The Cellist by Daniel Silva
20Erlenbach, Switzerland
Herr Karl Zimmer, the head of RhineBank-Zurich, welcomed Isabel to his fiefdom as though she were an unwanted houseguest. During a tense introductory meeting, he made it clear he had objected to her transfer but had been overruled by headquarters. Nevertheless, he claimed he was ready and willing to give Isabel a chance to salvage her career, provided she keep her nose clean and do nothing to interfere with the essential business of the Zurich office, which was making obscene amounts of money by any means necessary. He gave her a windowless cell of an office two levels beneath the trading floor. It was just down the hall from a cipher-and-biometric-protected door, behind which toiled the gnomes of a secret unit of the wealth management department known as the Russian Laundromat.
RhineBank’s ties to Russia, she explained, dated to the late nineteenth century, leaving the bank uniquely positioned to take advantage of the corrupt and oftentimes violent return to capitalism that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union. RhineBank-Moscow opened during the final years of the Yeltsin era, and in 2004 the Council of Ten approved the purchase of Metropolitan Financial, a small bank that catered to newly rich Russian oligarchs and criminals. RhineBank also extended a billion-dollar line of credit to MosBank, a Kremlin-owned lender directly controlled by the Russian president. MosBank used a portion of the money to fund the overseas activities of the SVR, Russia’s foreign intelligence service. It also allowed SVR agents to operate undercover from MosBank branches throughout the world.
“Which meant that RhineBank AG of Hamburg was indirectly facilitating Russian intelligence operations targeting the West. And it was making millions of dollars a year in profits in the process.”
That paled in comparison, however, to the profits the bank earned by operating the Russian Laundromat—a smooth-running conveyor belt that funneled dirty money out of Russia and deposited clean money throughout the world, all beneath impenetrable layers of shell companies that shielded the client’s identity from regulators, law enforcement, and, of course, investigative journalists. Much of the money began its journey at either MosBank or Metropolitan Financial. From there, it would make its way to dubious financial havens such as Latvia or Cyprus before arriving in Zurich, where the gnomes of the Laundromat worked their magic. They offered their clients a broad range of services, including legal and corporate advice subcontracted through a network of unscrupulous lawyers in Switzerland, Liechtenstein, and London. A unit of the Laundromat searched out investment opportunities. Luxury real estate, especially in the United States and the United Kingdom, was prized. But in many cases, the money was simply repackaged by other divisions of the bank and lent to other customers.
“As you can imagine, the arrangement is highly lucrative. Not only does the bank collect fees for the initial cleaning service, it then collects massive fees from the borrowers as well.”
“What kind of cleaning fees are we talking about?”
“That depends on how much soap is required. If the laundry is only lightly soiled, RhineBank pockets about ten percent. If the laundry is bloodstained, RhineBank might demand as much as half of it. Not surprisingly, the gnomes of the Laundromat like dirty customers. The dirtier the better.”
“Dealing with Russian mobsters can be a dangerous business.”
“Herr Zimmer is well protected. So is Lothar Brandt.”
“The chief of the wealth management department.”
She nodded. “Head washer boy.”
“You were aware of the Russian Laundromat before you arrived in Zurich?”
“Why do you think I asked to come here?”
“You penetrated your own bank? Is that what you’re saying?”
“I suppose I did.”
“What motivated you to take such a drastic step?”
“Mirror trades.”
“In English, please.”
“Let’s say a dirty Russian has a mountain of dirty rubles he needs to convert into dollars. The dirty Russian can’t take the dirty rubles to the local Thomas Cook, so he gives them to a brokerage firm that uses them to purchase a large quantity of blue-chip stocks at RhineBank-Moscow. A few minutes later, the brokerage firm’s representative in, say, Cyprus sells the exact same number of blue-chip stocks to RhineBank-London, which pays the Cypriot in dollars. The trades mirror each other, thus the name.”
Isabel learned of the mirror trades while she was in London, and from her new position in Zurich she was able to observe what happened when the money reached the Laundromat. Her view, however, was highly obstructed; the Laundromat was quarantined from the rest of the office. Even so, their activities required a veneer of internal compliance, especially transfers involving large sums of money—in some cases, hundreds of millions of dollars. Each day, Lothar Brandt brought stacks of documents to Isabel’s office and loomed over her while she blindly signed where indicated. But occasionally, if he was busy with another client, the documents arrived by inner-office pouch, presenting Isabel an opportunity to review them at her leisure. One corporate entity appeared frequently, almost always in connection with massive wire transfers, stock and real estate purchases, and other investments.
“Omega Holdings,” said Gabriel.
Isabel nodded.
“Why did Omega stand out?”
“Its sheer size. Most clients of the Laundromat utilize dozens of corporate shells, but Omega had hundreds. Whenever possible, I photographed the documents on my personal phone. I also ran Omega through our databases.”
“How much money did you find?”
“Twelve billion. But I was certain I’d only scratched the surface. It was obvious the man behind Omega Holdings was very high on the Russian food chain.” She paused. “An apex predator.”
“What did you do?”
She briefly considered filing an anonymous complaint with FINMA, the Swiss regulatory agency, but decided instead to give the material to a woman she had seen on Swiss television. She was an investigative reporter from a crusading Russian newsmagazine who had a knack for ferreting out financial wrongdoing by the men of the Kremlin. On the seventeenth of February, during her lunch hour, Isabel left a parcel of documents in an athletic field in Zurich’s District 3. That evening, using the personal computer in her apartment, she sent an anonymous message to the Russian journalist’s ProtonMail address. Afterward, she played Bach’s Cello Suite in E-flat Major. All six movements. No sheet music. Not a single mistake.
In March, Isabel left a package at a marina on the western shore of the Zürichsee, and in April she made drops in Winterthur and Zug. Several times each day she checked Nina Antonova’s Twitter feed and the website of the Moskovskaya Gazeta, but there were no stories about an important oligarch or senior Kremlin official utilizing the services of RhineBank’s Russian Laundromat. She made three more drops in June—Basel, Thun, Lucerne. Nevertheless, the Gazeta remained editorially silent, leaving her no choice but to pursue the investigation herself.
She had met Mark Preston when they were students at the London School of Economics. After completing his degree, he embarked on a career as a business journalist, only to discover he detested London’s financial elite. An avid gamer and amateur hacker, he pioneered a new form of investigative journalism, one that relied on keystrokes and clicks rather than phone calls and shoe leather. His sources were never human, for humans often lied and nearly always had a vested interest. Instead, Preston searched for information captured by the cameras of smartphones—on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Google Street View. He also discovered that in Russia there was a thriving black market for CDs crammed with telephone directories, police reports, and even the national passport database. Yearbooks from elite military units and academies were also available.
His first major story came during the Syrian civil war, when he documented that the regime was dropping chemical barrel bombs on innocent civilians. A year later he identified the Russian officers responsible for shooting down Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17 over Ukraine. The story cemented Preston’s reputation and earned him the enmity of the Kremlin. Fearful of Russian retaliation, he left London and went into hiding. He also joined the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, a nonprofit global network of reporters and news organizations headquartered in Washington.
“As you might recall, the ICIJ broke the Panama Papers story. Much of their work focuses on corruption. Mark helps the financial investigators by identifying and tracking the movements of individuals, especially individuals who are connected to Russia’s intelligence services.”
“How did you communicate with him?”
“The same way I communicated with Nina. ProtonMail.”
“I assume you didn’t refer to yourself as Mr. Nobody.”
“No. But I didn’t put my real name in any of the emails, either. It wasn’t necessary.”
“Because you and Mark Preston are more than friends.”
“We dated for a semester.”
“Who ended it?”
“He did, if you must know.”
“Silly boy.”
“I always thought so.”
They met at the end of Brighton Place Pier, as if by chance. At Preston’s insistence, Isabel had switched off her phone and removed the SIM card before leaving London. She gave him copies of the documents and asked him to undertake a private investigation on her behalf, for which she would pay any amount he asked. He agreed, though he refused Isabel’s offer of money.
“It seems he always regretted the way he treated me.”
“Perhaps there’s hope for him after all.”
“Not in that regard.”
A month passed before Isabel heard from him. This time they met in a little seaside town called Hastings. Preston gave her a flash drive containing a dossier of his findings. He warned her to be careful. He said Russian journalists had been murdered for less. Swiss bankers, too.
Isabel read the dossier that evening in her hotel room. Two days later she learned that Viktor Orlov had been murdered, apparently with a Russian nerve agent. She waited until Saturday evening before sending an encrypted email to Nina Antonova. She had left a new package along the bank of the river Aare, in the Old City of Bern. All the pages were blank, with one exception. I know who killed Viktor Orlov . . . Afterward, she performed Bach’s Cello Suite in D Major.
“Any mistakes?”
“Not a one.”
“Where’s the dossier?”
She dug it from her bag. “The flash drive and the Word document are both locked. The password is the same.”
“What is it?”
“The Haydn Group.” She looked at the Englishman and smiled. “The letter G is capitalized.”