The Silent Oligarch: A Novel (30 page)

“OK.”

“It’s changed. Already.”

“That’s good.”

He could hear a catch in the rhythm of her breath; the lake was silent but for the rigging gently clinking. He looked for ducks but couldn’t see any. “Where’s Vika?”

“Next door. We just finished lunch. She’ll be in in a second.”

“Will you kiss her for me?”

“Yes.”

They were quiet again, and Lock knew that Marina was crying not from fear alone but from hope: she was proud of him again, and as it made her weep it filled him with lightness, almost jubilation. This was going to work. Not everything was jinxed.

“I should go,” he said.

“You should.”

“It’s going to be OK.” He hesitated. “I love you. I’m sorry I ever forgot that.”

“I know.”

“I’ll call you tomorrow. When it’s done.”

B
Y
M
ONDAY MORNING
Lock was calm. Strangely so: all the alarm, all the anxiety of the last month had left him, and he knew they wouldn’t return. Malin was coming. Lock had called him the night before and told him, in few words, rather enjoying himself, that he was to fly to Berlin. Malin was coming—not as his master but as his petitioner. And no matter how today ended, he would be his master no more.

Lock woke early, a little after six. He could see from the light under the door that Webster was awake. He sat in the dark and imagined the day. Malin would land sometime this morning. In a few hours they would phone him and tell him to come to the Staatsbibliothek No. 2 on Potsdamer Strasse at noon. The Berlin state library. Webster had explained that it was open without being unmanageable, busy without being hectic. It was a sober, quiet building where the meeting could be controlled.

Outside the sky had turned from black to deepest blue.

T
HEY DROVE INTO THE CITY
in George Black’s car. Lock liked Black. He wasn’t a big man but there was a certainty about his manner, about the way he held himself, that made Lock feel safe. There were four of them in the car: Black, Webster, Lock and a well-spoken young man called James, who drove. George and James were at once exactly like their Russian counterparts and nothing like them at all. For one thing they were much more polite.

Twisting around in his seat Black explained that there were four more men already in Berlin. They were stationed in and around the library and would make sure that Lock was safe. “Not,” said Black, “that he’s likely to try anything out in the open.” When they got to Berlin two of Black’s men would be inside, two outside. Lock would wait in the car a few hundred yards away with James. When Malin arrived, and only then, James would drive Lock around and he would be escorted into the building. During the meeting itself three men would be watching from a short distance and three would patrol the area. When the meeting had concluded, Lock would be escorted quickly and easily to his car and driven to a rendezvous just north of Berlin. The second car would conduct countersurveillance on the first to make sure it wasn’t followed. Throughout, Webster and the team would sit back. It was important that Lock appear to be alone, even if Malin would assume he was not.

Webster had instructions for him too. They discussed the phone.

“You’ve got your two phones. When you sit down, take them out of your pocket and take the batteries out of each. Ask Malin to do the same. Try and look a little anxious. Make him think you’re the one worried about being overheard.”

“He won’t recognize either of them.”

“That’s OK. He knows you’ve got new phones. Now the recorder starts as soon as the battery comes out. Leave it facedown. There’s another battery in there that’ll give an hour of recording time, maybe a little more. It records straight onto a hard drive. There’s no noise, and no signal. You don’t have to worry about it at all. Don’t look at it. Forget it’s there.”

Lock nodded. He rested his hand on the briefcase next to him. It contained all of Gerstman’s documents, printed out on Herr Maurer’s computer.

“Chances are he’ll have people with him,” Webster went on. “That’s OK. You’ll have your people everywhere. We’ll hang back unless something happens. But he’s not going to want anything to happen to you while he’s around. So all you have to think about is talking to him.”

“How should I start?”

“Any way you like. Don’t think too hard about it. Let it come out. He’s expecting you to be angry and upset. So be upset. Challenge him.”

The roads were fast now and lined with ten-foot metal screens; Lock felt that he was being channeled along them to his destiny.

As they came off the motorway the screens fell away. They were on the industrial edge of the city. Lock saw chimneys like towers erupting white smoke into the sky, scrappy patches of land undeveloped, water towers like inverted rockets tarred jet black. There were no footprints in the snow here, no people walking. Then a McDonald’s, and a furniture warehouse, and beyond that the suburbs; close by the car, pinched apartment buildings in concrete and roughcast ran the length of each block, and the pavements were filthy with old snow. After a while the streets opened out and the houses relaxed and people began to appear in the shops, in the parks, at the bus stops. Lock had never seen all this, not before. It was new to him to see things. A row of poplars the shape of peacock feathers. A red leather bag against a woman’s tan shawl.

“You OK?” Webster broke his reverie.

Lock turned to him. “I’m fine.”

“Not nervous?”

“Not at all.”

The car turned into Tiergarten and Lock watched the silver birches tick past him. Beyond the park’s gates they emerged into a large open space, a mess of road and streetlights and traffic lights and slushy channels cut through the snow. The channels led from one huge modernist building to another, each somehow in its own world, like rivals. Lock looked to his left and saw finlike orange panels on a jumble of cubes and curves; to his right a sleek concrete structure in gray; ahead of him a low, massive box of black steel and glass. Watching over them stood a church with a green copper roof, its ugly square tower ringed in yellow and red brick. The sky was huge and gray above it all.

“This is Potsdamer Platz,” said Black.

“It looks like an architecture competition,” said Lock.

“That’s the library,” said Black, pointing past James to a building on the corner of the space. It was squat, jagged, irregular, made of gray and yellow concrete blocks and sloping glass in black frames. Screens like washboards masked the windows along one wall. It was set back from the road; next to the others it was reticent, erudite, scholarly.

“Was this east or west?” said Lock.

“Both,” said Webster.

They carried on past the library and crossed a bridge over the canal. Fifty yards farther on James pulled over to the side and Black and Webster got out.

“I’ll call you when he shows,” said Webster and gave Lock a calm, encouraging smile as he shut the door.

James pulled out again and took the next left into a quiet street. Halfway down it he did a three-point turn and parked.

“This is it,” he said.

“This is it,” said Lock.

I
T WAS
J
AMES’S PHONE
that rang. He answered it without saying a word, put the car into gear and moved off. Lock checked his palms; they were dry.

James parked just out of sight of the library. A man that Lock didn’t recognize came to his door and opened it.

“Good afternoon, sir. You need to go to the cafeteria area. As you go in, turn to your right and you’ll see it. The subject is sitting at a table facing the door. His bodyguard is standing a little ways behind him.”

“Thank you.”

“Good luck, sir.”

Lock checked his pockets for the two phones. They were there. He set off.

His chest felt light, the briefcase heavy in his hand. He smoothed his hair with his free hand as he walked along. Please let this work. Let him say it. Let him say the words. I want to tell the world that I brought him down. I want everyone to know. I want the journalists to know. I want Kesler to know. And Chekhanov. I want Andrew-sodding-Beresford to know, and all his superior English friends.

I want my father to know. And Marina. How I want Marina to know. And Vika. One day, Vika.

And Malin. In there now with his blank gaze and his impenetrable will. I want him to know that it was me.

T
HE LIBRARY WAS BUSY
and hushed. An old lady with snow chains on her boots clanked across the stone floor. Lock moved toward the cafeteria. There he was. Sitting by one of the plate-glass windows that lined that side of the building, alone at a yellow table, his bulk absurd on a spindly metal chair. On the table in front of him was a cup of tea and an envelope. Standing with his back against a pillar a few yards away was Ivan the bodyguard. I knew he was special, thought Lock. Ivan watched him as he neared the table.

Lock could feel his heart beating in his throat. Four tables away he saw Webster studiously reading a German newspaper. The café was quiet but some of the tables along the window wall were occupied: a bearded man with a laptop; two girls eating sandwiches; a young man in a cap and thick black glasses leaning over papers he had spread out across his table.

“You came,” Lock said in Russian.

Malin turned his head an inch toward Ivan and nodded. Ivan stepped up to Lock and asked him to spread his arms and legs. Lock, uncertain, did as he was asked, looking around him in quiet disbelief that this could happen so blatantly in such a place. Ivan ran his hands quickly down Lock’s sides, his legs, the small of his back, and then patted his stomach and chest. Reaching inside Lock’s jacket he pulled out the two phones, inspected each briefly and handed them back, before opening the briefcase and glancing inside. He nodded to Malin and stepped back again. Lock took off his coat and sat down, putting the briefcase on the floor by his chair.

“Phones please,” said Malin.

Lock looked at him, holding his eye for a second.

“OK. And yours.”

He reached into his pockets and pulled out the two phones. He slid the back off each, eased the batteries out and left the parts on the table. Malin did the same with a single phone.

The two men looked at each other. Malin’s eyes bored into Lock’s. Lock tried to understand them, to see something in there that he had not seen before. But they were the same: matte, dead, reflecting nothing. In his black coat and gray suit, the white shirt and the red tie, he looked exactly as he always had.

“You look bad,” Malin said.

Lock returned the gaze. “Thanks for your concern. I’m fine.”

“You looked better in Moscow.”

“I feel better here.”

Malin made a faint shrugging gesture, as if to say that he wasn’t going to argue the point.

“Did you make the transfer?” said Lock.

With the palm of his hand Malin slid the envelope toward him an inch. Lock reached for it and opened it.

“It’s in escrow,” said Malin. “Someone we both know. He’ll release it when he hears from you.”

Lock looked at the single sheet of paper. It was confirmation of a wire transfer made to an account in Singapore. He put it back on the table and, reaching below his chair, opened the briefcase. He took out a sheaf of A4 paper and set it down in front of Malin, who picked up the sheaf and began to work his way through, putting each page down on the table as he inspected it. Lock watched him steadily deal the pages, licking his thumb occasionally as he went.

When he had put down the last sheet from the batch he breathed in and let it out noisily through his nose.

“This is it?”

Lock didn’t reply.

“This is everything?”

“Yes.”

“Bullshit.”

“That is everything. Downloaded from Dmitry’s hidden e-mail account. I can give you the details.”

Malin shook his head. “You think this is worth ten million?”

“Yes.”

“Ten million, for invoices?”

“It’s what you wanted.”

Malin laughed, once, his big frame shifting up and down. “No, no, no. This is not what I wanted. This is not what I needed.”

“What does it matter?” said Lock. “You have what you’ve been looking for. It’s over. So it doesn’t say very much. That’s good, isn’t it?”

Malin raised his eyebrows but said nothing.

“It means you killed Dmitry for nothing. That’s not so good. But why should that bother you?”

Malin rubbed his chin, the folds of flesh pressed together between his fingers. He shook his head.

“I cannot go back to Moscow with this.”

Lock frowned. “What do you mean?”

“They will think I have lost my mind.”

“Who will? Who’s they?” Lock could feel a pain in his throat.

Malin sat back in his chair, adjusting his weight. He took his time. “Richard, who do you think I am?”

Lock shook his head. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“I have been trying to protect you, Richard. All the time. Because I understand your position. Better than you think. But you have caused me problems. You and Dmitry. It would have been better if he had stayed.”

Lock leaned in to Malin, his voice low but urgent. “Protect me? What, by having your goons fill me with Christ knows what and throw me off a roof? Was that how you protected Dmitry too?”

Malin leaned forward too, his hands clasped on the table. He lowered his voice. “None of that was me.”

Lock tried to swallow but his mouth was dry. He longed for water. He could see the small moles on Malin’s cheek.

“You or your people,” he said. “I don’t care.”

Malin shook his head gently. “Richard, I told you when we last spoke. I could not protect you forever. If you had come back to Moscow you would have ceased to be a risk.”

“I’m not a risk to you. I don’t want to be a risk to you. I don’t want anything to do with you. That’s what all this is about.” Lock’s voice was louder now. “We can leave each other. For good. Separate. Divorce. I’ll disappear. I will cause you no trouble. You know that.”

“Richard, it’s not for me to decide.”

There was a roaring noise in Lock’s head. He couldn’t think.

“What?”