The Silent Oligarch: A Novel (31 page)

“You and I are the same, Richard. An agent of convenience for someone else.” He paused. “Those were not my men trying to kill you. They were government men.”

Lock looked away from Malin and out the window. He saw bicycles lined up neatly in their racks. Evergreens like Christmas trees laden with snow.

“I came here for two things, Richard. This,” he put his hand on the pile of paper, “and you. If this had been valuable, I could have gone back and said that you were still loyal. Maybe you could have stayed here. Maybe. But now you have to come with me. I cannot go back with this alone.”

“I’m not going back.”

“Richard, understand this.” Malin leaned farther forward. He spoke in a half whisper. “You have worried some very important people. Kremlin people. They see the interests of Russia at risk. They see their own interests exposed. They have made it clear to me that I must clean up this mess. If you come back to Russia, with me, you will be safe. Outside Russia they will not let you exist.”

“I can’t go back.”

Malin said nothing for a moment, his eyes steadily on Lock. “Richard, you know what happens to people like us when we are not useful anymore. I am on the verge of not being useful. Your only hope is to come with me and let everyone forget about this episode. In two years we will both be where we were.”

Lock shook his head. His jaw was set, his head full of sound and rage.

“And Dmitry? Where will he be?”

“It was too late for Dmitry.”

“Then it’s too late for me.”

Malin sat back. “I’m sorry, Richard. I can’t let you choose.” He turned to Ivan, just an inch again, and nodded.

Lock saw Ivan walk toward him and his hand reach into his coat pocket. Lock pushed his chair back and began to stand. He shouted—“Help! Stop!”—and as he stood brought his hands up to push Ivan away. Webster was shouting, as were other English voices. He saw Ivan’s hand come out of his pocket and in it a syringe; felt his powerful hand on his upper arm. Then the grip released and Lock, off balance, stumbled backward and fell down against the window. When he looked up he saw Ivan being held by two of Black’s men. The syringe was on the floor. Malin was still sitting at the table, his expression unchanged; Webster was by him.

Malin stood up. He looked at Webster. “We are leaving,” he said, in English. He sorted the papers on the table into one pile, picked it up and walked past Ivan and Black’s men. Ivan shrugged himself free and followed.

One of Black’s men reached down to pick up the syringe. There was a clear liquid inside; it was still full. He handed it to Webster, who was collecting the phones and the envelope from the table.

“Come on,” Webster said to Lock. “Let’s go.”

Lock stood up straight. Faces stared up at him from the tables around. Two library security guards were here now and one of Black’s men was calming them down.
“Wir verlassen.
We’re leaving.” Webster guided Lock through the tables, out into the main hall and toward the door.

“You OK?”

“I’m fine.”

“What did you get?”

“I think we’re both finished.”

As they reached the entrance Black joined them.

“I’ll go first.”

Lock followed Black through the revolving doors, Webster right behind him.

He squinted as he came out into the air; the sky was still heavy with cloud but the snow was bright. He could see Malin and Ivan walking up the path toward Potsdamer Strasse, Malin walking slowly with heavy, rolling steps. He saw Black five yards ahead, scanning from side to side. Lock waited for a moment, turned to see Webster emerging from the door. From far away he heard a dull crack, like a stone falling on dry wood. His shoulder was thrown back, his arms flailed in space. He fell backward and his head hit the icy ground. Webster’s voice came to him.

“Richard. Fuck. Richard! George!”

He looked up. Flat gray sky. Webster’s hair. There was heat in his chest, and cold.

“Richard. You’re OK. Richard. Can you hear me?”

He felt his lips move as he tried to speak. They were dry; his mouth was dry. “I want Vika to know.” Each word separate, on its own.

Webster’s voice. “Know what, Richard? Know what?”

“It was me.” He closed his eyes.

Epilogue

I
T TOOK EIGHT DAYS
for Webster to get back to London. He wanted to accompany Lock’s body but the police hadn’t finished with it, so he came back alone.

He flew into a sunny Heathrow on a half-full plane, all tourists and families. As it taxied to its stand the stewardess wished everyone a pleasant stay in London and hoped they would enjoy their Christmas shopping.

In the cab he sat back and looked down at himself. He had been wearing the same suit for two weeks; his trousers were concertinaed around the crotch and his shoes were stained with Berlin snow. His fingernails were bitten and ragged, his lips chapped from the cold, the skin on the back of his hands so dry that it had begun to peel. His feet were fat from the flight and his neck ached. He wanted to go home and see his children.

At least it was warmer here: there was no slush on the roads and the pavements were dry. The shop windows were draped with tinsel, and colored lights zigzagged across the streets. In Shepherd’s Bush he watched a man in collapsed evening dress sitting asleep at a bus stop, his bow tie hanging limply around his neck, his head by turns slumping onto his chest and jerking him awake. It was eleven, and in another hour or so oddly constituted groups of men and women would start making their way to their Christmas lunches. Usually he liked this time of year, when London steadily relaxed to a slightly drunken stop.

On Holland Park he stood for a long time looking up at Marina’s flat. He had bought flowers around the corner; the florist had suggested lilies. Behind the house ran the high brick wall that Lock had climbed to escape into the park just a week before. Webster imagined the congestion in this quiet street that night: Lock’s bodyguards, Black’s men, the third car, all lined up to keep one poor lawyer in check. The third car should have told him. He shook his head, disgusted with himself.

Had Lock known how much he was fleeing from that night, perhaps he wouldn’t have looked back. If Webster had shown him the unseemly queue of people waiting on his every move, perhaps he would have braved Switzerland, changed his name, made it to some untraceable speck in the Pacific. Gotten away.

But this is where they would have found him. Eventually. Lock was too weak to endure his exile alone forever. As I would be, thought Webster. As any decent man would be. Any sane man. They would have found him through Marina, and the ending would have been the same.

He sighed, and tried to smooth the hair on the top of his head. If I am sane. If I am decent. He checked his tie and walked up the path to Marina’s door.

She buzzed him in without saying anything. As he climbed the stairs he was conscious of how sticky he felt, how grimy from airports and planes and taxis.

Marina was waiting for him on the second-floor landing. She was wearing a plain dress in dark gray and a black shawl. Against the black her skin was the palest white. She wore no makeup and her hair was tied back, so that nothing distracted attention from her eyes: dry, tired, a strange light shining through the green. She held out her hand and he put his suitcase down to take it.

“Mr. Webster.”

“Mrs. Lock.”

“Please.”

He followed her into a living room that overlooked the street. Light-gray sofas, a cream carpet, a console table to the right with photographs in simple silver frames; one of Lock, tanned and smiling, younger, his pale-blue shirt unbuttoned, behind him grass-green trees out of focus; one in black and white of him looking down at a baby bundled in his arms.

“Please, sit down.”

Webster sat in an armchair with his back to the window, Marina on a sofa to his left, her hands clasped in her lap, her eyes calmly on his. He put the flowers down on a coffee table in front of him.

“Thank you for seeing me,” said Webster. “I . . . I wanted to let you know how very sorry I am.” He looked down, rubbed his hands together. “Really. I wanted . . .” He could find no more words.

“Mr. Webster, thank you. Please understand, I know little about you. I know that you helped my husband. He talked about you when he called. He said he had some help, and I assume that was you. I am grateful to you for that. But before that you hounded him. I do not know you, and I do not need to. I have no interest in judging you. I told him he should call you, so perhaps I played my part.”

Her voice was even and precise, with a steady rhythm. Webster felt faintly shamed by her composure.

“I wanted to see you, Mr. Webster, because . . . I want you to tell me how he died. I want to know what happened since I last saw him here. He called, but he said nothing. I would like to know.”

“I can do that. I can tell you.”

Webster told her what he knew. He left out nothing: not his mistakes, not his culpability. And he told her what he thought: that Lock had been killed to safeguard a secret; that the secret was indeed safe; that they would never know who was responsible.

“What about Konstantin?” said Marina.

“He’s back in Moscow. The Germans didn’t press charges. They arrested his bodyguard for attempted kidnapping.” He paused. “My guess is that he’ll be quietly retired. If he’s not too dangerous.”

“When . . . When Richard was shot, what did he do? Konstantin.”

“He walked away. When I looked up he was gone. I saw him again after they’d picked him up at the airfield. They brought him in as I was sitting in the police station. He told me he was sorry about Richard. In Russian, as if he knew I’d understand.”

Marina nodded, her eyes clouding.

“For what it’s worth,” said Webster, “I think he meant it.”

“But he walked away.” Her voice was quiet and for a moment afterward they were silent. “And how was he that morning? Richard. How did he seem?”

“Like his mind was made up. The man I met in London was scared. He wasn’t scared that day.”

Neither said anything for a moment. Marina rubbed her eyes and looked down.

“He said something to me as he was dying,” he said.

Marina didn’t respond. She sat with her hand across her eyes.

“He said, ‘I want Vika to know. It was me.’”

Marina took her hand away from her face and looked at him. Her eyes were wet with tears and she wiped them away.

“What does that mean?”

“That Malin was finished. That Richard had done what he wanted to do.”

Marina said nothing.

“I don’t know what else it can mean.”

She nodded. “Mr. Webster, I . . .”

Webster shifted forward in his seat.

“I think I should go. I should go.” He met her eye. “I’m sorry for my part in this.”

“You thought you could rescue him. There are worse things. I never stopped thinking it.” She looked down. “I think you may have done more than me.”

Webster watched her for a moment and then stood up. “If you ever want to talk again . . .” He reached into his pocket for a card.

Marina shook her head. “It’s all right, Mr. Webster.” She stood. “I’ll see you out.”

O
UTSIDE, IN THE COLD AGAIN,
Webster stopped on the porch and took off his tie. He had bought it at the airport that morning: dark blue, soberly patterned. He rolled it loosely and put it in one of the building’s dustbins.

At the end of the short path to the street he looked back at the house and for a moment could see Lock on the other side of the wall, with mud on his city shoes and soft rain in his hair, alone in the vast darkness of the park. The image stayed with him as he walked to the main road. His hand was sweating around the handle of his case; he felt an urge to throw the thing away, and with it the work shirts and the exhausted razor blades and the chargers for his phones.

He found a taxi in moments. “Hampstead please. Well Walk.”

H
AMMER ANSWERED
the door just a moment after Webster’s double knock, as if he had been passing, or waiting.

“Ben. It’s good to have you back.”

“Thank you.”

“Come in. Let me take that.”

Webster gave Hammer his case and walked past him into the hall, dark despite the sun.

“No Mary?”

“I have no idea what she does with her days. I’m never usually here.”

“I’m sorry. I couldn’t face the office.”

Hammer guided him toward the study. “Let’s go in here.” He moved over to his chair, sat and smiled. “You’d have met with ranks of concerned faces. They’re all worried about you.”

The room was cold and the fire, as before, was laid but unlit. A spotlight on the desk by the window picked out a mess of files and papers. Outside the sun shone starkly on the brown-gray bricks of the houses across the street.

“That’s sweet of them.”

“Yes and no. They know it could have been them. But for the grace of God.”

“I doubt that.”

Hammer said nothing but raised his eyebrows just enough to indicate that there was more to say. For a moment the two men sat, Hammer drumming silently on the arm of the chair with the pads of his fingers, Webster looking around the room—at the fire, the books on the walls, the piles of newspapers on the floor—and occasionally catching the steady eye opposite him.

Hammer broke the silence. “I was expecting a call from the Germans.”

“I managed to persuade them to leave you alone.”

He nodded. “They want you back?”

“If there’s a trial.”

“Which there won’t be.”

Webster said nothing. No trial; barely any investigation.

“Malin?” said Hammer.

“He went home yesterday. I’ll be amazed if they see him again.”

“Maybe no one will.”

“Quite.”

More drumming. “And how are you?”

“I’m OK.”

“Really?”

Webster sighed. “Yes and no.” He took a phone out of his pocket. “These are his last words. Well, nearly his last. I can’t stop listening to them. Can’t get them out of my head. If I’d heard this I would have understood. I could have saved him.”

“It worked?”

“It worked. I didn’t want to tell you over the phone.”

“The police don’t know?”

Webster shook his head. “I gave them the suicide note and they ignored it. And the syringe. The whole thing was hopeless.”

“So what was said?”

“Do you want to hear it?”

“Yes, I do.”

“It’s in Russian.”

“Talk me through it.”

Webster pressed a sequence of buttons and put the phone on an upholstered stool between them.

“That’s Lock’s voice. That’s Malin.”

“What are they saying?”

Webster described the scene—the bodyguard, Malin at the table, Lock calm, Black’s men positioned around—and went through the conversation, as he had in his head a hundred times. The whole thing lasted less than three minutes. The exchange of papers; Malin’s disappointment; his insistence that all along he had been protecting Lock. As they listened and he talked Webster took off his watch, cleaned its face on his shirt and stared absently at the slow, strict progress of the second hand.

“Do you believe him?”

“I think Lock did.”

“And you?”

“I do. There’s no way he’d have had Lock die next to him. Look at the mess he’s in. Look at the papers.”

Hammer nodded. He had stopped tapping but now he started again.

“So who did it?” he said.

Webster sighed. “The next man up. Someone in the Kremlin. A faction in the Kremlin. It’s Russia. We’ll never know.”

Hammer grunted. “They were there already.”

“The Russians?”

He nodded. “Those two guys on the plane? They had nothing to do with it.”

“How do you know?”

“They spent a night in the Holiday Inn at the airport. Then I couldn’t see them anywhere. They vanished. In the end I found a hotel in Hannover. They were there for two nights, then Dortmund for two nights. They’re salesmen. They sell fertilizer.”

“How far is Hannover from Berlin?”

“They couldn’t have done it. You said it. This wasn’t Malin.”

Webster nodded. “The Germans weren’t interested either way.” He looked down at his hands. “I should have listened to Alan Knight. He tried to tell me this was different. I thought he was being paranoid. I think he had reason to be.”

“Never underestimate the power of your opponent,” said Hammer, as if repeating a familiar refrain. Webster nodded, still looking down. “If you know who your opponent is.”

“No news of Alan?”

Hammer shook his head. They were silent for a while.

“Sorry about the press,” said Webster.

Hammer snorted. “God, don’t worry about that. I’m afraid that will do us no harm. Especially once Tourna starts blabbing about it.”

“Christ. How is the client?” He had all but forgotten Tourna.

“Happy as a clam. He thinks you’re wonderful.”

“You’re not serious?”

“I am. He wants to hire you.”

“He didn’t mind the cost?”

“He told me he’d have paid it twice.”

“He’s grotesque.”

“Oh yes. I called him on Monday evening to tell him what had happened and warn him there’d be some press. On Tuesday he called me to congratulate me. He knows there’s no way Malin will survive this.”

“I wish I felt better about that.”

Hammer said nothing.

“Did he mention Lock?” said Webster.

“Not a word.”

Webster shook his head and gave a silent sigh.

Hammer watched him for a moment. “You should go home.”

“Nothing happened at my house?”

“Nothing.”

“Thanks.” Webster made to stand up, then stopped himself, as if he had something to say. They looked at each other for a moment. “I’m not sure when I’ll be back.”

“Take your time.”

“I’m not sure I will be back.”

Hammer simply watched him with mild eyes. His hand pulled at his chin, his fingers closed over his mouth.

“I just came from Marina Lock. I had to pass on his last words.”

Still Hammer said nothing.

“I should have given them to his daughter, because they were for her. But she wasn’t there. All week I’ve been imagining meeting that little girl—Christ, I don’t even know how old she is.” He shook his head. The words were fast, his tone harsh. “All week I’ve been imagining telling her and dreading her asking me who I am. Terrified. Who am I? I’m the man who finished off your father. The man who made him pay for his frankly banal mistakes. But that’s OK, because this other man you may have met but probably don’t remember, he’s finished too.” He stopped, collected himself. “I was relieved. I didn’t even ask where she was. Better for her that I didn’t.”