“An unusual story for a Russian immigrant,” said Lagrange, sipping his Scotch. “They usually keep to themselves and marry Russian. And they like to settle places their countrymen have already tested out. It’s like they’re always expecting a trick or a trap. Right, Bernard?”
“Sorry, I didn’t catch that?” The young man had made it on to the plane at the last possible moment and was now frantically revising a client presentation on his laptop in the row behind them.
“I said,” Lagrange shouted over his shoulder into the gap between seats, “Russians are always looking out for traps. You’ve already had some experience working with them.”
“Yes, they’re always afraid of being cheated, but also of being made to look the fool.”
“You’ve got that right,” said Stanley with a laugh. “Russians are always on guard, because they know how easily they do it to each other.”
“That,” Lagrange replied more soberly, “is why we are trying to arrange the best conditions for Russian clients at our bank. They must feel relaxed and at ease. There are very wealthy people among them, Stanley. Very. Wealthy. People.”
“I’m aware. I spent the summer studying Russian in Moscow twelve years ago. It was noticeable even then. We Americans don’t like to flash our cash around, but the Russians love to.”
“Here’s what I’ll say to you, boys,” said Lagrange, warming to his role as mentor the more he drank, “Do you hear me, Bernard?” he shouted over his shoulder again, knocking over his glass at the same time. “Remember this: Russians don’t want to be rich. They want to be richer than other Russians.”
Stanley and Bernard exchanged a glance and nodded in silent agreement.
The stewardess walked down the aisle with a smile frozen in place, handing out immigration forms to the passengers. The plane had begun its descent.
Chapter 2
Stanley remembered Moscow’s Domodedovo Airport very well from when he’d left Russia many years ago. He had heard something about its reconstruction since then but hadn’t paid too much attention—something was built or renovated, nothing out of the ordinary. But when they exited passport control, Stanley was stunned. The space around him looked more like a stadium than an airport; all that was missing was the football field. It might not have surprised him so much in Zurich, one of Europe’s largest airports. But here, in Russia?
“Where are we?” he asked, more to himself than to Lagrange.
Pierre, somewhat preoccupied after his three-hour aerial bout with Macallan, didn’t understand the question.
Pierre and Bernard had moved over to a crowd surrounding a television mounted on the wall, everyone watching the screen with intense concentration. The same incident was being shown repeatedly, from different camera angles. The footage, taken from security cameras, was blurry, and the movements of the people in it looked jerky, unnatural. All five or six cameras had captured the scene from above. The setting seemed to be close to a hotel or restaurant. A flashing neon sign with the enormous silhouette of a bear would occasionally enter the shot. The bear was holding a tray.
Each video fragment started with the appearance of a car, from which two men in suits emerged. A couple came out from under the awning of the establishment, walking toward them, a man and woman dressed in light-colored clothing that blended their silhouettes into the well-lit space behind. Two more men followed them, in dark suits like those coming from the car.
“Those guards are idiots!” someone in the crowd scoffed loudly. “Who closes a perimeter like that?”
At that point, a gray ball of something that looked like smoke or dust flared up and burst across the whole screen.
“A stun grenade,” announced another expert from the crowd. “M-84. American. And now those idiots are out of the game.”
For several seconds, the image on the screen was covered with a trembling white haze, and then the contours of figures around the car began to show. Suddenly, another car appeared in the corner of the shot. Judging from its disappearance in a matter of seconds, it was traveling at maximum speed. White flashes flew out of the car in the direction of the group walking out of the building. The recording cut off there, and the scene began again from a different angle.
“McKnight!” called Lagrange. “Come look over here. Can you read the scrolling text below? It’s moving too fast, my Russian’s not good enough.”
“I’ll try,” said Stanley, and began translating aloud. “Ok. An opposition leader. His companion’s condition is not serious. All four guards getting…got…hospitalized. A former member of parliament. He did not survive.
“People rarely do survive two bullets to the head,” a man remarked sarcastically in Italian-accented English. “Welcome to Russia.”
Pierre shot the Italian a disapproving glare before taking Stanley’s elbow and steering him toward the escalator. Bernard, loaded with suitcases, staggered along behind, afraid of getting lost amid the sea of taxi drivers aggressively volunteering their services.
In the time it took them to reach the exit and find their driver from the hotel, Lagrange managed to deliver an entire lecture on how various authoritarian regimes around the world dealt with political opposition. He spent five minutes detailing the types of political murders committed in African countries and how they differed from those in Latin America. According to him, the victims were always targeted because they had stopped playing by the unwritten rules of engagement between the existing government and the political forces striving for power.
“The first thing that ambition does is turn off the future victim’s critical-thinking skills,” Lagrange said. “He starts to believe that all this noise surrounding him, the media, human rights activists, the UN, the US State Department, and other decorative elements, are some kind of shield. One he can hide behind in the event of real danger. And it gets worse after that—he starts to lose his instinct for self-preservation. After all, he’s got these big tough guys around him with guns in their holsters and pockets full of fancy devices. And hundreds of cameras are watching all of this. The victim forgets that there are real people behind every instrument. And there are real people behind his guards—their superiors, their instructors, their employers. Take that man they just sent to meet his maker—why did he leave through the front door! I knew him a little. He was a wealthy guy. We struck up an acquaintance. They laid it out for him a couple of years ago—that’s how the Russians do it. Then a second warning, the last one. This guy seemed to understand that they weren’t playing games. So he settled down, dialed it back to an acceptable level. But then a couple months ago he comes out with an interview saying he’s going to expose corruption. Ok, great, go ahead and expose it. That’s fine. That’s why he’s got that silver tongue, so the folks back home can be shocked by his revelations and believe in justice being done. But why did he have to name names?”
McKnight was only half listening to Lagrange; he had little interest in this covert political warfare. He’d read enough about it already. If Russians had their own rules of doing business, he would play by them.
“I remember a Russian saying that fits,” he said, interrupting Pierre. “‘Every insect should occupy the place nature made for it.’ Something like that. It’s about a cricket.”
“Exactly,” said Lagrange. “Although you and I aren’t insects, but capitalist sharks, no?” He laughed, pleased with his own joke. “And we’ll have to work here according to their rules.” He added, sotto voce, “Fucking medieval rules.”
“Pierre, look at this airport!” Stanley flung his arms wide. “Does this look fucking medieval to you?”
“What does that have to do with anything? They’re barbarians! Barbarians with golden clubs sitting on a huge lake of oil and stinking up the whole world. Just take a look at this character over here. He’s waiting for us, in fact. That’s the driver from the hotel.”
The man failed to m
ake any impression on Stanley. He looked like an ordinary, well-trained driver. Okay, maybe the suit didn’t fit him quite right. Maybe his teeth weren’t great. And his smile was crooked. But he was smiling, wasn’t he?
“The funniest thing of all”—Lagrange went on, unable to drop the topic—“is that these Russian barbarians seriously consider themselves the successors of a glorious empire! What nonsense!”
“How’s that?”
“The USSR was no great empire.”
“What do you mean, it wasn’t?” Stanley couldn’t hide his surprise.
“It wasn’t, because it didn’t survive! Great nations don’t fall apart on their own.” Lagrange stopped halfway to the Mercedes awaiting them and turned to Stanley. “The USSR collapsed on its own, without any war or upheavals. Reagan made a sharp cut to oil prices, and a couple of years later the empire fell. That was it. You Americans could make it happen again, and Russia would fall apart much faster this time. Welcome to Moskovia.”
The driver greeted the bankers in broken English and asked them to follow him. In the car, he spent some time pressing buttons on his navigational system and warned them that their trip might take longer than usual. Traffic, of course.
“That’s why I prefer to fly into Moscow at night, and on a weekend if I can,” said Lagrange with a sigh. “But I somehow never remember that until I’m already at the airport.”
“I have to disagree with you,” Stanley said, going back to their previous conversation with a shake of his head. “Russians have a great nation, culture, science—they put the first man in space. I forget his name.”
“Gagarin.”
“Whatever…Gagarin.”
“Stanley, my friend,” said Lagrange and laughed, breathing out a miasma of alcohol fumes. “How can you be so naive! This country has gone through almost a century of negative selection. They’ve been killing or exiling their best, their most gifted, intelligent, and talented members. Your family is an excellent example. Who are Russians today?” Lagrange cracked his window open and lit up an enormous Cuban cigar. “Degenerates, drunk losers without a chance at success in the world of civilized people. This country has no fucking future, Stanley.”
“Well, maybe I’m missing something here, but if you despise them so much, how can you work with them?”
“We’re just trying to earn a little money before the music stops and the ship goes down.” Lagrange shifted in his seat and closed his eyes, signaling an end to the conversation.
The visitors made it to the beltway around the city center fairly quickly, and traffic was relatively light until they hit Kashirskoye Highway, where everything slowed to a crawl. By the time they turned on Andropov Avenue and traffic eased up again, Lagrange had nodded off, and Stanley was entertaining himself by keeping a count of watermelon stands versus cigarette kiosks.
Watermelons won in a landslide.
The watermelon sellers, all Asians in track suits and baseball hats, sat on wooden boxes under beach umbrellas. Each one they passed was involved in an animated discussion on his mobile phone. Some of them waved their free hands energetically. Stanley only saw one seller actively practicing his trade; he walked along the curb separating him from the flow of traffic, biting into a huge slice of watermelon, and invited the drivers and passengers creeping by to join him. McKnight was astonished to see that this shabbily dressed man had a mouth full of gold teeth. The midday sun filtered down through the lush (if dust-covered) canopy of maple trees lining the road, reflected off his golden smile, and scattered into brilliant specks of light on the windows of the cars.
The exhausted travelers finally made it to the third beltway, where the traffic split into several different streams. Their driver sighed in relief, rolled his shoulders back, and began to maneuver between lanes until he fell in behind a traffic cop in a Mercedes, who everyone yielded to even though the policeman was clearly in no hurry. It must be that universal instinct for self-preservation, thought Stanley. He’s in uniform, so he’s probably with the authorities. And you should give the authorities right of way.
When they passed the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Bernard couldn’t restrain himself any longer.
“Why is their architecture full of Soviet symbolism? Just look—the hammer and sickle. Here, there! Everywhere! Germany got rid of the fascist swastika. I don’t understand why Russians can stand the hammer and sickle.”
“The mysterious Russian soul?” suggested Stanley.
“No one has what it takes to understand the damned Russian soul,” muttered Lagrange, slowly opening his eyes. “Believe it or not, ladies, but they still have plenty of streets named after Lenin and other executioners of the Soviet people.”
“A paradox!”
“I’ve got a metaphor for you, Bernard, to help you figure it out.” Lagrange blew his nose noisily into a handkerchief. “Imagine a woman keeping a framed photograph of the man who raped her and murdered her children on the wall, and dusting it regularly to keep it looking nice. Is that woman sane or out of her mind? How about a people that tenderly preserve the corpse of a man in the Kremlin who raped and murdered their children—are they sane?”
“A split personality? It sounds like a case of schizophrenia.”
“You’re absolutely right, Stanley. But there is no ‘mysterious Russian soul.’ There’s only the split personality of the savage, which for some reason rouses the delight and affection of naive Europeans. But these are barbarians. The damned homo soveticus! I used to have some illusions too, until Laville said to me: ‘Only a Russian man is capable of raping his own fiancée.’ That’s exactly it! That’s their vile nature in a nutshell.” Lagrange started trying to relight his cigar. “If it were up to me, I’d surround Russia with another Chinese wall. They don’t belong with us.”
“I can’t understand it, to be honest,” Bernard said, thoughtfully examining the next totalitarian socialist realist building.
“That’s because you’re a naive Swiss village boy,” Lagrange replied irritably, yawning. “The Russian people need to wise up, repent, and ask the civilized world for forgiveness. Ask our forgiveness!” He beat his chest with a closed fist. “But they’d probably have to go through even more chaos to get to that point. Either way, it doesn’t concern me personally. The world is full of underdeveloped tribes; let them live in their own hell! I don’t care—all I want to do is make money off of them.”
Bernard sniffed indignantly and continued his perusal of the buildings along Tverskaya Street.
At the Ritz, they were met by a doorman in livery and a top hat, which looked pretty out of place in the summer heat. As did the fact that he was a black man in the middle of Moscow.
“He’d be better off in a loincloth,” said Lagrange sympathetically.
“In Africa he’d be fighting his brothers with Kalashnikovs over humanitarian aid from the Red Cross. Here all he has to do is sweat for a couple hours, and then he’s free to go have a beer in an air-conditioned bar,” remarked Bernard, dropping his bags and with a sigh of relief handing Lagrange’s enormous suitcase back to his boss.
McKnight stopped short, taken aback by this unexpected bit of racist banter. At his old job, the two Europeans would have seen some serious consequences from HR if they’d been caught talking like that in the office; it appeared that the Swiss bank’s corporate attitudes toward racism and hostile work environments leaned more toward the early twentieth century than the early twenty-first.
He was in a foul mood. The nearly two hours spent in traffic with Lagrange’s cigar smoke, after a long flight, had done him in. He was counting on their grim adventures being over for now and having the rest of the day to pull himself together. But Lagrange had other ideas. He checked his Patek Philippe, lips moving as if whispering to himself, and announced, “We have a little over two hours to recover and get acclimated. I suggest you visit the spa here. But don’t go to the Russia
n banya. You’ll come out like a wet rag. I’d recommend the massage, though. They have two Chinese girls working here who are simply magical.”
The women working the reception desk heard Lagrange’s final words and nodded their agreement.
“I’ll settle for a hot shower,” McKnight replied, hiding his sigh of disappointment. He’d already been picturing a sun lounger by the pool and watching a Breaking Bad episode or two. “What are our plans for the evening?”
“Let me check.” Pierre got out his mobile and dialed. “Robert, hi! We’ve arrived. I hope we’ll see you tonight? Yes…yes…where?”
The answer made Lagrange burst out laughing so loudly that the porter, who had been about to hand Lagrange the electronic key card to his room, jumped involuntarily and took a step back.
“That was Robert Durand, the lawyer. I can’t remember—have I told you about him?”
“You said that he acts as an introducer for our bank and helps bring in clients,” Stanley said.
“Exactly, yes, he helps us for a generous commission. Robert has invited us to dinner, a restaurant called Hannibal. Russian cuisine.” Pierre finally noticed the porter, took the key, and asked him in labored Russian, slowly and louder than necessary, “Hannibal, it is a ve-ry nice and most tas-tee res-taur-ant?”
The porter, whose excellent posture spoke of a military background, had apparently already realized what kind of person he was dealing with, and spread his arms wide, as if offering Lagrange the entire city, with all its countless restaurants, bars, and clubs.
In his room, Stanley spent a blissful half hour in the shower until he felt his eyelids begin to drift shut from exhaustion and deep relaxation. Wrapping himself in a towel, he made it to the bed, threw back the covers, and collapsed on the sheets before passing out.
He was brought back to consciousness by a quiet but insistent knocking at the door.
“Who is it?” he croaked, his voice hoarse with sleep. He noted with surprise that he was lying naked on the bed, the wet towel around his feet.
The Banker Who Died Page 2