Missing Man (24 page)

Deripaska, whose Cossack heritage could be seen in his broad forehead and strong cheekbones, was worth an estimated $14 billion. He lived close to Vladimir Putin in a wealthy Moscow suburb, and Deripaska's wife, Polina, was the daughter of the top aide to Boris Yeltsin, the former Russian president. He owned homes in England, France, and Italy; a private jet; and an oceangoing yacht, the
Queen K
, which had a crew of twenty-one. But the State Department treated Deripaska much as it did Birshtein, as an undesirable. American officials never publicly said why they wouldn't issue him a visa, but it was apparently related to his meteoric rise in the aluminum industry. During the 1990s, southern Siberia, home to Russia's metal smelters, was the setting for the “aluminum wars,” a period of Chicago-style gangland violence replete with murders and assassinations as rivals fought for control. Deripaska, who had earned degrees in economics and physics, was depicted in some accounts as a ruthless genius, and a lawsuit filed against him in an American court in the 1990s claimed he had made death threats against two competitors.

Deripaska denied doing so and insisted that the only payments he had made to gangs during the aluminum wars were to buy protection for his facilities. Over time, he had spent millions of dollars on lobbyists, including the former Senate leader Bob Dole, to get the State Department to change its stance. U.S. officials briefly lifted the ban, then reinstated it. Vladimir Putin was furious. “They give us nothing, explain to us nothing, and forbid him from entry,” he told one newspaper. Deripaska also courted U.S. politicians, meeting in 2006 with the Arizona senator John McCain during the World Economic Forum, a conference in Davos, Switzerland. One of the lawmaker's advisors, Rick Davis, arranged the meeting for McCain, who was then gearing up to become the 2008 Republican presidential nominee. Deripaska later hosted McCain aboard the
Queen K
, while it was moored off the coast of Montenegro. Nothing the oligarch tried had worked, and Boris had come to Paris to offer him a chance to earn what his money and influence couldn't buy: a visa. To get it, he would have to finance a secret operation to find and rescue Bob.

It had taken FBI officials about six months to connect with Boris after John Good's initial call to the bureau to offer the businessman's help. Two FBI agents were assigned to deal with him. One of them, Martin Hellmer, was a member of the Extraterritorial Squad, and the other, Joe Krzemien, was a retired agent with experience on Russian cases who was working for the FBI as a contractor. Initially, Boris proposed an undercover operation in which Krzemien, posing as a business associate, would go with him to Istanbul and see the same Iranians whom Bob had met in December 2006. But the plan never materialized and Boris next spent months searching for someone who might have connections to Iran. The person he found was an ally of Turkey's most notorious terrorist, Abdullah Öcalan. For two decades, a group founded by Öcalan, the Kurdistan Workers' Party, had waged a guerrilla-style war against the Turkish government, ambushing troops and blowing up buildings and bridges in its campaign to create an autonomous Kurdish nation. Finally, in 1999, Öcalan was arrested during a joint operation between the CIA and Turkish forces and sentenced to life in prison.

Boris's contact, an ethnic Kurd named Madzhit Mamoyan, was still a backer of the Kurdistan Workers' Party, and he looked more at home in a leather jacket than in a business suit. A short, thickly built chain-smoker in his fifties with dark eyes, Mamoyan lived in Moscow and described himself as a businessman. He hated Turks with a passion; if he went into a restaurant where a Turk was working as a waiter, he would leave.

After meeting Mamoyan through a mutual acquaintance, Boris told him U.S. officials wanted to find an American private investigator missing in Iran and were willing to do favors for people who helped. As a Kurd, Madzhit had plenty of connections in the region. Along with Turkey, there are large Kurdish communities in Iraq, Syria, and Iran. He told Boris he had a friend imprisoned in Spain he wanted released. When the FBI discovered the link between Madzhit and the Kurdistan Workers' Party, they hesitated to move forward—the group, which is known as the PKK, was designated during the Bush administration as a terrorist organization.

But the FBI didn't have any better alternatives, so Martin Hellmer and Joe Krzemien told Boris he could bring Madzhit to Washington for an interview so long as he financed the trip himself. Boris did it in style. A black stretch limousine picked up Madzhit at the airport and ferried him to a luxurious hotel near the White House, where he popped out of the car wearing a worn tracksuit smelling of cigarettes. That evening, Boris hosted Madzhit, Hellmer, and Krzemien at a lavish dinner that included champagne, oysters, and several bottles of wine.

FBI supervisors, fearing Madzhit might conduct PKK-related business while in the United States, kept him under surveillance. They didn't see signs of problems, but bureau officials told Boris that the Kurd lacked the political clout they needed in an intermediary. That might have ended the FBI's interactions with Boris and Madzhit. However, the two men weren't the type of people used to taking no for an answer, and they soon devised a plan to which FBI officials couldn't say no—one involving the aluminum magnate Oleg Deripaska.

Madzhit had met Deripaska in the 1990s when the Soviet Union was collapsing. The Kurd ended up owning a chain of television stations in Russia but was squeezed out, he would later say, by a notoriously corrupt mayor of Moscow named Yury Luzhkov. Over the years, he had stayed in touch with Deripaska, and after his trip to Washington, he thought of the oligarch's campaign to get a visa and his many business and political connections to Iran. He told Deripaska that U.S. officials were willing to reward those who helped find a missing American and suggested he speak with Boris. Before long, the two men were flying to Paris aboard the oligarch's private jet. Prior to the meeting, FBI officials gave Boris his instructions. The message was simple—if Deripaska delivered definitive evidence showing that Bob was either alive or dead, he would get his visa. There were a few ground rules. The oligarch would have to sever his ties with Washington lobbyists and fund the search for information with his money. “I know that people are sucking your blood with all their stories about how they are going to help you,” Boris told Deripaska. “I don't want anything from you, nothing.”

Deripaska mulled the proposal. Boris sensed the younger man was seething with the same anger and humiliation he had felt for years. Leaders of other countries accorded them respect. But in the United States, which held itself out as the world's moral arbiter, they were ostracized and treated with contempt. Boris had agreed to help Bob for a reason: he wanted his name off the watch list. But Bob's disappearance had opened bigger doors. By rescuing a missing American, he and Deripaska would be publicly celebrated as heroes, their old reputations cleansed forever. There were other possibilities as well. Boris could envision business partnerships with Deripaska, or the “young man,” as he called him, and the opportunity to assume his place among the oligarchs.

Boris was elated when Deripaska told him he was willing to meet with American officials. As their meeting ended, Boris couldn't resist letting him know that he had once been a major player in Russia. “Haven't you heard about me?” Boris asked. When Deripaska didn't reply, he explained that Boris Yeltsin, the godfather of the oligarch's wife, was his mortal enemy. In the early 1990s, the Russian president ran Boris out of the country after reports surfaced he had bribed Yeltsin's vice president to win baby food contracts for his trading company, Seabeco. Boris rejected the charge and chalked it up to political infighting. But Yeltsin didn't forget the incident, even mentioning Boris in his memoir. “I was to learn much more about him and Seabeco, his ill-reputed firm,” Yeltsin wrote. Boris told Deripaska he was surprised, given the bad blood, that the oligarch had agreed to see him. “That is very interesting,” Deripaska replied. “It was very nice meeting you.”

A few weeks later, Martin Hellmer and Joe Krzemien walked into the lobby of the luxurious Le Grand Hotel, not far from Place Vendôme in Paris. Fashion Week was in full swing and celebrities were in town to see shows by designers such as Alexander McQueen and Stella McCartney. The hotel's lobby was swarming with willowy models, and the agents paused briefly to take in the view before finding the elevator and riding up to a suite. Before leaving Washington, Hellmer and Krzemien had read up about Deripaska, and they expected to find a typical oligarch dressed in a custom-made Savile Row suit with a gold Patek Philippe watch strapped to his wrist. Deripaska didn't fit the part. His suit looked like it was pulled off a department store rack, and a plastic strap secured his cheap digital watch. His closely cropped hair appeared unevenly cut, as though his wife trimmed it at home. Joe Krzemien's attention was drawn to Deripaska's eyes. They were pale and icy cold. Krzemien had spent much of his FBI career on dangerous assignments, chasing spies and terrorists. When he shook the oligarch's hand, he felt a chill. Deripaska was one of the few people he had ever met who scared him.

Krzemien did most of the talking. Being a contractor allowed him to take greater liberties with the truth than Martin Hellmer, and the partners had worked out a routine to cover occasions when Krzemien needed to ad-lib—he would give Hellmer a certain look and the young agent would say he needed to leave the room. Krzemien told Deripaska, who spoke fluent English, that he and Hellmer were representatives of the U.S. government but didn't specifically mention the FBI. The ruse wasn't necessary. Krzemien realized Deripaska would never have agreed to meet with him and Hellmer absent agreement from Putin's office and that Russian intelligence officials probably knew who they worked for.

The oligarch told Hellmer and Krzemien he needed two questions answered before deciding whether to go forward. The first question was whether Bob had been kidnapped or killed in retaliation for something he had done as an FBI agent. When Krzemien said he didn't believe so, Deripaska posed his second question. “Has he ever done anything to hurt Russia?” he asked. Assured that he hadn't, Deripaska announced he was willing to fund a search and pay any ransom needed to free Bob, expenses that could amount to tens of millions of dollars. That price was small compared with what the State Department's refusal to issue him a visa was costing. A worldwide economic recession then unfolding was devastating the oligarch's business. To build his aluminum empire, Deripaska had taken out billions in bank loans, but he faced the prospect of defaulting on them because the price of aluminum and other metals was plummeting due to reduced demand. He had hoped to raise capital from investors by selling shares of RUSAL on the London Stock Exchange. But British regulators did not allow the offering to go forward, and financial analysts speculated the State Department's refusal to give Deripaska a visa was a factor in the decision. Wall Street investment firms were interested in Deripaska's ventures, but to get their money he needed a clean bill of health from U.S. authorities.

The businessman insisted on one condition for his participation in Bob's case. His role was to remain secret so rivals in Russia wouldn't know he was cooperating with the United States, a disclosure that could put him in physical danger. It was agreed that the oligarch would remain in the background while Madzhit Mamoyan oversaw the search for Bob on the ground. Boris would act as the go-between, relaying information among Madzhit, Deripaska, and the FBI. Bureau officials were elated. Deripaska, who was also involved in the automobile industry and other ventures, had contacts in Iran who might know about Bob. One FBI official called Chris and, without mentioning the oligarch's name, told her the bureau was now dealing with someone who could “fly into Iran on his private jet” and bring her husband out.

By 2009, Chris was getting regular weekly briefings from the FBI and the State Department about her husband's case. Typically, there was nothing new to report, but speaking regularly with Chris limited the number of spontaneous calls she made to agents. U.S. officials wanted her to feel they were doing everything possible to bring her husband home. They feared she would grow frustrated and go public about Bob's CIA ties, an outcome they desperately wanted to avoid, both for his sake and for the fate of the three young American hikers who were still being held in Evin Prison.

Bob's friend in London, Jeff Katz, the private investigator who headed Bishop International, was losing patience with the FBI's lack of progress. A native New Yorker in his sixties, Katz had lived for decades in England and spent much of his career working for Kroll Associates, the big investigative outfit, before starting his own firm. His most high-profile case at Kroll involved the mysterious death of Roberto Calvi, an executive of Banco Ambrosiano, an Italian bank that served the Vatican. When Calvi was found hanged in 1982 underneath London's Blackfriars Bridge, police officials concluded that his death was a suicide. A decade later, Calvi's family, unable to collect his life insurance because of the suicide finding, hired Katz to reinvestigate. He assembled a team of forensic experts, engineers, and a stuntman to re-create events on the night of Calvi's death. The key to the case turned out to be the dead man's shoes. Calvi favored shoes made by John Lobb Ltd., a famous cobbler on St. James's Street in London. Katz had the stuntman put on an identical pair and walk along the same metal scaffolding Calvi would have needed to navigate to reach the point underneath the bridge where he would have hanged himself. Calvi's body was found partially submerged in the river Thames, so the stuntman's shoes were soaked overnight in a bucket of Thames water. Technicians then microscopically examined both pairs of shoes. Unlike the stuntman's shoes, whose soles showed flecks of paint and rust from the scaffolding, the banker's shoes were free of debris, suggesting murderers staged the hanging by hoisting him up onto the bridge from a boat underneath it. Katz's finding prompted insurers to pay millions to Calvi's survivors.