The English Girl: A Novel

think we’re having fish for dinner,” said Mikhail.
    “Someone should have told me,” Orlov replied. “I would have brought a nice Sancerre instead.”
    N ot long after Viktor Orlov received his British passport, he purchased a controlling interest in a failing newspaper, the venerable Financial Journal of London, as a means of raising his profile among the city’s smart set. A few members of the staff, including the renowned investigative reporter Zoe Reed, had resigned in protest, but most stayed on, in part because they had nowhere else to go. Under the terms of the ownership agreement, Orlov had agreed to play no role whatsoever in shaping the newspaper’s editorial content. It was a pledge he had somehow managed to keep, despite his desire to use the paper as a cudgel with which to beat his enemies in the Kremlin.
    That didn’t mean, however, that Orlov was averse to calling his editors with the occasional news tip, especially when it concerned his own business. And so it was that, three days later, a small item appeared deep in the paper regarding a new addition to the staff at Viktor Orlov Investments, LLC. Orlov confirmed the hiring in a press release later that morning, saying that a thirty-five-year-old executive named Nicholas Avedon would be taking control of VOI’s energy portfolio, along with its oil futures trading desk. Within minutes, the Internet was swirling with rumors that Orlov had chosen a successor and was preparing a gradual withdrawal from the company’s day-to-day operations. By that evening, the rumors were so intense that Orlov felt compelled to make a rare appearance on CNBC to deny them. His performance was hardly convincing. Indeed, one prominent commentator said it raised many more questions than it answered.
    No one in London’s financial circles would ever know that the rumors of Orlov’s imminent retirement were started by a team of men and women working from an isolated house in Surrey. Nor would they know that the same rumors were injected into the bloodstream of Moscow’s business community, or that they reached the highest level of the state-owned energy company known as Volgatek Oil & Gas. Gabriel and his team were aware of this, because they read about it in a caustic e-mail sent by Alexei Voronin, Volgatek’s chief of European operations, to the head of the Gdansk field office. Eli Lavon presented a printout of the e-mail to Gabriel over dinner and translated the text, even the parts that were unfit for polite company. Gabriel responded by opening a leftover bottle of the Château Pétrus and pouring a glass for each member of the team. All in all, it was an auspicious beginning. Mikhail was now Viktor Orlov’s heir apparent. And KGB Oil & Gas was watching.

41
    MAYFAIR, LONDON
    T he offices of Viktor Orlov Investments, LLC, occupied four floors of a luxury Mayfair office block, not far from the American Embassy. When Nicholas Avedon arrived there early the next morning, the entire senior staff of the firm was waiting in the main conference room to greet him. Orlov made a few brief remarks, followed by a round of hasty introductions, all of which were unnecessary because Mikhail had memorized the names and faces of Orlov’s team during his preparation at the safe house in Surrey.
    If they had expected him to ease into the job slowly, they were sadly mistaken. Because within an hour of settling into his new corner office overlooking Hanover Square, he had begun a top-to-bottom review of VOI’s lucrative investments in the energy field. Never mind that he had conducted the same review already within the walls of the safe house, or that his insightful findings had already been written for him by Victor Orlov. The review sent a signal to the rest of the staff that Nicholas Avedon was not a man to be taken lightly. He had been brought to VOI to do a job. And heaven help the fool who tried to stand in his way.
    His days quickly acquired a strict routine. He would arrive at his desk early, having read the morning business journals and checked the Asian markets, and then spend an hour or two with his spreadsheets and charts before joining the morning senior staff meeting, which was always held in Orlov’s spacious office. He tended to keep his own counsel during large gatherings, but when he did choose to speak, his remarks set new standards for brevity. Most days he lunched alone. Then he would labor at his desk until seven or eight, when he would return to the