The Moscow Code

by Nick Wilkshire

  “So what happened, anyway?” she asked, bringing him back to reality. “With your ex?”

  “I found her with another man in a broom closet at a Christmas party,” he said almost automatically. Maybe it was the combination of wine, vodka, and cognac, or the realization that there would never be anything between him and this beautiful creature that made him unconcerned about how he sounded.

  “No, seriously.”

  “I’m serious,” he said.

  She put a hand over her mouth. “I’m sorry. That’s awful.”

  “It’s all right,” he said with a wave of a hand. “Ancient history. Best thing that could have happened and all that, right?”

  She gave a grim nod. “Mine was cheating, too. A surgical resident. And now they plan to get married, no less.”

  “How long ago did you find out?”

  “About a year and a half.”

  He nodded as though this explained a lot. “It took me a while before I really started to feel normal again. But you do get over it.”

  “Oh, I’m over it,” she said, visibly straighter in the chair for a moment, before slumping back just a little.

  “Have you started dating again yet?” he asked her.

  “Not really.”

  “You should. Good for the psyche.”

  “That’s what my therapist keeps telling me, but I’m just … I don’t know. I keep inventing reasons not to. Like getting so bitchy that no one in their right mind would want to go on a date with me.”

  Charlie laughed. “I think it’s normal to be hesitant.”

  “What about you? I wouldn’t think it’s easy to find dates.” She paused, realizing how that sounded. “I meant, because you’re in Moscow and it mustn’t be that easy to meet people — what with the language,” she added for good measure as she hid her face in her snifter.

  “Right,” he said.

  “It’s not like you couldn’t get a date,” she said, continuing to backpedal. He did nothing to stop her. “I mean, you’re certainly charming and …”

  He let her off the hook with a laugh. “It’s okay, I know what you meant.”

  She smiled and they sipped their cognac in silence, before Charlie moved on to another topic.

  “Did you hear about this tax-haven stuff online?” he said, thinking it was an awkward segue into an area Sophie seemed, by her expression, to care little about.

  “I saw something on CNN in my hotel — kind of a WikiLeaks for tax dodgers?”

  “Right.” Charlie set his cognac on the coffee table. “I was just skimming an article and I noticed Dmitri Bayzhanov’s name among the people exposed for sheltering money in Cyprus.”

  Sophie looked puzzled. “Who’s that?”

  “He’s a real-estate developer. His company’s the one doing Petr —”

  Charlie was struck by a thought, and he abruptly fell silent.

  “What’s the matter?” she said.

  “Do you have that USB stick with the spreadsheet on you? I left my copy at the office.”

  “The one Steve’s journalist friend gave me? Yes, why?”

  “Where is it?”

  She reached for her purse and rummaged around, as Charlie got his laptop out of his work bag.

  “I’m thinking I might know what that spreadsheet’s all about,” he began. Both sat on the sofa and he positioned the laptop on the coffee table and waited for it to fire up. It seemed to take forever to open the file, but as soon as it popped open, Charlie pointed at the screen.

  “OS stands for offshore, and RU is for Russian,” he said, pointing to the top of the columns. “This is a list of Alexander Surin’s stock holdings in Russian and offshore companies, and I bet the offshore companies are all registered in Cyprus.”

  “Do you recognize any of them?” Sophie asked, scanning the letters under each column, which looked like abbreviations or acronyms for corporate names.

  Charlie shook his head and opened the web browser on his laptop, searching for the same news story he had been looking at in his office. “Here it is,” he said after a few seconds of clicking around. He looked at the list under Dmitri Bayzhanov’s name and compared it to the Surin spreadsheet.

  “They don’t seem to match,” Sophie said, looking from one window to the other.

  “Shit.”

  “You’re thinking there’s a connection between Surin and Bayzhanov?”

  Charlie nodded. “Maybe I was getting ahead of myself, but I thought it might explain why Steve was given — maybe even asked for — information on Surin. Bayzhanov’s a big fish in real estate and is sure to have some skeletons in his closet. What if Steve was looking into crime or corruption? Bayzhanov might be of interest. It might also explain why Steve went to Astana.”

  “How so?” Sophie looked puzzled. She was sitting on the edge of the sofa, next to Charlie — both of them poised at the edge for a better view of the laptop screen. He could smell her perfume mingled with the fruity smell of the cognac on her breath.

  “Because Bayzhanov’s company started out there, before he moved into the Moscow market.”

  “And the connection between Surin and Bayzhanov?”

  Charlie sighed. “Maybe there isn’t one.”

  “The Bayzhanov thing makes sense, though. Maybe you’re on to something.”

  Charlie sat back on the sofa and Sophie reached for her cognac before doing the same. Suddenly they were very close together on the little sofa. She put her arm over the back and curled her legs up under her as she sipped from her glass. The background music switched to soft jazz as the snow continued to fall outside.

  “I don’t know what I’d do without you, Charlie,” she murmured. “I’d be lost.”

  Charlie couldn’t help but consider the irony of her statement. It was Steve Liepa who had saved his ass in prison, not the other way around. Charlie had managed to do absolutely nothing to get Liepa out and hadn’t even managed to ensure the safe repatriation of his body. Yet his sister was sitting here thanking him. He looked at her as she leaned forward and set her glass on the coffee table. The gesture brought her face close to his and he could almost feel the heat of her skin.…

  “A penny for your thoughts,” she said suddenly.

  Not for a million bucks, he thought, trying to bring his focus back to the investigation. “I was just thinking about the BayCo angle.”

  “So you think there’s something to this Bayzhanov guy?” she asked, smoothing the front of her shirt. Her manner seemed totally at ease, whereas Charlie was in turmoil.

  “It’s a possibility for sure,” he said, regaining some composure. “I’m going to have lunch with my counterpart from Astana this week — he’s in town for some meetings. I might talk to Katya Dontseva, too. See if she knows anything about Bayzhanov.”

  Sophie nodded, then glanced at her watch. “My God, is that the time?”

  Charlie looked at his own watch and realized it was almost midnight. Waving off her protestations that she should help him with the dishes, they set off into the snowy Moscow night. The accumulation over dinner softened the sounds of the street and gave the city an unusually bright feel as they made their way back to the Metro. Charlie did most of the talking on the ride back to her hotel, and they both seemed surprised at how quickly they found themselves at the front steps.

  “Well, here you are.”

  “I feel like I could walk for miles,” she said, taking a deep breath of the cold night air. “It must be your cognac.”

  “Warms the insides, doesn’t it?”

  “I want to thank you for a wonderful evening, Charlie. It was just what I needed.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  She paused just a tick, then smiled and disappeared through the revolving door, leaving him there in the snow. It had grown suddenly cold, but as he turned and headed bac
k up Tverskaya, the image of her curled up on his sofa, a glass of cognac in her hand and a smile on her face, kept him warm.

  Chapter 23

  Charlie sat at his kitchen table, sipping a coffee and reading the newspaper spread out before him. Despite the late hour, he had been unable to sleep upon his return to the apartment the night before, and he had awoken half an hour earlier than usual. He told himself it was the cognac, as he yawned and flipped to the next page and scanned the articles. The Russian markets had taken another turn for the worse, but that hadn’t prevented one of the former state-owned oil companies from achieving a record quarterly profit. He was about to head off to the shower when an article at the bottom of the page caught his eye.

  It was about the Petr Square development and cited the removal of a long-standing planning obstacle as the principal reason the development was now proceeding full steam ahead, and how, when it was complete, it would dwarf any other commercial development in the city. He read on with interest as the article noted that the anchor tenant alone would take over a hundred thousand square metres of the new space. He paused when he read the name — United Pharma International. It took him a few seconds to make the connection that he knew lay somewhere in the recesses of his sleepy mind.

  Then it came to him. Sergei Yermolov worked for United Pharma, and Charlie recalled the meeting in the lobby of the firm’s current premises. Charlie returned his attention to the article and the summary of United Pharma’s operations in Russia and worldwide. It soon became clear that the pharmaceutical firm was a behemoth, with annual sales in the billions and a stable of subsidiaries that it had gobbled up over the years, including some familiar drug companies. Charlie thought back to Yermolov’s attendance at the same pot party as Steve Liepa and wondered how his employer would feel about his dabbling in recreational narcotics. Maybe that explained the curt reception, he thought as he flipped the paper shut and downed the rest of his coffee. He paused as he caught sight of last night’s dishes still in the sink, lingering over one of the wineglasses — a faint trace of lipstick around the rim — before setting off for the shower.

  Charlie was on hold, waiting for the clerk at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to let him know whether his sole contact was available. Charlie had met her at one of the first functions he had attended after arriving in Moscow, and she had been somewhat helpful in getting Sophie’s visa processed quickly. He didn’t hold out much hope that she would be able to do much to extend it, but he figured it was worth a try. As he sat there, the phone at his ear, he recognized a familiar voice in the hall, and he stepped out the doorway just in time to see a dark-haired man in his thirties rounding the corner with one of the immigration officers.

  “Doug?” he called out, his hand over the receiver by his chin. The other man stopped and made an about-face.

  “Charlie, hi,” Cullen said, extending his hand as he approached.

  “On hold with the MFA — could be a while,” Charlie said, gesturing to the phone as he shook hands. “You gonna be around at lunch?”

  Cullen nodded. “We just wrapped up the morning session. I was going to come find you but you saved me the trouble.”

  Charlie looked at his watch. “Let me finish up here and I’ll come get you downstairs. There’s a little Moroccan place nearby where we can grab a quick bite.”

  Twenty minutes later they were sitting in a restaurant just around the corner from the embassy. The low red couches were covered with brightly coloured cushions.

  “It’s a bit smoky in here,” Charlie said as they settled in. “But the food’s pretty good.”

  “No worries,” Cullen said.

  “So how’s Astana?”

  “I can’t complain. It beats the hell out of Ottawa.” Cullen grinned. Charlie assumed Astana had a higher hardship rating than Moscow, and thus the incentives were greater. For a young guy like Cullen, a two-year posting went by quickly, and with nowhere to spend the extra money, it made saving easier. “But to be perfectly honest, this is my second winter, and I’m not really looking forward to the next few months. How about you?”

  “It’s pretty good so far, though the bureaucracy’s awful.”

  “That’s nothing compared to the corruption, I’m sure. The scenery’s nice, though,” he added quietly, as a striking brunette tottered by on stiletto-heeled boots.

  A server appeared just then and read off the lunch special, which they both ordered.

  “So I did a bit of digging before I came,” Cullen said when they were alone again.

  “And?”

  “I didn’t find out much about Bayzhanov, at least nothing that makes him any different from any other successful developer in Eastern Europe. He’s well connected, probably got half the local officials on his payroll and always willing to bend some rules, but that’s about it. He’s new to Moscow, though, and apparently this Petr Square is a big deal.”

  Charlie nodded, trying to conceal his disappointment. “It’s the largest commercial development in the city, from what the brokers tell me.”

  “His brother, though, is another story,” Cullen said, his voice lowering as he leaned forward on the red velour couch.

  “His brother?”

  “He’s been in jail for the past couple of years,” Cullen said, taking a sip of his water and grimacing at the taste. “Shit, I forgot to ask for still.”

  “It’s safer if it’s carbonated,” Charlie said, which prompted a shrug and another tentative sip. “If Bayzhanov’s so well-connected, why can’t he get his brother out of jail?”

  “’Cause he’s not in jail in Kazakhstan. He’s in Tajikistan.”

  “Tajikistan?”

  “It’s right next door, but apparently not as susceptible to Bayzhanov’s influence, or maybe he hasn’t found the right palm to grease yet, who knows.”

  “What’s he in for?”

  “That’s the funny thing,” Cullen said. “No one’s really sure. I heard corruption, sort of. Everyone I talked to seemed to think he was guilty, but no one knew what of.”

  “Is the brother in construction, too?”

  “Not that I could see. He might have had some role, un­­officially, but it seems he was a bureaucrat.”

  “You mean he was responsible for finding the right people for big brother to pay off?”

  Cullen smiled. “Government liaison, I think it’s called.”

  “So how did he end up in a cell in Tajikistan?”

  “That’s the question no one seems to have an answer for, and from what I can tell, he’s not getting out anytime soon, either. Are you guys looking at Petr Square for the new embassy here?”

  “Not really, although I’m only loosely involved in that file. I had heard that there were a lot of problems with Petr Square, though apparently they just got their building permit, so who knows. Rob Brooker’s more in the know — he’s been working on that file for a while.”

  Cullen nodded. “Rob’s a good guy. We were at HQ together for a while, before he got posted here.”

  They continued to chat as their lunch arrived, and when they were done, Charlie insisted on paying the bill, despite a mild protest from Cullen.

  “So how long are you here for?” Charlie asked as they stood on the front steps of the restaurant and zipped up their jackets. The air had grown colder over the past hour, and fat snowflakes had begun to fly on a brisk wind.

  “I head back tomorrow. I’ll keep digging and see what I can find out about Bayzhanov and his brother — let you know if anything turns up.”

  Charlie returned to his office, his conversation with Doug Cullen still on his mind. The fact that Bayzhanov’s brother was in jail was interesting, but without knowing the reason, it didn’t seem all that helpful or relevant. Charlie decided to do a quick search on BayCo and was immediately directed to a page advertising space available for rent in Petr Square. A bright banner across the top
of the web page announced that the plans had been granted. He clicked on the link that led him to a full-page article on the Petr Square development and he read it with interest, looking for some reference to Bayzhanov but finding only a quote from the chair of the planning committee that had given the project the green light. Charlie froze when he saw the name of the planning committee chair — Alexander Surin. He stared at the screen, going back over the Russian text to make sure he had understood it properly, but there was no doubt — the Petr Square pro­ject had been approved by a committee headed by Alexander Surin. It had to be the same Alexander Surin that Steve Liepa’s journalist friend had given him information on. He was still staring at the monitor when his assistant appeared at his door.

  “Hi Irina.”

  “This just came for you,” she said, handing him a couple of envelopes.

  “Could you translate something for me?” he asked, pointing to the monitor and turning it so she could view it from the other side of the desk.

  “Of course,” she said, leaning forward to view the text as Charlie scrolled down to the article on Petr Square. “It is talking about the Petr Square office complex that is being built near the Belorusskaya station.” She went on to summar­ize the article. When she got to the quote, Charlie pointed to the name onscreen.

  “And this Alexander Surin is the chair of the planning committee?”

  Irina nodded. “Yes, he is talking about the importance of the project to the Moscow market and also of the need for transparency and certainty in the planning process.”

  “What else does it say?”

  Irina continued. “It talks about the fact that the development had been stalled for almost a year for lack of a permit, but ongoing discussions with the city’s planning committee and mutual co-operation resolved the issue. It goes on to say that the developer has lost a lot of money as a result of the delay.” She looked up again. “That’s about it. It’s a short article.”