T
HERE ARE SEVEN OF US
sitting in the Café des Douanes, a hundred yards over the border from Swiss Geneva in France. Finn is sitting at the centre of a long red formica table. The other plastic chairs are occupied by the team he has gathered together in the past four years and who will now stick with him until the end.
It is the same café where Finn and the Troll first met to talk about the Plan back in the summer of 2000. I am not yet officially included in the team, being simply Finn’s trusted Russian girlfriend.
Finn persuaded, cajoled and, in one or two cases, even paid these members of his team to join him. He has at last come up with a plan of his own.
It is based on the work of all their efforts in the intervening years: digging into bank accounts, following money trails, gathering anecdotal and paper evidence from many absent sources, such as Sergei, who are outside the team. And, though only Finn and I
are aware of this, all is being slowly guided by the hand of Mikhail, the ever-present ghost at the feast.
And there are others on this team of Finn’s, like Dieter, who are not present but who still give this curious loyalty that Finn commands and that has got us all to this point.
As for me, Finn has never asked me to do anything that might compromise my relations with the Forest. And, though I don’t yet know it, he will only ever ask me once.
Finn has named this meeting a partial ‘family reunion’. Family, as ever, is important to Finn, even if it is just a word. The gathering is a two-day excuse for eating and drinking and enjoying each other’s company. It is also a chance for Finn to praise and thank us, and to steel us all for the final push-to establish the purpose of Exodi.
Apart from Finn and me, there is Frank who sits solidly on one of the red plastic café banquettes, a slight smile playing in his eyes, wearing his old grey woollen coat even though it is hot inside the café. Frank is the immediate reason Finn has called us together. He rarely leaves Luxembourg but is making a rare trip to Geneva to attend an anti-money-laundering conference.
The Troll, just come in from the street where he’s been barking into a mobile phone, is now wearing a russet beard that starts an inch below his mouth, like an Amish, and winds up on either side of his face like a hairy chinstrap. The Troll is cultivating this beard until the job is finished and this is some kind of ritual for him.
Then there is a man I haven’t met before, a sixty-five-year-old Englishman named simply James. He wears a three-piece pin-striped suit and his boyish complexion, surrounded by coiffed silver hair, reflects a care for appearances. James lives in Andorra and is an
old contact of Finn’s. Former special services, SAS, I guess, James has run a security business for the past twenty years, bugging and debugging buildings, negotiating with kidnappers, sifting through rubbish bins, helping clients who are the victims of
kompromat
, as we say in Russia, and other, related activities. James can kill and apparently knows some interesting interrogation techniques. With a cheerfulness that disguises his squeamishness, Finn describes James as ‘the blunt end’.
Then there is the Hungarian Willy, taking a summer break up in the mountains. Willy has come down from his hiking holiday to attend Finn’s impromptu meeting. He wears a red cravat with white spots around his neck and chomps on a Villiger cigar.
The sixth person present is a Swiss woman, an investigative journalist. There is a slight pause when Finn introduces her by this description. She is called Karin and has long blond hair. I can’t help wondering if she and Finn have had an affair in the past. I think it equally likely she is with Swiss Intelligence.
Karin is just finishing giving us all an account of her country’s exploits in central Asia.
‘Kazakhstan is known in Swiss banking circles as Helvetistan, so great is Swiss investment there,’ Karin says and I note that she flicks back her blond hair at the end of sentences. ‘Swiss bankers and politicians love Kazakhstan,’ she says. ‘It is rich in oil and gas and is run by the dictator Nazarbyev who conveniently answers to nobody but himself.’
Karin winds up her exposition with more flicks of her hair, which seem to irritate only me. ‘Swiss money pours into Nazarbyev’s coffers. The money is to buy his country’s votes at international forums where the Swiss need support, particularly in the area of banking secrecy. Nazarbyev votes with Switzerland at these legislative gatherings when there is a Swiss need and, in return, the Swiss government has recently granted him permission to build a $20-million chalet in our poorest canton, Valais.’
A heavily mascaraed waitress takes the order for another round of drinks. Frank drinks coffee, the rest of us beers and wine. The Troll lights his umpteenth cigarette and Finn follows him in this, as usual, as if reminded that he smokes. When the drinks have arrived, Finn looks around the table at each of us.
‘When I had just started in the Service,’ Finn begins, smiling at this retrieved memory, ‘I was asked to take the place of a more seasoned intelligence officer who was ill, during an operation in London. My task was to follow a Soviet embassy official and I was in the company of one of our occasionals called Kirill. Kirill was an old white Russian, nice guy, slightly mad, well into his seventies, and way past his sell-by date.
‘The Russian embassy official we were interested in had previously been at the Soviet embassy in Kabul just before the coup in ’79, and we were certain he was KGB,’ Finn says. ‘And now he had been posted to London. We decided to surprise him on his way home one evening and make him an offer.’ Finn puffs on his cigarette without pausing to drop the long ash into the ashtray. ‘It was my first face-to-face contact with a real Russian spy!’ he says and he squeezes my knee under the table.
‘Kirill and I were to wait in a pub by one of London’s commuter rail stations. The Russian took either the 5.10 or the 5.35 train each day to Blackheath where he lived. But the target didn’t show and Kirill proceeded to get drunker and drunker and angrier and angrier until I called back to base to say we should abort. They told us to stay where we were. When the target finally turned up after seven o’clock, Kirill was completely plastered. We followed the Russian on to the train and sat in the next carriage. Kirill had a bottle of beer and started walking up and down the carriage cursing and shouting about Russian spies. I thought he was going to be arrested as soon as the train pulled in.
‘Eventually I managed to manhandle him into a seat and we got off at Blackheath and began to follow the target across the com
mon, the old boy growling and swaying as we went. When we decided to make our move, the two of us came up alongside the man and I tapped his arm to ask directions. But as soon as we had his attention I told him that this was his moment of truth-either come over or we would fatally compromise him. Kirill was singing some old white revolutionary song and shouting something or other in Russian at a tree.
‘The target just looked scornfully at the old boy and then right into my eyes. Then he said calmly, “Why don’t you just fuck off,” and walked away.
‘I had to practically carry Kirill all the way home to Hampstead.’ Finn finally grinds his cigarette into an ashtray and smiles. Then he gets to the purpose of the story. ‘I’m telling you this to demonstrate that even our fine British intelligence service can conduct an operation of complete ineptitude.’
He looks around the table.
‘So don’t let anyone think we’re not up to this task. We are as good as anybody, perhaps better. Who would believe that we had come so far already?’ he says.
James, the blunt end, nods with soldierly approval, although he has no doubt heard better pep talks than this one on real parade grounds. Everyone is now looking at Finn.
‘What happened to Kirill?’ Karin asks.
‘He was retired with honour,’ Finn says, and arches an eyebrow at her. ‘But in 1991 he decided to revisit Moscow for the first time in over sixty years. He arrived on the day of the coup against Gorbachev, saw the tanks on the streets and assumed they’d come for him, the idiot. He had a heart attack and died on the spot.’
The Troll laughs uproariously. He is full of black humour.
‘Intelligence agencies usually overrate themselves,’ Finn continues, when the Troll’s rumblings subside. ‘It’s how they get their funding. If the British secret service makes mistakes like we did with Kirill, then all services do. All services anyway contain the
inbuilt flaw of being forced to do what they’re told by politicians.
‘The KGB is no better, and in some ways it’s worse. It’s disor-ganised, bloated, overconfident and at war with itself. So we should not underestimate what we few can achieve.’
Karin raises her glass and we all toast ‘the Italian job’, as Finn has named the operation, and ‘Italy’, which is what we call Exodi.
The final push now, Finn says, ‘is to find what the Kremlin plans to do with all this money it has clandestinely brought to the West. What is it for? What does Exodi exist to do?’
‘There aren’t enough football teams in the world…’ the Troll muses.
‘No amount of their intelligence operations in the West could possibly soak up these sums of money.’ Finn pauses and leans back in his chair.
‘The Russians are now the world leader in raw, brutal capitalism,’ Karin says.
‘Like America a hundred years ago,’ Willy adds. ‘There are no rules for them. The oligarchs have secret accounts all over Europe. It’s unbelievable.’
‘I’ve almost completed an investigation into one of them on just this theme,’ Frank says.
‘Which one?’ the Troll asks.
‘Mikhail Khodorkovsky,’ Frank replies.
Frank is referring to Russia’s richest man and the owner of its biggest oil company, who has just been arrested by special forces in Siberia, as his private plane prepared to take off.
Finn looks up at Frank and leaves his gaze hanging in his direction, but he doesn’t respond.
‘If we can find where Exodi’s funds are going,’ Finn says, bringing the conversation back, ‘I believe we will find the answer to all questions of Russia’s foreign policy.’ He looks at Frank again and smiles. ‘Frank, what do the illegal and secret accounts at Westbank exist to do? Where does the money go?’
‘That would be difficult to find out,’ Frank replies, and I sense he now regrets displaying his expertise a moment earlier.
‘But possible,’ Finn presses him. ‘We know what’s in the in-tray, but what’s in the out-tray? What are the funds paying for?’
‘Possible? Yes, it’s possible,’ Frank replies. But his habitual smile is no longer on his face.
Finn turns away.
‘And can you’–he looks at the Troll–‘look at the same question from Exodi Geneva’s point of view. With Karin perhaps? Both of you work together. What is going out of Exodi’s accounts in Geneva and where to?’
The unlikely combination of the Troll and Karin escapes nobody. The Troll, so grumpily confident of his own skills, is reduced to an embarrassed boy by just appearing even in the same sentence as the beautiful Karin. His blush spreads downwards into the russet beard and he merely grunts his acknowledgement.
‘Anna, James and I will be in Geneva for a while. There’s an important lead here that needs following up,’ Finn says. ‘Our first move on to the offensive, in fact.’
‘Oh yes?’ Frank’s smile has returned as he enquires, but Finn doesn’t expand.
‘I expect to make a start this afternoon,’ Finn says, discouraging further questions. ‘It’s already in motion.’
‘Oh go on, tell us,’ the Troll says mockingly.
Finn grins.
Finn puts his arm around Willy who is sitting next to him.
‘I have the name of a girl who works at a bank in Valais, Willy,’ he says. He hands over a piece of paper to Willy, presumably with the name of this girl and the bank on it, but there is more writing than that. I see there are names and account numbers, but I can’t read them, and Finn is careful to shield them from all but Willy. ‘I want you to see if you can ask her these questions,’ Finn says. ‘Who are they?’ He is referring to the unseen names, I guess. ‘What is
their history of payments, in and out. And why are the accounts under the control of the bank’s president alone.’
‘Sure, I can go to Valais.’ Willy shrugs and takes the paper.
‘There’s good walking there,’ Karin says. ‘And excellent golf.’
‘Thank you,’ Willy says, and smiles back at her. ‘But I don’t play golf.’
When we leave the café half an hour later, Finn makes a point of taking Frank aside and they walk up the street towards a tram stop. Frank seems anxious.
‘You need money, Frank?’ Finn asks.
‘Oh…you know,’ Frank answers.
Finn has always said Frank has little or nothing. He has always worked for peanuts because of his messianic belief in attacking big, criminal capital.
‘I can get you money,’ Finn says. ‘Just tell me what you need.’
‘Thank you, then,’ Frank answers. ‘I do need some.’
They arrange how much Frank needs and, in the course of this conversation, Finn uses the moment to ask Frank the question that is really on his mind.
‘If I give you what you need, will you stop investigating Khodorkovsky?’
I see by his tense stance and from his eyes piercing into Frank’s how urgent this is for Finn.
‘Why are you investigating him, Frank?’ Finn asks.
‘Khodorkovsky?’
‘Yes.’
Frank looks uncertain how to react.
‘I’m looking at his finances, that’s all. Accounts all across Europe. Gibraltar, Isle of Man, Guernsey, other places.’
‘Why are you doing that?’ Finn asks gently.
‘It’s what I do, you know that.’
‘It’s the Kremlin that wants to know about Khodorkovsky’s accounts, Frank.’ I can see Finn’s eyes gleaming from where I’m standing on the pavement. ‘So you’re doing the Kremlin’s work. Isn’t there a conflict of interest here?’
‘Oh, you know…’ Frank says.
‘No, Frank. I don’t know. How much do you need to stop this work?’
Frank looks across the street and is avoiding Finn’s eyes.