The English Girl: A Novel

brilliant theoretical mathematician he had worked within the Soviet nuclear weapons program. Lazarev knew nothing of capitalism, but like Orlov he was good with numbers. Lazarev learned the business from the ground up. Then Orlov placed him in charge of Ruzoil’s day-to-day operations. It was, said Orlov, the biggest mistake he had ever made in business.
    “Why?” asked Gabriel.
    “Because Gennady Lazarev was KGB,” Orlov answered. “He was KGB when he was working inside the nuclear weapons program, and he was KGB when I placed him in charge of Ruzoil.”
    “You never had any suspicions?”
    Orlov shook his head. “He was very good—and very loyal to the sword and the shield, which is how the KGB thugs like to refer to themselves. Needless to say,” Orlov added, “Lazarev betrayed me. He gave the Kremlin mountains of internal documents—documents that the state prosecutors then used to fabricate a case against me. And when I fled the country, Lazarev ran Ruzoil as though it were his own.”
    “He cut you out?”
    “Completely.”
    “And when you agreed to give up Ruzoil in order to get us out of Russia?”
    “Lazarev was already gone by then. He was running a new state-owned petroleum company. Apparently, the Russian president chose the name for this enterprise himself. He called it Volgatek Oil and Gas. There was a joke running round the Kremlin at the time that the president wanted to call the company KGB Oil and Gas but didn’t think that would play well in the West.”
    Volgatek, Orlov resumed, was to have no role in domestic Russian oil production, which had already leveled off. Instead, its sole purpose was to expand Russia’s oil and gas interests internationally, thus increasing the Kremlin’s global power and influence. Backed by Kremlin money, Volgatek went on a shopping spree in Europe, purchasing a chain of oil refineries in Poland, Lithuania, and Hungary. Then, over the objections of the Americans, it signed a lucrative drilling agreement with the Islamic Republic of Iran. It also signed development deals with Cuba, Venezuela, and Syria.
    “Do you see a pattern here?” asked Orlov.
    “The deals Volgatek struck were all in the lands of the old Soviet empire or in countries hostile to the United States.”
    “Correct,” said Orlov.
    But Volgatek wasn’t content to stop there, he added. It expanded its operations into Western Europe, signing distribution and refinery deals in Greece, Denmark, and the Netherlands. Then it set its sights on the North Sea, where it wanted to drill in two newly discovered fields off the Western Isles of Scotland. Volgatek’s geologists estimated that production would eventually reach one hundred thousand barrels a day, with a large portion of profits flowing directly into the coffers of the Kremlin. The company applied to Britain’s Department of Energy and Climate Change for a license. And then the secretary of state for energy asked Viktor Orlov to pop over to his office for a chat.
    “And what do you think I told him?”
    “That Volgatek was a wholly owned subsidiary of the Kremlin, run by a former member of the KGB.”
    “And what do you think the secretary of state for energy did with Volgatek’s application to drill in territorial waters of Britain?”
    “He dropped it into his shredder.”
    “Right before my eyes,” added Orlov, smiling. “It was a most satisfying sound.”
    “Did the Kremlin know that you were the one who sabotaged the deal?”
    “Not to my knowledge,” replied Orlov. “But I’m sure Lazarev and the Russian president suspected I was somehow involved. They’re always willing to believe the worst about me.”
    “What happened next?”
    “Volgatek waited a year. Then it filed a second application for the drilling license. But this time, things were different. They had a friend inside Downing Street, a man who they’d spent a year cultivating.”
    “Who?”
    “I’d rather not say.”
    “Fine,” responded Gabriel. “Then I’ll say it for you. Volgatek’s man inside Downing Street was Jeremy Fallon, the most powerful chief of staff in British history.”
    Orlov smiled. “Perhaps we should have a bottle of Pétrus after all.”
    T hey had sailed into dangerous waters. Gabriel knew it, and Orlov surely knew it, too, for his left eye was beating a furious rhythm. When he was a child, the twitch had made him the target of merciless teasing and bullying. It had made him burn with hatred, and that hatred had