Christopher Jones - The Silent Oligarch

His chores done, Lock sat with his coffee and wondered what to do with his day. Oksana was busy this evening, she had told him; she needed to work on her thesis. This, Lock reflected, was probably true, but even if it wasn’t, it didn’t matter. He wasn’t jealous of her, mainly, he supposed, because he had only ever had her on loan. When she finished her Ph.D. she would no longer need his support, and she would go. It was a civilized arrangement, and he had never felt the need to make it uncivilized by claiming more than they had tacitly agreed.

So he wouldn’t see her now for two or three days, and weekends in Moscow without Oksana were difficult. He could go to Izmailovsky for a walk, or to the baths, or to Starlite for a long lunch with other lonely Englishmen and Americans, stretching into dinner and a drunken, staggering visit to whichever nightclub had been decreed shinier than its peers this week.

In the end he sat in his apartment and read every mention of himself he could find on the Internet, nervous that he would find something he didn’t know was there. Twelve thousand hits. He was surprised to see so many. Some were about him, repetitive mentions of deals, acquisitions, transactions. Some were about Richard Lock the social entrepreneur, some about Richard Lock the singer-songwriter from Montana. Even when he was fairly certain that he had seen every pertinent, original mention of his name he carried on looking, morbidly expecting that he would finally find the article that showed him to be a fraud, a stooge, a money launderer. When he finished, it was dark outside and he felt relieved but still anxious, as if he had been given a health check that addressed only symptoms and not causes.

That evening he sent out for pizza and drank Scotch in front of the television, finishing his last cigarette around eleven.

On Sunday morning he checked the newspapers. Reuters had taken the story up, and he found small pieces in The Globe and Mail, The Observer and, bizarrely, The Hong Kong Standard. There was nothing new in any of them. He should let his various colleagues around the world know, he thought, so that they heard it from him and not somebody else. Later. He could do that tomorrow.

He went to the gym, cursed the tightness in his lungs, and managed a short, stiff run and twenty minutes on an exercise bike before capitulating and making his way to the sauna. Afterward he went to the Radisson on Tverskaya for lunch, where expats tended to congregate, breaking away from the group at around four and making his way home, wondering when it was that his appetite for days like this had died.

AT ONE ON MONDAY Lock had an appointment with Mikkel Friis, his partner in the restaurant project. Lock had long wanted to have a restaurant in Moscow. He thought that it would confer on him a visible glory that his everyday role could not. It was his idea, inspired by a trip to Istanbul with Oksana, and was set to be the city’s finest Turkish restaurant, rich and dark and exclusive, sumptuously Ottoman. The refurbishment had begun, they had their chef, they had sourced rugs and furniture from Turkey itself, and they had a name, Dolmabahce, that Lock liked. Today he and Friis, a young Dane who had made a premature fortune in private equity, were eating at the current holder of the zeitgeist crown, a supremely sleek modern place with a menu “fused” from the cuisines of a dozen countries, to see what they could learn.

Lock had spent the morning sending calming messages to all his contacts in the offshore world and was late. He apologized as he sat down, slightly out of breath.

“That’s quite all right,” said Friis. “I should think you have a lot on.”

“What do you mean?”

“Your supporting role in The Times .”

“Oh God, did you see it? Yes, I’ve had better weekends.”

“Someone sent it to me. It didn’t look too bad. Everyone has lawsuits, don’t they?”

“Exactly. They do. Yes, they do. Have you ordered a drink?” Lock looked around for a waiter, his hand in the air. “Yes, it could have been worse. The FT had an inch on it this morning and I expect Vedomosti will wake up to it sometime this week. Look, Mikkel, I… well, look, I wouldn’t want you to think that this was a problem.”

“Not at all, not at all,” said Friis, looking at Lock unwaveringly. Next to Lock he looked the model of health and potential. “If you are forced to drop out I will just finish everything myself.”

Friis held Lock’s eye and then laughed, and Lock laughed with him, not really knowing whether he was joking or not. A waiter arrived. Lock ordered a gin and tonic, Friis a sparkling water.

Their conversation from that point was about restaurants. Where to find their maître d’. Whether he should be Turkish. What music to play in the bar. The problems of sourcing good aubergines in Moscow. How to manage their chef’s inability to speak much English or any Russian. And, critically, how to ensure that this would be a mistresses’ restaurant and not a wives’ restaurant. In a practical and apparently organic scheme the good restaurants in Moscow, or at least the expensive ones, were all designated as one or the other, and the average bill would vary greatly between the two. The history of Moscow nightlife was dotted with extravagantly chic restaurants that had failed because rich, middle-aged Russians didn’t splash out on their middle-aged wives. The incentive for the restaurateur to create a mistresses’ restaurant was therefore great, but neither Lock nor Friis would have any say in the classification; all they could hope to do was influence the process. “The thing is,” said Lock, letting a piece of raw wagyū beef slip from his chopsticks, “if you make it sexy enough, people won’t want to bring their wives. It just doesn’t feel right. Well, some might, but they’re the ones who don’t have mistresses.”

“Hm,” said Friis. “I don’t know. I think you’re half right. I think it’s about price. Look at this: two thousand rubles for that. And that’s your starter. How much was your fish? Another two thousand? Three? No one wants to spend this on their wife. It’s simple. For this much you’re expecting to get laid. With some degree of certainty. You look at Cinquecento, that Italian place on Petrovka. It’s beautiful. It’s not even like Moscow in there. It’s like a day trip to Sardinia or something. The food is amazing. But it’s full of fifty-five-year-old Russian women in navy-blue suits with their fat husbands. No one talks. It’s like a state archive. I bet you they don’t last another year. And why? Because they’re too cheap. You spend half what you spend here. It’s a fantastic deal, and no one wants to look cheap in front of his latest dim blonde. Or smart brunette, in your case.” Friis smiled and forked the last of his starter into his mouth. “Which is why,” he concluded, pushing away his plate, his mouth full, “we are going to be very expensive.”

“I don’t know,” said Lock. “There are a lot of very expensive restaurants in Moscow.”

“Yes, and a lot of not so expensive ones too. And the expensive ones are always full. Trust me on this. I’m the businessman. You worry about getting the permissions from City Hall. A nudge from friend Konstantin will be very useful.”

Lock nodded and finished his drink.

“What about Oksana to be front of house?” said Friis. “She’d be amazing.”

“Christ, really?” Lock laughed. “People would come for a look, I suppose, but she doesn’t suffer fools. You’ve never seen her on form. Quite frightening. She might teach the punters some manners but they wouldn’t come back.”

Friis laughed and wiped his mouth neatly with his napkin. “So how much does Tourna want?”