Page 67 of The Collector
“Did you give him Rikke’s name?”
“I didn’t have to.”
“Because the SVRrezidenturain Copenhagen already knew that you were seeing her.”
“Yes.”
“And when she went missing?”
“I assumed that she was lying on a beach somewhere with all the money I’d given her. But when a few weeks went by with no sign of her, I began to suspect the worst.”
“And you of course went straight to the Danish police,” said Gabriel.
“And what exactly would I have told them, Allon?”
“The truth.”
“I didn’t know the truth.” He looked at Katje. “You must believe me, Ms. Strøm. I was very fond of your sister, even after she blackmailed me. I had absolutely nothing to do with her death.”
“Disappearance,” said Gabriel.
“No, Allon. She has a right to know the truth. I have it on the highest authority that Rikke is in fact dead.”
“How high?”
Magnus tapped the crystal of his Piaget wristwatch. “The very top.”
Six monthsafter his young mistress vanished without a trace, Magnus plowed another $5 billion into RuzNeft, increasing his stake in the company to twenty-five percent and earning himself a place on the Russian company’s controlling board. Nearly a half billion dollars of that additional investment went straight into the pocket of the Russian president. Vladimir Vladimirovich rewarded his prized asset with a $6 million home in the gilded Moscow suburb of Rublyovka.
Magnus’s wife visited once, declared the place grotesque, and refused to return. Magnus, however, found the life of a Russian oligarch to be intoxicating—the lavish parties, the private jets, the yachts, the beautiful women. His Russian friends started calling him Comrade Larsenov. His Western critics, too. He became romantically involved with a reporter from NTV. His marriage all but collapsed.
“Karoline and I have what I would describe as a very European marriage. She lives her life—quite well, I might add—and I live mine. As strange as this might sound, it wasn’t my many dalliances and affairs that drove her away in the end, it was my friendship with Vladimir. Volodya was the final straw.”
Magnus saw the Russian president frequently when he was in Moscow, usually in the company of other oligarchs, sometimes alone. One private meeting took place at Novo-Ogaryevo, his official dacha, on the day he signed a law that would allow him to remain in office until 2036, effectively making him a president for life.
“At the conclusion of our session, he handed me a gift-wrapped box.” He held up his left arm. “‘To Magnus, from Vladimir.’ And then he asked me, as though it were the farthest thing from his mind, whether there were any developments in the search for the young woman with whom I had been involved. It never occurred to me that he knew of my situation. I was so shocked I could scarcely speak.”
“Did he tell you that Rikke was dead?”
“Vladimir Vladimirovich? Of course not. He didn’t have to tell me. He just gave me that smirk, the one that said he had taken care of that little problem for me. Not in order to protect me but to compromise me so totally and completely that I would do anything to stay in his good graces. He was reminding me that one day he would ask me to perform a service for him, a mission of great secrecy and sensitivity.” Magnus lowered his voice and added, “Something that no one in their right mind would ever do.”
Which brought them, shortly before midnight, toThe Concert, oil on canvas, 72.5 by 64.7 centimeters, by Johannes Vermeer.
35
Branitzer Platz
It was Konstantin Gromov of the SVR, not Vladimir Vladimirovich, who gave Magnus his marching orders. The date was August 2, 2022, six months after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The previous day, the United States announced it was sending another $550 million in military aid to Ukraine, including additional ammunition for the HIMARS mobile rocket launchers that had wreaked havoc on Russian supply lines and battlefield command posts. The Kremlin had largely crushed the internal antiwar movement, but there was grumbling among the oligarchs of the inner circle as the war began to take a toll on the economy and their lavish lifestyles. Most of the major Western energy companies—including ExxonMobil, Shell, and BP—had declared their intention to walk away from their Russian joint ventures. DanskOil, however, had refused to join the exodus.
“How did Gromov contact you?”
“The same way he always did, a chatty email to my private account about a book he thought I should see.”
“Where did you meet?”
“Oslo.”
“And the assignment?”
