The English Girl: A Novel

spacious flat Gabriel had rented for him in Maida Vale. Housekeeping had taken a smaller flat in the building across the street as well. Whenever Mikhail was at home, a member of the team watched over him. And when he was at work, a high-resolution video camera with a secure transmitter kept a vigil for them.
    As it turned out, Volgatek was watching him, too. Gabriel and the team knew this because Unit 1400 had finally managed to break into Volgatek’s computer network, and they were now reading the e-mail of top company executives almost in real time. The name Nicholas Avedon featured prominently in several—including one sent by Gennady Lazarev to Pavel Zhirov, Volgatek’s faceless security chief, requesting a background check. Nicholas Avedon was now a flashing light on Volgatek’s radar screen. It was time, said Gabriel, to make him burn a little brighter.
    The next morning, Nicholas Avedon presented the findings of his review to Viktor Orlov and the entire team at VOI. Orlov declared them brilliant, which was hardly a surprise, since he had conceived and written them himself. Over the next few days, he undertook a series of bold market moves, all of which had been long in the planning, that radically altered VOI’s position in the global energy sector. During a whirlwind round of print and broadcast interviews, Orlov called it “energy for the twenty-second century and beyond”—and whenever possible, he gave credit to the plan’s nominal architect: Nicholas Avedon. The moneymen from the City liked what they saw of Orlov’s young protégé. And so, it seemed, did KGB Oil & Gas.
    T hey had demonstrated competence on the part of Nicholas Avedon. Now it was time to reveal the level to which Viktor Orlov had grown dependent upon him. Stock analysts and middle managers, said Gabriel, were a dime a dozen. Gennady Lazarev would make a play for Nicholas Avedon for one reason and one reason only—in order to screw his former mentor and business partner.
    And so began what the team described as the Viktor and Nicholas Follies. For the next two weeks, they were inseparable. They lunched together, dined together, and wherever Viktor went in public, Nicholas was at his side. On several occasions he was seen leaving Orlov’s Cheyne Walk mansion late in the evening, and he spent a weekend relaxing at Orlov’s sprawling Berkshire estate, a perquisite bestowed upon no other employee of the firm. As their relationship grew closer, tensions began to rise inside VOI’s Mayfair headquarters. Orlov’s other division chiefs didn’t like the fact that Nicholas Avedon began sitting in on what were usually one-on-one meetings with the boss—or that Avedon was often seen whispering advice into Viktor’s cocked ear. A few of the other staff declared open war on him, but most trimmed their sails accordingly. Avedon was besieged with invitations for after-work drinks and working dinners. He turned them all down. Viktor, he said, required his full attention.
    Next they took the Follies on a tour of the Continent. There was the business forum in Paris, where they were dazzling. And the gathering of Swiss bankers in Geneva, where they couldn’t put a foot wrong. And the rather tense meeting in Madrid with the CEO of an Orlov-owned pipeline company, who was given six months to show a profit or he would find himself looking for another job, along with the rest of Spain.
    Finally, they flew to Budapest for a meeting of business and government leaders from the so-called emerging markets of Eastern Europe. Gazprom, the Russian gas giant, sent a representative to assure those present that they had nothing to fear from their overdependence on Russian energy, that the Kremlin would never dream of turning off the spigot as a means of imposing its will on the lost lands of its former empire. That evening, at a cocktail reception held on the banks of the Danube, the man from Gazprom introduced himself to Nicholas Avedon and found, much to his surprise, that he spoke fluent Russian. Clearly, the Gazprom executive was impressed by what he heard, because a few minutes after the encounter an e-mail arrived in Gennady Lazarev’s in-box. Gabriel and the team read it even before Lazarev managed to open it. It seemed that Nicholas Avedon was now in play. “Hire him,” said the man from Gazprom. “If you don’t, we will.”
    But how to bring the two sides together so that the relationship could be consummated? Never one to wait by the