The same anonymous Russian businessman was thought to be the owner of the largest private dwelling in the French ski village of Courchevel, a lavish villa on the Côte d’Azur near Saint-Tropez, a mansion in the walled Moscow suburb of Rublyovka, and an apartment on Manhattan’s Billionaire’s Row purchased for the astonishing price of $225 million. He owned the obligatory yacht but rarely used it, as he was prone to seasickness. His private jet was a Gulfstream, his private helicopter was an Airbus H175 VIP. He flashed about Geneva in a motorcade fit for a head of state.
His official biography contained no reference to a KGB past, only an unremarkable stint at the Soviet Foreign Ministry, a job that had taken him briefly to East Berlin. Much speculation surrounded the nature of his relationship with the Russian president. Through his lawyers he acknowledged that they had known each other when they were young boys in Leningrad, but he rejected any suggestion that he was part of the president’s inner circle. Reports regarding his sometimes-messy personal life had been harder for the lawyers to tamp down. There were two known divorces, both quiet, and a string of rumored affairs and mistresses. His newest wife was the former Oksana Mironova, a beautiful ballet dancer more than thirty years his junior.
Not surprisingly, theMoskovskayaGazetawas among Arkady’s harshest critics. The magazine had exposed his links to the presidential palace on the Black Sea and the billions he had made from the bloated construction contracts awarded for the SochiOlympic Games. Several of the articles had been written by the missing investigative reporter Nina Antonova. Having returned to Wormwood Cottage to await permanent resettlement, she composed an illuminative twenty-thousand-word dossier of her own that contained every unproven allegation ever made against Arkady. It made for entertaining reading, as did Olga Sukhova’s retelling of a heated encounter she had had with Arkady in Moscow in 2007, after reports surfaced that his childhood friend from Leningrad was somehow worth an astonishing $40 billion.
By all accounts, the Russian president’s personal fortune had grown substantially since then. So, too, had Arkady Akimov’s, skyrocketing from a paltry $400 million in 2012 to $33.8 billion, according to the most recent estimate byForbesmagazine, making him the forty-fourth richest man in the world. Directly above him was an American hedge fund manager, and beneath him was a Chinese manufacturer of home appliances. Arkady, not without some justification, was said to have been disappointed by his ranking.
But then,Forbeshad only part of the picture. Missing from its estimate of Arkady’s net worth was the money that the gnomes of the Russian Laundromat had buried anonymously in the West. Fortunately, Gabriel had gnomes of his own—the nine men and women burrowing away in a subterranean room three levels beneath the lobby of King Saul Boulevard.
In nearly every respect, they were the polar opposite of the man whose life they were pulling to pieces. They earned a government salary and lived modestly. They did not steal unless ordered to do so. They did not kill unless innocent lives were at stake. They were kind to their spouses and lovers, and cared for their children to the best of their ability while at the same timeworking impossible hours. They had no vices, for those with vices were never admitted to their ranks.
They managed to conduct their work with a minimum of rancor, as raised voices tended to facilitate the spread of the coronavirus. Even Rimona Stern, who possessed her famous uncle’s quick temper, managed to modulate her normally stentorian tone. Proper social distancing was not possible—not in the cramped quarters of their subterranean lair—so they disinfected their worktables frequently and were subjected to regular testing. Somehow there were no positive results.
Gabriel poked his head through the doorway of Room 456C once or twice each day to check on the team’s progress and crack the operational whip. He was anxious to return to the field as quickly as possible, lest the Swiss have a change of heart and declare Arkady off limits. It was obvious to Rimona and the others that he was tempted to give the Russian oligarch the bullet he so richly deserved and be done with it. But Arkady Akimov—trusted member of the Russian president’s inner circle, owner of a private intelligence company waging war against the West from within—was far too valuable to kill. He was the one for whom Gabriel had been searching for a very long time. He would leave nothing to chance.
But how to penetrate his court?
Usually, it was a flaw or vanity that left a man vulnerable, but Gabriel instructed the team to find Arkady Akimov’s one redeeming quality. Surely, he beseeched them, there had to be at leastonereason why the Russian oligarch was taking up space on the planet. It was Dina Sarid, while reviewing NevaNeft’s otherwise pointless website, who discovered it. Through the company’s charitable arm, Arkady Akimov had donated hundreds ofmillions of dollars to orchestras, conservatories, and art museums in Russia and across Western Europe, oftentimes with little or no publicity.
As it turned out, Arkady was also a frequent underwriter of concerts and festivals, which allowed him to rub shoulders with some of the most prominent figures in the classical music world. A reverse-image search of social media turned up a photograph of the notoriously camera-shy Russian standing at the side of the French violinist Renaud Capuçon, a broad smile on his face. Arkady had worn the identical expression while posed next to the German violinist Julia Fischer. And with her countryman Christian Tetzlaff. And with the pianists Hélène Grimaud and Paul Lewis. And the conductors Gustavo Dudamel and Sir Simon Rattle.
Dina was dubious as to the operational value of her discovery. Nevertheless, she printed the photographs on high-quality paper and placed them on Gabriel’s desk. One hour later, during his evening visit to Room 456C, he wrote two more names on the chalkboard. One was an old enemy; the other, an old lover. Then he described for his team the opening act of the planned merger between the Office and the kleptocracy known as Kremlin Inc. It would be a seemingly chance encounter at a grand occasion, an event that Arkady Akimov would move heaven and earth to attend. Cocktails and canapés would not suffice. Gabriel required a star attraction, an international celebrity whose presence would make attendance mandatory for the moneyed elite of Swiss society. He also needed a financier to play the role of the evening’s benefactor, a paragon of corporate virtue known for his commitment to causes ranging from climate change to Third World debt relief. Just the sort of man Arkady Akimov would love to corrupt with dirty Russian money.
27
Geneva
RhineBank AG of Hamburg was not the only financial institution to do a brisk business with Nazi Germany. Switzerland’s National Bank accepted several tons of gold from the Reichsbank throughout the six years of World War II and earned a tidy profit of twenty million Swiss francs in the process. The major Swiss banks also took on high-ranking Nazis as clients—including none other than Adolf Hitler, who deposited the royalties from his anti-Semitic manifestoMein Kampfin a UBS account in Bern.
But more often than not, party leaders and senior officers of the murderous SS enlisted the services of discreet private bankers such as Walter Landesmann. A minor figure in Zurich banking before the war, Landesmann was by the spring of1945 the secret guardian of a vast ill-gotten fortune, much of which remained unclaimed after his clients were arrested as war criminals or forced to seek sanctuary in distant South America. Never one to miss an opportunity, Landesmann used the money to transform his bank into one of Switzerland’s most prominent financial services firms. And upon his death, he bequeathed it to his only child, a charismatic young financier who was called Martin.
Martin Landesmann knew full well the source of the bank’s rapid postwar growth and wasted no time washing his hands of it. With the proceeds of the sale, he created Global Vision Investments, a private equity firm that financed forward-looking start-up enterprises, especially in the field of alternative energy and sustainable agriculture. His abiding passion, however, was his One World charitable foundation. Martin delivered medicine to the sick, food to the hungry, and water to the thirsty, oftentimes with his own hands. Consequently, he was much beloved by the smart set in Aspen and Davos. His circle of influential friends included prominent politicians and the luminaries of Silicon Valley and Hollywood, where his production company bankrolled documentaries on topics such as climate change and the rights of immigrants. His most recent film was the flattering self-portraitOne World. Its legion of critics, mainly on the political right, wondered why he hadn’t called itSaint Martininstead.
The first documented use of the sobriquet was an unfavorable profile in theSpectator. It was now wielded regularly by his defenders and detractors alike. Martin secretly loathed it, perhaps because it bore no resemblance to the truth. For all his corporate piety, he was remorseless in his pursuit of profit, even if itrequired ravaging the rain forests or pouring carbon into the atmosphere. Among his more lucrative ventures was Keppler Werk GmbH, a metallurgy firm that manufactured some of the world’s finest industrial-grade valves. Keppler Werk was part of a global network of companies that supplied nuclear technology to the Islamic Republic of Iran in violation of United Nations sanctions—a network that Gabriel had penetrated and then used to sabotage four previously undisclosed Iranian uranium-enrichment facilities. Martin’s participation in the affair had not been voluntary.
His public pronouncements to the contrary, he did not play exclusively with his own money. GVI was the clandestine owner of Meissner PrivatBank of Liechtenstein, and Meissner PrivatBank was the portal of a sophisticated money-laundering operation utilized primarily by organized crime figures and wealthy individuals averse to taxation. For a substantial fee, and few questions asked, Martin turned dirty money into assets that could be held indefinitely or converted into clean cash. Gabriel and Graham Seymour were aware of Martin’s extracurricular activities. Swiss financial regulators were not. As far as they were concerned, Saint Martin Landesmann was the one Swiss financier who had never put a foot wrong.
He had fled cold, gray Zurich after the rapid sale of his father’s tainted bank and settled in genteel Geneva. GVI was headquartered on the Quai de Mont-Blanc, but the true nerve center of Martin’s empire was Villa Alma, his grand lakeside estate on the rue de Lausanne. Martin’s longtime chief of security greeted Gabriel in the forecourt. Their last conversation had been conducted over the barrel of a SIG Sauer P226. Gabriel had been the one holding it.
“Are you armed?” asked the bodyguard in his atrocious Swiss German.
“What do you think?” answered Gabriel in properHochdeutsch.
The bodyguard held out his hand, palm up. Gabriel brushed past him and went into the gleaming entrance hall, where Saint Martin Landesmann, bathed in a corona of golden light, waited in all his glory. He was dressed, as was his custom, like the lower half of a gray scale: slate-gray cashmere pullover, charcoal-gray trousers, black loafers. When combined with his glossy silver hair and silver spectacles, the clothing lent him an air of Jesuitical seriousness. The hand he raised in greeting was white as marble. He addressed Gabriel in English, with a vaguely French accent. Martin no longer spoke the language of his native Zurich. Unless, of course, he was threatening to have someone killed. If that were the case, only Swiss German would do.
“I hope you and Jonas had a chance to get reacquainted,” he said amiably.
“We’re having drinks later.”
“Do you know your Covid status?”
“Somehow I’m still negative. You?”
“Monique and I are tested every day.” Monique was Martin’s Parisian-born wife and an international celebrity in her own right. “I hope you’ll forgive her for not saying hello. She’s not anxious to relive the Zoe Reed affair.”
“That makes two of us.”
“I bumped into Zoe at Davos last year,” Martin volunteered. “She was anchoring CNBC’s afternoon coverage. As you might imagine, it was all rather awkward. We both pretended that none of the unpleasantness of that night happened.”
