The Silent Oligarch: A Novel (2 page)

“Good evening, Richard. I am sorry to interrupt your vacation.” Malin spoke in English with a heavy accent, his voice low and resonant. Lock simply nodded, aware from experience that these would be the only pleasantries. “Phones, please.” Lock took his three phones from various pockets, removed the back and the battery from each, and put the components on a dresser standing against the wall where two other phones lay, also in pieces.

“You know Mr. Kesler.” Malin gestured across the table at the older of the other two men in the room.

“Of course. How are you, Skip?”

“Just fine, thank you, Richard. You’re looking well. This is Lawrence Griffin, one of our associates.”

Lock shook hands with both men. “Skip” was in fact Donald, but he preferred to be known as Skip; this suggested a jauntiness at odds with the rest of him. He was a lawyer, a specialist in litigation, and Lock was alarmed to see him here: it meant that what they were about to discuss was serious, as he had feared, since Kesler was not the sort to fly across the Atlantic and spend a client’s money without cause. Everything about him suggested discipline. The younger man, Griffin, had taken out a notebook and was already writing. Both were in suits; both looked hot and slightly grimy, as if they had traveled that day and not yet changed their clothes.

Lock sat on his own at the head of the table. Malin turned to look at him.

“Tourna is making noises again. He is still upset.”

“This is about Tourna? Christ, that man makes so much noise. Can’t we keep ignoring him?” Tourna, Lock thought, was surely not worth a meeting in August.

“Mr. Kesler thinks not. Mr. Kesler.”

“Thank you, Konstantin. Richard, Mr. Tourna will file against Faringdon in New York on Monday, and is drawing on the relevant clauses in his contract to start arbitration proceedings in Paris. The New York complaint alleges that we reneged on our commitments to Orion Trading over the sale of Marchmont. Specifically, it says that Orion was sold an empty shell and that Faringdon took the assets. Hearings in New York have not yet been scheduled, but we’re due in Paris in November.” Kesler always spoke with extraordinary structure and precision, his staccato voice, with a hint of the South in it, beating out all the points. Lock wondered whether he had rehearsed.

“God, he’s an idiot,” said Lock. “What does he stand to gain?” No one spoke. Lock noticed that Kesler’s watch was still on Washington time. “Do we fight it or settle?”

“If all we had to worry about was whether or not we had met our obligations under the contract then, yes, we would either fight it or settle it—a fine judgment and not perhaps worth that much thought.” Kesler’s suit was dark blue, a light wool, with a pinstripe, European in its cut. “This time, however, Mr. Tourna has decided to add a little spice. He is alleging that Faringdon—and you—are part of a criminal conspiracy. More particularly, he is claiming that Faringdon is not owned by its immediate shareholders, but by Mr. Malin, and that it is the central component of, as he puts it, a global money-laundering operation. He puts the damage to him at a billion dollars.”

“A billion? Where does he get that from?” Now Lock understood why he and Kesler were here. “Who is he using?”

“Hansons. Lionel Greene. I’m told he’s very good.” Kesler looked over the top of his glasses at Lock, waiting for more, but nothing came. “This creates all manner of problems. We cannot settle, because the complaint is public, and to settle will imply that we acknowledge the charge. And we can be confident that everyone will soon know about this, because Tourna is never discreet, even when it is in his own interests to be so. And that is not the case here.”

Lock felt a weight bearing on his chest, a long-held fear. “Do we know what he knows?”

“No. The complaint isn’t detailed.”

“He’s fishing.”

“I don’t think so.” Kesler looked from Lock to Malin.

“Then what is he doing?” said Lock. “It seems crazy. Why allege something you can’t prove? And then make sure we can’t settle?”

Again Kesler looked between the two. Malin made the smallest movement of his head and Kesler resumed.

“Because he has no intention of settling? I suspect that Mr. Tourna is truly vexed, and when Mr. Tourna is vexed he doesn’t bottle it up. For this Greek, revenge is best served relatively warm.” Kesler paused, clearly pleased with his words. “I think he is doing this—and we must
assume
he is doing this—because he wants to hurt Mr. Malin. By now we can also assume that he’s hired investigators and PR and God knows who else to put on an almighty show. When he thinks the time is right.”

Kesler’s sidekick was all the while taking notes. Lock glanced at them and wondered how they could possibly be so voluminous already. The sun was lower now and behind Malin, leaving his face in shadow.

“Look,” said Lock, “if he had proof of something he’d blackmail us with it privately. That’s his style. Which means there’s no evidence.”

“Maybe not,” said Kesler, “but it’s going to be very uncomfortable demonstrating that. I’m here now because we need to start work immediately. Paris is the priority. I’ll be working out of Bryson’s London office to save you traveling to D.C. and me traveling to Moscow . . .”

“Wait, hang on.” Lock looked puzzled. “Why have an arbitration at all? If he wants to make a noise he can just sue us in New York.”

“That is the most interesting question,” said Kesler. “I don’t know. I simply can’t read that part. But I think that New York may be the sideshow. A lawsuit there will make a lot of noise, but . . . my guess is he wants to cause you a lot of pain but still give you a mechanism for settling—perhaps you agree to settle if he completely retracts the complaint. Or perhaps he wants to see you on the stand. We can sidestep that in New York, I think, but not in Paris. You have to attend your own arbitration.”

Lock could feel pain in his lower back. This was the moment at which he should be showing Malin that he was confident and full of fight but his body was registering dismay.

“Can we do him some damage first?”

“Fight fire with fire, you mean? Perhaps. I’m seeing investigators in London next week. It may be that Mr. Tourna has something he would rather remain hidden. But it’s not as if his reputation has far to fall. Such an asset.” Kesler gave a wry, irritating little chuckle.

Malin stood up, thanked Kesler, and asked Lock to join him outside. As they walked on the lawn in front of the house Lock could feel the spring of the grass under his feet. Through the cypresses he saw headlands and bays linking into the distance, the cliffs deep red in shadow. His fresh shirt was already damp and cool against his back. He and Malin took steps down to a swimming pool whose sky-blue water spilled endlessly over its far lip, the sea beyond a steady, serious cobalt. They sat at a table, out of the setting sun, where Lock, side on to Malin with his elbows on his knees, continued to gaze at the pool and wondered whether anything could make the scene more placid. He was curious to know whether Malin drew pleasure from it.

Malin extracted a packet of cigarettes from his shirt pocket, took one, and lit it. He spoke Russian now. “Richard, I am concerned about this. Tourna is a little crazy. I think Kesler is right—he is not doing this so that we pay him money.”

“Tourna is nuts. We should never have—”

“Let me finish.” Malin paused. Lock looked from the water to him, indicating his willingness to listen. “Kesler called me about this two days ago. This has given me some time to think. I asked him to come out here to discuss it with us in person. I have asked him as I am asking you to take special care of this so that it does not escalate. I want us to find out what Tourna knows. And I want to know everything about Tourna. That is your responsibility. I will not settle this because I do not trust Tourna to keep it settled.” Again he paused, drawing deeply on the cigarette. “How confident are you that we are protected?”

“Very confident.” Lock’s heart stammered. “There is nothing to link anything to you.”

“Look over your network for weaknesses. They will all be all over it soon. If there are weaknesses, let me know them.”

“I can’t think where they could be.”

“Just look. Who do you trust that might talk, knowingly or not? That is what they will be looking for.”

“Understood.”

“It may be that this can still go away. But in the meantime, work with Kesler. Work hard.”

Lock returned Malin’s even gaze for as long as he could, then nodded and looked away.

“Richard, I have always paid you well to prepare for this moment. Justify my faith in you.”

As they walked back to the house in the dusk the security lights clicked on, lighting up the house and the trees and blacking out everything beyond.

L
OCK ARRIVED
back in Monaco a little after ten. Oksana was not in their room at the Metropole. His calls to her went unanswered.

He stood in the shower, turned it up very hot and then very cold, and thought. He thought about why Kesler hadn’t spoken to him first but had gone to Malin directly. He thought about Malin’s words to him, part pep talk and part threat. And he thought about what he would have to do now, and how little he relished it. The problem, he knew, was not with the nature of the lie, but with the simple fact of it. If anyone looked hard enough (and certainly, they would have to look hard) they would discover that he, Richard Lock, was the richest foreign investor in Russia, the owner of a huge private energy conglomerate. And he had no plausible account of how he had come by any of it.

Two

W
EBSTER WAS THE FIRST
in his house to wake. The night had been close but now a cool breeze was blowing from the window and he pulled the thin sheet around him; by the light along the edges of the blinds he could tell it would be another hot day. Elsa was still asleep, her back to him. There were planes in the sky; it had to be after six.

If he left now perhaps he could fit in a swim before everyone else was up. But as soon as he had the thought he knew he wouldn’t go; he wasn’t ready to resume the work routine. What did he have today? A mess of things he hadn’t thought about since before his holiday: cases, clients, billing. Briefing Hammer on Tourna, and deciding whether to take his money. That alone might take all day.

He heard a floorboard creak in the room above. Nancy was up. Every morning she came downstairs and stood silent by his side of the bed until something in his subconscious told him she was there. It was a slightly disconcerting way to greet the world.

He lay on his side, facing the door, and closed his eyes. She moved so quietly he hardly heard her come in. He let her stand by him for a moment and then shot out a hand from under the sheet and pulled her up onto the bed, twisting onto his back and leaving her sprawled on his chest. Her feet were cold on his legs.

“Daddy!”

“Did you miss me?”

She said nothing but sat up and drummed a rhythm with her hands on his stomach. He picked her up under her arms and held her horizontal at arm’s length, her face smiling above his, her cheeks full, her dark hair falling down. She was heavy now, but his thumbs still met on her breastbone.

“Did you miss me?”

“Don’t tickle.”

“I’m not going to. Did you miss me?”

Nancy giggled. He gave her the slightest squeeze.

“Don’t tickle! Yes! Yes!”

He let her tumble down.

She raised her head. “Did you get me a present?”

“I was only away for a night.”

“Two nights.”

“I know. Sorry. I had a horrid journey back.”

“Just a little one?”

“Not even a little one. Nothing. Breakfast, if you like.” He pulled himself up onto the pillows and looked at her. “Is Daniel asleep?” She shook her head.

“What’s he doing?”

“Nothing for me?” Elsa was awake. She still had her back to them.

“Morning, baby. No. Not much to buy in Datça.”

She turned onto her other side and raised her head on her elbow. Her eyes were full of sleep. “Tea, please.”

“In a minute.” Nancy was running her finger down his jaw, feeling the stubble.

“How was it?” said Elsa.

“Beautiful. Hot.”

“Don’t. How was your billionaire?”

“Tanned and rich. Though I’m not sure his billions are entirely his.”

“Did you like him?”

“Not much.”

“Hm. Was it worth it?”

“It’s the best case I’ve ever seen.”

“Big?”

“In every way. But we shouldn’t take it.”

“Why not?”

“It’s a regime-change case. They’re trouble.”

“Tea.” Elsa inched closer and ran her hand along Nancy’s back.

“Five minutes. When Daniel comes down I’ll give them breakfast.” He looked at her. Her eyes were closed. Somebody had once said that Nancy had his looks and Elsa’s beauty. It was neat but true. “How was yesterday? Sorry I was so late.”

“With Thomas? Terrible. His mother doesn’t want him to come anymore. She thinks talking about it is making him worse.”

“That’s sad.”

“It is.” She glanced at Nancy. “I’ll tell you more later.”

For a moment the three of them lay there, Nancy plucking at the hairs at the base of Webster’s neck, Elsa watching her.

“Which regime?” she said at last.

Webster turned to her.

“It’s not quite a regime. It’s a man. Russia’s most corrupt, I’d say, at a guess.”

“And what would you be doing?”

“Exposing him.”

“You’d like that.”

“Yes, I would. He deserves it.”

T
WO DAYS EARLIER
Webster had woken before dawn in the spare bedroom, his alarm set to sound as quietly as possible, his bag packed, his clothes for the day hanging from the back of the door. Elsa and the children lay asleep in the still house. He had queued with the holidaymakers at Gatwick and waited half an hour for a taxi at Dalaman. The pilot had said thirty-three degrees; out of the shade, heat radiating off the concrete and the tarmac, it seemed hotter. The only suit he saw all day was his own. It was wool, gray, the lightest he had—a good, English suit, and the wrong thing to be wearing on the Turkish coast in August.

It took three hours more to reach Datça. Sitting upright on the hard rear seat he watched dusty mountains grow green with thick pine as the road bent toward the sea. Turkish dance music played quietly on the radio. The sun bore down on the side of the car, and he could feel the heat in the metal and the glass.

He had been away when the call came in but Webster thought he knew what Tourna wanted. His reputation needed help. His business was oil, gas, copper, iron, gold, bauxite, coal: anything valuable that could be ripped out of the ground in remote places. He would buy the rights to mine it, convince investors that he’d struck lucky and sell out just as it became clear that there was not so much there after all. What’s more, he was a tireless plaintiff who sued anyone who challenged him, usually suckered partners and principled journalists. Webster was sure Tourna would ask him to polish his name; to run the rule over him and find nothing wrong. The one part of the meeting he was looking forward to was explaining that wasn’t how he worked.

After two hours the road dropped onto a wide, sloping plain that rose again in the distance into a range of olive-green mountains, guided either side by the solid blue sea. This was the Datça peninsula. They drove through clusters of square, whitewashed houses and past hot almond orchards, the leaves on the trees sandy and brittle. The driver shaded his eyes from the sun, and the road climbed and fell once more before they reached Datça itself.

They stopped on the quayside; Webster paid and tipped the driver. It was cooler here—later in the day perhaps, and there was a breeze blowing north off the sea. Apartment buildings and stubby palm trees lined the front and in a haze across the water lay the mountains they had just crossed on the mainland. Tourna was on his boat, moored a mile or two out. Webster called the number he had been given and sat down on the edge of the quay to wait, his heavy brown shoes swinging above the water.

The
Belisarius
was long and sleek, a flash of white low in the water. He was greeted by Leon, the ship’s steward, who explained with the greatest regret that Mr. Tourna had been unexpectedly called away to Athens on business, but would return before nightfall.

B
EFORE BECOMING AN INVESTIGATOR,
or a spy, or whatever he was, Webster had been a journalist. Fifteen years before, with Yeltsin newly in power and Russia painfully transforming itself, he had gone to Moscow with little more than a degree in Russian to sustain him. Stories were everywhere. He wrote about savings being lost as inflation surged and about coal miners in Siberia unpaid for months; about officials corrupted to demolish fine buildings, tribes threatened by logging in the far east, families from America adopting orphans from Rostov, Samara, Tomsk. At first he wrote the articles and sold them wherever he could, but after six months he was working as a stringer for
The Times.
He traveled across the country, from the forests of Sakhalin to the dockyards of Murmansk, from the Gulag factories in the Arctic north to the Black Sea health spas where the politburo had spent its summers. Sometimes he went beyond, to Kiev and Tbilisi, Ulan Bator and Tashkent. In eight years he saw more ugliness and hope, more dishonesty, dignity and unexpected happiness than he knew he would again. Life was rich in Russia, even while it was cheap.

But slowly, almost without noticing, he came to tire of the endless round of expectation and disappointment. In 1992 he had believed that Russia would be great again; seven years later he worried that it was destined forever to miss its chance. His editors began to tire, too. And then, three months short of the new century, Inessa had died.

A man called Serik Almaz was charged with her murder, and four weeks after her death he was convicted. He had spent half his life in prison for theft and assault but at his trial, which lasted a morning, he pleaded innocent. Webster couldn’t attend because his visa had been revoked.

Novaya Gazeta
ran a piece on its front page about her work and her death in the line of duty;
The
Times
simply reported that she had died. She was the fourth Russian journalist to be murdered that year. At her funeral in Samara, Webster apologized to her husband, he wasn’t sure why, and a month later left Russia for good, his faith undone.

And now he was on a yacht, being kept waiting by the sort of man that Inessa used to write about. It was evening now, and Tourna had still not returned. He pinched a cigarette out of its new pack and lit it with the cheap lighter he had bought at the airport. Just one was all right; it was hot, after all, and he was abroad. A piece of tobacco clung to his lip and he wiped it off with his thumb. There was no wind now and the smoke drifted off the boat in its own time.

Webster read his book and watched the stars appear in the night. Reaching for his drink he caught sight of himself reflected in the black glass of the cabin. He had swum before dinner and his gray hair was stiff and unruly with salt. He had changed his grubby white shirt for his only clean one and was looking respectable, plausible even—anyone would think he belonged here. But he felt ridiculous, just as he felt trapped on this indecently beautiful boat. This wasn’t him. He should have left the moment he found out Tourna wasn’t here. He should probably never have come.

T
HE NEXT MORNING BEFORE BREAKFAST,
with the sun just up over the peninsula, he swam again, diving off the side of the boat into the blue-green sea. It was almost too warm for his taste; this wasn’t Cornwall, where a week before he had swum with the children in water that even in August had shocked the breath from him. And while it was good, it didn’t merit the trip. He had decided that whatever Tourna wanted wasn’t worth this sustained challenge to his dignity: he would get dressed, eat something and leave for Dalaman before the heat came.

As he climbed the ladder back up to the deck he heard the drone of an engine and looked back to see the launch approaching. Tourna was driving, stooping down to control the outboard motor. There was no doubt this was him. He was short and solid, his thick calves like a rugby player’s set firmly apart. He wore baggy navy shorts and a black sports shirt and had tied a white sweater around his neck. His skin was tanned deep and even like cherry wood, his silver hair bright against it.

Webster stood where he was, dripping and holding the towel close across his chest. Tourna sprang up the ladder two rungs at a time and held out his hand. Black sunglasses wrapped around his face.

“Ben. Aristotle Tourna. Delighted you could make it.” His smile revealed two strips of bright white teeth, even and closely packed. His handshake was needlessly strong.

“Likewise.” Webster, taller by a head, gave a half smile. “I was about to give up on you.”

“Sorry. Unavoidable. You had breakfast?”

“No.”

“Me neither. Get dressed and we’ll eat.”

When Webster returned twenty minutes later Tourna was on the phone, talking loudly in Greek and walking back and forth along the side of the boat. Eventually he sat down and started buttering a croissant. His skin sang with health. He had the look of a man who ate well: his jowls were full and his cheekbones fleshy. It was hard to imagine that he denied himself much.

“Better than having breakfast in some hotel on the mainland, no?” he said, beaming at Webster.

“It’s beautiful.”

“I love it here. You see that island over there?” Webster turned. “That’s Symi. Greece. And that, the peninsula, that’s Turkey. But really, it’s all Greece. Always was. One day we’ll take it back. Whenever I come here I feel like I’m on a raid.” He laughed. Webster couldn’t tell if there was mirth in it.

Tourna began to pile spoonfuls of fruit salad into a bowl. As he ate, his leg jigged up and down.

“So, Ben. What’s your background?”

Webster told him about his time in Russia, about finding journalism tame in London after Moscow, about falling into the industry by chance.

“Why did you leave GIC?”

“Too big. Too corporate. A new rule every day. It became hard to get results.”

“And Ikertu’s different?”

“I think it has the right balance.”

Tourna nodded, as if to himself.

“OK. OK. That’s good.” He put his spoon down. “Tell me. What happens to what I tell you here?”

“It stays with me. If you want to engage us and we’re happy to be engaged then I’ll share it with my colleagues.”

“If you’re happy?”

“Yes.”

“Why would you not be happy?”

“We might not like the job. We might not like the client.”

Tourna nodded again, and then laughed. “So I’m on parade here as well?” He took a long drink of orange juice. “That’s OK.” Webster sensed he was being stared at. “OK. Let’s start. You know Russia. Do you know a man called Konstantin Malin?”

“Yes, I do.” He felt his senses jolt awake. Malin. That was unexpected. Malin and his quiet legend.

Tourna nodded and chewed. “I bought a company from him.”

Webster interrupted. “Mr. Tourna, would you mind taking off your sunglasses? I’d be more comfortable if I could see your eyes.”

Tourna looked up from his bowl and stopped eating. “You want to look inside, huh?” His forehead creased as he raised his eyebrows. “You want this work or not?”

Webster smiled. “We’re busy. It’s all the same to me.”

“OK,” Tourna said with a dry laugh, and took them off. His eyes were a flat brown, the skin around them slightly lighter than the rest of his face. “This is more fun than I expected.”