The Silent Oligarch: A Novel

by Christopher Morgan Jones

  That was the place. Could he break in? A crazy idea. But he could have others do it for him. Any one of those former government security companies that advertised in the Moscow papers would do it. They would have to do it discreetly, of course; any indication that the office had been breached might lead back to him. Was there some way of making it look like Ikertu? Leave a trace back to London. He could ask those half-soaked London investigators to engage the Russians on his behalf.

  Lock sat back in his seat, wondering dizzily about the plan. It wasn’t bad. In fact it was good. This, after all, was the sort of thing that happened in Moscow every day. He was beginning to think like a Russian.

  But then he began to think like a lawyer. The loyalty of Lock’s investigators, of InvestSol, could that be relied upon? All it would take was for one of them to realize what was going on and he could end up being blackmailed. Or, more likely and far more dangerous, someone would mess up the job and the fearsome Horkov, or some even more frightening creature from Malin’s crack regiment of brutal old spooks, would track it all back to him.

  He was not a master criminal. After three large gin and tonics on a morning flight it was important to remember that.

  He circled around the problem for a while, discounting ideas as too timid or too reckless. Chekhanov, though, wouldn’t go away. He was the weak spot. Well, the only spot that felt weak at all. There had been a time, years before, when he and Lock had had offices next to each other in a building just off Novy Arbat until Malin had decided that this gave the wrong impression and separated them. But even now he was in Alexei’s office regularly. If he could only have twenty minutes in there alone. There were what, five or six filing cabinets in there?

  Every Tuesday at seven, an hour before Lock, Chekhanov met with Malin, and every two or three weeks he and Lock would see each other beforehand to prepare for their respective sessions. Invariably Chekhanov ran out of these meetings in a rush, apologizing to Lock and leaving him to see himself out. All Lock had to do was arrange their meeting for next Tuesday and arrive a little late with a full agenda. Better still, what if his phone rang as Chekhanov was leaving? He could take it, make some grave noises, and ask Alexei whether he could stay to finish it. The scene played out neatly in his mind.

  LOCK SLEPT for the last part of the flight, a heavy sleep that left him feeling slow and thick; he woke as the plane bounced gently off the runway at Sheremetyevo. Moscow looked flat and gray, beset by low cloud, already almost dark. Aching across his shoulders and down his back, Lock unclicked his seat belt, stood up to retrieve his suitcase, and stretched in the aisle. It was a quiet flight. At least that was something; no London flight was ever like this. With luck he would be near the front of the passport queue and be through the airport without that awful shuffling wait.

  An hour and fifteen minutes, in the end: two planes’ worth of Koreans and Bulgarians had arrived just before him. He had had worse. Wheeling his bag behind him he strolled through Customs, handing his declaration to an officer, and then out into Russia proper to search for Andrei and his car. Usually he waited by the Hertz desk, but today he wasn’t there. Lock stopped and looked down the length of the hall in each direction. No sign. He set his bag straight and took out his Russian phone. As he was finding the number he felt a hand on his upper arm.

  “Mr. Lock.” A deep, flat voice, Russian. Lock looked around to his right and then up. The man talking to him was tall, perhaps six three, and broad. He had fine, fair hair cropped so short that Lock could see the white scalp beneath.

  “Yes.”

  “Can you come with us please? We will take you into the city.”

  Lock turned to his left. Another man, similar in build, a little shorter, with gray hair and a broken nose stood there with his hands clasped respectfully in front of him. Both were wearing impenetrable black winter jackets and jeans.

  “Where’s Andrei?”

  “We are standing in for Andrei today.”

  Lock was awake now. He had no idea what this meant. Fear flickered through him.

  “Who sent you?”

  “We’re from the ministry.”

  The gray-haired man took Lock’s bag and started wheeling it across the concourse. His colleague let go of Lock’s arm.

  “Come. Please.”

  Lock followed. He became conscious of his briefcase. Why had he written those stupid notes? He should tell them that he needed to go to the bathroom, then tear out the page and flush it away. What if they took the briefcase off him while he went? God, he was hopeless at this. They hadn’t taken it, he reasoned; if they had wanted to, they would have.

  Down below in the mess of smoking cars parking and waiting a black BMW flashed its lights and the three of them got in, Lock in the back, his reception party bulky in the front. It was dark now, and the gray-haired man drove at speed through the lumbering traffic like someone used to immunity. Lock didn’t talk. He knew that he wouldn’t get answers from these two. They looked like special forces. Not that he really knew about such things, but they were clearly a different breed from Andrei.

  Slowly the tower blocks and the billboards became denser and from the dark Moscow began to coalesce into a city. They passed Dynamo Stadium and carried on down Leningradsky Prospect toward the ministry. But at Mayakovskaya they turned east onto the Garden Ring. That didn’t make sense. Lock felt, like a shock, a new fear: what if these men had nothing to do with Malin at all? What if they were FSB? Or worse, someone else’s people, which would mean—what? That Malin had fallen from grace?

  They were off the Ring now and into the messy heart of the city. The BMW swept through a tangle of small streets, the stuccoed buildings low around them and a dull orange in the street light. Lock knew this route. It would take him close to his flat. The car turned left into Maly Zlatoustinsky pereulok, his street, and pulled up outside his building. The blond man got out of the car and opened Lock’s door for him. Lock, wary, lifted himself slowly out of the car while the blond man fetched his suitcase.

  “What are we doing?” Lock asked.

  “We’re taking you home. That is all.”

  Lock walked up to the building, found his keys and opened the front door. In the lobby he called the lift. The blond man stood next to him as they waited, looking straight ahead at the lift door.

  Lock’s apartment was on the fifth floor. He took his keys, opened the three deadlocks, and went in. The blond man followed, setting the case down in the hall.

  “Thank you,” said Lock.

  The blond man said nothing and left.

  Lock took off his coat, threw it over a chair and went into the kitchen. He had gin, but no tonic. There was vodka in the freezer and he poured himself two inches into a water glass and drank it in one slack swallow. It felt like light, cool and warm in his throat.

  He closed his eyes for a moment and gave a small shudder. He had no idea what was going on. Was Andrei simply sick? Of all the outlandish possibilities flying around his head this, absurdly, was one of the more plausible. He walked into his sitting room, which ran the length of the apartment at the front, and looked out the window. The BMW was still there, parked right outside. Presumably it would wait to take him to the ministry in an hour or so. As far as Lock could tell only the driver’s seat was occupied. He watched for a while. The army veteran in winter camouflage who looked after parking for this building left the car alone. Two or three minutes passed.

  Then an icy thought took Lock. He went to his front door and looked through the spyhole. It was clear. He opened the door to scan the corridor, and there, standing to the right with his arms crossed and his back straight against the wall, was the blond man. Now Lock understood.

  “What are you doing?” he asked.

  “Waiting for you.”

  He didn’t need to ask anything more. He closed the door, went to pour himself another drink
, and sat at the kitchen table. He was under house arrest.

  That was the logical assumption. If they had wanted to shoot him they would have done it by now.

  There were different kinds of house arrest. Sometimes you were allowed out under close watch; sometimes you weren’t allowed out at all. Sometimes it ran and ran; sometimes it came to a most definite end. How long had the Romanovs had? A year? A little more?

  For twenty minutes he sat and thought and drank. Then his doorbell rang. Again he walked to the spyhole. A large man in a suit was there, rounder than usual in the distorting lens. Malin had never been to his apartment before. Lock opened the door.

  “Richard.”

  “Konstantin.”

  “May I come in?”

  “Of course, of course.”

  Malin followed Lock into the sitting room.

  “Can I get you a drink?” said Lock.

  “No, thank you.”

  “Please, have a seat.”

  Malin sat in the one armchair, where Lock usually sat when he was watching television. The room was sparsely decorated; this was not a home. Lock sat on the sofa and tried to appear relaxed.

  For a second or two Malin simply looked at Lock, and Lock as ever was at a loss to read his face. It held no expression. The eyes were blank and sharp at once. Had they always been like that? Were these the eyes that slowly seduced me so long ago?

  “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.

  MALIN 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.

  THE 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.