The Silent Oligarch: A Novel by Christopher Morgan Jones Page A

they had never met. She had sent him the piece, half-finished, as the first installment of a series about the new politics of Russia’s reviving energy industry. She wasn’t an energy specialist but he knew her work and liked this story; oil prices were beginning to rise after the crisis the year before and everyone was looking to see what Russia would do in its energy policy—and besides, it was “juicy.” He had paid the usual rate for the first article only, but had promised to look at the others when she knew exactly what they were going to be about; at the time she hadn’t been wholly clear.
    It was late summer when he published. When he read of her death, perhaps two months later, he had written a note to Novaya Gazeta. His wife had commented that it was strange, almost, that she was the first Russian journalist he knew to die, there were so many.
    No, he hadn’t thought it odd that she should send him the article. Even then, in the early days of the magazine, he had had all manner of people sending him ideas and stories. Had anyone suggested a connection between the article and her death? No, they had not. Elder had always assumed that it was one of the many minor oligarchs she had done so much to annoy. And no, it hadn’t occurred to him that it was inadequately sourced. In fact he remembered it quite differently.
    The conversation had ended there, more or less, with Elder a little prickly and Webster satisfied that this was all he was going to learn.
    The theory would just have to settle. In the meantime he had his case, and there Alan Knight and Inessa had left him with the sense that he knew at once much more and no more than he had before; as if he’d asked for directions and been given only a full history of his destination. The one thing that he could act on was what Knight had said about Dmitry Gerstman. Every investigator loved a disgruntled ex-employee, and Gerstman was mysterious to boot. People didn’t simply leave organizations like Malin’s without fuss. They stayed, or they were thrown out, or there was a fight.
    The only thing that gave Webster pause was that he knew nothing about the man. There was a little in the report that Tourna had given him but, he discovered, it had all been taken from the Web site of Gerstman’s new company. Also there, at least, was a photograph of him, a good one, as these things go, in black and white. In it he looked neat, disciplined, a little severe; but not, thought Webster, haunted. Probably in his mid-thirties. One of the young Russian technocrats, raised on margins and business models rather than rigorous central planning. His new company, Finist Advisory Services PartG, offered strategy consulting to energy and petrochemical companies. It wasn’t really clear what that meant, but whatever it was it seemed to be focused on central Europe. Gerstman had a partner called Prock, and elegant offices just off Kurfürstendamm in west Berlin.
    Webster’s preference was to steer a friendly journalist toward him to tease out some clue that might magically unlock his motivation. Gerstman was so precious—their only real source—that they might have only one chance to win him over. Hammer had thought this a waste of time and an insult to Gerstman. “He deserves you, not some stringer. What are we going to find out? We know he doesn’t like Malin. We know he’s not going to tell you anything straightaway. But he might over time, and he might talk to Lock. And it’s something to tell Tourna. You need a relationship with him. Better to start one now.”
    B ERLIN WAS WARM for October but Webster, misled by the forecast, had brought a coat, which was now annoying him. The more one carried the more irritating travel became. For a single night away he would take his briefcase, and in it a fresh shirt and fresh underwear, a razor and a toothbrush, a notebook, a pen and something not too heavy to read; never, if he could help it, a laptop. Gliding through the airport