When he got off the plane from Paris he found a voice-mail message waiting for him from Alan Knight. He had called from his Russian phone, which was unusual.
“Ben, this is Alan. It’s Thursday. Someone’s probably listening but I’m past caring. If they hear this maybe they’ll believe me.” He was quiet and hoarse, as if he was losing his voice. “Just to say we won’t be working together again, Ben. Sorry about that. But life here’s gotten a bit difficult. Seems I can’t get into the country without spending half a day being asked questions about my clients. Twice it’s happened now. I’ve been advised not to work for Westerners anymore, so that’s that. Not much I can do about it. I wish there was. Wish I could do something about the tax police raiding my office as well, but no doubt that’ll be cleared up soon, eh? These things usually are.” There was a long pause. He thought the message had come to an end. “So if you’re in Tyumen don’t look me up, Ben, all right? If it’s all the same to you. Best leave me alone for a bit. Best leave well enough alone.”
He had never heard Knight sound like that. He had complained before about the attention he was given by the security services, about his calls being overheard, but Webster had always assumed that whatever arrangement he had made for himself in Russia was stable. He’d been doing it for so long. He was one of them.
That evening Webster tried to write a progress report for Tourna, and rather to his surprise there was a lot to say. He left out all mention of Inessa. But Knight continued to prey on his mind. He told himself that any one of Alan’s jobs could be behind this, that there was no reason to think that his problems had anything to do with Malin, but every instinct in him cried otherwise.
AT TEN ON FRIDAY MORNING Hammer and Webster sat in the boardroom at Ikertu. Hammer had not run in. This was unusual and Webster wondered what it meant.
“Is he the sort to be late?” said Hammer.
“He was a day late last time.”
“I read the report. You’ve been busier than you think.”
“Yes, that occurred to me too.”
“How was Onder?”
“Enjoying himself.”
“You going to tell me about Berlin?”
“It was good. You were right.”
“I didn’t want you to go.”
“No, I mean about the whole thing. I feel better. I met my accuser, which helped. He burst in and rescued Mrs. Gerstman from me. He was a bit of a buffoon.”
“Good for him.”
“He still doesn’t like me very much, but he said something interesting.”
Hammer waited for him to go on.
“How’s your German?” said Webster.
“Minimal.”
“Mine isn’t what it was, but he said something that caught my ear and clearly wasn’t meant to. I think he said, ‘First the Russians, now the English. At least he didn’t break in.’ And then ‘Has he threatened you as well? It’s only a matter of time.’”
“Which means?”
“Someone thinks she knows something. It sounds as if her flat was broken into and they think it was Russians. Or perhaps Gerstman’s office. Then as he was ordering me out he said something about calls she’d had in the last ten days. I didn’t get a chance to ask her. I was more or less marched off the premises.”
“Could you call her?”
“Perhaps. I’ve promised her news from Hungary, if I get any. I don’t think she likes me either, but she doesn’t seem to hate me.”
The phone on the boardroom table rang. Mr. Tourna was in reception. Webster collected him and introduced him to Hammer, who looked skinny and pale beside him. Tourna, pristine in a light tweed jacket, baby-blue cashmere sweater and white shirt, looked as ostentatiously healthy as he had on his yacht.
Hammer was always delighted to meet a rogue and took on most of the small talk; Tourna, like most clients, was charmed. Hammer had a conman’s talent for finding a person’s passion and appearing to know all about it, and for five minutes he quizzed Tourna about boats, and sailing, and the relative merits of marinas throughout the Mediterranean and beyond.
“No, only sail, Mr. Hammer, only sail. I may look vulgar but I despise those floating brothels with their helicopter pads and their swimming pools. You can swim in the sea, no, if you want to swim? Ridiculous. Let me tell you, Mr. Hammer, I met a man once in Shanghai. We had been discussing some business. He asked me to come aboard his yacht. You have a yacht in Shanghai I ask, and yes, he says, in the harbor. The most beautiful yacht you will see. Well, there are many ships in Shanghai harbor but not so many yachts, I think. So I go. And there in the harbor is this monstrous big shining cream office block—with a helicopter on it, naturally. And we go on board and there are gold taps and beds in the shape of seashells. All very tasteful. And I ask my friend, where do you go? And he doesn’t understand. I say, where do you take her—because, for the life of me, I cannot think where I would want to sail near Shanghai. And he looks at me for a moment, still not understanding, and then he laughs, and he says, oh no, there’s no engine. You can’t go anywhere in it. The engine room is empty.” Tourna bellowed out a laugh. “It’s probably still there now!” Hammer laughed too, and Webster gave what he hoped was an enthusiastic smile. “So, gentlemen,” said Tourna, his face taking on the look of urgency that Webster had seen in Datça, “how are you getting on?”
They sat at the table. Webster handed out copies of the agenda and his report. Tourna took a minute to scan each document, then set them carefully to one side and looked Webster square in the eye.
“OK. This is interesting. This is nice. But this is not progress. Your fees are killing me. There is more in your invoices than in these reports, that’s for sure. You seem to have forgotten what I want.”
“I understand. There have been times in the last few weeks when I’ve thought we simply couldn’t do it.”
“If you can’t do it then we stop today. This is not a fishing expedition.”
“I think we can. Let me tell you what I think we’ve learned. You’re right about Malin. He’s creaming off more from the Russian state than all his peers. But that’s not enough. To prove that you’d need to go deep into Russia, so deep you’d probably never come back. And there’s nothing in his past to convict him. No one talks. He owns everyone who might know something.”
“So,” said Tourna, with a glance at Hammer, “how is that not hopeless?”
“You stop looking at him and look at his organization.” Webster was animated now, leaning forward and tapping his points home on the table. He took a copy of the report, turned it over and with a pencil drew on it a figure eight on its side—an infinity sign. “In Russia, he has this big operation, beautifully organized and black as pitch.” He started shading in the right-hand side of the eight. “You can’t see in. It’s in there that he steals the money, and it’s in there that he runs his investments. But the money has to come out before it can go back in. So in the West, in a hundred offshore companies, is the other big operation.” With his pencil he pointed to the other side. “More beautiful still, if anything. Layer upon layer. You can get a glimpse of it but you can’t get past the front door. And here, where the two sides meet, here sits Richard Lock, looking both ways.”
“So he knows everything?” said Tourna.
“So he knows everything. But better, if anything, without him none of this works. Everything has to go through him.” Webster paused for a second. “Have you read the updates I’ve been sending you?”
“I have.”
“Then you know about Dmitry Gerstman?”
“Yes, I do. Nasty business. Around Malin it does not surprise me.”
“It surprised me.” Webster and Tourna shared a look. “We don’t know who killed Gerstman, or if anyone did. But one thing I do know is that Lock is very scared.”
“This is a hypothesis?”
“No, this is fact. We had someone talk to him after he had given evidence in Paris.”
“My God, he was horrible in Paris.” Tourna gave a short bark of a laugh. “I’ve never seen anything like it. He started OK, he’d been prepared, but Christ, when our QC got his claws out? It was bloody. Bloody. If I were Malin I’d have called me after an hour and begged to settle. Who spoke to Lock?”
“I can’t tell you that.”
“OK. What did he say?”
“He’s scared. He knows he did badly this week and he’s scared to go back to Moscow. At least he was; he might be back there by now. I should imagine he’s terrified that he’s going to be next.”
“He’s scared. Good. He should be. So what?”
Webster hesitated for a moment. It crossed his mind that this was an ugly business, trading in a scared man’s fear. He went on. “Malin can’t live without Lock. Without Lock the fiction collapses. It’s a big lie, and he’s the man paid to do the lying. If we persuade him to tell the truth, then it will almost certainly win your lawsuits. Malin has to explain himself to everyone, and his business will be crippled at the same time. All his financing will dry up. Bryson Joyce may have to resign.”
“I don’t get it. If Lock gives evidence for us, he’s out of a job and he’s just made a big fucking enemy. Why would he do it?”
“Because,” Hammer said, “we’re at the stage now where the FBI and a number of others are taking an active interest in Mr. Lock’s case. I had a conversation with a friend of mine at the Bureau this week and they see great potential in him. In pure dollar terms, he’s one of the biggest money-launderers they’ve ever seen. And I hear from them that the Swiss are having a good look too.”
Tourna sat back, pushed his chair a foot or two away from the table, and pulled at his bottom lip while he thought. Like Hammer, he was a fidget, but where Hammer tapped and chewed he used his whole body. His leg jigged, he sat forward. As he watched him, Webster wondered whether Hammer had indeed made that call, and if so what had been said. He thought they were holding off until after this meeting.
“Mr. Hammer,” Tourna said at last. “What do you think?”
Hammer put down his pen. “It’s a big opportunity. Like all big opportunities, it comes with risks. The risks here are not really to us. They’re to Mr. Lock. You risk some fees, we risk reputation, but Lock could be in real trouble. Ben has had a difficult couple of weeks. It’s not usual for the people we interview to wind up dead. It’s not usual for us to be accused of causing it, either. But I think I’ve persuaded him that the best way to protect Lock, long term, is to help him out of this mess. He’s in way over his head. I can tell. I’ve seen so many of these guys. Some are tough enough, but he isn’t. So one day, something’s going to happen to bring Malin’s castle tumbling down, and Lock? He’s going to wind up dead or in jail. If he’s lucky, under house arrest in Moscow. The one way he can avoid that is by seeing the light. I suggest we show it to him.”
For perhaps a full minute Tourna sat pulling at his lip.
“What happens to your fees?”
Webster fielded it. “We’ve spent a lot of money so far because we had to have a lot of people doing a lot of work. Where this case is now, the only person billing hours to it is me. We’ll probably need some surveillance as well. We’re going to need to know where Lock is and what he’s doing. When he comes west. But we can scale back the monthly payment quite hard. The success arrangement remains the same.”
“How long do you think you need?”
“I’d say two months,” said Webster, “perhaps one.”
“What if Lock doesn’t go for it?”
“No harm done,” said Webster. Hammer nodded.
Tourna thought for a moment longer, pulling at his lip again.
“This is the only way,” said Webster.
Tourna nodded. “OK. Let’s do it. I want a cap on surveillance, though. I know what that shit can cost. If I need to follow my second wife I’ll just give her the money in alimony. It’s about the same.” He gave another short laugh and stood up to leave. “Mr. Webster. Mr. Hammer, nice to meet you. Do this for me, gentlemen. At any time this looks like it’s not working, stop the clock, yes? I know you’re having fun but not at my expense, OK?” Hammer smiled.
Webster saw Tourna out and then returned to the boardroom. Hammer was still there, still smiling.
“What was that about the Bureau?” said Webster, half enjoying one of Ike’s occasional surprises, half irritated by it.
“Sorry. I meant to tell you before he arrived. I called when you were in Berlin.”
“Are they interested?”
“Oh yes,” said Hammer. “They are.”
Nine
NO ONE COULD get you in the air, thought Lock. No one could point out your mistakes. No one could politely criticize your performance. Best of all, no one could treat you with that embarrassed delicacy that suggested you were already incurable.
It was only a brief recess. Four hours from Paris to Moscow in the sun above the clouds. Then at Sheremetyevo airport he would switch his BlackBerry back on and it would all start again. The calls from Cayman, from Cyprus, from Gibraltar, everyone nervous about those people from Ikertu; e-mails from Kesler and Griffin about the horrors of Paris and what on earth we do next; maybe for good measure a call or two from a journalist late to the party. He wondered which had been the worst moment of this relentlessly grim week: being unpicked piece by piece by the acid Mr. Lionel Greene, QC; learning from his secretary that Malin had asked to see him immediately on his return; or being told by the dependable and normally untroubled Herr Rast, the oldest and calmest of Lock’s cohorts in Switzerland, that the Zurich prosecutor had been asking him questions about Faringdon and Langland. Probably the call from Rast, by a shade. Greene had done his worst, and at least Malin was the devil he knew; Swiss prosecutors, however, were a new and frightening apparition.
God, these Queen’s Counsels were good. As he looked at the virgin world of sunshine and deep blue and pure white outside his window it occurred to him that he had been in awe of Greene, and that even while he was being savaged a small part of him had been held rapt by his agility, his utter sureness. Lock wondered whether, in another life, he could ever have been that good. He wasn’t sure he had the appetite to scoop all the meat from a man’s bones as Greene had done to him, like a surgeon eating a crab.
There were faint reasons for hope; Kesler, at least, was forcing himself to be optimistic. Lock may have failed to convince anyone that he was an oil tycoon but Tourna had failed to demonstrate that he had been defrauded. Paris was unlikely to be the end of it by any means. Kesler had also reminded Lock that it was not his plausibility that was on trial, which was just as well, and that none of it would be reported in the press. And that was the greatest relief.
But Malin. Christ. Lock wondered how much he would know. Presumably Kesler would report how the hearing had gone, and it was in his interests to spare the direst details. But that wouldn’t be like Kesler. He could feel the shame of it all rising from his chest into his throat.
Still, at least it was done, and he wouldn’t have to do it again. Malin would be angry, that was certain, but there was little he could do. Little he could say, perhaps, since hadn’t he, after all, hired Lock in the first place for this ridiculous job? Ultimately Malin was responsible, in every sense. Lock smiled, without enthusiasm.
He looked at his watch. Half past ten by French time, half past one in Russia. A respectable time for another drink. He finished the one in front of him.
To distract himself, he took a notebook from his briefcase, cleared pretzel wrappers from the flimsy drop-down table, passed all the rubbish across the empty seat beside him to a stewardess and asked her for more gin. He opened the book at a fresh page and took a pen from his pocket. He started with the
date, and was about to write “Dossier” before he decided that was imprudent and changed it to “Ideas.” Then he sat for a while, looking at the words, waiting for inspiration to come, doodling on the opposite page. Under his original heading he drew three boxes and annotated each: What Malin Knows, What I Know and What I Need to Know. Concentrating now, he wrote in each box. The last slowly began to fill up.
What he needed to know was where the money came from. This was difficult. What he saw was only the first layer. His offshore companies received transfers from a dozen companies incorporated all over Russia, and it was only beyond these that real businesses generated the money itself. From sitting in a thousand meetings Lock knew roughly what these did: they overcharged their captive, state-owned clients for goods and services; they bought product cheap and sold it on at market rates; they secured licenses that they never intended to use and could sell on at vast profit. But that was all. He had never been shown the workings.
Finally he drew a fourth box: Where That Information Exists. He thought for a while. Malin’s head; it existed there. He wrote it down. Government files. Probably, somewhere, deep inside some unimaginable part of the Kremlin, there was a file that he and many others would dearly love to see. Where else? Malin’s office at the ministry. Malin’s home? Possibly. He wrote that down. Chekhanov’s office. What about the Russian lawyers? Yes, there might be something there.
Chekhanov’s office. Everything must be in that office, surely? If you were going to pick someone to testify against Malin, it would be Chekhanov. He knew everything. Every corrupt payment, every shaky transaction, every fraud Malin had ever committed.
The Silent Oligarch: A Novel Page 17