The Cellist by Daniel Silva

58Geneva–London–Tel Aviv

It began the usual way, with an anonymous leak to a respected journalist. In this instance, the leaker was Christoph Bittel of the Swiss NDB, and the recipient of his editorial largesse was a financial reporter from the Neue Züricher Zeitung. The information concerned a New Year’s Eve raid conducted by Swiss Federal Police on the home and office of the oil trader and oligarch Arkady Akimov. Details of the investigation were scarce, but the words “suspected money laundering” and “theft of Russian state assets” found their way into the reporter’s spotless copy. Arkady Akimov could not be reached for comment, as he had taken refuge in Moscow—curious, for his private plane was parked on the tarmac at Geneva Airport, grounded by order of the Swiss government.

Later that morning, with the help of Paul Rousseau in Paris, it emerged that Arkady Akimov had hosted a New Year’s Eve party at his chalet in the French ski village of Courchevel. Among those in attendance was the Russian president, who had traveled to France without public fanfare and left sometime after midnight, evidently with Arkady Akimov aboard his plane. The guest list, which somehow became public, included several prominent French businessmen and numerous politicians from the far right. None of those reached for comment remembered anything unusual. Indeed, few could recall much of anything at all.

The next shoe to drop landed on the Zurich office of RhineBank AG, which was the target of an extraordinary Saturday-morning raid. The firm’s Fleet Street office in London was likewise raided, and the chief of the bank’s global markets division, a certain Anil Kandar, was taken into custody at his Victorian mansion in tony Richmond-on-Thames. Swiss and British financial authorities were unusually taciturn regarding the motivation for the searches, saying only that they were related to the Akimov case. RhineBank’s executive steering committee, the Council of Ten, hastily issued a statement denying any wrongdoing, a sure sign the bank had been up to no good.

The sweeping scale of the misconduct was made public later that evening in a lengthy exposé published jointly by the MoskovskayaGazeta and the Financial Journal of London, both of which were controlled by the estate of the late Viktor Orlov. The story detailed RhineBank’s long-standing ties to members of the Russian president’s inner circle and characterized the business empire of Arkady Akimov as a mechanism for the acquisition and concealment of ill-gotten wealth. According to internal RhineBank documents, Akimov was a longtime client of the so-called Russian Laundromat, a secret unit at the firm’s Zurich office. But in late 2020, he had been lured into an illicit relationship with the Geneva-based financier and political activist Martin Landesmann, who was working with Swiss and British investigators. At Akimov’s behest, Landesmann had purchased several companies and real estate assets, including office buildings in Miami, Chicago, and London’s Canary Wharf. The true owner of those assets, however, was none other than the president of Russia.

Among the more shocking aspects of the article were its London dateline and the name of the reporter who had written it: Nina Antonova. As it turned out, the missing Russian journalist had been granted secret refuge in Britain. In a sidebar to her main story, Antonova admitted that she had unwittingly given Viktor Orlov a packet of documents contaminated with ultrafine Novichok powder. The packet had been prepared, she alleged, by an associate of Arkady Akimov named Felix Belov. Interestingly enough, Belov was among those who had attended the New Year’s Eve party in Courchevel. His whereabouts, like those of Arkady Akimov, were said to be unknown.

The developments sent shockwaves up and down the length of Whitehall. There were some in the opposition Labour Party, and at rival newspapers as well, who found fault with Downing Street’s handling of the matter, especially the formal charges that had been filed against Nina Antonova by the Crown Prosecution Service. Prime Minister Jonathan Lancaster gleefully admitted they were an unorthodox but necessary ruse to protect the reporter from Russia’s vengeful intelligence services. He then engaged in a little vengeance of his own, ordering the National Crime Agency to seize a long list of high-value properties, including the Canary Wharf office building. Swiss authorities simultaneously froze the assets of NevaNeft Holdings SA and seized Akimov’s airplane and his villa on Lake Geneva. Sources in both countries suggested it was only the beginning.

But why had the Russian businessman been targeted in the first place? And why had he gone into business with Saint Martin Landesmann, of all people? Was it possible that Martin’s pro-democracy NGO was some sort of operational front? And what about the splashy gala at the Kunsthaus museum in Zurich? News footage revealed that Akimov and his beautiful young wife had been in attendance that evening. Could it be that the renowned Swiss violinist Anna Rolfe was somehow involved as well?

And then there was The Lute Player, oil on canvas, 152 by 134 centimeters, formerly assigned to the circle of Orazio Gentileschi, now firmly attributed to Orazio’s daughter, Artemisia. The director of the Kunsthaus curtly rejected questions regarding the painting’s authenticity, as did the noted London art dealer Oliver Dimbleby, who had brokered its sale. But where had Dimbleby acquired it? It was Amelia March of ARTNews who supplied the answer. Dimbleby, she reported, had purchased the painting from Isherwood Fine Arts, where it had resided since the early 1970s. Sarah Bancroft, the gallery’s alluring managing partner, said the circumstances of the sale were private and would remain so.

Amelia March notwithstanding, the reporters who probed for morsels at the edges of the affair found little that was satisfactory. A spokesman for the Global Alliance for Democracy promised that the important work of the NGO would continue well into the future. Through her publicist, Anna Rolfe said she performed at the gala as a favor for an old and treasured friend. Presumably, that friend was Martin Landesmann, but Martin refused all comment. His legion of right-wing critics said his sudden silence was proof that miracles can indeed happen.

Yevgeny Nazarov, the Kremlin’s silver-tongued spokesman, was as loquacious as ever. During a combative Moscow press conference, he denied reports that the Russian president was the anonymous owner of the assets in question, or that he possessed secret wealth hidden in the West. A spokeswoman for the incoming American administration dismissed the claim as laughable and suggested the president-elect would not wait long to take appropriate action. The outgoing administration—or at least what remained of it—washed its hands of the mess. The president, who had given up any pretense of governing, was focused on a last-ditch attempt to overturn the results of the November election. The White House press secretary refused to say whether he had even been briefed on the matter.

There was at least one senior American official, CIA director Morris Payne, who followed the demise of Arkady Akimov with more than a passing interest, for he had played a small but not insignificant role in bringing it about. Payne knew what others did not, that the operation against Akimov and his financial enablers at RhineBank had been orchestrated not by the Swiss and British but by the legendary Israeli spymaster Gabriel Allon. Owing to certain technical capabilities of the National Security Agency, Payne was also aware of some unpleasantness that had occurred after Akimov’s New Year’s Eve party in Courchevel—something having to do with a German woman named Isabel Brenner and a dead Russian called Felix Belov.

Though Payne was not long for his job, he was anxious to obtain a readout of the evening’s events. Truth be told, he believed he was entitled to one. Nevertheless, he waited until eleven a.m. on the morning of Wednesday, January 6, before ringing Allon on the Langley–to–King Saul Boulevard hotline. Much to Morris Payne’s dismay, his call received no answer. His profanity-laced tirade was audible the length and breadth of the seventh floor.