“Come on, stop delaying. What is it?”

“Okay. He did just what we asked. He went to his old office at
the tax collection bureau in the ministry of finance and got his secretary of thirty years to do the digging for him. At first, they didn’t know what to look for, so they scoured through Anfang’s articles of incorporation.”

“What was in them?”

“Almost nothing of interest. The company was created in 1923 by Pieter Schmidt’s great-grandfather. Schmidt remains the CEO. The articles of incorporation have been amended six times over the years for small, unimportant reasons. The last amendment was in 2000.”

“All right, what happened next?”

“They then pulled Anfang’s corporate taxes; they were due in April.”

Blaise could tell by Anne-Sophie’s voice that whatever Hermann had found wasn’t good news.

“They didn’t file their corporate taxes this year,” Anne-Sophie intoned.

“What do you mean, they didn’t file a tax return?” Blaise insisted. “Anfang is a big company, they must have completed a return.”

“Well, they didn’t,” Anne-Sophie retorted, looking down at her notes to find a specific notation. “Instead they filed something called a Form T-161.”

Blaise didn’t have to tell Anne-Sophie that what she had just heard was the equivalent of gibberish. She waited for her friend to go on.

“My father says that Form T-161 is titled ‘Notice of Cessation of Operations.’ It is the form Germany’s tax authorities require when a corporation winds up its business and ceases to exist. This form is the way out-of-business companies advise the Finance Ministry not to expect any further tax payments in the future.”

“I don’t get it, Annie. This company exists today. We have their address; I saw their building.”

“Blaise, if you would stop interrupting me, you would be able to get the whole story a whole lot faster,” Anne-Sophie admonished.

“What? What?”

“It seems that companies filing Form T-161 are required to provide a formal explanation for the cessation of business. The reason Anfang Energie is no longer going to pay corporate taxes in the Federal Republic of Germany is that they’ve been sold. To a foreign company.”

Blaise started to sense what was coming.

“Anfang Energie was purchased by Volga Gaz in January of this year. Anfang exists only in name; it’s now a wholly owned subsidiary of Volga Gaz.”

“Jesus,” whispered Blaise. “But why isn’t this public?” She looked at Anne-Sophie in puzzlement. “Why isn’t there any knowledge of this?”

“I asked my father the same question. It seems that, as a closely held, private company with no outside shareholders, Anfang Energie has no legal requirement to disclose the sale. It was a private transaction.”

“But obviously the company’s attorney is a nice German lawyer, a detail-oriented stickler.” Blaise smiled. It was perfectly Teutonic. The attorney had filed the T-161 because he wanted to be sure that the ministry wouldn’t chase down Anfang for any tax payments this year.

“Yes, that is exactly what happened.”

It took only a few seconds for the initial elation of having found out that Anfang was just a cover for Volga Gaz to give way to real worry. Now that they knew the truth, what were they to do with the information? The two women fell into a ponderous silence. Without saying so, both wondered the exact same thing. But each of them came to a diametrically opposite conclusion.

Anne-Sophie was the first to talk.

“Blaise, there is nothing more to think about,” she said, her hands cutting the air in agitation. “I have to go back to Kursk. I have to tell Daniel that I know he has hidden his life from me. That he is involved in secrets and conspiracies. Right here, in Frankfurt. In my
own country! I have to tell him that this is not the family life I want for my children. And then I have to ask him for a divorce.”

Anne-Sophie was in a furious spin, fixating on the need to leave Daniel. She repeated over and over again that it was impossible to live under the same roof with a man who was a veritable stranger. A man who hid what he did every day.

The more Anne-Sophie talked, the more worried Blaise became. Really worried. Blaise didn’t know why her mind was always so efficient at clearly reading the dangers ahead. Perhaps it was because years of brawls with corporate higher-ups had accustomed her brain to think suspiciously. Whatever the reason, it made no difference. The only thing of importance was that Anne-Sophie wasn’t thinking straight.

Blaise now decided that there was no choice but to speak up.

“Stop for a moment,” Blaise whispered. “You have to take a step back. As painful as this is, you need to try to see this with some distance. You’re not thinking clearly enough about what Hermann found out this morning.”

Anne-Sophie looked up sadly.

Blaise swallowed hard. “I don’t think that going back to confront Daniel is a very good idea.”

“What?” shouted Anne-Sophie. “There isn’t any other choice.”

Blaise raised her hand, demanding silence. “Hear me out for a moment. We’ve fallen into something much bigger than just you, Anne-Sophie. It’s not just about
what
Daniel is hiding. The real question is
why
he has kept the details of his job, his travels, and his relationship with Anfang Energie a secret. And if you ask yourself that question, the answer is frightening.”

She saw that her friend was now paying attention.

“Let’s review what we know. We know that Anfang Energie is bidding for a large project in Peru called Humboldt to export natural gas to the United States. Don’t underestimate the importance of Humboldt; this isn’t just any little energy project in South America. There are huge financial and political interests involved here, lots of
them coming from my own country. The United States is desperate for natural gas. Remember, I’ve seen firsthand what failing generators and empty pipelines have done to people’s lives in California.

“We also know that Daniel has been traveling to Bolivia. Your daughter found the visa stamp in his passport, right? This probably means that, in some capacity, Daniel has been involved in Volga Gaz’s partnership with the Bolivian gas company. Peru and Bolivia are in a race to get their gas to market first. So, supposedly, Bolivia and Peru are big competitors in the gas-export business.

“Supposedly,” Blaise repeated before continuing.

“But now your father has discovered that this competition is a sham. Anfang Energie and Volga Gaz are actually one and the same company. If Anfang wins the Humboldt bid, the Russians will virtually control the eastern Pacific Ocean’s natural gas routes to California.”

Anne-Sophie interrupted, struggling with her anger to pay attention. “But if Peru and Bolivia are such fierce competitors, why would they allow the same company to bid on both of their gas-export projects?”

“You’ve hit the nail straight on, Annie. You see, I don’t think either country knows of the connection between Anfang and Volga Gaz. I know the man in charge of Humboldt. His name is Luis Matta. He is a destroyer of the environment, somebody who believes that Peru needs to develop its natural gas capacity no matter what the cost to the fragile Amazonian ecosystems. But he is not corrupt. In his own way, he is convinced of doing the right thing for his country. Had he known that Anfang was a Volga Gaz subsidiary, he would never have qualified them for the Humboldt bid.”

Blaise took a deep breath. “No, I don’t think anybody knows. What we’ve just discovered is a massive Russian sting operation to take control of South America’s natural gas.”

Blaise’s gray eyes took one look across the table and saw that Anne-Sophie did not get it. She was still having trouble looking beyond the concentric circles of her own problems.

“Blaise, all this superpower cloak-and-dagger stuff has nothing to do with me. I’m just a woman in a relationship that has gone sour. My husband may be involved in all of this. Or he may not. I don’t care; I just want to get out. This is not how I want to live my life.”

Blaise reached over to the water pitcher and poured water into her wineglass. She tried to gauge how honest she should be with her best friend. Anne-Sophie’s situation pained her. But Blaise needed her to understand the danger she was in.

“Unfortunately, all this international secrecy has
everything
to do with you. You have to listen to me. Carefully.

“You’re my best friend,” Blaise pleaded. “I can’t lie to you. I’m going to be very, very direct. You can’t get out of your marriage. Not now. Not yet. You can’t go back to Russia and tell your husband that you know all of this. We have inadvertently found out something that is very, very critical to Volga Gaz. If it’s important to Volga Gaz, it’s important to the Russian government. They won’t let some insignificant marital difficulties endanger their plan.”