March 22, 2013,
Four Seasons Hotel, Park Lane, London
FROM WHERE BEREZOVSKY WAS standing, in a darkened corner at the very end of the long, black-lacquered bar, half leaning against the edge of a chest-high chair paneled in a deep crimson velvet, he could just make out the pianist’s fingers as they trickled along the ivory keys, following the pattern of notes behind a tune decidedly jazzy in nature, something Western and light and airy, but still with a hint of depth, lilting scales that went on forever, rising above the noise in the crowded, elegant lounge, above the clink of glasses and the clang of silverware, of couples chatting, businessmen discussing deals, tourists consulting maps and considering museums, churches, restaurants. Music that should have been nothing but background, somehow elevated to the point where it was all Berezovsky could hear.
He wasn’t certain why he was still in the bar. The Four Seasons was quite close to his office, easily within walking distance; even so, of course his car was waiting outside, engine running. He could also have headed home, to his mansion in the suburbs, or perhaps to the flat he kept in the city. He could have headed out of London, to any number of places. Well, any number of places that didn’t have any sort of extradition treaties with Russia, that weren’t in the midst of the relentless machine gobbling up more of his assets, confiscating his houses or boats or cars.
But the engine that had powered him for so long—the adrenaline that had kept him running at such incredible speed, rushing from one thing to another, a bullet train, a man who couldn’t keep still within his own skin—had finally seized, shut down, gone cold. And here he was, standing in a bar just a few blocks from his office, thinking through the short interview he had just given moments before.
It had been the first time he’d spoken to anyone in the press since the trial. In fact, he’d essentially hidden himself away for the past seven months, since that horrifying verdict, refusing most visitors, not answering any mail, even changing his phone number. He wasn’t sure why he had finally relented. Maybe he’d realized that at the very least, he needed to try to put his thoughts out loud; maybe, somehow, speaking would organize the swirling chaos that now dominated his mind.
The reporter, a native Russian, a competent, intelligent journalist by the name of Ilya Zhegulev—had, ironically, been from the Russian edition of Forbes—the same magazine Berezovsky had sued for libel for suggesting that he was some sort of gangster. Since then, Paul Klebnikov, the journalist who wrote that piece—and coined the label “Godfather of the Kremlin”—had been gunned down outside the Forbes office in Moscow. On July 9, 2004, he’d been shot nine times with a semiautomatic pistol, then taken to a nearby hospital in an ambulance that didn’t have any functioning oxygen tanks—only to bleed to death in an elevator that had somehow become stuck for over fifteen minutes in the hospital basement. Klebnikov’s murder remained unsolved, even though many fingers had pointed at Berezovsky.
But Berezovsky was beyond caring about irony; he wasn’t sure what had made him finally acquiesce to speak with the Russian writer—and, in retrospect, going back over what he had said, he knew that it would have taken more than a quality journalist or an experienced linguist to decipher what he’d been trying to say. From the very beginning, he’d realized that maybe he’d been wrong to think he was ready to make any sort of statement. Throughout the interview, he’d continually asked that it be off the record.
If he remembered the conversation correctly, he’d started off by both attacking and praising Badri; trying to explain recent press reports that he and Badri had gone through some sort of financial “divorce” before Badri passed away, which had resulted in the lawsuit and settlement with Badri’s widow. And then the conversation had shifted quickly to his own despondence at his current state—the mistakes he’d made, the miscalculations that had led him in the wrong direction since he’d left Russia. He’d told the reporter how much he missed his homeland, and how badly he wanted to return. Not to the political world, not to challenge Putin or fund a revolution or fight for democracy. Just to return home.
It wasn’t simply an old man’s musings after a year of tragedies, financial, personal, and legal. At some point between the end of the trial and that night at the Four Seasons, Berezovsky had taken this idea—this sudden dream—and had tried to find a way to make it a reality. To that end, he had shut himself into his office on Down Street, had sealed the double doors and set the combination, then had sat at his desk and written a letter—to Vladimir Putin.
In the letter, he had pleaded his case directly to the president. He had asked the man—the same man he had spent the past thirteen years vilifying, attacking, threatening, and blaming for countless murders—to forgive him for his actions in exile, to allow him to return to Russia. To pardon him, as a Christian, to allow him to spend his remaining years in his homeland. In the letter, he promised to stay out of politics, to be a simple mathematician. Perhaps to teach at some university, inspire a new generation to think mathematically. Even in this letter, he hadn’t been able to resist offering up his services—if the president should need them—as an adviser, to help with running the country. But in the end, it was a simple request to let him come home.
He had sealed the letter in an envelope, and had passed it along to a person he knew would be able to deliver it—and had waited for a response.
As of that evening, he had heard nothing back.
Exactly, he thought, what he should have expected. A powerful man like Putin, receiving the letter of an unimpressive man.
Perhaps he should have ended the letter the same way he’d ended the interview with the young journalist from Forbes.
“I don’t know what I should do,” he’d told him, seeming to sink beneath his black scarf and into his dark turtleneck sweater, like a turtle into its shell. “I am sixty-seven years old. And I don’t know what I should do.”
I lost the meaning, he had said. The meaning of life.
Maybe he hadn’t understood what he had meant. Maybe the only people who could truly understand were those who had been there, throughout it all. The players, big and small.
Alone in the bar of crimson and black, he closed his eyes and concentrated on those fingers against ivory, the scales that seemed to go on forever.