The Cellist by Daniel Silva
42Quai du Mont-Blanc, Geneva
At eleven a.m. the following morning, a Russian stockbroker named Anatoly Bershov rang his man at RhineBank-Moscow on behalf of an unidentified client and purchased several thousand shares in an American biotech company that developed and produced a widely used coronavirus testing kit. Five minutes later the same Russian stockbroker instructed his representative in Cyprus, a certain Mr. Constantinides, to sell an identical number of shares in the company to one Anil Kandar, head of RhineBank’s global markets division in London. The first transaction was conducted in rubles, the second in dollars. Mr. Constantinides immediately wired the proceeds to a correspondent Cypriot bank—it was located in the same Nicosia office building, which was owned by anonymous Russian interests—and the correspondent Cypriot bank wired it to the Caribbean, where it bounced from one shady house of finance to the next before finally making its way to Meissner PrivatBank of Liechtenstein.
By then, the money had passed through so many flimsy corporate shells its point of origin was all but impossible to determine. For good measure, Meissner cloaked the money beneath a final layer of corporate murk before squirting it to Credit Suisse in Geneva, where it landed in an account controlled by Global Vision Investments. A fonctionnaire at Credit Suisse sent an email confirmation to a GVI executive named Isabel Brenner, who, unbeknownst to the fonctionnaire, was the hidden hand behind the entire appalling deception.
Anatoly Bershov placed a second call to his man at RhineBank-Moscow shortly after three p.m. This time his client wished to purchase several thousand shares in a giant American food-and-beverage conglomerate. The banker from whom Anil Kandar purchased an identical number of shares in dollars was located in the Bahamas. The funds ricocheted among several dubious Bahamian banks, all located on the same Nassau street, before crossing the Atlantic in the opposite direction and finding temporary lodging at Meissner PrivatBank of Liechtenstein. Credit Suisse took possession of the money at four fifteen Geneva time. Email confirmation to Isabel Brenner, Global Vision Investments.
The transactions produced more than a hundred pages of records, including two internal GVI documents requiring both Isabel’s signature and the signature of Anatoly Bershov’s mysterious client. Fortunately, his office was located directly across the river Rhône, in the Place du Port. Isabel arrived at five p.m. and, after placing her phone in a decorative signal-blocking box, was admitted into Arkady’s inner sanctum on the seventh floor—one floor above the offices of the mysterious NevaNeft subsidiary known as the Haydn Group. Much to her surprise, Arkady personally signed the documents where indicated.
Isabel photocopied the papers upon her return to GVI headquarters, along with the other relevant records, and placed the originals in a safe in her office. The copies she gave to a courier, who delivered them to a rented villa in the diplomatic quarter of Champel. Their arrival was cause for a brief celebration. Three months after its unlikely inception, the operation had borne its first fruit. Gabriel and the Office were now minority stakeholders in the kleptocracy known as Kremlin Inc.
Anil Kandar suggested they tap the brakes long enough to determine whether RhineBank’s regulators at the Financial Conduct Authority had taken note of the unusual trades. Isabel could have assured her former colleague that FCA was well aware of their activities, as was Her Majesty’s Secret Intelligence Service. Instead, she agreed to a pause, so long as it was brief. Her client, she wrote in an obliquely worded email, was not by nature a patient man.
Forty-eight hours proved sufficient to put Anil’s concerns to rest, and by Friday morning, Anatoly Bershov was bullish about Microsoft. So, too, was Anil Kandar. Indeed, not five minutes after Bershov placed a multibillion-ruble bet on the conglomerate at RhineBank-Moscow, Anil purchased an identical number of shares from Mr. Constantinides of Cyprus, though Anil paid for his chips with American dollars. The money appeared in a GVI account at Credit Suisse in late morning, and the proceeds of a second mirror trade appeared in midafternoon. Arkady signed the documents that evening at NevaNeft headquarters.
Afterward, he invited Isabel to join him for a glass of champagne. Citing a pressing matter at the office, she tried to beg off, but Arkady was insistent. Ludmilla Sorova brought a bottle of Dom Pérignon and two glasses, and for the better part of the next hour, as the last light drained from the skies above Geneva, they debated the merits of Rachmaninoff’s four piano concertos. Isabel declared that the second was clearly his greatest. Arkady agreed, though he had always had a soft spot for the mighty third and was particularly fond of a recent recording by the Russian pianist Daniil Trifonov.
The conversation left him in a reflective mood. “If only I could talk to Oksana like this,” he lamented.
“She doesn’t like Rachmaninoff?”
“Oksana prefers electronic dance music.” He offered Isabel a sheepish smile. “You might find this difficult to believe, but I did not marry her for her intellect.”
“She’s very beautiful, Arkady.”
“But childish. I was quite relieved when she behaved herself during Anna Rolfe’s recital. Not long before the pandemic, I took her to a performance of Tchaikovsky’s violin concerto. Afterward, I swore, never again.”
“Who was the soloist?”
“The young Dutchwoman. Her name escapes me.”
“Janine Jansen?”
“Yes, that’s the one. Do you know her, too?”
“We’ve never met,” answered Isabel.
“She’s no Anna Rolfe, but she’s quite talented.” Arkady added champagne to Isabel’s glass. “I’m sorry, but I can’t recall how it is you know Anna.”
“We were introduced by Martin.”
“Yes, of course. That makes sense,” said Arkady. “Martin knows everyone.”
While walking home through the darkened streets of the Old Town, Isabel reached the unsettling conclusion that Arkady was interested in expanding the parameters of their relationship to include a romantic or, heaven forbid, a sexual component. She shared her concerns with Gabriel on Monday evening during another carefully choreographed meeting in Martin’s apartment on the Île Saint-Louis in Paris. Next morning, over coffee at the café in Fleet Street, she informed Anil Kandar that they needed to quicken the pace of the illicit mirror trades. He responded with four large transactions that produced nearly a hundred million dollars.
Anil engineered four more mirror trades on Wednesday and another four on Thursday. But it was Friday’s haul—six large transactions with more than two hundred million in proceeds—that put them over the top. Isabel obtained the required signatures during a late-afternoon appearance at NevaNeft headquarters and for a second time was invited to linger for a glass of champagne. The intimate nature of the conversation left little doubt that Arkady was hopelessly infatuated with the beautiful German cellist who was laundering his dirty Russian money. She was therefore relieved when, shortly after six p.m., Martin appeared on the screen of the giant wall-mounted television in Arkady’s office.
At length, Arkady said, “You never answered my question.”
“About my relationship with Martin?”
“Yes.”
“Martin and I are colleagues.” Isabel paused, then added, “As are we, Arkady.”
He aimed a remote at the screen and increased the volume. “He’s quite good on television, isn’t he? And to think that not a single word of what he’s saying is true.”
“It’s not all a lie. He just neglected to mention one or two pertinent details.”
“Such as?”
“The name of the man who’s financing his planned spending spree.”
“There is no such man.” Arkady smiled. “He’s Mr. Nobody.”
Isabel squeezed the stem of her champagne glass so tightly she was surprised it didn’t snap. Arkady appeared not to notice; his gaze was fixed on the television.
“And you’re mistaken about one other matter as well,” he said after a moment. “Ludmilla Sorova is my colleague. You, Isabel, are something else entirely.”
The host of the CNBC program upon which Martin appeared was none other than Zoe Reed. The topic concerned rumors swirling about Wall Street that Global Vision Investments was considering several deals in the United States, including in the distressed commercial real estate sector, which the firm had avoided in the past. Martin was as elusive as ever. Yes, he acknowledged, he had several irons in the American fire. Most were in the forward-looking energy and technology sectors where he had traditionally been active, but commercial real estate was not out of the question. GVI expected a sharp post-pandemic rebound in the United States once a sufficient percentage of the population had been vaccinated. The perception that the pandemic would forever change the nature of work was mistaken. Americans, declared Martin, would soon be returning to their offices.
“But that doesn’t mean we can go back to our old ways. We have to make our places of work greener, smarter, and much more energy efficient. Remember, Zoe, there’s no vaccine for a rising sea level.”
“Is it true you’re looking at a high-rise in downtown Chicago?”
“We’re looking at a number of different projects.”
“And what about America’s current political turmoil? Are you at all concerned about the stability of the market?”
“America’s democratic institutions,” said Martin diplomatically, “are strong enough to withstand the current challenge.”
The interview left little doubt as to Martin’s intentions. It was only a matter of when and where and how much. The wait for an answer was not long—five days, in fact—though the asset in question came as something of a surprise. Isabel obtained the necessary signatures at NevaNeft headquarters and forwarded copies of the documents to the rented villa in Champel. Kremlin Inc. was now the proud owner of a sixty-story office-and-condominium tower on Miami’s Brickell Avenue, which meant that Gabriel was now the proud owner of Arkady Akimov. The time had finally come to take on an additional partner—a partner with the financial firepower to turn Arkady’s empire to ashes. He had one small piece of unrelated business to attend to at King Saul Boulevard first.