Christopher Jones - The Silent Oligarch

“Scared. Where are you?”

“I’m sorry, sweetheart. I’m fine. I didn’t mean to worry you.” Despite himself he felt a thrill of reassurance that she had been thinking of him. “I think I’ve found a way out.” He waited for her to respond. “I can’t really talk about it but I’m seeing Konstantin. I think I can make a deal.”

“I spoke to him.”

“He called again?”

“I called him.”

Lock felt a small leap of fear—not of Malin, but of plans unraveling. He stopped walking and looked across the lake; his bodyguard stopped a few feet behind him.

“You called him? Why?”

“To see how much of him was left.”

“What do you mean?”

“I told him that my father was watching what he did. That if he hurt you he would finally be lost.”

“What did he say?”

“That his conscience was clear. That I had no reason to fear him.”

“You believe him?”

“He said one day I would know he did everything he could for you.”

Lock snorted. “Everything is right.”

“I think he believes it.”

A dozen sarcasms occurred to him. Justified, possibly: she had encouraged him to turn, and now she seemed to be suggesting that he turn back. He saw them clearly, but he didn’t feel them. She was merely as scared as he had once been.

“Don’t believe him,” he said, feeling a rush of energy at the thought that this whole business was now his to end. He would dictate terms to Konstantin; he would free himself; he would end this fear that had slowly etched away his life, and hers.

“I just—”

“Don’t. He’s got nothing left. He wants you to persuade me.”

“Will you talk to him?”

“I am talking to him. Tomorrow.”

“Not in Moscow?”

“I can’t say.”

The line was quiet. He could see her eyes, creased in a frown, full of sadness.

“I could be back in London tomorrow,” he said. “Or the next day.”

Still silence.

“Marina?” He knew that she was crying. “Sweetheart, it’s OK. I have something he wants.”

“OK.”

“It’s changed. Already.”

“That’s good.”

He could hear a catch in the rhythm of her breath; the lake was silent but for the rigging gently clinking. He looked for ducks but couldn’t see any. “Where’s Vika?”

“Next door. We just finished lunch. She’ll be in in a second.”

“Will you kiss her for me?”

“Yes.”

They were quiet again, and Lock knew that Marina was crying not from fear alone but from hope: she was proud of him again, and as it made her weep it filled him with lightness, almost jubilation. This was going to work. Not everything was jinxed.

“I should go,” he said.

“You should.”

“It’s going to be OK.” He hesitated. “I love you. I’m sorry I ever forgot that.”

“I know.”

“I’ll call you tomorrow. When it’s done.”

BY MONDAY MORNING Lock was calm. Strangely so: all the alarm, all the anxiety of the last month had left him, and he knew they wouldn’t return. Malin was coming. Lock had called him the night before and told him, in few words, rather enjoying himself, that he was to fly to Berlin. Malin was coming—not as his master but as his petitioner. And no matter how today ended, he would be his master no more.

Lock woke early, a little after six. He could see from the light under the door that Webster was awake. He sat in the dark and imagined the day. Malin would land sometime this morning. In a few hours they would phone him and tell him to come to the Staatsbibliothek No. 2 on Potsdamer Strasse at noon. The Berlin state library. Webster had explained that it was open without being unmanageable, busy without being hectic. It was a sober, quiet building where the meeting could be controlled.

Outside the sky had turned from black to deepest blue.

THEY DROVE INTO THE CITY in George Black’s car. Lock liked Black. He wasn’t a big man but there was a certainty about his manner, about the way he held himself, that made Lock feel safe. There were four of them in the car: Black, Webster, Lock and a well-spoken young man called James, who drove. George and James were at once exactly like their Russian counterparts and nothing like them at all. For one thing they were much more polite.

Twisting around in his seat Black explained that there were four more men already in Berlin. They were stationed in and around the library and would make sure that Lock was safe. “Not,” said Black, “that he’s likely to try anything out in the open.” When they got to Berlin two of Black’s men would be inside, two outside. Lock would wait in the car a few hundred yards away with James. When Malin arrived, and only then, James would drive Lock around and he would be escorted into the building. During the meeting itself three men would be watching from a short distance and three would patrol the area. When the meeting had concluded, Lock would be escorted quickly and easily to his car and driven to a rendezvous just north of Berlin. The second car would conduct countersurveillance on the first to make sure it wasn’t followed. Throughout, Webster and the team would sit back. It was important that Lock appear to be alone, even if Malin would assume he was not.

Webster had instructions for him too. They discussed the phone.

“You’ve got your two phones. When you sit down, take them out of your pocket and take the batteries out of each. Ask Malin to do the same. Try and look a little anxious. Make him think you’re the one worried about being overheard.”

“He won’t recognize either of them.”

“That’s OK. He knows you’ve got new phones. Now the recorder starts as soon as the battery comes out. Leave it facedown. There’s another battery in there that’ll give an hour of recording time, maybe a little more. It records straight onto a hard drive. There’s no noise, and no signal. You don’t have to worry about it at all. Don’t look at it. Forget it’s there.”

Lock nodded. He rested his hand on the briefcase next to him. It contained all of Gerstman’s documents, printed out on Herr Maurer’s computer.

“Chances are he’ll have people with him,” Webster went on. “That’s OK. You’ll have your people everywhere. We’ll hang back unless something happens. But he’s not going to want anything to happen to you while he’s around. So all you have to think about is talking to him.”

“How should I start?”

“Any way you like. Don’t think too hard about it. Let it come out. He’s expecting you to be angry and upset. So be upset. Challenge him.”

The roads were fast now and lined with ten-foot metal screens; Lock felt that he was being channeled along them to his destiny.

As they came off the motorway the screens fell away. They were on the industrial edge of the city. Lock saw chimneys like towers erupting white smoke into the sky, scrappy patches of land undeveloped, water towers like inverted rockets tarred jet black. There were no footprints in the snow here, no people walking. Then a McDonald’s, and a furniture warehouse, and beyond that the suburbs; close by the car, pinched apartment buildings in concrete and roughcast ran the length of each block, and the pavements were filthy with old snow. After a while the streets opened out and the houses relaxed and people began to appear in the shops, in the parks, at the bus stops. Lock had never seen all this, not before. It was new to him to see things. A row of poplars the shape of peacock feathers. A red leather bag against a woman’s tan shawl.

“You OK?” Webster broke his reverie.

Lock turned to him. “I’m fine.”

“Not nervous?”

“Not at all.”

The car turned into Tiergarten and Lock watched the silver birches tick past him. Beyond the park’s gates they emerged into a large open space, a mess of road and streetlights and traffic lights and slushy channels cut through the snow. The channels led from one huge modernist building to another, each somehow in its own world, like rivals. Lock looked to his left and saw finlike orange panels on a jumble of cubes and curves; to his right a sleek concrete structure in gray; ahead of him a low, massive box of black steel and glass. Watching over them stood a church with a green copper roof, its ugly square tower ringed in yellow and red brick. The sky was huge and gray above it all.