“Not really,” he told her. “I’m the one Kirill called. I’m the only one he trusted.”
“Why?”
“He and my father were friends.”
“That’s a terrible reason to trust someone.”
“I agree.”
She brought her cigarette to her lips, jerked it away, then took a drag.
Milo said, “Kirill wanted me to protect Joseph Keller.”
She exhaled smoke at him, then glanced past him to the bar. “I don’t know anyone with that name.”
“I think you do,” Milo said.
Again she looked at the bar, so Milo turned to look for himself. The bartender, a huge bald man with hair coming out of his ears, watched them both. Maybe waiting for a signal. And Milo had come inside alone and unarmed. He was beginning to regret that decision.
“Ms. Mokrani,” Milo said, “you have a choice. Either you let me take over the protection of Joseph Keller, or you keep him yourself. But for how long? You know that you’re being watched, right? Colonel Rahmani is very curious, and smart, but I don’t think he’s your real problem. The Russians—they killed Kirill in order to get to Keller. And they will not give up.”
Gazala knitted her brows, as if hit by a sudden pain. “You are sure they killed him?”
“Pretty sure.”
“Why would they?”
Milo shook his head. “I won’t know until I speak with Joseph Keller.”
Gazala brought her cigarette to her lips, pulled it away, then took a drag.
Whippet was still in the doorway across the street when he and Gazala left the bar together. Milo caught her eye, and she nodded that the coast was clear. For once, luck was on his side.
As Whippet crossed the street to join them, Gazala looked frightened, so he introduced them, but called Whippet Mary. Together, they followed a winding path through narrow streets surrounded by high apartment buildings. “He never liked my place,” she said.
“Egorov?” Milo asked.
“He said a woman like me should live on the water. He was that way. A charmer. But not a fool. He had been hurt, and had learned from pain.”
“Who had hurt him?”
Gazala Mokrani raised her chin, just a little, in the way of a natural-born performer. “He told me that he had devoted his life to a political system that had failed him. It wasn’t until he grew old that he realized his only responsibility was to himself, and to me.”
“So you wouldn’t describe him as a patriot?”
She narrowed her brow, considering the question. “Countries, he told me, mean nothing. They are just masks. Money is everything.”
“Did he convince you?”
A mild shrug. “Kirill Egorov was a very convincing man.”
The foyer was chilly, with iron stairs wrapping around an ancient elevator that looked like it hadn’t functioned in a long time. The walls were coarse and occasionally marked up by graffiti—but it was always low, no more than four feet up, which made Milo think that little children were the culprits. At the third floor, Gazala pressed a button on the wall and the landing lit up, the bare bulb buzzing. She used another key on her heavy door, and when she pushed it open they could hear the sound of a television playing English-language news. She waved them inside, then shut and dead-bolted the door.
“I am back,” she called in English as she unwound her scarf. “Not alone.”
A male voice said, “Fuck.”
Gazala looked at them and shook her head in annoyance.
Milo followed the direction of the voice and in the high-ceilinged living room found a white, barefoot man in a dirty shirt and slacks, scrambling to his feet in front of an old television bled of most of its color. He smoothed his unkempt hair, then wiped at his bristly cheeks. His eyes were bloodshot, but he was fit, his arms wiry with muscle. Not what Milo had expected from an accountant, but it was the same face from the MirGaz website and Keller’s Nexus page.
“Joseph Keller,” Milo said, “Kirill Egorov sent for me.”
“Name?” Keller snapped, his accent more working-class than Milo would have expected.
“Milo Weaver.”
Keller thought about that, tilting his head. “Prove it?”
Milo handed over his laminated UN card. “And you?”
Reading Milo’s details, Keller used his other hand to reach into his back pocket and take out a worn British passport with his name and photo in it. Slipped between its pages was a business card: JOSEPH KELLER, SENIOR CONTROLLER, MIRGAZ, with an address on the Frunzenskaya embankment in Moscow.
When Whippet entered the room and raised an eyebrow, Keller took a step back. “Who’s she?”
“The only way you’re getting out of here alive,” she told him.
Keller’s shoulders sank, and he handed back Milo’s ID.
“I will make tea,” Gazala said as she passed the doorway.
“What’s going to happen now?” Keller asked.
“We’re going to sit down and drink some tea. You’ll talk. After that, we’ll arrange for you to be moved someplace safer.”
“Where?”
“Europe.”
Keller thought about that, then nodded. He went to the television and turned it off.
“We need to hear it all,” Milo said. “Okay?”
Keller held his eye for a long moment. He had the look of someone who had lost everything. A barren look. Milo had seen that look before, years ago, in the face of Martin Bishop. He’d also seen that look further back, when his days smeared into the next in a constant blur of cities and languages and hotel rooms and sudden, brutal acts in service to his nation. It was the face he’d seen in the mirror.
19
Before telling his story, Keller asked if Milo knew anything about his family in Moscow. “Are they all right?”
“I have someone checking on it. We should know soon.”
Keller nodded. “You’re CIA, then? FBI?”
Milo shook his head. “But I’m in a position to help.”
That answer seemed to bother him. “Then, uh, what’s your relationship to Egorov? You’re not … Russian, are you?”
“No, I’m not,” Milo assured him. “I’m not CIA, MI6, or any of them.”
“Who do you represent?”
“Does it matter?” Milo asked. “I’m the only one here offering to keep you safe.”
As Keller considered this, Milo wondered if their negotiations were going to break down here and now. Because there was no way Milo would admit, at this stage at least, the secret of his organization. Eventually, Keller wiped at his lips with his thumb and said, “I didn’t know. I mean, if I had known I wouldn’t have touched it. I don’t enjoy knowing things like this.”
“I don’t doubt you.”
Keller looked around, unsure, and Gazala entered with three cups and a steaming teapot on a tray. When she set them down, Whippet came over to fill the cups. Gazala gave Keller a look—neither kindness nor hatred—then disappeared.
Milo said, “Why don’t we work through who you are first. Okay?”
Keller blinked at him. “Well, Joseph Samuel Keller.”
“Married, obviously.”
“Yes. To Emily Thompson, we have two sons—Jeremy, six, and Daniel, eight.”
“You’re an accountant, I understand.”
“CPA. Successful, too. I was. That’s how Sergei heard of me. Through my clients. Sergei Stepanov, CEO of MirGaz. You’ve heard of him?”
“I have.”
Keller gratefully accepted the cup Whippet offered, but Milo only set his on the coffee table and focused on Keller. Watched him take his first tentative sip, place the cup back on the table, and say, “This was a year ago. MirGaz, you understand, is the world’s largest natural gas producer. So Sergei’s job offer wasn’t a small thing. I moved my family from London to a gated community outside Moscow, and … well, we did well. I did good work for Sergei, skirting the bleeding edge of international financial law.”
M
ilo remembered how Oskar had put it: He helped make Stepanov richer than he already was. Certainly richer than he needed to be. Arguably richer than he deserved to be. “Did you like the work?” Milo asked.
“Sure. People usually like the things they’re good at, and this is what I’m good at.”
“You made Russian friends?”
He shook his head. “We weren’t social, not with them. We had our English school, a nice circle of Protestant expats—I suppose we lived in a bubble, but it was our bubble, and we were happy. Sergei and his political friends lived their lives while we lived ours. By last month, a year into it, we were still happy enough. And then I got the invitation. To a gala party at the Ritz-Carlton.”
Milo raised his brows to show he was interested. “This was Sergei Stepanov’s party?”
Keller nodded. “He put them on all the time, oligarchs and Duma members getting drunk with high-class prostitutes, but it was the first time I’d been invited.”
“Why were you invited?”
Keller shrugged. “I didn’t know. I just knew I wasn’t up to it. So I declined the invitation, and was surprised the next day when Sergei walked into my office to insist that I come. I mean, I’d been there a year but had only been in the same room as Sergei Stepanov maybe four times. And here he was, coming out to the office just to see me. He told me my ‘countrymen’ would be there, that I would make them feel more comfortable, and, well, to come for him.”
“Hard to say no to that.”
Keller nodded. “He’d rented the entire ground floor. It was—it was enormous. Hundreds of people, the social and political stratosphere. Everyone said Putin was going to show up, but I never saw him. Drinks flowed, and sometimes camera crews squeezed through, because the press had been invited, too. To show off what Russian success looked like. I didn’t know anyone, of course, and Sergei was busy entertaining others, so all there was for me was to stand around and drink. Not too much, but enough to relax a little, and that was when this Russian woman, Anna, struck up a conversation. At first, I thought she was flirting, and then I worried she was a prostitute. She was young and pretty, and the party was full of them. But she wasn’t a prostitute, and her English was quite good. Anna, it turned out, was as much of an outsider as me—not sickeningly rich, and not screwing any of these rich men. She ran a cultural blog, and she’d gotten into the party with her press pass. It turned out she also knew a fair amount about finance, and I was happy to talk about what I did … until she started asking uncomfortable questions, questions about Sergei. What kinds of financial interests did Sergei have in London? How close was he to Putin, really? And, more specifically, was it true that Sergei had close personal contact with Diogo Moreira?”
“Diogo Moreira?” Milo cut in. “Who’s that?”
“I didn’t know. Not yet. But Anna did—the name really meant something to her, and more importantly she’d come to the party to follow up on a connection between Sergei and Moreira.”
“She doesn’t sound like a cultural blogger.”
“Even I was starting to figure that out. I demanded to know what she was, really, and that’s when she admitted that she ran a dissident blog that published a lot of political exiles. RESIST. Her full name was Anna Urusov.”
“She was a well-known journalist,” Milo said. “No one figured this out when she showed up at the door?”
Keller shook his head. “The thugs at the door weren’t the cream of Russia’s crop.”
“Sure.”
“Still, I was just as ignorant. I didn’t know the name Anna Usurov from Anne of Green Gables. But I knew that anyone who ran a dissident blog and was asking questions about Sergei could only mean bad news. So I started to extricate myself from the conversation, and that was when Sergei appeared again, drunk. He introduced himself to Anna, who he didn’t recognize, and kissed her hand. But he’d come for me, wanted to introduce me to my countrymen.”
“Did you tell him about Usurov? About the questions?”
Keller took another swig of his tea, as if he might need it. He flexed his arms, the muscles and tendons taut. He said, “Look. Though I did try to close my eyes to these kinds of things, I knew where Sergei’s money came from, and where it went. Mostly. I knew Sergei was not someone to fool with, and when he asked me about Anna, I didn’t say a thing. I didn’t want anything to happen to her, but more importantly I didn’t want anything to happen to me or my family. Guilt by association, you understand?”
Milo did.
“Sergei brought me to meet a group of English businessmen. Told them I was the cleverest accountant he’d ever seen, that I could rub two stones together and make money appear. Nonsense like that. But it went over well enough. Eventually, I went to get another drink and in the lobby saw Anna again—she caught my eye as two big goons dragged her out of the hotel. Her eyes seemed to be pleading. Really. Pleading. I felt sick. I got my stuff from the coat check and left.”
“No one stopped you?”
“Why would they?”
“Sure.”
“And I drove home. Slowly, worried I’d have a wreck. I just felt so filthy. You know? I told Emily, and told her that I’d sworn off things like that. Never again. I was going to visit the office, home, church. That was it. Emily surprised me by disagreeing. But it shouldn’t have surprised me. My success is entirely her doing. If it wasn’t for her, I’d still be shuffling numbers for bloody Oxfam. But she pushed. Just like she did that night. This is how you move up the ladder, Joe, she said. You endear yourself to the boss.” He shook his head and asked Milo, “But at what cost?”
Milo felt like Keller needed an answer, but he didn’t have one to give.
20
“I couldn’t sleep,” Keller said. “I couldn’t stop thinking about Anna Usurov and her questions. Who was Diogo Moreira? What was his connection with Sergei? Looking back, it was stupid of me. If I’d been like my wife, I would’ve known it was in my best interests to just forget about it. But I’m nothing like Emily. I’m too curious. So I lay there, wondering, and decided to check on it in the morning.”
“In the office?”
“Yes. It’s a forty-minute drive, door to door, and on the way I listened to Moscow FM. That’s the English-language station. News and cultural pieces, mostly, and news from London, which I like. I get to the office, hello to the guard on duty, and up a floor to my office. I ignore my emails and get right to it—Diogo Moreira. And it was quick. A simple Google search. Moreira’s an officer in Portugal’s intelligence agency.”
“Serviço de Informações de Segurança?”
“Look, I’m not naïve—I know MirGaz has shady connections to some European governments, but Portugal? That’s what I don’t get. MirGaz’s European interests are in the east, where natural gas pipelines run into the EU. Portugal isn’t even on MirGaz’s radar.”
“NATO,” said Milo.
“What?”
“If Moreira is Portuguese intelligence, then he has access to NATO documents.”
Keller stared a moment, as if this were news. Milo doubted it was, though, for even if it hadn’t occurred to Joseph it would have occurred to Egorov, who would have told him. Or maybe not.
“Anyway,” Keller said, “that’s not my wheelhouse. MirGaz is. So I plugged his name into the company’s intranet, just to see, and was surprised to find a hit. A document—thirty-two pages—detailing Diogo Moreira and about sixty other names, along with payments to each of them.”
“What kind of payments?”
“I don’t know. And even as I send the spreadsheet to my printer, I’m already starting to worry that what I’m doing might not be the best idea. I don’t know—maybe it’s Emily’s voice in my head. I take the pages and leaf through them. Payments to banks all around the world, small banks I’ve never even heard of. Monthly, quarterly. Tens and hundreds of thousands of euros at a time.”
“How much are we talking about in total?”
“One-point-two billion euros.”
“Yeah. And the thing is, all this is being paid out to people I’ve never heard of, names that have never been noted in the accounts. At first, like I said, I was a little scared, but when I realize this, I think that, no, I have done the right thing. I’ll take the document upstairs to get to the bottom of this. Maybe right to Sergei. Because if I don’t it might come back to bite me in the ass later on. Right?”
“That’s a reasonable assessment,” Milo said, but knew he wasn’t convincing. “Is that what you did?”
“I didn’t get a chance. My door opened, and one of my co-workers comes in. Alexei. Little guy, twenties. No one likes him. He walks in, poking at his phone, as if he expects the room to be empty, then stops short when he sees me. He’s stunned, but I don’t know why he would be. You’re here? Alexei says. You came in? Like he can’t believe it. Then he holds up his hands and starts to back up. Wait. Okay? Don’t move. Stay right here. I have to get the others. Then he runs off.”
Keller reached for his tea and took a drink, his hand trembling. When he set the cup down again, it clanked against the saucer.
“Now I’m the one who’s stunned. It’s weird, right? But before I can think it through, my phone rings. It’s Emily. She wants to know why Grigory, MirGaz’s head of security, an old man we dealt with when we first moved, is parked in our driveway. I ask what the old man is telling her. Nothing, she tells me. He’s not even getting out of his car. I’m scared. And—well, that’s enough for me, isn’t it? The morning is sliding into really weird places quickly. So I tell her I’ll be home as soon as I can, and I walk out of the office. Downstairs, good-bye to security, and when I’m almost at my car I realize I still have the document under my arm. All thirty-two pages. Fine, it’ll be safe with me, and I’ll deal with it later. And as I’m getting in the car I hear my name being called. It’s Alexei, and there are five others with him. One of them a guard. They’re all calling for me to come back. But I…” He hesitated, thinking back to that moment. “Look, I’m worried about my wife, and everything just feels too strange and uncomfortable. So I get in my car and drive off. Back on the highway, heading out to the suburbs. And that’s when it happens. The radio’s still on, and I find out that the police have just discovered the body of Anna Usurov in her apartment, dead from asphyxiation.”
The Last Tourist Page 13