The Silent Oligarch: A Novel Read Online Free PDF Page A

EFORE BECOMING AN INVESTIGATOR, or a spy, or whatever he was, Webster had been a journalist. Fifteen years before, with Yeltsin newly in power and Russia painfully transforming itself, he had gone to Moscow with little more than a degree in Russian to sustain him. Stories were everywhere. He wrote about savings being lost as inflation surged and about coal miners in Siberia unpaid for months; about officials corrupted to demolish fine buildings, tribes threatened by logging in the far east, families from America adopting orphans from Rostov, Samara, Tomsk. At first he wrote the articles and sold them wherever he could, but after six months he was working as a stringer for The Times. He traveled across the country, from the forests of Sakhalin to the dockyards of Murmansk, from the Gulag factories in the Arctic north to the Black Sea health spas where the politburo had spent its summers. Sometimes he went beyond, to Kiev and Tbilisi, Ulan Bator and Tashkent. In eight years he saw more ugliness and hope, more dishonesty, dignity and unexpected happiness than he knew he would again. Life was rich in Russia, even while it was cheap.
    But slowly, almost without noticing, he came to tire of the endless round of expectation and disappointment. In 1992 he had believed that Russia would be great again; seven years later he worried that it was destined forever to miss its chance. His editors began to tire, too. And then, three months short of the new century, Inessa had died.
    A man called Serik Almaz was charged with her murder, and four weeks after her death he was convicted. He had spent half his life in prison for theft and assault but at his trial, which lasted a morning, he pleaded innocent. Webster couldn’t attend because his visa had been revoked.
    Novaya Gazeta ran a piece on its front page about her work and her death in the line of duty; The Times simply reported that she had died. She was the fourth Russian journalist to be murdered that year. At her funeral in Samara, Webster apologized to her husband, he wasn’t sure why, and a month later left Russia for good, his faith undone.
    And now he was on a yacht, being kept waiting by the sort of man that Inessa used to write about. It was evening now, and Tourna had still not returned. He pinched a cigarette out of its new pack and lit it with the cheap lighter he had bought at the airport. Just one was all right; it was hot, after all, and he was abroad. A piece of tobacco clung to his lip and he wiped it off with his thumb. There was no wind now and the smoke drifted off the boat in its own time.
    Webster read his book and watched the stars appear in the night. Reaching for his drink he caught sight of himself reflected in the black glass of the cabin. He had swum before dinner and his gray hair was stiff and unruly with salt. He had changed his grubby white shirt for his only clean one and was looking respectable, plausible even—anyone would think he belonged here. But he felt ridiculous, just as he felt trapped on this indecently beautiful boat. This wasn’t him. He should have left the moment he found out Tourna wasn’t here. He should probably never have come.
    T HE NEXT MORNING BEFORE BREAKFAST, with the sun just up over the peninsula, he swam again, diving off the side of the boat into the blue-green sea. It was almost too warm for his taste; this wasn’t Cornwall, where a week before he had swum with the children in water that even in August had shocked the breath from him. And while it was good, it didn’t merit the trip. He had decided that whatever Tourna wanted wasn’t worth this sustained challenge to his dignity: he would get dressed, eat something and leave for Dalaman before the heat came.
    As he climbed the ladder back up to the deck he heard the drone of an engine and looked back to see the launch approaching. Tourna was driving, stooping down to control the outboard motor. There was no doubt this was him. He was short and solid, his thick calves