Page 114 of The Collector
“Tear up those transfer orders, you bastard.”
“If you insist,” said Gennady. “But I’ll require your signatures onthe cancellation order. It shouldn’t take more than a few minutes. What time should I expect you?”
After enduring yet another torrent of abuse, Gennady rang off and immediately dialed Magnus Larsen. The call went straight to voice mail. Magnus, it seemed, had wisely switched off his mobile phone.
The manager of the FBO at Pulkovo Airport, however, answered Gennady’s call without delay. The news was not promising. The weather had forced the airport to impose a full ground stop. The FBO expected conditions to improve around midday, but commercial flights would receive priority. It would be early evening, the manager predicted, before private aircraft received a departure slot.
Which meant that Magnus and Ingrid were now trapped inside Russia. Gennady had bought them a few additional minutes, but surely not enough time to make their escape. What they required was a guarantee of safe passage from a powerful member of thesiloviki—someone like the secretary of Russia’s Security Council. Gennady was confident there was a deal to be made. All he required was a bit of leverage.
And so it was that Gennady Luzhkov, with a single phone call to an underling many floors below, transferred the lion’s share of Nikolai Petrov’s personal wealth—205 billion Russian rubles, none of it rightfully his—to an account held by one Raisa Luzhkova at the Royal GulfBank of Dubai. Petrov was automatically notified of the enormous transaction via email. He rang Gennady seconds after receiving it.
“Where’s my money, you bastard?”
“Didn’t you review the email, Secretary Petrov? Your money is at Royal GulfBank. But it won’t stay there long. And when it’s gone, you’ll never find it. Unlike you, I’m very good at hiding things.”
“What do you want?”
“A promise that you and your friends at the FSB will make no attempt to prevent Magnus Larsen and Ms. Sørensen from leaving the country.”
“I don’t suppose they’re in their bed in Rublyovka.”
“No.”
“Where are they headed?”
“I haven’t a clue.”
“Best guess?”
“Kazakhstan,” said Gennady.
“My money’s on Finland.”
“You don’t have any money, Nikolai.”
There was a long silence.
“Transfer the money to VTB Bank,” said Petrov at last, “and I’ll let them go.”
“Other way around. Let them go, and I’ll transfer the money. And then you can do with me as you please.”
“Don’t worry, I intend to.”
The connection went dead.
Gennady dialed Magnus’s number again, but there was still no answer. He needed to tell them that it was safe to cross the border. He had only one option.
He found the main number online and dialed. A cheerful-sounding woman answered in American-accented English. “Embassy of the United States.”
“My name is Gennady Luzhkov. I am the chairman of TverBank and an asset of the Central Intelligence Agency code-named Komarovsky. Now listen carefully.”
57
Southern Finland
It sounded too crazy not to be true. At least, that was the conclusion of the embassy operator, who had heard a great deal of Russian-accented nonsense over the phone lines since the beginning of the so-called special military operation in Ukraine. She immediately passed the message to her superior—it was more or less a word-for-word transcription of what Mr. Luzhkov had said—and the superior ran it upstairs to the office of the deputy chief of mission. It meant nothing to the DCM, but he had the good sense to bring it to the attention of the CIA station chief, who put it in a flash cable to the Russia House at Langley, which bounced it back across the Atlantic to Helsinki.
It would be another five minutes before the news reached Tom McNeil via an encrypted email. It stated that Gennady Luzhkov, the founder and chairman of TverBank and a CIA asset code-named Komarovsky, had somehow managed to arrange safe passage from Russia for Ingrid and Magnus Larsen—doubtless at enormous personal risk to himself. McNeil was elated by the news, Gabriel less so. Experience had taught him that deals with Russians invariablywent sideways, oftentimes as a result of nothing more than blinding Russian incompetence. He would therefore refrain from any celebration or expression of relief until his two assets were safely across the border.
