The Silent Oligarch: A Novel

by Christopher Morgan Jones

  “What did you tell him?”

  “That I didn’t know anything.”

  “Was that it?”

  “He wanted to know if I had lost trust in him as well.”

  “And?”

  “I told him I didn’t leave Moscow just to get away from you.”

  Again, Lock was silent.

  “He said . . . he told me that he was trying to save you.”

  Lock closed his eyes. “There’s no point in telling me that.”

  “I thought you should know.”

  “Do you believe him?”

  “I think he no longer knows what he is saying.”

  Lock nodded slowly to himself. Could Malin really expect him to believe that? There was no point in wondering. He felt tired.

  “Listen, darling, I should go. It’s going to be a busy few days. I’ll . . . I’ll call again.”

  “OK.”

  “Will you kiss Vika for me?”

  “Of course. Be careful. Please.”

  “I will.”

  “If it doesn’t work, I’ve found you a lawyer.”

  BY TWELVE THE NEXT DAY Lock was anxious. Nina hadn’t called and he had begun to regret the letter; it was time to stop delaying. His first call to her went unanswered, but he left no message. So did his second, two hours later; this time he told the machine who he was, that he was in Berlin and would welcome the chance to see her. He could go to her or she could come to him at the Hotel Daniel.

  At three she called; it was a short conversation. She told him that she didn’t want to see anyone associated with Dmitry’s old world, that he shouldn’t take this personally, and that she would be grateful if he left her alone. He tried to tell her that he no longer worked for Malin but it was clear that she had made up her mind. As he put the phone down he wondered what Webster would have done to keep her talking—and what would he do now to force a meeting?

  Lock had been in his hotel room all day, reading Middlemarch and the guidebook and drinking Scotch. He had had breakfast, but no lunch, and his head felt light and tense at the same time. He didn’t know what to make of Nina’s refusal: was it the end of everything, or merely an obstacle? Part of him, he realized, had never thought that Nina would make any difference; part of him longed to think that she would. Snow had settled thickly overnight and was still falling outside his window.

  He decided to walk into town. He couldn’t leave today in any case, not in this snow, and he wanted to see people and breathe fresh air. And he needed new shoes. The pavement sludge had frozen in places and in his leather soles he made precarious progress north, across the canal and up Friedrichstrasse, leaning forward slightly for balance and correcting himself with a jerk every time he started to slip. If the snow would only stop he could drive to Switzerland in a day—less, probably. He wondered how far south it was falling. He passed Checkpoint Charlie and stopped for a moment to read the screens that enclosed the construction sites on either side of the road. People had crossed the wall in suitcases, in cars decked out in mourning, suspended from balloons, on death slides, in a hundred ways that defied imagination. Plenty had tried and not crossed at all, shot down by the automatic machine guns trained on every inch of the wall or by the border guards who longed to cross it themselves. Some had been left to die in the death strip between the two walls, the soldiers of neither side prepared or allowed to go to their aid. All in one direction. No one had ever crossed the other way.

  He was in a camping shop trying on shoes when Webster rang. The phone gave an irritating chirrupy ring that was strange to him, and it took him a moment to realize it was his to answer. He took the phone out of his pocket and looked at it for some time, hoping that voice mail would pick up, but it simply rang and rang, chirruped and chirruped.

  “Hello,” he said at last.

  “Richard, it’s Ben. How are things?”

  “Ben, hi. OK. They’re OK.”

  “How are you getting on?”

  “She won’t see me.”

  “Why not?”

  “She says she won’t see anyone from my world. I tried to tell her it wasn’t my world anymore but I didn’t get through.”

  “So what are you doing now?”

  “Trying on shoes.”

  Webster said nothing for a moment. “What are you going to do?”

  “I don’t know. It’s snowing like crazy here.”

  “Richard, do you want to see Nina?”

  “I don’t know. Yes. Yes, I suppose I do.”

  “Why don’t you go and see her?”

  Lock thought for a moment. Priorities shuffled in his mind. “Would you see her?”

  The line was quiet for a moment. Please. I need help.

  “I’ll be there tomorrow,” Webster said at last. “I’ll text you my plans.”

  “Thank you. She might see you.”

  “She might. Are you OK?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Hang in there. We’ll crack it together.”

  Lock left the shoe shop with his old shoes in a plastic bag and his new ones dry and tight on his feet. They had jagged soles and made short work of the ice. He felt newly in control, and set off in search of the café where he had eaten the night before. Two nights in the city and already he had worked out a routine. He was too tired to do otherwise.

  This part of Berlin was all wide streets and solid apartment blocks. Something about the rhythm of the buildings—the narrowness of the windows, the space between them, the height of the floors—reminded him strongly of Moscow. Their colors too: creams, dirty yellows, grays. And the streets empty of people in the snow, the pavements a slithery mess, the streetlights giving out a harsh blue light. It came to him suddenly and with a panicked chill that this was an eastern city, that he’d been tricked into thinking it was the incorruptible West, that he wasn’t safe here. They could get you here, if they wanted to; it wasn’t so far away. They probably knew he was here already. He could feel his heart beating fast in his chest and his throat felt swollen, unable to swallow.

  He walked quickly now to the café, not quite rushing, and when there ordered beer again, and ate soup, and sausages with sauerkraut. He began to calm down, and scolded himself for not having eaten sooner. He wished he’d brought his book. He had his notebook, though, and for a while he sketched in it absentmindedly. First Webster came out, wearing a mac, a trilby and dark glasses, a flower in his buttonhole and a folded newspaper under his arm. Then Lock himself astride a high wall, one arm and one leg in view. He looked at the images for a second, shook his head as if to clear it and opened a fresh page. He would think this thing through. He drew two lines down the page and gave a title to each of the three columns: Cooperate, Return and Run. Then he ruled two lines across, and marked the rows Likely Outcome, Risks, Obstacles. It took him half an hour to fill up the grid with a neat, close hand and he could feel his mind disentangling as he wrote. This was an odd document, he realized; he wondered what someone would make of it if they came across it. It was odd in part, he understood, because nowhere did it address what he wanted. It hadn’t occurred to him to include it, and he wasn’t quite sure where it should go.

  So on the opposite page he wrote two things. See Marina and See Vika. He stopped and looked at the words for a while, and wished that he’d known this so clearly five years before. What they told him now was that he had no choice but to wait for Webster and see this out. He shut the book flat with his hand, as if swearing on it. Then he put it back in his pocket next to Marina’s letter, paid the bill and went out into the night.

  This was not a lively neighborhood. Shops were shutting around him and between them offices were already dark. Berlin felt empty again. He longed for a bar with young people in it; they had to be somewhere. He stood on the porch of the café for a moment and looked at his map. Schö
neberg was close. The guidebook had said something about Schöneberg, he forgot what. He’d try there.

  As he walked along Kurfürstenstrasse he passed a man he thought he recognized. He was young, perhaps thirty, and he wore a heavy black cap and a padded raincoat down to his knees. His eyebrows were fair. As he passed he looked at Lock with an air of studied casualness, as if it would be unnatural not to hold a stranger’s eye for a half-second. Lock knew the cap. He’d seen it somewhere. Was it in Moscow? No, it was here, he was sure. He walked along staring at the grimy pavement, looking hard for the answer. At Checkpoint Charlie. He had been reading the screens on the other side of the street and when Lock had crossed over he had turned and walked away. Lock was sure it was him. They were half an hour from there now and this was a big city. This wasn’t chance.

  There’s no way they can know that I’m here, he thought. I’ve been so careful. Webster planned it. Maybe it’s one of Webster’s people. But why would he follow me now? And there was something about that cap, something eastern, something Muscovite. It was the sort of cap that half the men in Russia wore come winter.

  What had Webster said about knowing if you’re being followed? Lock turned south down a quiet residential street; he was the only person on it. Two-thirds of the way down he stopped and made a show of patting and exploring his pockets. Then he turned and started walking the way he had come. There was no one there. The street was empty. He turned again and, resisting the strong urge to look over his shoulder, forced himself to walk on. Two streets away he saw a taxi, hailed it, and went back to the hotel, wondering all the while about what he had seen.

  WEBSTER’S PLANE WAS DUE to land at eleven. He had sent a text saying that he would meet Lock at his hotel at noon or thereabouts.

  Lock had not slept. All night his mind turned the same questions around and around. Should he stay in this hotel or move to another? Make a break for Switzerland? Sit and wait for someone to pick him up? He had tried to read but the lines had just slipped past his eyes.

  By dawn his skin felt scratchy and greasy and he could smell a sour smell of old whisky and sweat rising from his body. The room was stuffy, its curtains closed. A fug hung in the air. Questions still churned in his head. Malin. What had Malin meant when he called Marina? How was he trying to save him? From destroying his soul by betraying Mother Russia? What else could it be?

  And what of Webster, coming to rescue him? Could he trust him?

  He realized he couldn’t wait in that room any longer. He showered, pulled on a soft new shirt—for a moment felt human—and finished dressing. He pulled the curtains apart an inch and looked out at the street. No movement. No people. He watched for a moment to make sure. Before he left he did something he hadn’t done since he was a boy: he plucked two hairs from his head and licking his finger stuck them across the joins of the wardrobe door and a drawer in his chest of drawers. He took a third and balanced it on the lock of his suitcase; a fourth he smoothed onto the door and the doorjamb, at ankle height, as he left. Then he hung the Do Not Disturb sign on the handle and went out in search of breakfast.

  It had stopped snowing, finally, and Lock walked along the canal with the low sun in his eyes. Thin ice had formed over the water; in places it looked thick but by the edges geese still paddled. Few people had walked there and the snow on the path, on the black branches of the trees, on the roofs and balconies and fences was still a pure white. Lock’s new shoes made a crunching sound as he walked. Occasionally, despite himself, he checked behind him, and saw no one. He passed a woman training a dog, a spaniel puppy, and a man in a huge puffed-up coat walking a whippet. That was it.

  He found a café serving Frühstück and ordered rolls, ham, cheese, coffee and orange juice. He had brought his book, and now he sat and read it, taking it in, ordering more coffee to justify his sitting there. At ten thirty he paid and set off back to the hotel. This was where he would want to live in Berlin. Quiet. Pretty.

  By the time he reached the Daniel he had forgotten about his schoolboy spying ruse. The Do Not Disturb sign reminded him and he checked the door. The hair wasn’t there. A shock ran across his shoulders. He knocked on the door and listened carefully for any noise inside. It was quiet. His heart seemed to rise in his chest. He hesitated for a moment, not sure whether to go on or run. Slowly he turned the key in the lock and opened the door. Still no noise. Then he swung the door open in one swift movement and moved back a step. There was no one there. He checked the bathroom, and that was empty. None of the hairs was in place.

  Lock turned the key in the door, sat down on the bed and put his head in his hands. Noise filled his head. He would like everyone to leave him alone. For a day. For a day or two.

  In his case lay the components of his old Russian phones. He put one of them back together without its SIM card, and copied a number from it into his new phone, asking himself why he was still bothering with this security nonsense. Then he pressed connect and waited. The line rang only twice.

  “Da.”

  “When I came to work for you,” said Lock, talking quickly, standing now and looking out the window for signs of movement, “I didn’t agree to be followed everywhere by your fucking thugs. Call them off. Call them off, or I will go straight to the Americans, the Swiss, the fucking Caymanese and happily spend the rest of my days in prison. Happily. I don’t want to see another goon. I don’t want them holding my hand, I don’t want them searching my room. I’m fucking serious, Konstantin, don’t think that I’m not.”

  There was silence for the shortest moment.

  “Richard, where are you?”

  “What do you mean, where am I? You know exactly where I am. What you don’t know is what I want. I thought I’d phone home and tell you. Would you like to hear it?”

  “Yes.” Malin’s voice was deep and solid, apparently unmoved.

  Lock took a breath, let it out through his nose. “We don’t have a future, Konstantin. I definitely don’t. The FBI will have my guts. So my choice, it seems, is life at Her Majesty’s pleasure or at yours. I don’t know which one I prefer. I really don’t.”

  “Richard. I think you are panicking over a small thing. I was worried that you might and that was why I wanted you to be protected.” He paused. “Your mistake is to think that the Americans are important. Or powerful. They are not. You work for a Russian business and this is a Russian matter.”

  Lock snorted a laugh. “Ha. A Russian matter. Konstantin, I don’t think you understand. This is an American matter, a Dutch matter, an English matter. Anywhere our money goes—your money goes—it’s their business.”

  “No. That is your mistake.” Malin’s voice was even and forceful. “These people, they can look, they can get excited. They are paid to do this and it makes them happy. But do you think they will find things in Russia? Do you think they will find you there? I am safe in Russia. You can be safe here too. I have paid you well for a long time, Richard. You have been loyal to me but now, when it counts, you run away.” Malin stopped. Lock could hear him breathing, gathering himself, letting him know how grave this really was. “I can protect you for only so much longer, Richard. I have never wished you any harm. Come to Moscow today—or tomorrow, take your time—and I can guarantee you that in a year, maybe two, there will be nothing left of this. Nothing. And you will look back and think how foolish you were to have doubted me. To have doubted yourself.”

  Lock sat down, hung his head and rubbed the back of his neck until a red mark appeared on the skin. He took the phone from his ear, looked at it without expression, and disconnected the call.

  “There was never anything to doubt,” he said to the empty room, and lay back on the bed.

  Fourteen

  WEBSTER ASKED HIS TAXI to stop in the street behind Lock’s hotel and walked the final few hundred yards; from habit he never left a taxi right outside his destination. From the air Germany had
looked plain and neat, black lines of trees stretching across spotless white fields, the city a jigsaw of red roofs and straight roads, but down here on the ground nothing was immaculate. With one leg still in the car Webster stepped carefully over the frosted puddle in the gutter, struggling not to slip on the icy snow that had been cleared from the other edge of the pavement. He could feel the easterly wind blowing up his flapping suit trousers, and knew that his thin London coat would be no defense against this cold.

  He wondered which Lock he would find waiting for him: the plausible lawyer or the frightened escapee. He had sounded distraught on the phone. Not for the first time Webster asked himself whether he was pushing Lock too hard, and again the answer came back: you’re his only way out; his other choices are worse; not long now. And a response in turn: I hope you’re right.

  It felt strange to be making intimate decisions about the life of a man he hardly knew. He had at once a strong sense of him and no sense at all: an idea taken from press articles and company records and court documents and unreasonable assumptions. The Lock he had met in Enzo’s had surprised him. He had expected him to have the arrogance of those who gain power without earning it; to have a thicker shell; to be fond of himself in a way that he clearly was not. Sitting in his coat across the table, Lock had seemed already fallen, less bumptious middleman than sinner seeking absolution, as if he knew too well what he had done and how much was at stake. And, after all, wasn’t he a victim of the same disorder that had finished Inessa, the same desperation to keep the truth hidden? Webster didn’t know whether to be comforted or unnerved by this: it made his own role less significant, but his responsibility to Lock much greater. Responsibility to do what? he asked himself. Find a way out for him; give him a second chance. Keep him alive.

  For the first time since Turkey, Webster craved a cigarette.

  At the Daniel he explained that he was a friend of Mr. Green. Room 205, second floor. He walked up the stairs and found the room at the end of a dark corridor, a single lamp giving out a dim light. He knocked gently on the door, and heard movement inside. The spyhole darkened and Lock opened the door, only enough at first for him to see down the corridor and know that Webster was alone.