Christopher Jones - The Silent Oligarch

His phone rang.

“Hi,” he said. “Where are you?”

“Downstairs. Come for a coffee.”

“There’s nowhere to go for a coffee.”

Hammer laughed. “Meet me in Starbucks.”

Webster started to say that he didn’t think Starbucks was a good place to discuss anything, let alone what they had to discuss, but the line had gone dead.

Hammer had bought him a coffee, which he didn’t really want. He drank it anyway, absentmindedly. He noticed that behind his birdlike keenness and thick-rimmed black spectacles Hammer was beginning to look old. But there was still something daunting there, and Webster as always felt the need to perform well for him.

“Jesus, you were less grumpy before your holiday,” said Hammer, emptying a packet of sugar into his coffee. “How was it?”

“Wet and short. But lovely, thank you. Spent most of it pottering about in a bass boat in the drizzle trying to catch mackerel.”

“Any luck?”

“Elsa caught six on our first outing. Then nothing. Nancy ate it raw off my penknife. I was amazed.”

“And how was Turkey?”

“Hot. Tourna’s a piece of work.”

“What does he want?”

They were sitting at a counter in the window. Before he began, Webster instinctively looked around behind him to make sure no one could hear. He leaned in to Hammer a little and spoke softly.

“Do you know who Konstantin Malin is?”

“I know he’s come up before. Oil?”

“Oil. He’s the power behind the throne at the energy ministry. He advises the Kremlin on energy policy—some say he pretty much sets it. And he enforces it. He’s also extremely rich—one of the new breed. A silent oligarch.”

“What does the minister think about that?” Hammer was a fiddler, a tapper, a chewer of pens. He found it difficult to sit altogether still. Now he was blowing on his coffee to cool it, letting his glasses mist up and then clear, not looking at Webster.

“I suspect he gets his share, but a fraction of what Malin is taking. He’s been there for decades. He must have served under dozens of ministers.”

Hammer drank some coffee and watched people pass by on the street, then turned to Webster with a look of fresh concentration.

“How powerful is he?”

“A government intimate. For ten years or more, as far as I know, which is very rare. He may be unique. Every case we do in energy he’s there, somewhere. He’s the gray cardinal of the Kremlin.”

“Who looks after his affairs?”

“In Russia, I don’t know. A guy called Lock has been his lawyer for fifteen years or so. He manages an Irish company that seems to own most of the assets. And there’s a Russian called Grachev who runs a trading operation in Vienna.”

Hammer thought for a moment, tapping out a precise rhythm with his thumb and forefinger on the counter. His shirt collar, far too big, hung around his neck like a noose.

Webster continued. “I know Lock. Or know of him. There’s a joke in Moscow: why did Malin lose all his money? Because it was Locked up.”

“Hilarious.”

“It’s a pun. Lock means sucker.”

After a pause, Hammer said, “Who’s he fallen out with?”

“Malin? Besides Tourna? There’s an ex-employee who looks interesting. No obvious animus. There must be a few Russians who don’t like him, inside the Kremlin and out. Otherwise I don’t know. As far as I can see there’s no litigation we might follow.”

“That’s interesting.”

“It is?”

“And what does Tourna want?”

Webster told him. The fall of Malin.

“Is that all?” Hammer sat back and thought, tapping on the rim of his cup with his thumbs. “Did you discuss fees?”

“No. I told him I’d need to speak to you first about whether we do the work.”

Hammer frowned. “Why wouldn’t we?”

“Because being seen to work for Tourna is grubby. I don’t mind that but you might. But the main thing is, Malin’s a real player. He’ll have his own security people, good ones, and he has a lot to lose.”

“What’s the worst he might do?”

“Set his people on us, rake muck, make life difficult, especially in Russia. Revoke my visa, which would be a pain.”

“Will he shoot you?”

Webster laughed. “No, I shouldn’t think so. They tend not to kill Westerners. But thanks.”

“What about our sources in Russia?”

“I think the same applies. If Malin gets wind of us, and he will, he’ll disrupt life for them, maybe put them out of business. But we may not need to do that much in Russia. If Malin’s vulnerable it’ll be offshore somewhere. Perhaps in his past, but I doubt it.”

Hammer folded his arms and beamed at Webster. “This is juicy, isn’t it? Have you had any thoughts?”

“God yes. My head’s spinning with ideas. For once I need you to keep me in check.”

“That’ll be novel.”

Webster paused. Outside two men were getting out of a taxi, struggling with boxes of legal papers. He turned to Hammer. “Look. I need to be straight with you. I’ve been waiting for this case. Or one like it. I may not be the best judge.”

“You want to afflict the corrupt?”

“Something like that.”

Neither said anything for a moment.

“Maybe we shouldn’t take it,” said Webster at last.

“Can we do what he wants?”

“We’d have to be very lucky and very clever.”

Hammer leaned in confidentially, lowering his voice. “I think this has the makings of a landmark project.”

“I thought you might say that.” Webster felt a flutter in his chest.

“Tell Tourna we want two million U.S. up front. We’ll keep that on account and bill him a million a month until the end of the project. If we help him get his fifty back we want five percent. If we finish off Malin, we want another ten million.”

“You’re serious.”

“I am. You said it. If we can crack this without doing much in Russia, fantastic. If we can’t, we haven’t lost anything and we’ll probably help Tourna get his money back at least. If Malin kicks up a fuss it’ll die down and in the meantime you can do a few Kazakh cases. It’s not like we’ve got an office in Moscow to raid or employees to imprison.” He paused. “Where does Lock live?”

“Moscow.”

“That’s a shame.”

“Why?”

“Because he started to work for Malin before either of them knew what they were doing. That means he knows where the mistakes are. And if you’re right, he’s not exactly battle-hardened. Get him out of Moscow. He’s protected there.”

“With pleasure.”

“He’s worth a lot to us. Go after him.”

LONDON WAS A GATEWAY FOR LOCK; he passed through it often on the way to his island world, where the sun shone and he was in charge. But in a broader sense it led to a life that was closed to him in Moscow. He would buy his suits there, from Henry Poole—the oldest tailors on Savile Row, he had once discovered with satisfaction—and the shirts and ties, shoes and socks that set him apart, he liked to think, from his Russian colleagues. There he would boss his lawyers, have his hair cut, dine well with the very few friends he still had, and feel briefly his old self, part of a confident, distinguished fraternity, the equal of his peers. In London, too, he would occasionally see his family.

But he hadn’t seen Marina or Vika on his recent visits. He told himself that there were good reasons for this: he was usually passing through and was seldom in town for long; the greater the size of Malin’s secret empire the more meetings he was forced to have; Vika was in bed by eight, just as his working day tended to finish. Today, however, on his way to Holland Park to see them, scenes from the Riviera playing in his mind, he found guilt mixed in with the usual apprehension.