The Silent Oligarch: A Novel (18 page)

“How was Paris?” Malin said at last.

“Not as good as it could have been. No doubt you’ve heard.”

Malin nodded. A slow nod, three times, looking at Lock all the while. Then he took a long deliberate breath, let it out through his nose, and reached into his jacket pocket for his cigarettes, a Russian brand. He took one from its soft pack and lit it with a plastic lighter, letting all the smoke leave his lungs before talking.

“I thought Kesler coached you.”

“He did.”

“Then it was your fault?”

Lock didn’t reply. He tried to hold Malin’s look. Malin watched him and smoked. He tapped his ash, curling it into the ashtray, and spoke again.

“Do you think it likely, Richard, that the largest foreign investor in Russia’s oil industry would not know the difference between kerosene and gasoline?”

“I didn’t . . . I’m just the shareholder.”

“Or the standard terms of an oil exploration license?”

Lock looked down at his shoes. Malin went on.

“Or the combined revenue of the group over the last ten years?”

Lock could feel a sharp, constricting pain in his breastbone. There was a stagnant smell about him. He wanted to take a shower.

Malin was still looking at him.

“I’m sorry.” It was all he could find to say.

Malin stubbed out his cigarette, separating the burning ember from the filter, his eyes held on Lock.

“You have had too much international exposure, I think.” Malin sat hunched forward like a frog, his thick shoulders sloping. “Things are difficult. There are stories in the newspaper and the lawsuit goes on. Tourna’s people are more and more aggressive. They will put pressure on you, and I do not want any harm to come to you.” He paused. “You are too important to me.” This seemed to demand a response but Lock waited. “This is why I have arranged for new bodyguards for you. These men are good. They will make sure that you are looked after. They will make sure that no one gets to you.”

Lock tried to think of something to say. “What about Andrei?” was all that he could manage.

“He has been reassigned.” Malin shifted forward in the chair. “Is there anything else you need to ask me?”

“Will I . . . Can I come and go as I please?”

“Of course. It is exactly as before.”

“How long will this last?”

“Not long. It is a temporary measure. When things have died down we can go back to normal.” Lock felt himself being scanned and at the same time being told something: don’t underestimate how serious this is.

Malin Stood up and held out his hand. Lock took it.

“Good-bye, Richard. I will see you at the ministry on Monday.”

“Yes. Good night.”

Malin let himself out. Lock was left in his sitting room, wondering. He wondered about many things, but what troubled him the most was what hadn’t been said. No mention of the investigation into Tourna. No steely pep talk. Almost as if he didn’t matter anymore.

M
ALIN WAS RIGHT:
it was exactly as it was before. Lock was surprised by how little difference it made to his life to have an armed guard watching over him. He went to the office, he had dinner, he came home, he had a solitary and dreary weekend. Liberty would have been wasted on him.

His guard changed at nine each night. He knew that every movement he made was noted and reported, and he knew, though it was unspoken, that he couldn’t leave the country, or flit to St. Petersburg for the weekend. But that wasn’t so different either. For years now he had lived at the permission of someone else. Now he knew it. That was all.

What was different was Oksana’s absence. For a week after his return from Paris he had tried to live a simple life and ignore the weight he felt on him every morning when he woke, but any setback, any reminder of his plight and he found himself wanting to see her. More than anything else he wanted to talk to someone who didn’t occupy his world. He chided himself for his weakness but it made him no stronger.

And then there was Marina, and the letter. He had taken to carrying it with him in his inside pocket, where it felt at once like a comfort and a risk: after all, if anyone were to read it they would surely conclude that he was now on the verge of defecting, or of simply breaking down. He didn’t know why he kept it with him. He told himself that she was right in her analysis but wrong, or unrealistic, in her prescription, and so her words didn’t serve as inspiration, or guide, or spur (there ought to be spur enough in finding a guard outside his apartment door each morning, as certain as the sun). But they stayed with him nevertheless, on his person and circling in his head, perhaps because what they said most clearly was that she still cared for him, that in some other universe where his confinement was not as close or as total there might yet be hope.

T
HE PAPERS WERE ALIVE AGAIN.
The
Wall Street Journal
had published a profile of Malin that, while it mentioned his official achievements, was not flattering. “Russia’s Secret Oligarch” was the headline, and it went much further than the story in
The Times
in setting out his connections to Langland, Faringdon and Lock. The
FT
had followed it up with an article about Faringdon, its extraordinary string of assets and its shadowy proprietor, one Richard Lock.

The one thing that gave him some hope was his plan, now more critical than ever. And more dangerous. Every evening after dinner he worked on it. He had burned his original notes, and was now storing all the details in his head; it wasn’t complicated in any case. He had two problems to work on: how to get his phone to ring as Chekhanov was due to leave, and how to pick the lock on a filing cabinet. He had been practicing the latter on one of his own at home. He began with a straightened paper clip, but that was too flimsy and he moved on to a hair clip that Oksana had left in his bathroom. With some practice he could feel the pins moving up and down inside the lock, but he couldn’t get the mechanism to turn.

That Saturday he woke early after an unsettled sleep and took himself to the
banya
to be steamed and scrubbed. His escort waited outside. When he left he felt lighter and the fug in his head had cleared. Moscow was still cold but there were no clouds and the air for once felt good to breathe. He told his guards that he was going to walk for a while. The driver stayed with the car; the blond man followed five yards behind him. Lock walked briskly down to Red Square, charging his lungs, determined to fill his day so that he could convince himself and Malin that his spirit wasn’t lost.

He would do something he had never done: he would visit the Kremlin. It might do him good to see behind those immense red walls. The Kremlin was still the dark, unknowable center of things, a silent threat to every Russian. If it chose it could exile you, jail you, take everything you had. It owned you. Even Malin was wary of it, as if it were some arbitrary and alien power. In that mysterious citadel by the river people worked, and talked to each other, and made decisions. Malin knew most of them. And yet he still spoke of the Kremlin not as a collection of politicians and administrators but as a fearsome creature that might savage you for the merest slight or simply on a whim. Lock, for his part, was awed by it, and a little scared. He prayed that he would never give it cause to notice him.

From the kiosk on the far side of Red Square he bought two tickets, one for himself and one for his blond companion, who took it with some awkwardness. In among bands of tourists he passed through the broad wooden gate in the outer wall and into a long avenue of trees. As he walked he was amazed by how fine the buildings were, and how immaculately everything was kept—the paths clean, the verges trimmed, the grass a deep green even now, in winter. Russian government buildings weren’t like this. They were grubby and practical. This was luminous and serene, and rich with the spirit of the country it governed. The offices, vast and painted a deep yellow, had a rationalist air at odds with the pure white and onion domes of the churches and cathedrals; the one looked north and west, the other south and east. Together they suggested to him the sentimental greatness of Russia. Against every expectation, he was moved. There was such beauty here. How easy, he thought, to rule without fear of redress from a place such as this.

He spent a little over an hour there, then tired. He would have liked to discuss some of what he was thinking with his chaperone but didn’t feel that he could. He was hungry, but didn’t want to eat alone. He wanted to see Oksana. In fact, he needed to: he needed someone to call him at Chekhanov’s office, and she was the only person he knew in Moscow he might trust. As he walked back into Red Square he took his phone and called her, for the first time since she had left him in Café Pushkin. As he dialed, the same electronic squeal that he had heard in London the week before played in his ear, and he realized with a new sting of anxiety that someone was probably listening to his calls. Of course they were. Only dimly hearing Oksana’s voice-mail message, he hung up.

His spirits, so carefully buoyed, collapsed. Who was listening to his calls? Probably Malin. Possibly Ikertu. Both? Could two groups of people tap the same phone? He had no idea. It hardly mattered. He had no one to talk to anyway. Putting the phone back in his pocket he turned to his bodyguard and told him that he wanted to go home.

O
N
T
UESDAY MORNING
he was in the office early, around eight. There was an e-mail waiting for him from Kesler, sent a little after ten, his time, the evening before. Lock expected it to be about New York, the next item on the legal agenda. Instead it told him that the Financial Crimes Unit of the Royal Cayman Islands Police Service wanted to interview him about “irregularities of ownership” in certain companies under his control. If he could attend a meeting the following week that would suit them. Kesler explained that if he did go it would be only with a guarantee from the island of temporary immunity.

This was the first official investigation. Newspapers and lawsuits and hints from Swiss prosecutors were one thing, this was another. Kesler was in the United States this week. Lock couldn’t call him until the afternoon. He wanted to know whether this was serious. He also wanted to know whether he would be allowed to go. His guess was that if he knew about it, he would be going. He would find out this evening when he saw Malin.

In the meantime, he had some last-minute planning to do. Even if he couldn’t be arrested in Cayman he wanted to be prepared to negotiate. He wanted something to offer them, and this meant that he had to go through with his plan that evening. He might not get another chance.

He had made some progress with the lock. He had realized finally that he needed two pins, not one, and fashioned something near the thickness of the hair clip, the only one he could find, from tightly twisting two paper clips together. It now took him about thirty seconds to open his own filing cabinet. He could only hope that Chekhanov’s locks were the same.

Oksana would not be helping him. He had called her once more, on Sunday morning, but again she hadn’t answered. He suspected she wasn’t talking to him for his own good. In any case, he had thought of a way around the practical problem. There was a stopwatch on one of his phones that had a countdown function. By changing the sounds you could make it ring as if for a new call when the count reached zero. Before his meeting, he would set it to count down from fifteen seconds, and then activate it from his pocket. He had practiced, and it worked: down button twice, right once, down once, center button.

His day was not productive, nor quick. Normal life continued in the network of companies, and he should have been signing documents and transferring money and opening bank accounts and making sure that everybody else was doing what they should be doing. But he couldn’t concentrate. Two scenes occupied his mind. In one, he was being led away from Chekhanov’s office by two enormous henchmen as Chekhanov himself looked coldly on; in the other, he was in a fluorescent-lit office in Cayman, bargaining feverishly with a pair of stony-eyed policemen.

Time dragged. He skipped lunch, and then regretted doing so. He smoked halfheartedly. By the time he came to leave for the meeting he was feeling light-headed and oddly detached.

Chekhanov’s office was in a low building above a row of shops: a café, a shoe shop, an electrical repair shop. It gave no hint of how much money and influence lay within. Wooden doors in the middle of the row opened onto a wooden staircase, its gray paint chipped away, lit by a single fluorescent bulb on the wall. Lock walked up two flights. Two doors opened off the landing at the top. He turned to the right and pressed the bell. A dull brass sign by the door read “Industrial and Economic Holdings Z.A.O.” As he waited Lock checked his equipment: one hair clip, the paper clips wound together, his countdown phone, his normal phone, his BlackBerry with its camera. All present, and none of it incriminating. His hand felt clammy in his pocket and he tried to dry it on the lining.

A key turned in the lock on the other side and the door opened. Chekhanov’s secretary showed Lock in, without pleasantries, and for a minute or two he stood in the reception area, unable to decide whether to sit down. Not many people were received here, he thought. Throughout the offices the walls were lined with wood, vertical strips of pine varnished a deep red brown, and the only decoration was a single frame displaying an incorporation document for Industrial and Economic Holdings. Two low steel chairs, their upholstery worn, were set against the wall facing the receptionist’s desk, between them a chipboard coffee table with nothing on it. The room smelled dusty, as if someone had just vacuumed.

The receptionist’s phone rang. “Mr. Chekhanov is ready now.”

Lock walked past her desk and down a corridor, taking the second door on the right. In here were the same pine walls, the same institutional hard gray carpet. Hanging behind Chekhanov’s desk was a Russian coat of arms, a gold double-headed eagle against a field of bright red.