Chasing the Storm (13 page)

The theater was a grand structure, with an imposing exterior reminiscent of the Parthenon. He had to pass through two security checks, leave his briefcase with a baggage attendant, and was then allowed to proceed up the red-carpeted steps to the ticket attendant. He’d been to the Oslo Opera House a couple of times, impressing some girl or other, and had worn his office attire, but here he was glad Marin had ordered the suit and bowtie. Some of the men were in tuxedos, and the women wore dresses that looked straight off a Paris catwalk: fanciful confections of ruffles and angled jackets paired with bold jewelry.

He was shunted up two flights of stairs, to a door that opened onto a gallery high on the right side of the stage. The view was dizzying: a sea of red velvet and gold scrollwork and painted walls, with the curtains like a velvet waterfall before him. The orchestra was tuning up in the pit, an off-kilter droning. He found his seat, right at the front of the gallery, and leaned over the gold railing, looking down at the people filing in. When he sat back, someone had taken the seat next to him. She was looking at her program. He glanced sideways at her face. It was Lena.

To cover his smile, he opened his own program. It was a handsome little paperback, with gilt decorations on the cover and etched illustrations inside. The program was divided into three sections: Russian, French, and English. He read the little blurbs on each dancer, then glanced again at Lena. She was wearing a blue dress with a low bodice and lace ruffles at her wrists. A ruby set about with diamonds sparkled at her throat. She’d put her hair up, revealing her pale neck. Little strands of hair, like wisps of ash, had escaped from the careful architecture, and lay against her cheek. She smelled faintly of jasmine. She saw his glance and looked away sharply, closing the program and opening it again at once. A hush was falling on the theater, and they looked up. The curtain was rising.

He knew the story, and had even seen the play at one point, or some movie version of it, but was unprepared for the emotions the ballet would rouse in him. The delicate music that seemed to saturate the theater, the violins thrumming in his bones. The dancers leapt and twirled with an effortless grace that seemed, from their perch, entirely magical. The skirts of the girls floated, defying gravity, and the men lifted their partners and spun them this way and that, as if they had hollow bones like sparrows.

At intermission, he let Lena leave first, then followed a dozen steps behind her, in the trail of jasmine, down to the foyer, where there was a bar. She ordered a martini and moved to a wall beside the stairs, holding the glass in both hands and watching the patrons spill down the stairs. Rygg was strangely excited, though he knew it was all an act. But the beauty of the ballet and the sumptuous space and her extraordinary loveliness made him feel as though he was in his own private ballet. He moved through the crowd, holding the stem of his libation loosely between his middle finger and ring finger, and stood in front of her.

“Aren’t you sitting next to me up there?” he asked.

She looked away frantically, then down into her drink.

“Am I right?” he pressed. “Aren’t you the girl next to me? Seat 27B?” He waved his ticket at her.

She nodded and slowly raised her eyes to meet his.

“Well, I’m Torgrim Rygg. From Norway. You speak English?”

She nodded again.

“So what’s your name?”

“Lena.” Her voice was almost a whisper.

“Lena. Lovely. Are you enjoying the ballet?”

She nodded, and gave him the first smidgen of a smile.

“First time to the Bolshoi?” he asked.

She shook her head. “I have been many times,” she murmured. “I was when I was young a ballerina. I wanted to be a ballerina. Like all the girls of Russia.”

“You’re not young now?”

Now her smile was fuller. “In Russia the training for a ballerina begins at age seven. If by age ten you are not … good. Not suitable. If you are not suitable by age of ten, it is finished.”

“So who said you weren’t suitable?”

“The madame at the Kirov. I cried.” She put a finger to her cheek, and drew it downward, but she was smiling.

“Well, I must say, I’m thoroughly enjoying it so far.”

“And what do you do, Mr. Torgrim Rygg?”

“Just Torgrim, okay? I’m in oil. Oilman. I’m here trying to see some of the big men, get in on some of the Russian action. And see a few of the sights.”

A bell chimed, and she raised a finger: “It is time to return,” she said.

In a fit of reckless chauvinism, purely because he wanted to relish the occasion, he offered her his arm, and she took it. Her touch was light, as though a butterfly had perched on his elbow.

The second half of the ballet was darker, with the suicide scenes and the dances of lamentation, and when the curtain finally rose for the third time and he’d clapped until his hands were sore, he looked over at Lena. Her cheeks were entirely wet, and she smiled a wobbly smile at him. “The ballet,” she said, raising her voice over the applause and leaning toward him. “Always it makes me to cry. I am sorry.”

“Don’t apologize,” he shouted back.

On the front steps of the theater, he caught her arm. “Hey,” he said. “Why don’t you give me a call? Here’s my card. I’m at the Odessa Korona Hotel.”

She shook her head, but he thrust the card into her hand. “Just take it,” he said. “Think about it.”

Chapter 11

Petrovich

May 7

She called him
up the next morning, while he was eating his breakfast in bed.

“Mr. Torgrim Rygg?” She sounded cautious.

“Speaking. Who is this, please?”

“I am Lena Lorincozová. We met yesterday at the ballet.”

“Right. And how are you doing this morning, Lena?”

“I am well. You said, Mr. Torgrim – Torgrim – that you were concerned about oil. It is right?”

“That’s right.”

“I have – I have my friend of my father, he is also concerned about oil. I tell him about you, he say he will like to meet you today.”

“That’s excellent! Give me the place and the time, I will be there.”

“Okay. It will be at a dinner. I will be there as well. Seven o’clock. I will send driver for you, to your hotel. Is all right?”

“Perfect.”

When later that morning, Rygg told Marin-Alex that he’d hooked up a date for the evening, Marin feigned worry. “Be careful of prostitutes in Russia, Mr. Rygg,” he said earnestly. “They carry many diseases.”

“Oh, she’s no prostitute, I think,” he retorted. “I met her at the Bolshoi. She seemed very elegant.”

“But this will mean that you must miss the outing on the Volga by night. Very nice, with lights and Russian folk dancing.”

“Cancel that for me, Alex, will you? I mean, I want to check out your folk dancing, but perhaps another time. You haven’t seen this girl.” He gave Marin a wink and a little flicker of amusement passed across Marin’s eyes.

Driving through the
streets that evening, in a Mercedes C300 with smoked windows, Rygg looked out at the passing streets. Tattered drunks, their T-shirts riding over their bellies, wobbled across the cobblestones. As the vehicle moved beyond the central area of hotels and offices, they passed young people under bridges and in doorways, with bands around their arms and needles in their hands. Some slouched in pairs or trios, but they did not talk to each other, each staring off in a separate direction. At one intersection, a skinny man with lank, oily hair came up to the car and pressed his face against the glass of the windscreen. His eyes were bloodshot gashes, and his cheeks were flour white. He put a hand against the screen. On his forearm was the black stippling of needle pricks. The driver started up the wipers, jostling the man’s head sideways, and he toppled backward into the gutter. They drove on, the smear of grease on the glass diminishing with each pass of the wipers.

They drove for forty-five minutes, as the apartment blocks grew first higher and grimier, then more spread out and newer. Finally, they paused before a barrier. On either side, a concrete wall topped with hurricane wire vanished into the darkness. A security guard with a submachine gun slung across his shoulder checked the driver’s documents, peered at Rygg, then made a call on a walkie-talkie. He listened for a moment, nodded, and signaled his companion to lift the barrier.

Beyond the barrier, they entered a zone of huge mansions. It reminded Rygg of the Bygdøy district in Oslo, where the millionaire oilmen vied with each other for the most colossal palaces. Here, behind immaculate gardens with trimmed topiary and goldfish ponds and gazebos, brand new villas stood, some like fairytale castles, with turrets of white marble and flags fluttering behind crenellation. In the driveways were the requisite dark-windowed Mercedes and BMWs, but also, like parakeets perched among crows, candy-hued Ferraris and Lamborghinis, all in a state of perfect polish.

The Mercedes entered a long, curving driveway and halted before the largest villa in the enclave: a great dark hulk against the light-polluted sky, with a few randomly placed windows, narrow as those of a medieval fortress. Rygg thanked the driver, who nodded shortly, and walked up to the door, which was a round-topped oak slab set with iron knobs.

A voice from a recessed speaker over the door said something. “I don’t speak Russian,” Rygg told the door. “I was invited here by a woman. Lena. I met her at the ballet.” There was a minute of silence, and then, with a multiple clicking of bolts and clatter of chains, the door opened. A huge, shaven-headed man stood before him, but behind him, Lena was smiling and waving. “Just a moment, Torgrim,” she called. “Boris will search, and then you can come in.”

Boris stepped forward and ran his huge hands over Rygg’s body, squeezing his genitals without compunction, pressing into his armpits, running a finger between his buttocks. He indicated that Rygg should open the briefcase, and flipped cursorily through the documents, then stood aside to let him enter.

Lena kissed him on both cheeks. “I am sorry about Boris,” she said. “We are very suspicious here, as you know.”

“I guess so,” he said. “Why’s that?”

“In Russia, if you are rich, there is always someone who want your money.”

“I got you. So is this your house?”

“It is the house of my uncle. The brother of my father.” She led him down a carpeted hallway to a smoke-filled room where four men lounged on leather sofas. The side tables were littered with glasses and bottles and cigarette cases. On one table, among the glasses, lay a small pistol with gold grips. The men were dressed in silk shirts and had belts with fancy buckles and dark creased pants. With their beefy grim-mouthed faces and pomaded hair, they reminded Rygg of New Jersey mobsters in a made-for-television B movie. They looked up as Lena and Rygg entered, but made no move to stand.

Lena gave a short speech in Russian, gesturing at Rygg. He caught the word “Bolshoi.” When she’d finished, the fattest man, who was wearing a purple shirt and a gold chain, nodded once. Without raising his hand from his belly, he angled a finger toward a sofa. Lena looked at Rygg, with relief in her glance. “This is Mr. Nikolai Petrovich,” she said. “My uncle, as I informed you. He is one of the leading Russian experts in oil production, and he is interested in your proposals. I will leave you.”

Petrovich said a single word to her, without raising his voice, and she turned to Rygg again. “My uncle wishes me to stay,” she said and motioned him to take a seat.

Rygg sat and nodded at the four men. Petrovich watched him over the beetroot bulwarks of his cheeks, the eyes ensconced in pouches of fat. He said something to Lena, and she bustled about, offering Rygg a cigarillo, asking him what he wanted to drink. She seemed a bit flustered. He waved the cigarillo away. “I’ll have whatever Mr. Petrovich is having,” he said. She dumped some vodka into a glass and handed it over.

Petrovich grunted, and Lena said: “Tell Mr. Petrovich about yourself, please.” Lena and Petrovich seemed to have a special semaphoring system: Petrovich’s grunts seemed too rudimentary to contain any meaningful content.

“Well, I’m just your average Norwegian oilman,” he said, looking from face to face. Only Lena responded at all, giving him a small smile. “I’m the vice-president of acquisitions at Iversen Foss and Company.” He fished out his wallet, pried up one of the cards Marin had made for him, and leaned forward, holding it out to Petrovich. With a slightly impatient patting motion of his palm, Petrovich indicated that he should set it on the table. Rygg did so. “Now Iversen Foss,” he went on, “is one of the top oil firms in the world. And we’re always on the lookout for fresh fields, if you know what I’m saying. We’re deep in Angola, we’ve got our fingers in Alberta, in Kazakhstan. Anyway, we’d learned about Romashkino – well, everyone in oil is watching it – huge potential there, we understand. Initially, I tried to make contact through the government, but … well, you know how it is. Things got bogged down, there was more and more paperwork, just to get to see someone. Anyway, the chief thought I should just fly on over, see if I could make any headway. So yesterday I was still trying to make contact with someone in the government, set up a meeting. Frankly, I was at my wits’ end. You just get shunted from one bored woman to another. So I decided to see a bit of the city. Last night I went to your famous Bolshoi.
Romeo and Juliet
– ballet, you know. Have you guys seen it?” The four men just watched him. Somehow, Rygg had a hard time picturing them at the ballet. “
Romeo and Juliet
,” he said again. “And it just so happened that my neighbor was this lovely young lady. We began talking. I told her I was in oil, and she said she had an uncle, and … well, you know the rest. Here I am, having a drink with you good people!”

With Lena translating, Petrovich asked some questions about Iversen Foss, and Rygg answered, staying close to the truth while boosting some of the figures and interjecting fabricated asides about his role in closing certain deals.

“My uncle has heard of Iversen Foss,” Lena said. “But, please, what does your company want with Romashkino? This he wishes to know.”

“Stock. Stock options. Perhaps the possibility of joint investment. If you’re doing exploration, you know, Iversen Foss is interested, very interested in funding that kind of thing. With a share of the profits, of course.”

Petrovich grunted again.

“My uncle wishes to know if you have previously made business in Russia.”

“Not at all, I’m afraid. I’m brand new here. But I understand that you just drink a glass of vodka together and everything goes like clockwork.” He raised his glass.

Lena translated this and suddenly the four men were giggling, their faces expressionless but their bellies heaving. Rygg laughed with them, a little too loudly. Petrovich lifted his glass to Rygg and nodded slightly with his eyebrows.

Petrovich now made a little speech, the words rumbling out as though his mouth was filled with small stones. He paused to let Lena translate.

“My uncle says that Russia, the new Russia, operates with two laws. This is the law of the gun, the law of money.”

Petrovich leaned forward and took the little pistol from the table, holding it between finger and thumb. It looked like a toy. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a gold clip that gripped a fat wad of rubles. These two items he brandished at Rygg. He continued with his speech, Lena translating on the fly: “Without gun, there is no money, without money there is no gun. From outside, Russia look like normal government. But from inside, no government. Only gun, only money.”

“I got you,” Rygg said. “I’ve worked in Egypt – similar story. But there has to be some sort of structure. I mean, oil’s coming out of the ground here, it’s getting moved around. Who controls all this?”

Lena passed this on. Petrovich nodded. Then he shrugged and tapped his chest with the muzzle of the pistol.

“Right,” Rygg said. “So I’ve come to the right person.” He laughed, but not even Lena joined him this time. “So what do I need to do – what do we at Iversen Foss need to do to become partners? Is it even possible? That’s what I need to know. Is it possible?”

Petrovich looked at Rygg for a long time. Then he held up the gun and the clip once more and shook them slightly at Rygg. He grunted something to Lena.

“Money or gun. Which do you have?” she said.

“Well. Money, I suppose.”

“How much?”

“As much as you need. Iversen Foss is willing to offer what it takes to get our foot in the door. There’s no theoretical limit. Within reason, I mean. But basically, no theoretical limit.”

Lena passed this along. Petrovich seemed to digest the information for a minute, watching Rygg through his fat-crusted eyes. Then he heaved himself upright and extended his hand. Rygg leaned forward and took it, and though he was a big man, he felt his fingers engulfed and crushed within the slab of flesh. Petrovich lifted his vodka glass, and his three companions and Rygg did likewise. “Cheers!” he said – it sounded like “cherries” – and they drank.

A buxom blonde in a filmy white dress came through a door and whispered something in Petrovich’s ear. He nodded, and she walked away. He called her back. When she leaned over him again, he grabbed her right tit and smirked at Rygg while she squealed. “Svetlana,” he said, by way of introduction. “She nineteen year,” he informed Rygg, then let her go. He said something to Lena in Russian.

“Mr. Petrovich is inviting you to dinner with him.”

“Sounds good. I’m starving.”

Dinner took place in an immense dining room that mimicked an old English hall, with a long dark-wood table and candelabras and porcelain place settings. Old oils of the Russian countryside hung from the walls, and an entire stuffed bear reared in one corner, reminding Rygg of a burly bodyguard that might lurk in the shadows. Petrovich and his companions seemed at odds with the elegance. They slouched in their chairs and slurped at the soup, splashing it on their silk shirts, and picked up the lamb and duck bones and held them in their fists, gnawing at them with rotten, gold-studded teeth. All the while they were drinking vodka, and as they were constantly raising their glasses for more toasts, Rygg was compelled to keep up with them, although the odds weren’t exactly on his side.

Petrovich started on a story, something about a girl he’d fucked in Thailand, and Lena translated for a while, throwing out bits and pieces, and then, as the story went on and on and grew more sordid, she fell silent, looking down at her plate. Petrovich threw a lamb bone onto her plate, and she looked up at Rygg. “Mr. Petrovich discovered finally that the girl have a penis,” she said. “You understand?” Clearly uncomfortable with the situation, her usually beautiful face turned into a ghastly grayish-white grimace.

Rygg nodded. He grinned companionably at Petrovich. “The old switch,” he said. “Never been in that situation myself, but I’ve heard similar stories.”

Petrovich still seemed annoyed with Lena. He rumbled something at her, and she shook her head. He rumbled again, more insistently, and she sighed. “Mr. Petrovich wishes me to tell you that I am a bad girl,” she said.

Petrovich interposed himself here. “This Lena,” he told Rygg. “She no good. She her father leave. Her family leave. She go to mens they no like Russia. You know? They no like Russia. Now she come backs to uncle.” He scrubbed at his cheeks with his fists and made babyish crying noises. “Waah. I no have money. I want come back. Waah. Baby!”

Lena looked at her plate. Rygg shrugged. “Women, eh?” he said.