The Silent Oligarch: A Novel

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Authors: Christopher Morgan Jones
Tags: thriller, Suspense, Mystery
her arms and watched the dancers. “Is this leading somewhere?”
    “I . . . I suppose I’d like to say I’m sorry.”
    “She wouldn’t understand.”
    “I don’t mean actually say it.”
    “What, then?” Marina glanced at him and then turned back to the lesson.
    Lock thought. He couldn’t find the words, because he didn’t yet know what he wanted to say. Marina always knew what was in her heart, and the more complicated the situation—where he would grope around among desires and fears that sat forever in shadow, reticent, unassuming—the more clearly she knew it. This was what he remembered of their arguments. What he had since come to realize was that there can have been no sense of triumph for Marina in these easy victories, that they must have been at best an additional disappointment, and he was conscious now, at least, of wanting to show her that he had changed.
    So: what did he want? Some knowledge must have been distilled from the slow, dripping process of the last four years. In his mind a pair of images sat juxtaposed: his flat in Moscow, hard and bright, its marble floors polished to a shine, the leather furniture unworn, the kitchen redundant, the whole thing empty now and always empty; and his daughter in her T-shirt dancing and spinning below him.
    He wanted to be away from money. That he did know. In his world every act was a transaction, every relationship a wary contract. He had always thought himself a shrewd if minor player of the game, but since Monaco he had become aware for the first time of the price of competing, of the steep and perhaps unavoidable cost.
    He looked at Marina. How often had he sat like this, watching her in profile and failing to find the words that would turn her to him? He felt a flush of guilt and then of failure at the thought.
    “I’d . . . I’d like to see more of you,” he said. “Of both of you.”
    “You’ve said that before.”
    “I haven’t. I’ve said I’d visit more often. This is different.” Marina closed her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose. He went on. “I want to see more of you. Not just visit but spend time together. Do things.” Marina didn’t reply. “Normal things.”
    She turned to look at him and he felt the coolness that was sometimes in her eyes.
    “You have work to do, Richard. You know that.” She paused. “Leave Moscow. Find a way. I don’t want that in our family anymore.”
    Lock nodded gently, his eyes down. “And if I do?”
    Her eyes softened. At times like this they seemed to suggest that there were greater sorrows than her own. “The worst part of this was seeing you lost. I still hate it.”
    He nodded again. Below him the dance teacher was counting out a four-four rhythm and Vika, watching her intently, was trying to follow a new move. Lost. It was a good word for him. He had drifted way off course; perhaps too far.

Four
    S OMETIMES WHEN A JOB BEGAN you surveyed the ground, found it undisturbed, and simply had to start digging to see what was there; sometimes you arrived to find it churned up by others before you, and set to it with enthusiasm in the loose earth they had left behind. But this was new to Webster. He could guess what was buried and where, almost see it, but he couldn’t get near enough to dig.
    Now he sat with his hands clasped behind his head, slouching almost off his chair, looking at the wall and wondering what he would do when he ran out of space. He had his own chart. It was made up of eight sheets of flip-chart paper and took up one wall of his office. On it he was writing in soft dark pencil everything of note about Project Snowdrop (Ikertu, ever hungry for project names, was working its way through flowers). He had a box for Malin at the top left; at the bottom left, one for Faringdon; top right, Lock; bottom right, Grachev. In each, in slanting capitals, were growing lists of ideas, attributes, facts. In the middle of the chart and expanding outward was what looked like a

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