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“Fuck!” the young assassin shouted, ducking and throwing an arm protectively in front of his face. A few seconds later he was out the front door and running up the road.
CHAPTER 7
MOSCOW
RUSSIA
> AS was always the case when he arrived, the outer office was empty.
Grisha Azarov crossed it quickly, glancing at an ornate clock on the wall to confirm that he was precisely on time. The door at the back was open and he passed through, closing it quietly behind him.
The office was a stark contrast to the one he’d just visited in Siberia. Every wall was clad in the rich wood paneling favored by powerful men and gilt accents bordered the ceiling. Carefully restored antiques and priceless works of art were in abundance, tracing the whole of Russia’s history.
At nearly twenty meters square, it took a not insignificant amount of time to cross the room and take a position of attention in front of a desk that had once been owned by Czar Nicolas II. According to legend, he had used it only once before the people rose up and killed him for his sins and the sins of his forebears. Azarov had always thought it ironic that Russia’s president would choose a desk with such a history.
Maxim Krupin finished signing the document in front of him and set it aside, leaning back in his chair to finally acknowledge Azarov’s presence. The politician was relatively young at fifty-two, stocky and solid. He had recently grown a jet-black mustache that, despite being meticulously groomed, still had the effect of making him look a little wild. Undoubtedly the change was a calculated effort to further intimidate the West and to ingratiate himself with a constituency desperate to have the world tremble once again in Russia’s shadow.
By contrast, Azarov was clean-shaven, with a thin, muscular physique beneath a suit tailored to obscure it. The man who oversaw his training never allowed his client’s body fat level to rise above that favored by professional athletes. In a world flooded with modern weapons, strength was desirable, but speed and agility were the difference between survival and death.
“You look well despite the recent unpleasantness, Grisha.”
“It’s kind of you to say, sir.”
“Certainly better than when I found you.”
Their rare face-to-face meetings always began with Krupin subtly reminding Azarov that everything he had was a result of their association.
While Dmitry Utkin’s similar comment had been an exaggeration, Krupin’s was fundamentally accurate. Azarov had been pulled from his special forces post without explanation just before his twenty-fourth birthday. Having distinguished himself on a number of difficult clandestine operations as well as on the army’s intelligence tests, he had come to the attention of the country’s new president.
Krupin had ridden a populist wave into office and was then in the process of consolidating his power. In order to facilitate that consolidation, he’d needed a man with a specific skill set and unwavering loyalty.
The Russian army had provided the former while Krupin bought the latter. Almost overnight, Azarov had gone from living in a barracks and making a few rubles a month to a life of mansions, private jets, and runway models. It had been more than the son of a poor farmer from the rural north could ever have dreamed of. Now, though, he recognized it as the Faustian bargain it was.
“Our friends were beginning to forget their place,” Krupin continued. “Now they’re reminded that they’re only flesh and blood.”
He was, of course, referring to Utkin and Russia’s other powerful oligarchs.
“A weakness we share, Mr. President.”
“Do I hear fear in your voice, Grisha? It doesn’t suit you.”
Krupin was a brutal man who had risen through the ranks at great cost—a cost that was beginning to come due. The precipitous drop in oil prices had combined with Western economic sanctions to loosen the iron-fisted control he’d gained over the country. The control that kept both him and Azarov alive.
“They’re dangerous men with extensive resources, sir.”
“They have no patriotism, Grisha. No love for mother Russia. The Americans are trying to strangle us and all they care about are insignificant shifts in their stock prices. They have no vision for this country’s return to its former glory.”
Azarov wondered what exactly that former glory was. The dysfunctional aristocracy represented by the handcrafted desk in front of him? The genocidal mania of Joseph Stalin? The disastrous communist experiment?
In truth, his country was utterly dependent on the extraction of natural resources. Russia invented nothing. Made nothing. Contributed nothing. Its people had never had a chance to learn how.
In many ways, this is why Krupin had enjoyed such success in politics. He understood his people’s thirst for relevance and had a gift for slaking that thirst in ways that were ultimately meaningless but satisfying in the short term.
“Before he died, Utkin demanded details of your plan for the economy and proof that those plans would be effective, sir. I suspect the others will do the same.”
Krupin’s eyes narrowed and he leaned forward across his desk. “I will cut the Americans off at the knees, Grisha. Russia will be respected and feared throughout the world. We will exceed even the power we had at the height of the Soviet era. Will that be sufficient for these little men?”
“What you describe would indeed be glorious,” Azarov said, trying to conjure the expected sense of enthusiasm.