Moscow Sting

“Oil fields. New ones. The biggest. I tell you, I was there. In Sochi, down on the Black Sea, three weeks ago. Then in Moscow. Putin, Medvedev, Ivanov—we met them all. I was one of the team out there with ‘one of France’s major oil companies.’ ” Plismy winked coyly at the anonymity. “And we all sat around the same table with the men of power, the siloviki. Cover name, of course, cover position in the company. Usual rules.”

Plismy threw his head back like a horse and then dipped in towards Logan again.

“The Russians are going to hand us—France—the big Siberian oil fields, take them away from the Americans and anybody else. The biggest fields, Logan. The Sakhalin fields in particular, the biggest prize of all.”

“Sounds like a good day’s work,” Logan replied.

“It was a couple of days, actually,” Plismy said, blithely unaware of the foolishness of his own self- importance.

Logan now saw that Plismy didn’t know about his fall from grace. He was taunting him with what French aplomb and acumen could do, as opposed to American ham-fistedness—as Plismy saw it, anyway. Plismy thought he was still CIA.

“Look, Thomas, dinner’s on me,” Logan said suddenly, and smiled openly. “I want to be the first outside your office to congratulate you on the new job.”

“Well. That’s good of you,” the newly enriched Plismy replied. It was this sort of respect that a man like him, in his new position, could only expect.

They took a taxi back into the centre when they’d finished dinner. Plismy knew a place, which he and similarly ranked Parisians from different professions attended for what he called “late evening delights.” It was off the Faubourg Saint-Honore, at the smart end, Plismy noted.

“It is where the French elite from the grandes ecoles go for discretion,” Plismy said—though he was not, Logan knew, one of them. He’d come up from the rough banlieues of Marseille, where he’d learned his hatred of other, “lesser” races.

In the taxi Plismy returned to the Russian theme. Russia had been on everybody’s minds since the Kremlin’s show of aggression in Georgia. Putin had been photographed with the invading troops, openly displaying his power over the nominal president, Dmitry Medvedev.

“Top secret,” Plismy said. “The Russians captured some American special forces troops fighting with the Georgians. They told me that in Moscow. Very embarrassing for your people, I’d have thought.”

“I know nothing about it.” Logan grinned, in order to give the impression he knew exactly what Plismy was referring to.

But Plismy went off on another self-congratulatory tack, around the role he’d played in Moscow for many years, which now seemed to be bearing such rich fruit.

“The Americans, the British, they took the early, easy pickings in Russia,” Plismy said pompously, as if he were giving a lecture at the Hautes Etudes Commerciales. “But the French are the ones the Russians trust now. Perhaps for that reason. We weren’t in there like you, stripping the place in the nineties. But now France is coming up, just as Russian power expands. It couldn’t be a better moment. It will be a good few years, Logan, believe me, a profitable few years ahead. And don’t think our oil company doesn’t appreciate my own role in their giant strides in Russia,” he added, and winked across the seat of the taxi.

By which he meant, Logan knew, that Plismy was getting a slice of the action on the side.

“Look at what’s happened over Georgia,” Plismy continued. “The Russians march in—provoked by that madman Georgian president. The Americans do a lot of huffing and puffing. But it’s Sarkozy, our leader, who goes in and does the deal with Putin.”

“You mean Medvedev.”

“Medvedev may be president, but Putin pulls all the strings. Him and his cronies have it all sewn up. I’ll tell you a story.”

Plismy sat back in his seat and opened the window a little wider.

“Go on, tell me, Thomas—as long as it doesn’t reflect well on you, you old bastard.”

Plismy laughed and punched Logan’s arm. He was quite drunk, Logan noted.

“Up in Moscow, on this deal, I spoke with a very beautiful woman,” he said. “She’s in the Russian parliament, the Duma. Ex ice-skater. She was very attentive to me.”

I’ll bet she was, Logan thought. And I bet ice-skating skated over her real reason for giving you the time of day.

“She told me,” Plismy continued, “that the president of Uzbekistan came up to meet Medvedev in the Kremlin. In the course of much discussion, about many things, Medvedev asked why the political opposition in Uzbekistan disliked Russia so much. The president replied that they didn’t dislike Russia, they disliked Putin. Medvedev leaned back in his chair and sighed. ‘I know how they feel,’ he said.”

Plismy clapped his hands with delight at the story, but mainly, Logan observed, because he knew it. He knew an insider’s tale of a conversation between the president of Russia and another national leader that had taken place in private, in the heart of the Kremlin, the heart of power.

“I know how he feels!” repeated Plismy, way off his usual vocal register. “The president of Russia is terrified of Putin. Medvedev’s just Putin’s poodle, you know I’m right about that. But don’t think we’re in Russia’s pocket for a second,” Plismy cautioned, as if Logan had been thinking such a thing. “We’re not like the Germans, handing out pipeline contracts that the Russians alone will benefit from. No. France is going to reap a rich harvest from these oil fields, but we’ve kept our independence intact. We play both sides with the Russians, Logan. We carry a stick, and we dangle a carrot. We have plenty up our sleeve in France, if the Russians ever get nasty.”

“And they will, believe it,” Logan said, to Plismy’s irritation.

Plismy leaned in towards Logan so that the taxi driver wouldn’t overhear. Logan could smell the hours of alcohol on his breath.

“We have some very important, very senior anti-Putin officers from the KGB under our protection. Here. In France,” he said. “We keep them up our sleeve, so to speak, for a rainy day. They have a great deal of compromising information about Comrade Vladimir. Bank accounts in Switzerland and so on. We keep our own kompromat against the Russians, just as they do against each other. We are well prepared.”

“Really? How senior?” Logan said. He knew they were approaching their destination, and it tempted him to take a leap.

But just as Logan thought Plismy was about to unburden himself a little more, the taxi drew up at the kerb.

“Oh, yes, France is looking after herself,” Plismy said importantly. And as he opened the taxi door, he veered off the subject completely, possibly recalling an earlier motif. “And the damn Jews in London and New York deserve everything they get,” he said randomly.

Two and a half hours later, after Plismy had been sated by a bottle of 1986 Krug champagne and the “most beautiful eighteen-year-old philosophy student you ever saw,” Logan found himself in another taxi with the Frenchman, on the way to another bar.

“So,” the Frenchman breathed, heavily and too close to Logan’s face. “What have you got for me, Logan? What’s the meaning of our meeting?”

It had taken Plismy nearly five hours to reach this point. He really believed that Logan enjoyed his company, Logan realised. Just like all the others. But Logan saw too that the cunning in Plismy’s eyes, even through the hours of drinking, was still engaged.

“You may need to use some of these KGB defectors you have up your sleeve here, Thomas,” he said.

“Oh, yes? And why is that?”

Logan decided on telling the background from truth, and then adding the big lie under this camouflage to hook in Plismy.

“It’s from our station in Vienna,” he said.

He saw Plismy watching him avidly.

“As you know, the Russians have increased their operations there tenfold,” Logan said. “It’s back to Cold War levels.”

“It’s true, they’re trying to march across Europe again,” Plismy agreed. “Money is no object for them now.”