The Silent Oligarch: A Novel (24 page)

Lock pushed his chair back and made to stand up. With defiance he looked Webster in the eye. “I came here to talk business and you just . . . harangue me. I don’t need this. You have no idea how little I need this.”

Webster leaned forward and put his hand flat on the table, a gesture of finality and trust. “Richard. I’m not here to offend you. But you’ve got a decision to make. You’re here in yesterday’s clothes with mud on your shoes for what? Because you thought it would be fun to jump over walls in the middle of the night? You’re not the man you were a week ago. Your life has changed.”

Lock stood up. Webster went on.

“Was it part of the plan, to bolt? Or blind panic? Or would your wife not let you stay?”

Without looking at Webster, Lock walked away between tables and out the door. His mug was still full of tea. Webster saw his face through the window as he turned onto the street. There was no trace of insult there, no anger; only fear, like a man pursued.

Webster drummed his fingers on the tabletop in thought. Ten more minutes with him was all he needed. He put his phone back together and waited for it to warm up. He needed to call Black and let him know that Lock had left and was heading east on Church Street. His tea was still warm, and he sat with the thick white mug in his hands. He could go after Lock now, catch up with him along the street, or he could find him later, let his thoughts do the work. But it had to be today.

His phone chimed awake, and as he picked it up the bell above the door jangled. Lock stood in the doorway with an odd look of contrition on his face. Webster looked up as Lock threaded his way between orange plastic chairs and sat down again. For a moment neither man spoke.

“Can we discuss me?” Lock said at last.

Webster gave a small, understanding nod. “I think we should.”

“I . . . I went to church this morning. That beautiful one on George Street. Do you know it?” Webster shook his head. “You should go. Walk through the door and it’s like being in Italy. I thought that if I told someone everything then perhaps . . . But I couldn’t find a priest. And I wasn’t sure what I was there to confess.”

“Sins of omission?”

“Possibly. Yes. I have omitted rather a lot.”

For the next half hour, Lock talked. He talked about Cayman, and the horrifying specter of the FBI. He talked about Malin and his growing impatience, about the bodyguards and the prison that Moscow had become. He talked about Gerstman, and the terror that still struck him whenever he imagined his death. He left very little out.

It seemed to do him good. Webster listened closely, interrupting with the occasional question, and it occurred to him as Lock revived a little that in some respects his own profession was not so different from his wife’s. He had felt this before, the beginnings of a strange dependency, a stranger intimacy. Each needed to trust the other, whether that was wise or not.

Then it was his turn. He told Lock what he knew about Malin, and what the FBI would come to know. Lock interjected that the Swiss were also interested, so he thought, and Webster said there would probably be more. He laid out what would happen next: how charges would be drawn up and international arrest warrants issued; how Lock would be forced to remain in Russia; how the newspapers, frankly quiet until now, would feed happily on it for months. He began to remind Lock of the precedents, the helicopter crashes, the drive-by shootings on motorbikes, until Lock cut him short.

And then he described the alternative. Cooperate with law enforcement. Engage independent lawyers. Work against Malin; expose him. Go to prison, perhaps, but claim some small piece of your life as your own.

Throughout, Lock sat and listened, nodding occasionally as if to stay in touch from somewhere far away. He seldom looked at Webster; he stared at the table, out the window, at the other people in the café, which was busier now. He was still in his coat, and underneath its bulk his body looked shrunken and collapsed. When Webster was done he sat nodding steadily for several moments.

“The trouble is,” he said, finally looking at Webster, “I don’t think I know enough to be of use.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know enough. Never have. Kesler explained it to me. To hurt Malin you need to show he’s a criminal. I don’t know he’s a criminal. Or I can’t prove it. I just know that he’s a rich Russian and I own things for him.” He leaned back and tried to find something in his trouser pocket; it sounded full of change. Eventually he pulled out a small plastic rectangle and held it up for Webster to see. “On here is everything I know. Every document from my files—every transfer, every company, every instruction. I thought I should have it all somewhere safe in case I needed it. But the funny thing—do you know what it is?”

“No.”

“The funny thing, is that it’s so clean. Money goes from here to there, it buys things, it grows, but I don’t know where it’s from. Fifteen years I’ve been doing this and I don’t know—have no idea”—Lock beat out the syllables on the table with the flat of his hand—“where any of it comes from. I guess, like you guess. But I don’t know.”

Webster felt his stomach lift and fall. “So what did Gerstman know?”

“Did you know him?”

“I saw him before he died.”

Lock frowned a little, as if he was thinking something through for the first time. “So it was you.”

“I like to think it wasn’t. He wouldn’t speak to me.”

“Do you know how he died?”

“I have an idea. He didn’t strike me as the type to kill himself. Or to do it in that way. So either he knew something, or it was a message.”

“To me.”

“Perhaps.” Webster watched Lock take this in. Either way, he thought, one of us precipitated his death. He didn’t say it. “So what did he know?”

“More than me, I suppose. He was a Russian, for a start. He knew where the money came from. Or some of it.”

“Enough to make him dangerous?”

“Dmitry was much too clever to be a danger to those people. He did everything he could to show Konstantin that. I thought he believed him.”

Webster waited a second or two. His fingers drummed on the table, his foot tapped on the floor. There was a gamble in this next move, since it was still possible that Lock was here on Malin’s behalf. Look at him, though, with the livid dark bags under his eyes and the fear in his face; he needs me.

There was something he had to clear first. He looked Lock in the eye. “Tell me. Do you remember an article about Faringdon? From ten years ago. In English. The only one there’s really been. It said that you were buying things for the Russian state.”

Lock frowned, as if rooting through his memory. “No. There’s never been anything. Not until you started.”

“It was by a friend of mine. A Russian woman.”

“No.” Lock shook his head. “I would have remembered. Is it important?”

Lock was no actor; his face was empty; it meant nothing to him.

“Probably not.” It was strange how a single piece of information could suddenly reveal a person. In that moment Webster understood that Lock was not the sort of man to be told things, but the sort who serves a purpose. A standard component of a more complex mechanism. The realization freed him. “I went to see Nina Gerstman.”

Lock sat back and crossed his arms. “Was that decent?”

Webster shrugged. “I thought I could help her. She thinks it was Malin.”

“Of course it was Malin. How does that help?”

“Perhaps we can show that it was.” Lock waited for Webster to go on. “I think that Dmitry had some sort of file on Malin. I also think that someone searched his flat a week or so before he died. Prock mentioned it but thought I wouldn’t understand. Do you know Prock?”

Lock shook his head. “No.”

“Dmitry’s partner. An unlikely match.” He paused. “Maybe she’d show it to you.”

“Nina?”

“Yes.”

“Why would she show it to me?”

“Because you’re the man who can bring down her husband’s killer. Because Dmitry liked you.”

Lock sighed, exhaling through his nose and mouth. “You’re sure there’s something there?”

“I think there is. Something that will hurt Malin. It doesn’t make sense otherwise.”

“What if there isn’t?”

“Then everyone will still want to talk to you, you’ll just have less to tell them. You can go back to Russia or talk to the FBI. I’ll help you.”

Lock thought for a moment. “Is she in Berlin?”

“As far as I know.”

“So I go, she gives me this file, this information, whatever it is, and then I come back. What does it do for me?”

“It makes you valuable. Simple as that. Christ, you can take it back to Malin if you like and he’ll pat you on the head and love you again. Maybe let you go around on your own. If that’s what you want. Otherwise it’s the difference between wanting to nail him and actually doing it.”

“It’ll never happen. It never happens.”

“It happens. I’ve seen it. And you’re the only one who can do it.”

“And you don’t care if I run off?”

“You’re not mine to control. But if you do I’ll know you got something.”

Lock sighed again, looking around the room at the stallholders coming in for their lunch.

“I’m not very good at this sort of thing.”

“What sort of thing?”

“I’m no spy. I tried it in Moscow and screwed it up. I have no talent for subterfuge.” He laughed a cold laugh. “Funny. Under the circumstances.”

“I’m quite good at it,” said Webster. “Let me help.”

There and then Webster made a plan, writing and sketching, angling his notebook on the table so that Lock could make it out. Lock ate a bacon sandwich; Webster left his to go cold as he scribbled and talked.

Lock should leave London straightaway. There was no point in delaying. He should take a flight to Amsterdam or Rotterdam. That far he could be traced, but once there he would create a little diversion. Using his credit card he would buy a train ticket to Noordwijk, where his father lived, so that anyone watching would assume he was going home. But he would drive to Berlin in a hired car paid for by Ikertu through an innocent-sounding front company. That way no one would have any idea of his true destination.

From Amsterdam to Berlin was a journey of four hundred miles, probably a seven-hour drive. He could stay overnight in Hannover or push on for Berlin in one go. There he would check in to a hotel that Ikertu had again found and paid for. He would be Mr. Richard Green, and would be careful not to present his passport when checking in.

“What do I say if they ask?” said Lock.

“Tell them you had your briefcase stolen at the airport and you don’t have it. You’re going to the embassy in the morning. We’ll find you a hotel that won’t care.”

Money was important. He should withdraw as much as he could today, in London and Holland, and use cash for everything once he landed in Europe. Phones too. Lock volunteered that he had dismantled his old ones yesterday.

“Good. Leave them that way. Before you go we’ll get you a pay-as-you-go,” said Webster.

And then he should see Nina. Lock should plan his own approach. He knew her, and he could decide what would work best. Webster gave him her address and phone number.

“How do I get back?”

“You arrive at the airport and book yourself on the next plane back to London. Leave it very late, just before check-in closes. I’ll meet you at the other end and take you somewhere safe.”

“What if they find me?”

“They won’t. You’re not leaving a trace.”

Lock sat for a moment, leaning on the table with his hands clasped together, his thumbs pressed against each other.

“When did you start following me?”

The question surprised Webster but he was happy to answer. “When you arrived yesterday.”

“No, not this time. I mean, when did you first start following me?”

“Yesterday.” Lock gave Webster an appraising look. “Really. We had no reason to before.”

“OK. OK.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. The last time I was here I thought someone was following me. Maybe I imagined it.” Lock sat back and rubbed his cheek. “Why don’t you come with me?”

Webster sat back, as if the planning was complete. With Yuri’s help he would know exactly where Lock was, but to go with him now was to risk overloading this delicate new trust between them. He needed Lock to think he was in control.

“I could. But this is your mission. I’ll be a phone call away. We’ll make a spy of you yet.” He smiled, the sort of smile that says everything will turn out fine, no matter how unlikely that might seem.

Thirteen

T
HIRTY-FIVE YEARS BEFORE,
it must have been, Lock had traveled across Germany on roads like this to Altenau, a lake town in the Harz mountains. They had left at night to avoid traffic, his father driving, his mother and sister asleep. Opera played loud on the cassette, the high notes tinny and distorted. Lock stayed awake and watched the car’s softly glowing instruments reflected in the window against the dark. On the straight roads his father sat almost perfectly still, his arms locked and steady on the wheel.

That was their second holiday in the mountains. The first they had spent in tents, sometimes in campsites, sometimes in the wilderness, but that year Lock’s mother had insisted on a roof and a bath, and Everhart had booked them into a guesthouse on the edge of town by the lake. They were the only family there, everyone else was there to walk, and Lock and his sister, waking early and playing, were often in trouble for disturbing the other guests. Everhart seemed quietly pleased that they were bringing some life to the place.

For two weeks they walked, and swam, and took day trips to pretty towns. Sometime in the second week Everhart declared that he and his son were going for a proper walk, a long one, and early the next day they set off, Everhart leading the way around the edge of the lake through densely planted pines, the needles dry under their feet. Lock’s scuffed white tennis shoes slipped on the slopes, and he followed in awe the unerring tread of his father’s sturdy leather boots. Even now he could remember every moment of that day. They walked for hours, saying little. Everhart moved quickly, but not so quickly that with the occasional run and skip Lock couldn’t keep up. At lunch, the lake by now a long way behind them, they sat in the forest by a stream, ate their sandwiches, and talked about the future: where Lock would go to school, what he might study at the university, what he would do to earn a living, where he wanted to live. Everhart shared his tea in the cap of the Thermos flask.

This was the longest Lock had spent alone with his father; it made him nervous and happy. In the afternoon, the sun now over their heads and dropping light down between the trees, they carried on walking, stopping now and then for Everhart to refer to his compass and his map. Above the town of Bad Harzburg the path left the forest for a while, and for the first time they could see sky and hills and woods ahead of them. They stopped for a moment to take it in. Lock’s father crouched behind him and pointed across a shallow valley to a dark band of forest encased in a high metal fence.

“You see that fence?” said Everhart. “That is the Iron Curtain. It cuts Germany in two. You be thankful you’re a Dutchman.” Lock imagined vast curtains of gun-colored metal, swagged apart to reveal some hellish mechanical world beyond.

And what had Lock done? He had gone to live there. Perhaps that’s why his father was so appalled. Perhaps Lock had ceased to be a Dutchman in his eyes the moment he had gone east. The thought struck him as he drove past Osnabrück on a stretch of highway that seemed to go on forever no matter how fast he went. It was late now, past ten, and he should find a place to spend the night. Stopping seemed luxurious, but he reminded himself that if Webster was right he had time. He might feel pursued, but he was in no hurry.

At Stansted he had bought a suitcase and to put in it a new sweater, shirts, T-shirts to sleep in, socks, underwear, a razor, a toothbrush, a book—
Middlemarch,
of all things; after Cayman he had always meant to read it—a notebook, a guide to Berlin and two bottles of decent malt. These new possessions felt like the starter kit for a new identity that he had not yet defined. In the pockets of his coat he had two pay-as-you-go phones that Webster had arranged. One was for calls to a third, virgin phone, which Webster would keep, the other for any calls Lock might need to make in Berlin. All were for practical purposes untraceable, apparently. And in his wallet he had five thousand euros. He was all set. All set for a raid behind the wall to retrieve his identity.

He had arrived in Rotterdam an hour or so after dark. He had hired a car, a good one, an Audi, since it was less conspicuous in Germany to drive an expensive car than a cheap one, and then set off, the satellite navigation telling him in calm Dutch where to go from time to time. It felt strange to be driving; in Moscow he was driven, and everywhere else he took taxis. He enjoyed the car’s solidity, its sureness, the impression it gave that it knew where it was going. He was conscious for the first time in years of the distance between places, between Rotterdam and Utrecht, between Arnhem and Dortmund, and he enjoyed that too.

Maybe in this car the Swiss wouldn’t stop him at the border. Maybe he should give it a go. No, he thought. Perhaps after Berlin.

H
E SPENT THE NIGHT
in a motel just off the autobahn outside Hannover. The line about his briefcase had worked and he hadn’t had to show his passport. It was strange that even now—he was on the run, for heaven’s sake, if you could be on the run from your boss—these little lies unnerved him. He paid cash in advance and wondered whether that would be the thing that finally made the tired-looking Polish clerk suspicious enough to call the authorities. Which authorities he had no idea.

But no one came for him in the night. After a sandwich that he had bought in Rotterdam and a glass or two of the Scotch, he slept a solid, heavy sleep with no dreams, waking just before the dawn with a sore throat and a headache. He hadn’t opened a window and the room was hot. He showered and dressed and left in fifteen minutes, discovering as he stepped out into the cold air that it had snowed in the night and was snowing still, fat soft flakes settling on the hoods and roofs of cars. The road itself was smeared with an ugly gray paste of slush and grit and oil, and the journey took twice as long as it should. But here he was, approaching Berlin from the west, warm and safe.

He didn’t know the city. It wasn’t a place he had ever needed to visit: Frankfurt, yes, for its banks, but otherwise Germany had never been important in his scheme. He followed the signs to the center, hoping from there to see signs for Kreuzberg. Through Charlottenburg, through the Tiergarten, past the Reichstag; he eventually found himself on Unter den Linden, driving along the wide boulevard whose name he had heard so often. It was less pretty than he had expected: it looked as if the massive buildings on either side, the hotels and offices and government buildings, had bullied all the leaves off the bare limbs and left the trees cowering in the middle of the road.

It was strange to be driving in a city he didn’t know. It took him nearly an hour to find the hotel. The Hotel Daniel, in a residential street near the canal. It was small, and dark in a comforting way, and he was shown to his room by a bulky, smiling woman in her seventies who spoke little English but understood him well enough. He gave his name as Mr. Green. When he started to explain about his passport she simply waved him away.

The room was papered with red and cream stripes, and fitted out with furniture that didn’t match and was a little too good for a hotel of this kind. A double bed with a small mahogany table by its head; a wardrobe, mahogany again and rather grand, with an oval mirror set into its single door; a chest of drawers; a desk and chair. From his window Lock could see through trees the canal and the U-bahn track above it, and beyond that a solid redbrick church and layers of boxlike apartment buildings stretching back into Mitte. A train ran past from left to right, its orange carriages the only color in a world of white and gray.

Lock unpacked his new things, taking his shirts from their plastic packages and hanging them, creased, in the wardrobe. He checked the charge on his phones. Should he call Nina now? Something held him back. He thought for a moment that it was the prospect of seeing his dead friend’s wife and being rejected, or not knowing what to say. But that wasn’t it. If Nina had nothing, knew nothing, then the last prospect of some sort of dignified escape from all this, however fantastical, was gone. Here in this comfortable room, snow blanking out the world around, that was a moment he could happily delay.

He would write her a note. Or better, a letter of condolence. He was in Berlin, and would very much like to see her. That was natural, after all: they had met, and Dmitry had been his friend.

He took his time with it, writing it out in his notebook first before copying it carefully onto a sheet of the Daniel’s letterhead. When he finished he called down to reception and managed to explain in English, Dutch, and broken German that he wanted a taxi.

H
E NEEDED FOOD, AND AIR.
Outside the snow was now a gray mud on the pavements. Lock could feel his shoes cold on his feet and knew that icy water was about to leak through the soles and seams. Soft flakes had given way to something between hail and sleet and the easterly wind froze his face. He walked on the main road, leaning into the cold as it came at him, taking in little but the noise of the cars and the people hurrying past him on their way home. He had little idea where he was; he had a map but there was no point in trying to open it.

At Wittenbergplatz he turned left into quieter streets in search of a bar. Thank God for bars. When he found one it was less a bar than a café, rather grand and Viennese, but it would do. It was warm, and warmly lit, and he found a booth that seemed the most comfortable thing he had ever seen.

He ordered beer, because this was Germany, and drank the first one in four or five deep swallows. Another came. He looked at the menu and ordered food: gravlax and Wiener schnitzel.

From his coat he took one of his phones. He looked at it for a while and then put it on the table. It continued to attract him. He wanted to call Marina, to tell her he was all right and that he had a plan, but he wasn’t sure he should. Webster had said he could make calls, hadn’t he? Halfway through his third beer he surrendered.

“Marina?”

“Richard?”

“Hi. I thought I should call.”

“Richard, where are you?”

“I shouldn’t say. I just . . . I wanted to tell you I’m OK.”

“Vika wants to see you. I think she can tell I’m worried.”

Lock rubbed his eyes with his free hand, pinching the bridge of his nose.

“I’ll see her soon,” he said. “Tell her I’ll see her soon.”

There was a pause. “I stood there,” said Marina, “whispering your name over the wall.”

“I’m sorry. I was fine. I should have said.”

They were silent again.

“I did what you suggested,” Lock said.

“What?”

“I got some help. I’m trying to find a way out. It’s better already. Being free. I can think more clearly.”

“That’s good, Richard, but . . . You’re not going to run off? I don’t think I could stand it.”

“No. No, I’m not.”

“I thought you had.”

“I’m going to face it. I think I have to.”

Marina was quiet for a moment. “That’s good. That is. We’ll help you. I’ll help you.”

“I know.”

Another silence, broken by Marina. “Konstantin called.”

Lock said nothing.

“This morning. He wanted to know where you were.”

“What did you tell him?”

“That I didn’t know anything.”

“Was that it?”

“He wanted to know if I had lost trust in him as well.”

“And?”

“I told him I didn’t leave Moscow just to get away from you.”

Again, Lock was silent.

“He said . . . he told me that he was trying to save you.”

Lock closed his eyes. “There’s no point in telling me that.”

“I thought you should know.”

“Do you believe him?”

“I think he no longer knows what he is saying.”

Lock nodded slowly to himself. Could Malin really expect him to believe that? There was no point in wondering. He felt tired.

“Listen, darling, I should go. It’s going to be a busy few days. I’ll . . . I’ll call again.”

“OK.”

“Will you kiss Vika for me?”

“Of course. Be careful. Please.”

“I will.”

“If it doesn’t work, I’ve found you a lawyer.”

B
Y TWELVE THE NEXT DAY
Lock was anxious. Nina hadn’t called and he had begun to regret the letter; it was time to stop delaying. His first call to her went unanswered, but he left no message. So did his second, two hours later; this time he told the machine who he was, that he was in Berlin and would welcome the chance to see her. He could go to her or she could come to him at the Hotel Daniel.

At three she called; it was a short conversation. She told him that she didn’t want to see anyone associated with Dmitry’s old world, that he shouldn’t take this personally, and that she would be grateful if he left her alone. He tried to tell her that he no longer worked for Malin but it was clear that she had made up her mind. As he put the phone down he wondered what Webster would have done to keep her talking—and what would he do now to force a meeting?

Lock had been in his hotel room all day, reading
Middlemarch
and the guidebook and drinking Scotch. He had had breakfast, but no lunch, and his head felt light and tense at the same time. He didn’t know what to make of Nina’s refusal: was it the end of everything, or merely an obstacle? Part of him, he realized, had never thought that Nina would make any difference; part of him longed to think that she would. Snow had settled thickly overnight and was still falling outside his window.

He decided to walk into town. He couldn’t leave today in any case, not in this snow, and he wanted to see people and breathe fresh air. And he needed new shoes. The pavement sludge had frozen in places and in his leather soles he made precarious progress north, across the canal and up Friedrichstrasse, leaning forward slightly for balance and correcting himself with a jerk every time he started to slip. If the snow would only stop he could drive to Switzerland in a day—less, probably. He wondered how far south it was falling. He passed Checkpoint Charlie and stopped for a moment to read the screens that enclosed the construction sites on either side of the road. People had crossed the wall in suitcases, in cars decked out in mourning, suspended from balloons, on death slides, in a hundred ways that defied imagination. Plenty had tried and not crossed at all, shot down by the automatic machine guns trained on every inch of the wall or by the border guards who longed to cross it themselves. Some had been left to die in the death strip between the two walls, the soldiers of neither side prepared or allowed to go to their aid. All in one direction. No one had ever crossed the other way.