To Kill a Man - Maggie Costello Series 05 (2020)

by Bourne, Sam

  Maggie came to a file labelled only ‘Judith’. She clicked on that, but for the first time it demanded its own password. She tried using one of the several that Natasha had given her, but none worked. After the third failed attempt, a message popped up telling her that she would be barred from access to that document for one hour.

  Judith. Was there another layer to the enigma of Natasha Winthrop? Did this folder contain a cache of letters and notes – photographs? – relating to a past relationship with a woman? Maggie thought back to those pictures of Natasha stepping out at various Washington events, usually with a man on her arm. She thought of that day at Cape Cod, the long chat they had into the night: there had been no mention of a man. Was she hiding something about herself, pretending to be somebody she wasn’t? It seemed so unlikely. Except here was a file labelled ‘Judith’, kept under password-encrypted lock and key. Maggie would come back to it.

  Finally, she came to a file whose label she could not read. She squinted at the screen to see that the label was not in English but in the Cyrillic alphabet. She clicked it open and watched as it disgorged its contents, the screen filling with several dozen files. One was labelled with the single word, ‘Remember’. Maggie clicked on it, to reveal that it contained a single email. The subject line was also ‘Remember’. The recipient was Natasha Winthrop, and the sender was . . . Natasha Winthrop, though sent from a different, personal email address. It was only one sentence long:

  You may know a lot, but you won’t know everything.

  Maggie read that over several times. It sounded like advice Natasha had given to herself, or even the kind of aphorism a less stylish type than Natasha might have embroidered, framed and hung on the wall. It would be suitably platitudinous guidance to fit any office, and yet Natasha did not have it where it could be seen daily, but only in this one file. Was this a memo-to-self, or was this perhaps a record of advice supplied by a specific client? Was it, in fact, a warning?

  Now Maggie plunged in, browsing through the documents held within. They were a mixture of English and Russian, with two or three names recurring several times. One ran to several thousand pages, dense with the language of commercial contracts: all warranties, disclaimers, limitations on liability, confidentiality clauses, indemnification clauses, arbitration clauses. She tried to cut through the detail, to ascertain the most basic facts of the arrangement she was reading about. But it was impossible. She couldn’t even be sure who the main parties were to this agreement. The text seemed to have been constructed by piling opaque layer upon opaque layer, each one thick not only with corporate legalese but deliberate obfuscation.

  Orbiting around that text, like moons around a planet, were a clutch of others which Maggie eventually deciphered as company registration documents, locating various blandly named corporate structures in Cyprus, the British Virgin Islands, Panama and the Cayman Islands. She studied a few at random, looking for the name of an owner. Except there was no human name to be found. Instead a company registered in, say, Cyprus would give as its owners the name of two further companies, or ‘LLPs’, who themselves would be registered in, say, Bermuda and Belize. Finding the parents of those companies would lead to yet more mysterious corporate entities, registered in ever more exotic locations. Finding these companies was, it seemed to Maggie, like playing a childhood game of pass the parcel: each time you thought you had reached the end, you realized you had just come upon yet another layer of wrapping. The item you sought remained concealed, perhaps infinitely.

  Maggie went back to that first file she had opened, with its word of warning.

  You may know a lot, but you won’t know everything.

  Right now, Maggie thought to herself, she knew nothing at all.

  In frustration, she opened a half-dozen other folders – one of which contained screenshots of messages, again in Russian, sent via ProtonMail, which Maggie knew operated out of Geneva and promised maximum end-to-end encryption – saw that they contained more of the same, then promptly closed them again. There was no way she was going to make sense of this, and certainly not in a rushed few minutes.

  Finally she clicked on a file which stood out from the others because it was a JPEG, rather than a PDF or Word document. It opened up to display a photograph of a piece of paper. The picture was not casual, but carefully taken, in the style of a museum catalogue displaying a rare papyrus. In fact, as Maggie zoomed in on the image, she saw that this was not a piece of paper at all but something thicker. Words had been handwritten in solid black ink onto the white cotton of a restaurant napkin.

  They were in Russian. There was a sentence, and underneath it what Maggie assumed were two signatures.

  She pulled out her phone, clicked on the Google Translate app and held up the camera lens to the screen. The words wobbled and hovered for a bit, until eventually the device got a fix on them, sufficient to convert them into type. The app generated a rough, instant translation, so that magically it was an English sentence that now seemed to float on the napkin:

  We agree that we own the mine and all its profits together, half each.

  Was that it? Was that what all these thousands of pages of contractual minutiae boiled down to? Maggie imagined how it might have worked. Two oligarchs shaking hands over dinner, agreeing to do the deal right there and then, one of them pulling out a fat fountain pen to inscribe their agreement in cloth then handing it to lawyers in London, New York, Brussels and Washington, to turn it into a formal contract.

  Was that how Natasha fitted in? Was she the Washington end of this international legal operation, doing her bit to hide the true ownership of, say, a zinc mine in Kazakhstan, wrapping it up inside a maze of shell companies and fictitious brass-plate firms in assorted island jurisdictions, the better to ensure not a cent was paid in tax?

  The very thought was enough to fill Maggie with gloom. The notion of foreign, and especially Russian, influence on the US electoral process had been a battleground since the last campaign. The frontrunner, Tom Harrison, had already had to deny ‘links’ with Moscow, not that that had cooled the more fevered corners of progressive Twitter. They were still hot with claims that Harrison was the next handcrafted puppet of the Kremlin. According to this theory, the Russians were engaged in a classic bet-hedging exercise. Given their role in the last election, they already had the incumbent president. If his opponent in November was Harrison, then they couldn’t lose. It would be puppet versus puppet, with Moscow the certain winner.

  Maggie didn’t buy any of that. Harrison’s defects were glaring, even before he’d added to them with that creepy shoulder-squeeze-and-whisper move the other day. But there was no compelling, as opposed to flaky, evidence that he was some bought asset of the Kremlin. His record in the senate suggested he was anything but.

  Still, the mere raising of the suggestion had done its work. His opponents, starting with the president, had thrown some mud and now a vague smell of it stuck. Washington was brutal like that. ‘Pig-fucking’ had been Stuart’s shorthand for it, in memory of the legend of Lyndon Johnson, in one of his first campaigns, deciding to spread a rumour that his opponent enjoyed intercourse with pigs. His campaign manager said, ‘But Lyndon, you know he doesn’t do that.’ To which Johnson had replied, ‘Sure, I know. I just want to make him deny it.’

  It was partly all this Russia talk that had fuelled Natasha Winthrop’s little boomlet. She was a cleanskin, untainted by Beltway grime. If it now turned out that she had served as a consigliere to the Moscow mob, helping in what was a glorified money-laundering scheme, her electoral appeal – presuming any could be salvaged from this Todd nightmare – would be gone. She would be ‘as bad as all the rest’, the verdict terminal to any insurgent candidate.

  Or was Maggie reading this all wrong? Did Natasha have all these documents because she was building a case against the rapaciousness of the men whose signatures were etched on the luxurious cotton of that napkin? Had she
been hired by one of those NGOs that campaign for the rights of indigenous people swept out of the way by a big plant or a deep mine that destroyed the place they had called home for centuries, cutting down the ancient forest that had given them shelter or poisoning the lake that had quenched their thirst? Maggie pictured Natasha in dirty jeans and heavy boots, a film of sweat on her forehead, as she surveyed a blighted landscape, filling a notebook with the testimony of those Kazakh villagers, lamenting that their land had been despoiled and their groundwater contaminated by the arrival of a foul, polluting mine.

  The trouble was, Maggie couldn’t be sure. Was Natasha working with the men who had scribbled their names on that napkin, or working against them? If the former, were those men drawn from that subset of oligarchs who constituted an unofficial and dispersed opposition to the man in the Kremlin, funding dissident groups and anti-government websites, willing on the day when he would, at long last, be ejected from power? If they were, then that would explain the convoluted, arcane financial arrangements that filled the electronic folders on Natasha’s computer screen: they were hiding their assets not from the international taxman, but from the long, greedy arm of the Russian state and its latter-day czar.

  Or were the two dealmakers? So casual with their vast fortunes that they were happy to record a multi-billion-dollar deal on a piece of table linen; faithful allies of the Russian leader, acting as his de facto envoys to the wider world, protecting his interests and even – or so rumour had it – stashing his billions outside the country, whether in bank vaults in Zürich or luxury penthouses in Knightsbridge, ready for the day when he would need them? Plenty of the Russian super-rich performed that function. They were seen as independent men of standing in their new, adopted cities – funding a science lab in London, endowing an orchestra in New York – but in reality they were mere bagmen for the boss, able to function only until the day he withdrew his patronage.

  As Maggie stared at that high-resolution image on the screen, preserving a handwritten contract as if it were a fragment of the gospels, she felt sure that, somehow, it contained the answer to the riddle that currently confronted her. If someone was indeed working to damage or derail Natasha Winthrop, the explanation surely lay here. It would hinge on the answer to the question posed by the contents of these files, but which Maggie could not yet resolve. Was Natasha the scourge of these Moscow oligarchs – or their servant?

  Chapter 25

  Moscow, Russia, three days earlier

  One woman looked to another with a signal that consisted of nothing more than a glance in the man’s direction and back again. That sent word – silent word – around the club, spoken out loud only in the changing area. ‘He’s in again.’

  The women all knew who that meant, though the clientele at The Landing Strip included no shortage of low-lifes. Nor did the man owe his notoriety to his wealth. Plenty of oligarchs, mini-oligarchs and their well-rewarded henchmen came to this place on Prospekt Mira, handily distant from the city centre.

  It was not an anonymous venue; it was not even discreet. But it was less conspicuous than some of the alternatives. Partly because it had few international customers, it was assumed that – unlike most of the sex clubs in the city, and certainly the suite of every five-star hotel – not every corner in The Landing Strip was monitored by hidden cameras. Moscow’s gangster class felt unwatched, and therefore relatively relaxed, here. That was certainly true of this man.

  The woman approached to take his drinks order. This was an act of self-sacrifice on her part. She’d been here longer than the other ‘girls’, who she regarded as too young to put in the firing line. (One, who had started only last week, claimed to be seventeen, but the woman was ready to stake a night’s tips that the girl wasn’t a day older than fifteen. If the man got her in his sights, there’d be no stopping him.)

  She appeared at his table. She put her head up, shoulders back and her chest out, smiling her friendliest smile – safe in the knowledge that he wouldn’t notice her cold, laser stare. He wouldn’t be looking at her eyes.

  The man was on his own, as always. Bald head, brown leather jacket, black polo neck, as always. Bottle of Johnnie Walker Black Label, as always. He tucked a hundred-dollar bill into the woman’s garter, fingers lingering on the skin of her inner thigh, as always. He was sending a message: The big shot has arrived, he has money in his pocket so he can do whatever he wants. As always.

  The woman remembered her first encounter with him. At the time, she had been glad that the man had picked her out. He was clearly loaded. And there were none of the usual warning signs: no slavering, no pawing. In fact, the man had barely seemed interested. While she performed on the stage, he had been looking at his phone.

  Even when she gave him a private dance, grinding up against him, the man showed no obvious signs of being aroused. He did not breathe heavily, he did not have to adjust himself in his seat. When he asked to have another dance in a booth, it had come as a surprise.

  The man had chosen the end booth, furthest away from the bar and the stage. That was a clue, if only she had been looking out for it. But the woman’s mind had been elsewhere, chiefly on the extra cash she hoped to earn.

  Once in the privacy of the booth, inches away from him, she’d intensified her routine, making it slower and, somehow, more serious. As she turned and moved, showing herself to him, she remained focused on the hard currency that would soon be hers, calculating upwards from the hundred dollars he had handed her just for serving him a drink. In a moment she would unleash her signature move, one that had always paid dividends.

  But she never got that far. Instead, and with no build-up or warning, he placed his hand on the top of her head and pressed down hard, as if plunging the detonator that would demolish a tall building. He stopped once he had her mouth level with his groin.

  In itself that was not an unfamiliar ploy. Men often tried it and the woman had a ready response. She ducked her head out from under his hand, aiming to get back upright where she would do her finger-wagging number: incorporating the gesture into her routine, but also leaving no doubt she meant it. Done right, it usually had the desired effect, signalling to the client that he needed to back off, without humiliating him. That was one thing this woman, and all the ‘girls’, knew: don’t ever make a guy feel small. Don’t belittle or emasculate him. Because that’s when he’ll get nasty.

  The woman had her plan but, once again, she didn’t get the chance to execute it. No sooner had she got her head out from under the palm of his hand than the man connected with it again, pressing it so hard, he forced her fully onto the ground. This time he was leaving nothing to chance, gripping her skull so there was no chance of escape. He kept pressing until her cheek was on the floor.

  Now he came off the banquette and, with his right hand still a vice around her head, reached for his zip with his left. When she resisted, he released his right hand for just long enough to slap her across the face, so hard she wondered if her cheek was bleeding, and then resumed his grip. After that, she did what he wanted her to do, just to make it stop.

  When it was over, the woman hid herself. Cowering in the toilet, feeling the red sting of her face, she talked to the other women through the door of the stall. She didn’t want to come out. She told them what had happened, warned them to stay away from him. It was nearly dawn before she dared open the door.

  Later the woman talked to the woman who ran things day to day, asking that she report the man to the police. But when she gave a description of the man, the boss shook her head and her eyes hardened. ‘Not this one,’ she said. ‘No, no, no. Not this one.’

  He was too rich and too powerful. That was what she had said. ‘Besides, he has the police in his pocket. We report him, we get in trouble. That’s how it works. Sorry.’ And she passed the woman a tube of cream for her face.

  And that had been the end of it. He came back to the club less than a week later
. The woman avoided him, but over the weeks and months that followed she realized she needn’t have bothered. He didn’t remember her face or the face of any of the women here, including those he had assaulted.

  All the ‘girls’ were under strict instruction from each other, the wisdom handed down from the veterans – those that had been dancing at The Landing Strip for months rather than weeks – to the new recruits. With this man, no private dances, if you can avoid it. Never in the corner booth, if you can avoid it. No extras, if you can avoid it. And if you can’t avoid it – if he forces you – don’t resist. Because if you kick or scratch or punch him, then he will remember you and he will have his revenge. You’ve seen the picture of that girl, the one on the pinboard up by the lavatories? You know what happened to her, poor thing. May she rest in peace.

  ‘Can I get some service?’

  The woman turned around to see a new customer had arrived at a table near the performing area. The woman had been so focused on the man, she hadn’t seen this one come in.

  ‘Of course,’ the woman said and took a step nearer.

  Only now, no longer blinded by the spotlight aimed at the stage, could she confirm that this new arrival was a woman. Such things were not unheard of, but they weren’t exactly encouraged either. The management were quite happy to have two girls simulating it on stage. But as a paying customer? That was more awkward.

  The new arrival ordered a vodka and tonic, no lime, no ice. She then asked the woman to join her at her table.