The Silent Oligarch: A Novel (14 page)

What was less clear was how much Lock himself really knew; murkier still, what Malin thought he knew. Less than Gerstman, surely? Maybe not. Perhaps he knew all manner of things but didn’t understand their significance. If that was true, he risked meeting with an accident for no reason at all. After all these years being governed by others he had no desire to end his days so powerless. So he had a choice: he could show Malin that he was no threat, or he could become a threat after all.

His car sat in lanes of traffic on Tverskaya. He looked out of the window at the boxy Ladas and bulky ZiLs around him; even in his own BMW the petrol fumes were thick. What would a Russian do? A Russian never did anything for a single reason. That was one important principle. And he never revealed his true position. He was two-faced: he showed one to the world and the other he hid. Lock had never learned this trick. If his Russian colleagues had laughed at Gerstman’s softness they undoubtedly laughed still at Lock’s naïveté. But here, surely, was an easy opportunity to exploit that. If he could convince Malin that he was harmless while building up what he knew, that must be sensible. A dossier. That was what he needed. That’s what people in his position did, drew up a secret file, to be deployed when necessary—with luck, perhaps never. And after all, what else did he have, except what he knew?

Lock felt a new energy inside him. He had had an idea: for the first time in years, a positive idea about his own fate. Now all he had to do was find the courage to act on it.

Café Pushkin was a re-creation of a rich Russian’s town house from the first twenty years of the nineteenth century. It was pedantically, absurdly authentic: huge, worn flagstones covered the ground floor and wood paneling the walls throughout. The cloakroom, in the cellar, was appropriately dank. In the library, on the first floor, where Lock had booked his table, and where real oak bookshelves held real Russian books, a brass telescope and a Victorian globe sat by huge sash windows, as if the owner of the house, an amateur scientist perhaps, had merely stepped outside for a moment and invited you to improve yourself while he was gone. From the cream-white walls brass sconces gave out fake candlelight. Lock liked it here because in among the fashionable Russians, who more than a decade on still came here, were tourists and even middle-class Muscovites celebrating. It felt democratic in a way that much of Moscow did not.

It took them a while to find his reservation but then it always did. He waited patiently while his waitress, dressed in a burgundy waistcoat and apron, slowly extracted it from the computer, an ugly anachronism in the warm light. Finally he sat, and ordered a gin and tonic. Oksana would of course be late. He read the menu: Russian food: blinis, pelmeni, solyanka, borscht, caviar, sturgeon, stroganoff. He would have the solyanka as he always did, and then maybe some duck. His drink came, and he poured a small amount of tonic into the glass: like the water and the wine, he told himself.

If he moved his flight to the evening he could make a start on his file tomorrow morning. All he needed to do was download everything on the network. It would probably fit on a single memory stick—two at the most. That would leave a record, of course, but he was the administrator of the system and in all his time working for Malin no one had ever inspected it. And he could always say that he’d needed to take it all to London and Paris. He should make a copy or two, and leave them somewhere secret but accessible. One in Moscow, one in London perhaps. Marina could look after one. If this was one of those thrillers I halfheartedly read, he thought, I would entrust one to my lawyer and have him publish it should anything terrible happen to me, but I don’t have a lawyer and even if I did no one would publish the little I know. We could always vanity-publish. He smiled at the thought, wondered whether Oksana would be much longer and ordered another drink.

That is the problem with this scheme, he thought. My value to Malin relies solely on my not being him. I don’t actually know very much. I’m not important enough to know things. The one devastating thing that I know is that I’m a fraud, but that in itself is not enough to finish Malin. And the hard irony is that Malin probably doesn’t know that—or can’t afford to believe it. He thinks I’m more dangerous than I am.

His second drink arrived. He looked at his watch. Twenty past. Oksana could be another twenty minutes. He sipped his gin and tried to remember what she had been doing that day; there was something at the university. He couldn’t, and returned to his new project. How to find out how Malin stole? For a long time he considered this without a single thought occurring to him. God, he thought: I am no spy.

As he tilted his head back to finish the last of his drink he saw Oksana arrive, stately in black, a head taller than the waitress who led her to the table. For a moment it occurred to him that she would make a perfect accomplice. She had poise and coolness enough for the both of them. He stood to greet her and they kissed. On his empty stomach the gin was making him feel warm and slightly giddy. He ordered another and a vodka for Oksana. She looked around the room and took a long time to settle herself on her chair; she seemed exercised about something. Her long nails, painted a deep red, rapped on the tabletop.

“You look amazing.”

“Thank you, Richard. This is a good table.”

“Of course. How was your day?”

“Hm. Not so good. Unbelievable in fact. I need that drink.” She looked around for the waitress.

“She’ll be here soon. What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” She met his eye but couldn’t hold it. “Just a bad day.”

“Tell me.”

She sighed. “All right. Christ. It’s that little fucker Kovalchik. I had a review with him today, you remember?” Lock gave a grave little nod. “I hadn’t seen him since the summer, not since I decided to include those chapters on the Gulag. So we go over the new plan, and he tells me that the Gulag is not a ‘profitable’ area of research. Too many people have already written about it, apparently. Academic exhaustion. But you can’t write about . . . ah, at last. Bring me another, please.” She took her shotglass, held it up to Lock, and knocked it back. “You cannot write about displacement without mentioning the Gulag. Hundreds of thousands of people began life—if you can call it that—began life in Kazakhstan because they were sent to the gulags. Idiot.” She played with her empty glass. “Idiot.”

Lock waited for a moment to see whether she had finished. Could he not discuss his plan with her? She was from Almaty. She was a foreigner, more or less. “So what does that mean?”

“That means I have to go back to the original plan and scrap everything I’ve done for the last three months. Or I carry on and risk being failed.”

“Would he do that?” He should talk to her. She might be the difference between doing it and just thinking about it forever. When they had finished discussing Kozlovsky or whatever his name was he would test the ground.

“Oh yes. Yes, he would. He’s a nasty little shit.”

“Who does he report to?”

Oksana gave a hard, short laugh. “Maybe I could have him sacked?”

“No, that’s not what I mean. Do you have any right of appeal? Can someone have a word with him?”

“He’s my professor. If I piss him off I won’t get another one.” She had stopped fidgeting now and looked at him with a coldness he didn’t enjoy. “Not every problem can be solved by finding a bigger bully, Richard. Even in Russia. You should understand that.”

“What do you mean?”

“I know who you are, Richard. You have a pretty unpleasant boss of your own.”

“I don’t follow you.”

“Never mind. Never mind. Let’s just have a nice dinner like we always do. You can pretend to be interested in my thesis.”

“I am interested in your thesis.”

She laughed again. “You know, when I first met you I liked you. We have an arrangement, I know that, but I liked you. Here’s a man, I thought, who knows things, who doesn’t care only for money. Here’s a man with self-respect. And then I see the papers and I see what you do. For that slug. It saddens me, Richard. I can’t tell you how much. You should have been more than this.”

She held his eye for a moment and then stood up.

“I’m sorry, Richard. I didn’t want to be disappointed by you. Let me know if I owe you anything.”

Lock watched her as she walked away, betraying no emotion in her even stride. The waitress came and put new drinks on the table. Lock drained Oksana’s vodka and sat for some time watching the space she had left.

“M
Y NAME IS
Richard Lock.”

“Thank you, Mr. Lock. And can you tell us in what capacity you are here today?”

“I am here as a representative of Faringdon Holdings, one of the companies named in Mr. Tourna’s complaint.”

“Very good. Let me start with some establishing questions. What is Faringdon’s business, Mr. Lock?”

“Faringdon is a private energy business that invests in oil and gas in the former Soviet Union. We own stakes in companies in Russia and Kazakhstan, mainly.”

“And what is the turnover of the group?”

“That’s commercially confidential. I would prefer not to answer that.”

From the end of the table Kesler gave a small nod of approval.

Across from Lock, Griffin resumed. “And what is your role in the company, Mr. Lock?”

“I am a shareholder.”

“The sole shareholder?”

“I would prefer not to answer that. I own a majority holding in the company. That shareholding is structured through various offshore companies in order to minimize my tax obligations.”

“Legitimately minimize,” said Kesler.

“Sorry, legitimately minimize my tax obligations. I don’t see that the exact shareholding structure is relevant to Mr. Tourna’s claim. I own a majority position and am authorized to speak on behalf of all shareholders.”

“Good,” said Kesler. “OK. That’s how it’s likely to start. If I was Greene I’d want to look at your career, the founding of Faringdon, how it’s grown. I’d leave the charges until last. That’s probably how he’ll play it. Now the main thing to remember is not to be drawn on ownership, not to be drawn on financing. Stick to the version we’ve established. Let’s deal with the background now. We can go through the charges tomorrow. Lawrence, please continue.”

It was Friday, and Lock was back in the offices of Bryson Joyce drinking his second cup of stale coffee. He, Kesler and Griffin sat around a table in a small, hot meeting room. Thursday had been final coaching; today and tomorrow, mock questioning; Monday, Paris. He would have preferred to have been anywhere else. Kesler was annoying him. His manner was now openly critical. He, thought Lock, is the despairing impresario to my talentless gangster’s moll. Every mistake Lock made he felt less like the client and more like a liability. If this exercise was meant to give him confidence it seemed set to fail.

At least this was work, and at least this was London, and the two together helped to distract him from Oksana. He was surprised by how keenly he felt the loss of her; he had expected that arrangement to be easier to break. But what hurt more, of course, was that she was right, as Marina had been, and blunt, as Marina had not.

“So, Mr. Lock. Can you help us all, please, by giving an account of your career to date? It would be useful to know how you came to Russia and what business you have had there.”

The problem is, thought Lock, that Griffin is being much too polite. Will it be this genteel on Monday? Presumably Lionel Greene didn’t get to be the man he is by talking to his witness like the local parson. Nevertheless, as Lock went through his answers he didn’t mind. Overall he would rather be roughed up only once.

And so the day went on, Griffin asking neat questions and Lock delivering neat answers. After an hour or so Lock’s mouth was dry and he had become conscious of the flat monotone of his voice. Two days of this.

“And how would you describe yourself, Mr. Lock? In business terms.” Griffin seemed to be enjoying calling him Mr. Lock.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, what sort of a businessman are you?”

“I’m a private equity investor. I invest in private companies at any stage of their history. Usually I take a majority stake. While I hold my investments I work with the management of the company to optimize value.” All carefully scripted, to within an inch of being meaningless.

A
T LUNCH,
Lock left Bryson’s office and walked toward the Barbican, which rose boldly above the City like the relic of some strange and ancient civilization. He lit a cigarette, regretted it instantly and stubbed it out. The day was gray and warm. He called Marina—he should have called her yesterday but he hadn’t felt like talking to anyone. A piercing, scrambled digital squall began the call and then the line went dead. He tried again and reached her voice mail straightaway.

“Hi, it’s me. I got in late last night. Call me. I . . . I’d like to take you to dinner. Tomorrow? I’ve been thinking about what you said when I was here last. Love to Vika.” It felt strange to be talking about normal things after so long with Kesler. Reluctantly he took himself back to the office, and the barrage continued.

“Can you please describe your relationship with Konstantin Malin?”

“I know him. Anyone who has worked in Russian energy knows him.”

“Would you say that he was a friend of yours?”

“A strong acquaintance, I would say.” Kesler’s phrase.

“I see. So you have met Mr. Malin?”

“Of course, a number of times.”

“Have you ever done business together?”

“Not personally, no. Faringdon has many dealings with the Ministry of Industry and Energy where Mr. Malin works.”

“So Faringdon has never profited from a close relationship with Mr. Malin?”

“Certainly not.”

“Really? Your paths certainly seem to cross often enough. Let’s take Sibirskenergo ZAO. This is a Faringdon company, yes?”

“We own sixty-eight percent.”

“We?” Kesler interjected.

“Sorry.” Lock took a breath. “Faringdon owns sixty-eight percent.”

Griffin resumed. “What does it do? Sibirskenergo.”

“It explores inaccessible oil properties in the far north of Siberia. Skip, why are we doing this? We didn’t prepare for this.”