Page 111 of The Collector
The document was now locked in Gennady Luzhkov’s attaché case, along with the half million in cash. Gennady’s powerful Vektor pistol was still in Ingrid’s handbag. As for the whereabouts of Gennady himself, Ingrid and Magnus knew nothing. They did not know whether he had been arrested or even whether he was alive or dead. If he wasn’t dead yet, she thought, he would be soon—all because she had stolen the Security Council directive.
She looked down at Magnus’s disabled phone.
“Don’t even think about it,” he said quietly.
“I have to know.”
“Assume the worst.”
“Do you know what they’re going to do to him?”
“The same thing they’re going to do to me if we’re arrested. Besides, Gennady knew what he was getting into. I only hope that when the story of this affair is written, he’ll get the credit he deserves.”
“And what will they write about us?” asked Ingrid.
“I suppose that depends on whether the Russian border guards allow us to leave.” Magnus rubbed the fogged windscreen with the sleeve of his overcoat. “It occurs to me that you know everything there is to know about me, and I know next to nothing about you.”
“Yes,” she said.
“Tell mesomething, at least.”
“I grew up in a little town in Jutland near the German border.”
“Good start. What does your father do?”
“He’s a schoolteacher.”
“And your mother?”
“A saint.”
“You’re obviously intelligent. Why did you become a thief?”
“Why did you become an energy executive?”
“Don’t tell me you’re an environmentalist.”
“Devout.”
“I suppose you’re very green. Carbon neutral, that sort of thing.”
“And if I was?”
“I would advise you to get professional help.”
“It’s all a hoax?”
“Look at the snow falling around you.”
“We’re in northern Russia, you moron.”
“I will concede that the climate is warming. But the burning of fossil fuels has nothing to do with it.”
“That’s not what you wrote in an internal DanskOil memo in 1998. In fact, you said exactly the opposite.”
His head swiveled to the right. “How could you possibly know that?”
“What do you think I was doing all that time I was sitting outside your office?”
