Page 66 of The Collector
Somehow young Magnus emerged from the circumstances of his birth with a formidable brain in his head. A voracious reader and gifted student, he won admission to the University of Copenhagen, where he studied political science and Russian history. Then he headed off to Harvard for his business training. He joined DanskOil in 1985 and fifteen years later, at the age of forty, was promoted to the rank of CEO.
The company he inherited was profitable but by no means a major player in the industry. Magnus resolved to increase DanskOil’smarket share, which required additional petroleum—more petroleum than could be extracted from beneath Denmark’s territorial waters. He found it in Moscow in the spring of 2003, when he reached an agreement with the Kremlin to embark on a joint venture with the state-owned energy company RuzNeft.
“And that,” he added, “is when my life unraveled.”
He was peering into the glass of vodka that Ingrid, after returning his watch, had thrust into his hand. They were seated together on the drawing room’s dowdy formal sofa, the first edition ofThe Beautiful andDamnedresting on the coffee table before them. Natalie and Dina, late arrivals to the gathering, wore the vacant expressions of stage extras in a café scene. Eli Lavon appeared to be contemplating a chessboard only he could see. Mikhail was pacing slowly, as though waiting for his flight to board. Gabriel stood next to Katje, the silent witness to the proceedings.
“Do you happen to remember her name?” he asked.
The CEO looked up from his glass. “Must we, Allon?”
“We’re all adults, Magnus. Besides, we’ve heard it all before.”
“Her name was Natalia. She was very beautiful. I made a dreadful mistake.”
“I’m told that you were shown a video at FSB headquarters at Lubyanka.”
“Let’s just say that I was made aware of what the Russians had in their possession. If it had been made public, everything that I had managed to achieve would have been gone in an instant.”
He had hoped it would end with the lopsided DanskOil–RuzNeft deal, that his life would return to normal, that he would never be reminded of the mistake he had made in Room 316 of the Hotel Metropol. But during a trip to Russia in the winter of 2004, it was made clear to him that wouldn’t be the case.
“By whom?”
“Konstantin Gromov. At least that was the name he gave me. I’m sure it was a pseudonym.”
“Konstantin was your new SVR case officer?”
Magnus nodded.
“What did he have in mind?”
“A long-term relationship.”
“And you agreed, of course.”
“What choice did I have?”
He was tasked with supplying the SVR with business and political intelligence, with providing the names of potential recruits, and with acting in ways that advanced Russian interests over the West’s. He became a pied piper of a new Ostpolitik, reading lines from a script written for him by Moscow Center. He heaped praise upon the Russian leader at every opportunity, even after the vicious murder of Alexander Litvinenko in London in November 2006. Several friends stopped speaking to him. His wife, Karoline, who knew nothing of what had transpired in the Hotel Metropol, thought he had taken leave of his senses.
The pressure of leading a double life placed additional stress on their marriage, which had been strained for some time. And when Magnus noticed a beautiful half-Inuit woman at Noma one evening, he instructed his driver to make contact with her on his behalf.
“She rebuffed his first approach. Quite vehemently,” he added with a fleeting smile. “But eventually she agreed to see me, and we entered into a relationship. I paid her rent and her expenses, bought her anything she desired, and made certain that she always had plenty of spending money. I made no demands regarding exclusivity. In fact, I encouraged her to see other men. But I insisted that she never tell anyone she was involved with me. She agreed she wouldn’t.”
“How long did this relationship go on?”
“Nearly a year. I treated Rikke with kindness and affection, and I thought she was happy with the financial aspects of our arrangement. That was why it came as such a shock to me when she demanded a large sum of money to maintain her silence.”
“How much did you give her?”
“A million kroner, roughly a hundred thousand dollars. A few weeks later, she demanded a second payment, which I agreed to.”
“And when she came back for more?”
“I happened to be in Saint Petersburg for a meeting at RuzNeft headquarters. I had a drink with Konstantin Gromov while I was there. He could tell that something was troubling me and insisted I confide in him.”
“Which you did.”
“I had nowhere else to turn.”
