The Banker Who Died

by Matthew A Carter

  “A snitch?”

  “Yes, an informant. He reported to the KGB about any suspect behavior by Soviet citizens abroad.”

  “Wow.” Stanley was at a loss. “Well, that was a long time ago.”

  “Russians have a saying: there’s no such thing as a former snitch. So Grigoryan is probably still following someone’s orders.”

  “The thought did cross my mind that he was acting like he was trying to recruit me!” said Stanley.

  “Probably not,” said Lagrange. “But I know why he left the service.”

  “Oh?”

  “He suddenly developed allergies. To almost everything—just imagine! The London air, their pudding, his morning orange marmalade, to five o’clock tea, roast beef, the English language, and even the way Tottenham was playing. Grigoryan was covered in rashes, wheezing. His limbs were swelling up. So they brought him back to Russia, ran tests, were getting ready to treat him with some kind of special medications, and—poof! Just like that, his allergies disappeared. You could call it the allergy of a Russian patriot.”

  “More like a Russian thief. He wouldn’t be able to set up these kinds of deals in London. Are we really going to give him 40 percent?”

  “We are, Stanley. Of course, we are! And here’s Bernard! Let’s go in. We’re a minute and a half late. I hope they’ll forgive us.”

  Waiting for them in a private room of the restaurant was Hadjiyev, who Lagrange called “our Fifty-Seven,” though naturally, not to his face. This referred to the oil magnate’s ranking on Forbes’s Russian list.

  Hadjiyev dispensed with any small talk, starting in on Pierre about how the quality of Laville & Cie was getting worse and worse and that his family office was advising him to restructure his financial streams because his investment portfolio had dropped by 15 percent. And now, again, he was going to have to hear about a correction on global markets, as if justifications will change the minus on that 15 percent into a plus. Pierre sighed sympathetically at the oil baron’s laments, and when the latter at last paused for breath, introduced him to Stanley.

  “Your new relationship manager, Mr. McKnight. He’s the one we can both rely on. Your friend in the bank!”

  “My friends have become quite expensive lately.” Hadjiyev observed Stanley with the same indifferent perusal he had given the dishes waiters put down in front of him and then removed. He had eaten nothing yet.

  “We have prepared a special presentation just for you,” said Pierre. “Shall we?”

  Fifty-Seven nodded.

  “Mr. McKnight, please go ahead! Bernard, let’s have the copies.”

  Stanley took a deep breath and opened the first page of the presentation.

  “Volatility returned to the markets and dominated headlines early this month as the VIX Index recorded its single largest spike of the last five years.”

  Hadjiyev yawned and glanced briefly at the graph of prices that Bernard held out to him.

  “Unfortunately, after the introduction of sanctions, this was a disastrous year for the Russian securities market. Negative numbers and mistrust from investors pushed Russia into the group of outsiders among emerging markets. This trend is tied to the absence of positive relations between the West and Moscow, the intensification of the sanctions standoff, and the total absence of drivers of growth for the Russian economy. We can see that on the next slide.”

  Stanley raised his head to see that the beads in Hadjiyev’s hand had stilled, and his eyelids were drifting shut. The oligarch had clearly dozed off.

  Lagrange, who couldn’t help but notice as well, coughed and cut Stanley off.

  “The rest from there is clear. Would you agree, Mr. Hadjiyev?”

  Fifty-Seven shot up and rubbed his eyes. The beads in his hand resumed their motion.

  “Fifty million,” he said. “Tomorrow they’re going to be transferred from Latvia, from ABLV Bank. But the next time we meet, I better not hear any unpleasant numbers from you, like minus 15 percent. And I better not be saying them myself. You show up with other numbers. Positive numbers.”

  As they were walking out of the restaurant together, Hadjiyev showed Lagrange his prayer beads and asked, “Do you know how many beads this has?”

  “Not sure,” answered Pierre.

  “There are fifty-seven.” For the first time since their meeting, the oligarch became animated. “I don’t want there to be, say, one bead. Ten would be too little. But fewer than there are now—twenty/thirty beads, somewhere around there, that would be good.” Hadjiyev threw an arm around Lagrange’s shoulders and added. “I have faith in you, my friend. If I didn’t, well, you know. And tell your boys too. Tell them to work hard for me.”

  In the car taking them to the office of their next client on Krivokolenny Lane, by Chistye Prudy, or Clean Ponds, Lagrange spent a long time massaging his forehead and face. Interacting with Hadjiyev had clearly taken a lot out of him, although he didn’t seem to have done all that much. Stanley and Bernard remained quiet. They waited for their boss to speak first. Finally, Lagrange took a flask out of his jacket, sipped from it, and said, “The first, last, and most important thing to remember about this client, boys, is that we have to treat him like a child. Our only child. Capricious, nasty, ill-mannered—but ours. He’s completely uninterested in our nonsense chatter, our graphs, our percentages and forecasts. What we need to do is convince him that we have a personal, almost familial, interest in his well-being. Yes, this will be a lie. But he has to believe it. This is a child that wants to be fooled.”

  “And what if we feel like strangling this child?” Bernard said.

  Lagrange took another swig from his flask and shot Bernard an irritated look. “We don’t do that. We’re bankers.” He lit up a cigarette and blew the smoke out in a huff. “And remember, boys: sincerity is key. Learn to imitate it, and your success is assured!”

  “Bravo, boss!” Bernard exclaimed, clapping. “You’re a genius!”

  “That was a poor imitation of admiration, Bernard. Insincere.” Lagrange smiled and flicked his ash out the window. “No annual bonus for you.”

  A narcissistic French windbag and a damn Swiss sycophant. Stanley sighed quietly and pressed his temple against the cool glass of the door, trying to chase away his headache. What lovely company! Where in the world did I end up? Lagrange’s cheap act is only effective on a weak, young mind like Bernard’s.

  Stanley was nothing but disgusted with Hadjiyev, a narcoleptic oil bubble. Even the psychopathic Peshkov seemed better in comparison. Stanley was getting ready to tell Lagrange that business in general, and the banking business in particular, was no place for maxims. That it is a cruel world in which the intellect wins. But he didn’t say anything. His intuition told him that it was a good idea to keep a low profile for now, and simply observe.

  Their third client was a Mr. Puzikov, a modestly dressed, ordinary-looking man. Stanley’s eye was drawn to the liberal coating of dandruff on the shoulders of his cheap jacket. Puzikov was carrying an old Motorola mobile phone, and his office looked like nothing so much as a tourist agency for the elderly. They didn’t spend long there. Lagrange introduced Stanley, and Bernard then gave Puzikov a briefcase with papers and a flash drive. The client spoke all of two words, in English, “Sorry,” and “Thank you.”

  On their way back to the car, Stanley asked how such a strange character had managed to earn $350 million. Lagrange lit up a cigarette and offered one to Stanley.

  “Thanks, I don’t smoke.”

  “Ah, my memory must have failed me. Not in business, though, thankfully. As for our untidy client in desperate need of a hairdresser, it’s all quite simple. The Russians call them frontoviki—a play on words from the English word front and the Russian word for a soldier on the front line. Mr. Puzikov is a front man for a highly placed government official. All his assets are in Puzikov’s name—stock, real estate, money
, cars, yachts, airplanes. Everything except his women,” Lagrange said, laughing. “So all those millions belong to the front man on paper. Meanwhile, the real owner receives a government salary and doesn’t have to worry about declaring his income.”

  In the car again, Lagrange, as if suddenly remembering something, announced,

  “Here in Russia almost all our clients are frontoviki in one way or another. It’s just not always easy for everyone to see. But you’ll catch on, I’m sure.”

  “What do you mean, all our clients?” Stanley was hit with a strong urge for a cigarette.

  Lagrange frowned down at his BlackBerry, ignoring the question.

  “Ok, we’re heading back to the hotel. Bernard, you go over the documents for Gagarin again, then relax, go over to the Bolshoi Theater if you want. You and I, McKnight, are going to rest for a bit, get prepped for battle, and head out to our most important meeting of the day.”

  Chapter 7

  McKnight went downstairs at six that evening and found Lagrange in the bar.

  “We’re running late. Can you try to talk to that mysterious character over there?” Pierre nodded toward one of the hotel’s drivers standing by the revolving door. “He claims to speak three languages, but I can’t understand a word he says. Maybe your Russian will help us out here.”

  “Where do we need to go?” asked Stanley.

  “Gagarin’s office is on Ostozhenka near the Kremlin,” Pierre said, continuing to look the driver over skeptically. “Here’s Ostozhenka”—Pierre pointed it out on his smartphone—“from that bridge to that square. Here’s where we are. It’s about eight hundred meters if we travel there directly, but traffic is jammed up in every direction.”

  Lagrange dug around in his jacket pocket and pulled out a business card.

  “Here’s the exact address.”

  Stanley glanced at the card, then examined the map. Both the Garden Ring road and the Boulevard Ring were highlighted in blinking red lights, with the occasional stretch of orange, meaning that the entirety of central Moscow was one big traffic jam. The situation, which was looking highly problematic at the least, if not hopeless, was resolved in the most unexpected of ways.

  Two men entered the hotel, immediately drawing every eye in the lobby. The first, wearing a severe black suit and white shirt without a tie, was over six feet and solidly build, speaking to a former career as an athlete or soldier. He reminded Stanley of a Viking; his curly red hair waved around his face as he walked, a short beard framed his massive jaw, and his eyes shone with a mixture of madness and complete confidence in his own superiority over all around him.

  “I saw a psycho just like him in a Kubrick movie,” Stanley muttered under his breath. “Although I don’t think Jack Torrance had a beard.”

  “He’s here for us, actually,” Lagrange replied, slapping McKnight on the shoulder. “Relax. That’s just Shamil, Gagarin’s top security guy.”

  “He looks pretty dangerous.”

  “Oh, he is,” Lagrange said. “He was in the special forces, back in Afghanistan, and he’s been with Gagarin for over twenty-five years. So we’ll get there fast. And I wouldn’t be surprised if these fine gentlemen coming to pick us up were responsible for some of that traffic.”

  There was something mechanical in Shamil’s movements, his gaze scanning across the people in the lobby, gray eyes slightly narrowed, one hand in his pocket while the other swung in time with the rhythm of his steps. His entire image, especially his lips compressed into a narrow line, testified to power held in check until needed, and an explosive power, at that: if someone got in his way, he would be thrown to the side, if a wall blocked his path, that red-bearded Viking would have simply gone through it, pausing afterward for a moment to brush the brick dust from his shoulders.

  Trailing him was a rosy-cheeked man of about thirty in huge Tom Ford glasses, a gray suit and pink shirt, with a pink handkerchief in the jacket’s outer pocket, and his full, red lips pulled up in a half smile. A hotel employee hurried over to them, but was stopped in his tracks by a look from Shamil. For a flash of a moment, looking into his eyes was like looking down the barrel of a shotgun, and the employee came no closer.

  “Who’s the other man?” asked Stanley.

  “That’s Anton Biryuza, the head of Gagarin’s family office, his éminence grise,” said Pierre, holding up his handkerchief as if wiping his mouth.

  That deliberate gesture wasn’t lost on Stanley. He turned his back on the two men and asked in a whisper, “So this gray eminence can read lips?”

  Lagrange shrugged and met McKnight’s eyes briefly.

  “Even in French. He graduated from MGIMO—the Moscow State Institute of International Relations. That’s the Harvard of Russia. It puts out spies and diplomats. I’m sure he learned a lot there. Let’s go say hello. And smile, McKnight. Smile!”

  “I’m trying,” Stanley said, automatically straightening his tie.

  “Biryuza likes both men and women. So try to get him to like you, darling!”

  When Gagarin’s head of security saw the bankers, he finally let Biryuza walk ahead.

  While everyone exchanged the necessary greetings and pleasantries, Stanley studied the secretary discreetly. It looked like Lagrange was right; Biryuza really was gay. In the expression on the secretary’s pretty face, or rather, the lack of any particular expression, all he could see was sterile courtesy. And with a bit of imagination, you could read anything you wanted into his hard but impersonal gaze, from secret madness to a boyish innocence.

  Meanwhile, Shamil circled the bankers, noting everything of interest for a man of his profession. Everyone in the lobby—the hotel workers, and all the residents and guests—followed his movements, fascinated like cats drawn to sunbeams. From his smooth, mechanical motions, it was clear that Shamil was ready for any threat and would emerge victorious from any conflict. Stanley was surprised that the people closest to Gagarin were of a nontraditional sexual orientation. It seemed like a sign, or a challenge. Especially taking into account the open discrimination against sexual minorities and widespread sexism throughout Russian society.

  Biryuza explained that they had come to personally collect their dear guests, as Moscow was experiencing a total breakdown in transportation. When Stanley asked what new invention Russia had devised to combat traffic, Anton showed the first hint of real emotion, something resembling a good-natured smile appearing on his face. “Just a little blue light,” he answered, gesturing at McKnight and Lagrange to follow him to the exit, “a flashing light under a blue top.”

  Lagrange, exiting the Ritz’s revolving doors, added that a car’s license plate numbers mattered in Moscow as well.

  “License plates starting with ‘AMR,’ for example,” Pierre continued, as their armored black Mercedes, siren wailing away at sluggish drivers, began weaving down one-way side streets, heading in the opposite direction of the law-abiding motorists with whom they shared the road. From the passenger’s seat, Shamil waved at the oncoming cars as they went, shooing them out of the way.

  As they turned from Sechenov Lane onto Ostozhenka Street, near the Galina Vishnevskaya Opera Centre, the Mercedes just missed the bumper of a patrolman’s parked Toyota. The officer was startled out of his doze by their screeching brakes, and grabbed for the microphone of his radio, a flush climbing on his frightened face. But he didn’t get the chance to report on the incident; Shamil lowered his window and held out some sort of license toward him. Or an all-powerful pass of some kind. Whatever it was, all that mattered was the effect it had on the patrolman. He put the microphone back down in its cradle and gave a salute.

  Stanley and Pierre exchanged meaningful glances.

  Gagarin’s office was located in an old merchant’s estate affixed with a plaque reading Protected by the State. A two-meter-high, redbrick fence circled the building’s perimeter. The fence was topped by seve
ral feet of barbed wire and a number of video cameras pointing in various directions.

  Stanley read the inscription on the door—“Charitable Foundation for the Support of Entrepreneurship.” “I didn’t think that entrepreneurship needed charitable aid,” he whispered to Lagrange as they ascended the stairs between two stone lions.

  “It does in Russia,” Lagrange answered quietly.

  The old-world merchant style ended just past the engraved wooden doors. The mansion’s interior was a huge, open room with glass staircases up to circular mezzanine floors that were intersected by winding waterfalls. Little winter gardens hung on steel cables. All of this crazy splendor was light, quiet, and empty. The only sound was the running water, and the call of a bird somewhere out of sight. They only encountered one person as they crossed the hall to the elevator. Judging from his clothing and the tools in his bag, he was either a gardener or a florist. The elevator took them up to the roof.

  “We have a room here for private meetings,” said Biryuza, swiping a card through an electronic lock, and they entered a large circular room, its walls and ceiling composed of frosted glass. Bookshelves stood around the perimeter of the room, alternating with aquariums of various sizes. Vases of cut flowers were placed here and there, on the floor, on benches, and on metal stands. The flowers and the vases were illuminated by lights installed in the floor. There were no signs of an office in the room, which looked more like a relaxation room in an expensive private clinic. This impression was intensified by the soft background music; the lazy strumming of an acoustic guitar was occasionally augmented by the sound of either a flute or a pipe.

  It was only when they had nearly reached the opposite end of the room that the guests saw several low, wide leather chairs grouped around a black marble pedestal. McKnight went closer and noticed a crystal chest about the size of a shoebox atop the pedestal.

  “What’s that?” asked Stanley, gazing in astonishment at the chest.

  Inside, on a crimson velvet cushion, rested a human skull, yellow with age.