The Silent Oligarch: A Novel

by Christopher Morgan Jones

  He had discharged his driver, and to stretch his back after the morning’s flight was walking across Hyde Park, happy that August and Monaco were behind him. His last four days there had been uncomfortable: he had been tetchy, Oksana sullen. He wanted to tell her what was troubling him but knew he couldn’t; she had taken his nervousness to mean that he didn’t trust her. Monaco, hot and threatening thunder, had tightened around him, and trips to Cannes and up into the hills around Grasse had failed to give release. The storms never came. He had felt relief when Oksana had boarded her flight, and no doubt she had too. Ten days were simply too many to spend in Monaco—perhaps too many, he thought, to spend with me.

  The park was green, vivid, old, full of tourists. It was five o’clock but the sun was still high and Lock, in his shirtsleeves, his jacket over his shoulder, walked at an idling pace past the Reformers Tree and the Old Police House, across the Serpentine Bridge and toward Kensington Palace. He was aware of loving London for reasons that he imperfectly understood, something to do with its confidence: London never pretended to be something it was not.

  He had never walked to her flat before. He continued to go slowly, eager and hesitant at once. He wondered which Marina would be there to greet him: the romantic whose broken hopes she still struggled to conceal or the cool rationalist who had understood long before him that they needed to be broken. It was this crisis in her that he loved, and it was this that made him dread seeing her: in her company he felt like either a heel or a quisling.

  They had met in Moscow, early in Lock’s time there. She was a lawyer—she worked in Moscow City Hall, selling off state property to private developers—and Malin’s goddaughter. It was he that introduced them, inviting them to a small dinner at his dacha, where he made a big show of playing matchmaker, embarrassing them both. There were moments later when Lock would wonder if this had all been part of his grand plan.

  For over six months Lock had been living the expatriate life in a city that absorbed him completely, and now he found himself in the Russian countryside for the first time. It was spring, and the low sun picked out the bright new leaves of the alders and silver birch. He first saw Marina as she walked with Yekaterina Malin in a grove of apple trees, and he thought immediately that even in this place she seemed to glow more intensely than the world around her. She was slight and fair-haired, with clear, white skin and a small nose, a little upturned. Her eyes were green, even and light, like peridots.

  That night they talked about Russia. Lock had never been invited to a Russian’s home before, and it was made clear to him that this was an honor only granted to a few. Russians, he was told, were by nature an open and friendly people but their recent history—perhaps all their history—had caused them to reserve friendship for longer than they might like. Lock had suggested that perhaps now, for the first time truly democratic, Russia could look forward to a warming of its relationships, at a diplomatic and a personal level. One of the other guests, a doctor and an old friend of Yekaterina, thanked Lock for his eloquent words but feared that it would take more to repair this broken nation, ravaged for centuries by the cruelty of the leaders it craved and probably deserved. Marina bridled at this: she objected to the notion that Russians loved to suffer; and she saw now the opportunity for a real people’s revolution that would allow Russia to achieve at last the greatness that had always been its destiny. As she talked, her cheeks flushed red. Marina in argument captivated Lock, and he watched rapt as she made her case with passion, not caring, it seemed, that she was in the company of her elders. Malin, less forbidding then, had seemed to enjoy every moment, cheerfully goading on both sides.

  Still dwelling on the past he arrived at her flat. It was on Holland Park, the road, and looked out onto the park itself. Lock remembered Vika telling him delightedly that she lived on Holland Park, in Holland Park, next to Holland Park. That too was London, ignoring any obligation to make sense. He stood outside the gate for a moment and looked up at the building: white stucco, double-fronted, huge but discreet about it. He breathed deeply, walked up the path and rang the bell.

  He saw from the name card next to it that she was still Marina Lock. She had kept his name when she left him, and he still, despite attempts to be disciplined, found in this some small, unrealistic hope of reconciliation. In the rare moments when he honestly reviewed his life he knew, with a certainty he was generally denied, that Marina was too good for him—not perhaps for the man he had once been but certainly for the one he had become. This knowledge pained him, partly for her sake but mainly because it shook the delicate fiction on which his remaining self-esteem rested. He might sometimes succeed in forgetting who he had once been but Marina was always there to help him remember.

  Her voice came over the intercom. “Hello?” Each time he heard it now it was a little less Russian.

  “It’s Richard.”

  “Come up.”

  The two long flights of stairs left him out of breath. Vika was waiting for him on the landing, and ran to him as he climbed the last steps.

  “Papa!”

  He stooped to hug her but felt a short stabbing in his back and knelt down instead. His head rested on her shoulder. It was a long time, he realized, since he had hugged anyone.

  Marina was in the door, smiling, less guarded than she would once have been. He stood up and gave her a kiss on each cheek.

  “Come in,” she said. “You look well. Where have you been?”

  “Monaco, for a week or so. It was hot.” A pause. He wouldn’t mention Oksana and Marina wouldn’t ask. And he wasn’t at all sure that he did look well.

  “Come into the kitchen. I’m making Vika her tea.”

  Lock ruffled the girl’s hair. She was fair, like her mother, but had his straight nose and his blue eyes. “And what are you having for tea, rabbit?”

  “Daddy, I’m not a rabbit. I’m eight years old. And I’m having fish fingers.”

  “Such an English girl these days.” Vika walked into the flat and he followed.

  For an hour Lock sat at the kitchen table and talked with his wife and his daughter. Vika was shy with him, but relaxed as he quizzed her about school and England and her holidays. She and Marina looked deeply healthy. They had been to Cape Kolka in Latvia with Marina’s parents for three weeks. They had walked, and swum, and gathered berries. Vika had seen a buzzard. Marina had claimed to have seen an eagle, but Vika didn’t believe her. Lock remembered sitting in hunting blinds with his father-in-law; it had never really suited him.

  “Daddy, when can you come on holiday with us?”

  “Well,” said Lock, “perhaps you and I could go to Holland and see Opa. We could go at half-term.”

  “Can you come too, Mummy?”

  “We’ll see.”

  They discussed Vika’s friends, and Marina’s parents, and Christmas arrangements. Lock would be in London for Christmas, he hoped. Marina cooked and tidied; Lock and Vika sat at the table. After her tea, Vika went to get ready for bed.

  “Might you come again?” said Marina.

  “I could. I have endless meetings with the lawyers. I may be here at the weekend as well. One night later in the week?”

  “Don’t disappoint her, Richard. It’s getting harder to explain why you never see us.”

  “I won’t.”

  “Let’s set a day.”

  “I can’t until I’ve seen the lawyer. I’ll know tomorrow.”

  “All right. You’ll call?”

  “I’ll call.”

  Marina looked at him steadily and said, “How are you?”

  “I’m fine. Things are good.”

  “So no change?”

  “Marina, come on.”

  “Why don’t you move to London? I don’t miss Moscow. I’m ashamed to say it but I don’t. Not at all. You could be freer here.”

  “It
won’t work. You know that. He needs me where he can see me.”

  “You know, I used to think Konstantin was the most wonderful man in the world. Like my father but more serious. Committed. I don’t understand what he’s become.”

  Lock did not reply.

  “What if you find a replacement?” said Marina. “For yourself?”

  “What, put an ad in Kommersant? Monkey wanted for oligarch? Must be quiet and domesticated?”

  “Please, Richard, don’t.”

  Lock sighed and rested his head in his hands, rubbing his temples. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’ve sometimes thought the same myself. It won’t work.”

  “But Dmitry managed it. Nina sent me an e-mail in the spring. They’re in Berlin and they’re happy. It’s like a new life.”

  “Dmitry was different.” Lock shook his head. “He’d only been there for what—four years? Five? And Konstantin always preferred Grachev in any case. Part of the problem is he still likes me. But in the end we’ve been together too long. The balloon’s too high.”

  Marina looked at him closely. Her silence meant that she didn’t concede that he was right but wouldn’t press her point. He was grateful to her for it.

  Before he left, Lock read to Vika, lying next to her on her pink bed. He wondered whether he was making a good job of it: he wasn’t sure he was expressive enough. He was no actor. The book was about a Palestinian girl who longed to play football for her country; it seemed very grown up. It was cool in Vika’s room, and safe, and he wanted to fall asleep next to her and never leave.

  By the time he said good-bye to Marina it was almost night outside; from the landing he could see the oaks in the park full and black against the dark blue of the sky.

  “Look,” he said. “You’re right. Sod the lawyers. Let’s go away at the weekend. We could go to that place in Bath. The three of us.”

  Marina crossed her arms. “No, Richard. That’s too much.”

  “Vika would love it.”

  “Until she came home.” She shook her head. “It isn’t right. And anyway she has dance on Saturdays.”

  Lock’s smile was disappointed. He put his hands in his pockets and looked down, turning slightly as if to leave.

  “You should come,” said Marina. “To watch her dance. She loves it.”

  “When is it?”

  “It’s at ten. Near the school.”

  “On Saturday?”

  “Saturday. It would mean more to her. Really.”

  Lock nodded. He kissed Marina on the cheek, just once, and left.

  THE NEXT DAY KESLER, in gray pinstripe, sat at the table, looking grave. Lock was eating a Bryson Joyce biscuit, sitting back in his chair, his right ankle resting on his left leg, his foot tapping impatiently in space.

  He had spent the morning instructing a firm of investigators to take Tourna’s affairs apart. Kesler had decided that he should maintain a distance, and Lock had gone alone. He had used the firm before and was reassured by its air of secrecy and menace; rather Muscovite, he thought. It even had a portmanteau name that had a Russian ring: InvestSol Ltd.—Investigative Solutions. There were three partners: one had worked for MI5, one for Special Branch, and the other came with no obvious pedigree. Their office, in a large seventies block somewhere in Victoria, had the air of a slightly under-funded government department. All three partners had been present this morning, no doubt sensing a big assignment. Lock had told them what he wanted and they hadn’t told him much at all, but he knew that soon Tourna’s bank accounts, phone records, credit card statements, dustbins and medical history would be sifted through for signs of anything that looked like ammunition. When he got back to Moscow he would ask the Russians to look into Tourna’s Russian profile, perhaps see what they could get from Greek intelligence. He wasn’t sure the Londoners were up to that.

  And now he was in an office on the twenty-first floor of a building near Moorgate, answering the many questions that Kesler was reading from a prepared list. There seemed to be several sheets and they were still on the first.

  “So who ultimately owns Faringdon? Ultimately?” Kesler was looking down at his notes, searching them as if for an answer he knew was not there. Griffin, the associate, was to Kesler’s left, and another junior lawyer sat beyond him; Lock hadn’t caught his name. They were all taking notes.

  “We’ve been through this,” said Lock.

  “We have, and I apologize, but if I don’t understand it I can’t defend you, and at the moment I don’t.”

  Lock breathed in deeply and let it out again, almost a sigh. As a lawyer himself he had always enjoyed telling other lawyers what to do, and over the years he had gotten used to it. He didn’t like this reversal, but more particularly he didn’t like to imagine the reasons for it. He wondered where Emily was. Was it Emily? Emma? On his previous visits, Kesler had always been accompanied by a pretty junior lawyer. Her absence no doubt indicated a shift in his status.

  “I don’t really feel like the client here, Skip.”

  “With respect, Richard, you’re not my client.”

  “Faringdon’s your client. Whose signature’s on the engagement letter?”

  “Yes. And my duty is to Faringdon, not necessarily to you—to the board and not the shareholder, to be precise.” Kesler held Lock’s eye for a moment. He looked over at his colleagues. “Lawrence, David, can you give us a moment?” Griffin hesitated. “Leave your things. Thank you.”

  Griffin and the junior left the room with the air of schoolboys who aren’t sure what they have done wrong.

  “Look,” Kesler said, staring hard at Lock, his palms open on the table, “leaving aside legal niceties, can we agree that our interests are aligned? What works for you works for Faringdon and that works for Konstantin. For now. We both know that you don’t own Faringdon and we both know who does. The world knows it. Tourna definitely knows it. But I have to know what lies between, because I have to know how likely Tourna is to prove that.”

  “I’ve told you everything to a certain point. If it becomes necessary I can tell you more.”

  Kesler looked at his watch. Now he was emphatic. “Richard, we’ve been talking for barely an hour. In Paris you’re likely to be on the stand for a day or two at least. Do you think their QC will get bored and just stop? Thank you very much, Mr. Lock, I think that will do? He will be much less nice than me. Much less. Now, we’ll be coaching you for that, but in the meantime,” slowly now, each word stressed, “you need to open up.”

  “Konstantin has nothing to worry about,” said Lock airily, with a small wave of his hand. He wasn’t sure whether this communicated the right air of unconcern. He didn’t trust Kesler; or, more precisely, he didn’t trust what Kesler had been asked to do.

  “I know, Richard. OK, I see. Christ.” Kesler looked down at his notes, resting his forehead on his hand, then slowly back to Lock. “Let me reassure you. I’m not here to conduct an audit. I’m not here to inspect the quality of your work and tell him to get a new man to plug the holes. You’ve had a big job to do for Malin but you are not the boss, and you don’t get to decide what to tell me. It’s already been decided.”

  So he was no longer the client. Malin and Kesler were talking directly. That wasn’t surprising—he knew that much from the meeting in Théoule—but he had still expected to play a role.

  There was a time, Lock thought, when I wasn’t this constricted, when my first response wouldn’t have been colored by fear. He asked himself what his old self would do now. Leave with a humiliating put-down to Kesler? Hire new lawyers? His old self would have had choices. But now, as Kesler had correctly identified, he was as frightened of Malin as he was of the law, and not to cooperate with Kesler was to invite the fury of both.

  He leaned forward and took another biscuit, still trying to project confidence.

  “All rig
ht. But you know how delicate this is.”

  “I do.”

  “Do you trust him?” Lock, delaying, nodded to the empty space where Griffin had sat.

  “Completely. He’s worked with me for five years.”

  “Why haven’t I seen him before?”

  “Because it hasn’t been a criminal defense matter before. Which is what this is.”

  “It’s an arbitration, for God’s sake. An arbitration. We’ve sat through or settled a dozen of them.” Lock was becoming a little louder and sarcastic now, beginning to gesticulate.

  “This is different, Richard. Because of where it may end up. Because they’re accusing you of being a criminal. Even if Tourna isn’t shit-stirring, and he will be, if that tribunal thinks you’re a money-launderer—even hints at it—you can guarantee that the Swiss will be all over it, the Americans—God knows who else.”

  The Swiss. The Americans. The unnamed others. With unassailable authority, indefatigable, righteous, rooting out the wrongdoers and sending them to jail. But if Lock went down, so would Malin, and Malin, therefore, wouldn’t let him. Therefore he was safe. There was logic to this. For a brief time he even welcomed the idea of relinquishing control of this mess to Kesler.

  OVER THE COURSE of the next six days Lock tried to tell Kesler everything. Six days and five evenings with Kesler, Griffin and the junior, describing a professional lifetime of routine, dishonest transactions. Almost a whole week in Bryson’s offices. Bored but nervous, he insisted on sitting opposite the large window that looked east toward Liverpool Street, so that while he talked he could watch London become lower and sparser as it faded into the east, finally giving hints of the countryside beyond. It was hot out there, clearly, but in their conference room (still quite a sizable one, Lock noted—he might no longer be a client, he might even be a criminal, but at least his boss was important enough to run up impressive fees) the temperature was steadily just above chilly.