The Silent Oligarch: A Novel (19 page)

Chekhanov rose, leaned forward across the desk and shook hands. His hand felt small and dry. His skin looked stretched across his face and the sharp ridge of his nose. Lock had noticed long ago that he never seemed to blink.

“Richard. It is good to see you.”

“Alexei. I hope you’re well.”

“Yes. Busy. I was in Tyumen last week. I have returned to a mess.”

Lock smiled what he hoped was an easy smile. “I know the feeling.”

“Hm?”

“I’ve been away since I saw you last. I’m only just recovering.”

“Good. Good.” Chekhanov was looking at his computer, distracted. At least he made no comment about Paris. “Has Konstantin mentioned this company in Burgas? Refining. I need to talk to you about it.”

“No. No, he hasn’t.”

Chekhanov sat down. On his desk were three mobile phones. Two were dismantled, their batteries out; one was not. He picked it up and slid the battery casing off.

“Shall we?”

Lock hesitated for a moment. “Yes, of course.” Fuck. How could he have been so stupid? Fuck. Would Alexei remember how many phones he usually had? If he took two out, and Alexei commented, then he could produce the other one and claim absentmindedness. It was the best he could do. He removed his BlackBerry and a regular phone, took their batteries out and left them on the desk. He smiled again. “So? Where do you want to start?”

Chekhanov was still checking his e-mail. He glanced at his desk and then looked back at Lock, his eyebrows raised. His eyes were gray and quick. “You ready?”

“Yes.” Lock waited for the question. It didn’t come.

“Let us start with Kazakhstan. It isn’t making us any money and the manager’s defrauding us. I think I found a purchaser last week. If we sell it there will be about a hundred and eighty million coming in. Be ready to put it somewhere.”

Chekhanov talked and Lock took sketchy notes. The refinery in Romania was close to breaching its debt covenants and needed money; there were bribes to be paid in Bulgaria, decent ones, if they were going to buy this refinery in Burgas; the group’s financing company needed funds to buy equipment before leasing it on into Russia. And on and on. All the while Lock could feel the phone in his trouser pocket pressing against the top of his thigh.

He looked at his watch. It was 6:35. Surely Alexei had to leave soon? He was talking about some problem with Langland, some customer who hadn’t paid, and checking his e-mail for the details.

“This is no good. I have to go. This one can wait.” He looked up at Lock. “Did you get all that?”

“Yes. I think so.”

“Good. Let’s go.”

Chekhanov put his phones back together and stood up, dropping them in his briefcase. Lock stood too and put the batteries back in his dismantled phones. He put one in his trouser pocket and as he did so keyed in the sequence on the other: down down right down center. As Chekhanov bent over his desk to shut down his computer, the phone rang. Lock took it out, looked at it, pressed a key as if to answer it and then covered the microphone.

“Sorry,” he said to Chekhanov in a half whisper. “Do you mind?”

Chekhanov, gathering up papers now, waved him on.

“Philip, hi. How are you?” Lock answered in English, then paused. “Sorry, I’ve been in a meeting. Yes, I can. Shit, really? That’s not good. Well, I have to leave for another meeting shortly but yes, I’ve got twenty minutes or so. Hold on.” Another short pause. “Hold on a second.” He covered the phone again. Chekhanov was ready to go, briefcase in hand, a quilted coat over his arm. “Alexei, do you mind if I finish this call? It’s important.”

Chekhanov looked at Lock. He seemed to have hardened somehow in the last minute. “Come with me. I’ll drive you to the ministry. Finish your call on the way.”

“It could go on a bit,” said Lock. “I don’t want to bore you.”

“No.” Chekhanov was firm now. “Come with me in the car. Otherwise call this person back.”

“Well, I don’t need to be in the ministry for . . . Yes, OK. Yes. I’ll come with you.” Lock felt himself flush around his neck. Chekhanov had been briefed about him. He was no longer trusted. “Right, Philip. Sorry about that. How can I help?” This is ridiculous, he thought, as he went down the stairs after Chekhanov, saying the occasional yes or no to keep the fiction up. Chekhanov left the building and walked to his car, which was directly outside. Lock followed, wondering how on earth he was going to finish this. “Quite. Hm. OK, I see.” He got into the backseat, next to Chekhanov, and shut the door. It was suddenly so quiet that his phone felt glaringly dead and silent in his hand. “Philip, listen. I don’t think that sounds so bad. I think the thing to do is to talk to the accountants this afternoon and see if they can do a full, do a full audit on everything. Do you have a sense of how much we’re talking about? Hm. OK. That could be worse.” He gave a sigh in the hope that it would seem authentic. “Listen, let’s talk tomorrow when you know more. Yes. Yes. OK then. Bye. Good-bye.” He sat back in his seat and let the phone fall by his side.

Chekhanov looked down at the phone and then at Lock. “Everything all right?”

“Yes, fine. Fine.”

“What was that?”

“Oh nothing. Some money gone missing in the BVI. Probably an oversight.”

“Not such a long call.”

“No, it was nothing really. In the end. Nothing.”

Ten

F
OR A WEEK
London had been dark and cold. A fine, dense rain fell like sea mist and the city felt empty, like a resort town off-season; as he walked to the Tube in the mornings Webster half expected to turn a corner and find the wind blowing at him on a broad promenade beaten by waves. From time to time the sky lightened from lead to limestone and his spirit dared to lift a little, but this was an oppressive time.

London had felt like this when he moved back from Moscow; an unfamiliar, insidious cold across the shoulders, endless rain that had left him yearning for snow. In those first weeks home he had found his home city more impenetrable than the one he had left behind, and for a while he had regretted trading Moscow’s movement and wild spontaneity for all this admirable solidness. Even now, sometimes, he felt a pang of regret at having left Russia, a sort of homesickness that he could never quite explain. But more than anything this weather brought to mind his long-dead plans—undoubtedly good, never robust—to stop writing stories that never seemed to have any effect, to get out of journalism altogether and do some good; reminded him too of the day he got the call from Global Investigations Corporation and signed up instead for this strange career that ever since he had relished and distrusted in equal measure.

What good did he do? What was his tally? Webster was by instinct an agnostic, but he couldn’t rid himself of the idea that somewhere one’s deeds were being reckoned and that his own score was in the balance. GIC had been convinced of its own worthiness; Ike was more circumspect but believed ultimately that Ikertu was a positive force in the world. Webster even now simply wasn’t sure. What did he accomplish, exactly? How was the world different for what he did? He helped his clients not to lose money or reputation. That was all. If his client was upright, he told himself, this was good work, if hardly saintly; when, as now, his client was at best a rogue, how did he help anyone at all?

Snowdrop was unsettling him. It was the case he had always wanted, his chance finally to afflict those who tended to do the afflicting. But Elsa’s words wouldn’t leave him. This had become a quest—a twin quest, Tourna’s and his own—and his sense of proportion was unbalanced. He was no longer sure why he was pursuing Malin. Was it to restore to Tourna what was rightfully his? To show the corruption that still ravaged Russia, and by doing so accelerate its end? Or simply to destroy a life in compensation for the life he had seen destroyed?

Hammer’s advice, as ever, was simple and good. Do what it says on the engagement letter; remember the commitment you made. And while Webster’s motive might have troubled him, at least his next step was clear.

He had to get a message to Lock, and in such a way that no one else would know of it. The message itself was simple: you have options; do not assume that there isn’t a way out of this; you will need expert help, and I am the expert. Webster had taken down and folded away the hand-drawn map of Malin’s world that he had stared at for so long, and in its place was now a single sheet of poster-sized paper. On it was a circle drawn in thick black ink, and inside the word “Lock.” One other smaller circle marked “Onder” sat to one side. That was as far as he had gotten.

Lock was in Moscow. He had flown back immediately after Paris and hadn’t been anywhere else since. Webster knew this because he had primed his source at the travel agency to check three times a day for bookings in the name of Richard Lock. So far there was nothing.

The plan, not yet fully formed, was that Onder would find an excuse to see Lock and gauge his mood. If he was feeling trapped, as Webster had to believe he would be, Onder would offer to make the introduction. The problem was that this couldn’t happen in Moscow, because it was too dangerous, and in any case Onder was not the sort of person one could send off on missions; everything had to fit with his schedule.

Hammer’s advice was clear and constant: just wait. We’re not in any hurry; our client wants us to stop spending money, and this way we don’t spend any until we have an opportunity that justifies it. But Webster lacked Hammer’s restraint, partly because he was consumed by the case, and partly because Hammer enjoyed waiting as part of the game. For all that Hammer was constantly in motion Webster admired his ability to sit still.

So as the rain fell in the gloom Webster struggled with the obvious truth that there wasn’t anything to do and tried to occupy himself with other projects. But two things happened that week nevertheless, and neither served to make him any calmer.

The Wednesday after his meeting with Tourna he received a call from Elsa at work.

“Have you seen this e-mail?”

“What e-mail?”

“You clearly haven’t.” Her voice was anxious, tight.

“I’m not in my office. What is it?”

“I don’t know. It’s in Russian. But it has our address on it.”

“Hold on. I’m nearly there. Let me see.” He sat at his desk and clicked on his screen. There was one new e-mail, from a Nicholas Stokes, the subject blank.

“I was at school with Nicholas Stokes.” He opened it.

“Then he has a strange sense of humor.”

The e-mail was addressed to Elsa, and he had been copied. It was laid out like a letter; in the top left-hand corner was Webster’s home address in Queen’s Park, complete with postcode. The body of the message was the full Russian text of an article from
Kommersant
reporting the death of Inessa. Webster had read it at the time; it was notable for being one of the few to print details of her writing. Otherwise the e-mail was empty: no introduction, no Dear Ben, nothing. He looked at it for a moment blankly, conscious that his heart was beating faster.

“What does it say?” said Elsa.

“It’s an article about Inessa. From just after she died.”

“What the hell for? Why is our address there?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know. It’s OK. Let me look at it.” He began to inspect it more closely. The name that had shown up in his inbox was Nicholas Stokes, but the e-mail address itself was [email protected]. The name meant nothing to him. He opened up the detailed information that showed the electronic path the e-mail had taken, but that too was meaningless.

“I don’t know what it is,” he said. “A message to me.”

“To us.”

“Hold on.” He searched for Boris Strokov on the Internet. Only a handful of results came back. “OK. Well, whoever sent it wants me to know that they know all about me. I haven’t seen Nick Stokes since I was seventeen. And they know our address.”

“And my e-mail.”

“And your e-mail. They’ve been busy.”

“Who is Boris Strokov?”

“I don’t know. Hardly any seem to exist.” By now he had discovered that Boris Strokov was a character dreamed up by Tom Clancy to inject Georgi Markov full of ricin on Waterloo Bridge. Russians, this meant, have a proud history of getting to people outside Russia. He kept the thought to himself.

“Ben, I hate this. I hate it. It’s your case, isn’t it?”

“Probably.”

“Probably? If it isn’t that what on earth is it?”

“It’s the case.”

“Right. And now they know where our children live. And they’re telling me, their mother, in an e-mail.” She paused. It occurred to Webster that that was the cleverest aspect of it. “Tell me this doesn’t scare you.”

“It doesn’t. I’ve had these things before. They’re unnerving.”

“Unnerving? That’s good. Well listen. I am unnerved. Distinctly unnerved. I don’t let my work intrude on our lives and I don’t think you should either.”

“Baby, look. You really shouldn’t worry. It’s a warning to the curious. They want me to stop work.”

“Then maybe you should.”

In his office Webster looked at the e-mail and shook his head. Instinctively he thought it through. If Malin was doing this it meant that he was rattled, and that could only be good.

“No. Not now. This doesn’t mean anything. It’s nothing.”

Elsa was silent on the other end of the line.

“Listen. If someone wants to hurt you they don’t tell you they’re going to do it.”

“But there’s no rule against it, is there?”

No. There was no rule.

O
VER THE NEXT FEW DAYS
the e-mail hovered on the edge of Webster’s thoughts, tugging insistently, the abuse of Inessa’s memory a constant barb. Elsa was tense. He tried to reassure her but his arguments, at once perfectly logical and somehow irrelevant, sounded hollow in his ear. The simple truth was that his pride wouldn’t allow such an ugly and simple device to have its effect. It was too base, too easy. If anything he felt newly galvanized.

That weekend the Websters left London for the south coast. They stayed in a cottage in Winchelsea, on a cliff a mile from the sea. They walked on the great beach at Camber Sands in the rain, with not a soul in sight; ate fish and chips in Rye; were chased by a herd of friendly bullocks on a farm. London and Moscow began to feel far away.

On the Saturday evening, Webster was reading to Daniel when his phone started buzzing in his pocket. He ignored it, finished the story, kissed him good night and went downstairs to the kitchen.

There was no message, and the call was from a Russian number he didn’t recognize. He dialed it, cradling the phone against his neck and taking a glass down from a shelf.

“Hello, this is Ben Webster. You just called me.”

“Ben. This is Leonard. Cahill. In Moscow.”

“Leonard. Good to hear from you. How are you?” He reached for a bottle of whisky and poured himself an inch, then a dash of water from the jug. He could hear Elsa walking around upstairs.

“Ben, have you heard from Alan? In the last few days.”

“He left me a voice mail last week.”

“When was that?”

“I was at Heathrow, so Thursday. Late afternoon.”

“Nothing since?”

“Nothing. Why?”

“He’s gone missing.”

Webster took a drink and put his glass down. “What sort of missing?”

“He was in Tyumen at the weekend. Then he had a story for us in Sakhalin. He never showed up. His wife saw him off on Monday morning and hasn’t heard from him since.”

“What was he working on?” Elsa came into the kitchen. She took a bottle of wine from the fridge and poured herself a glass. He mouthed “sorry” to her and stepped out into the hall.

“A piece about Sakhalin II. A puff piece. Nothing exciting. I was going to ask you the same thing.”

“He hasn’t done any work for me for six months.” This, of course, was strictly true.

“You don’t know what he was working on?”

“No. We talked about something but it never happened.”

“Fuck. His wife’s beside herself. Says he’s never done this before. Had he told you about his problems?”

“He mentioned something about the tax police.”

“I hope he hasn’t done anything stupid.”

“I can’t see it. Not Alan.” Christ. I hope no one has done it for him. “Have you told the police?”

“The Tyumen police aren’t big on missing persons.”

“But you’ve told them.”

“I’ve notified them.”

“And you don’t know whether he took a flight?”

“No. We know nothing. He left his house at eight on Monday and that’s it. He booked the flights. Hasn’t phoned anyone. His phone’s off, needless to say. Car’s still at home.”

“Have you tried his Turkish phone?”

“I didn’t know he had a Turkish phone.”

Webster sat down on the stairs. The different possibilities cycled through his mind. “Look, Leonard. Maybe I can do something. I’ll have a look at his flights and see if anyone’s been using his phone. Get Irina to send me his credit card details, all his cards. Any phone numbers I might not have. I’ll have a look.”

“Thanks, Ben. This isn’t like him.”

“Tell me if anything happens.”

“I will.”

Webster hung up. He found the Turkish number for Knight and dialed it. It went straight to voice mail. Where was he? Perhaps he had bolted; gone to Turkey while things calmed down. Perhaps his home life wasn’t as solid as it seemed. Perhaps he was in debt.

In the kitchen he picked up his glass and took a good swallow. None of these was convincing.

“What was that?” Elsa was chopping an onion, her face half turned away from the fumes.

“Nothing. A case.”

“You look worried.”

“It’s nothing. Just a wayward source.”

W
EBSTER DID WHAT HE COULD
to track down Knight. His travel-agent source found out that he had been booked on the 10:35 from Tyumen to Vladivostok; he never checked in, not to that flight or to any other that had left Tyumen that week—or any Russian airport, for that matter. With Mrs. Knight’s permission Webster spoke to the phone company as Knight and reported his phone missing; no calls had been made since Monday morning when he had rung for a taxi to take him to the airport. His wife had seen him leave in the car, and the taxi controller told Webster that they had dropped him off at around eight in the morning. He had paid the driver in cash, but in the airport made one purchase on his credit card, for three hundred rubles, from a café. That was the last trace he had left. It would take about a week to discover whether he had taken any money from his offshore account, but somehow it seemed unlikely; he had withdrawn no money from the joint account he held with his wife.

Alan Knight was definitely gone. If he had decided to make himself disappear he had done a very good job of it. He was clever enough for that. And the alternative, while it seemed so much more likely, simply didn’t make sense. Why abduct him? Why not have him die in a car crash or a hit and run? Why not arrest him on some absurd charge and ship him off to a distant prison? He was a Russian citizen. They could do what they liked to him. But what Webster really couldn’t accept was that whatever was happening to Alan had anything to do with a conversation they had had two months ago about not very much. It seemed so disproportionate. And if they were sending him messages, surely Alan’s disappearance would come with some sort of message attached; if this was meant to frighten off Ikertu, why leave it ambiguous?

It was while he was dwelling on these questions, wondering whether he should wait for answers before finally conceding that this case was no longer worth the prize, that he received a call from his friend at the travel agency. The news was not about Knight but about Lock: he was booked on flights to Cayman through London, leaving Moscow on Wednesday and stopping in London for two nights on his way back.