Rule 34

index finger alongside his crooked, slightly splayed nose.

“We should get you a woman—” You stop when you see the look in his eyes. He hasn’t been the same since Yelena died. Some men need all the women they can get, but for others, one is all they want for a lifetime. “Or a bottle of vodka? And some dirty videos. When did we last kick back with a good movie?”

Now his shoulders relax. “I’m supposed to tutor a meeting of the All-Republic Commission on Finance this afternoon,” he says quietly. “Most of those fucking peasants wouldn’t know a credit default swap if it bit them on the bell-end. And listen, they aren’t paying me to teach macroeconomics at the state academy anymore. Those bastards, if they were my students, they’d be heading for a ‘fail.’ All they can think of is lining their own pockets. What the fuck do they care about the future?”

“The committee will still be there tomorrow, and the day after,” you point out. “Send a reliable deputy . . .” Now you understand the expression. “What is it?”

“What indeed?” He raises an eyebrow. “It’s the future. I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately.”

“What?”

“Listen.” The First Citizen glances away. “Suppose I ordered you to arrest the American, the investment agent. No reason given, just shut his little crime syndicate down right now and bugger the big picture. Would you do it?”

“For you, boss? Of course, in a split instant.” You shrug. “Of course, it would make a real mess,” you add, conspiratorially: Subtext, you’d completely fuck over our past two years’ work.

“Right, right.” Bhaskar limply punches the open palm of his left hand, winces slightly from the carpal tunnel syndrome that’s plagued him for decades. “You’d do it, but first you make sure I am fully informed as to the consequences.” (Little does he truly appreciate the real risks involved: It’s your job to protect your unworldly genius of a childhood friend from the real-world consequences of such a whim. To ensure that when it’s time for you to bring the hammer down and Bhaskar to fix the deficit, there are no overlooked survivors with enough money to pay for assassins.) “I’m not asking you to do that. But the point is, at least I know where you stand. You’re not afraid to tell me. But those fuckers on the all-state council? That rat-bag Kurmanbek smiles like a vulture and makes nicey- nicey noises, but do you think he’d lend me a horse if my pony was lamed—”

Kurmanbek is the vice-president—or rather, the ethnic Uzbek counterweight in the ruling coalition Bhaskar presides over: in other words, Nuisance Central. And, of course, Bhaskar’s right: If he asked Kurmanbek the time, the answer would be whatever was most convenient for the veep. “Is the committee’s immediate agenda critical?” you ask. “Because if not—why not send Kurmanbek to deputize? I’ll have someone listen in”—you’re talking about bugging a state committee—“and compare the minutes to what actually gets said. Worst case, you skip class. Best case, Kurmanbek hands you some live ammunition. But either way, you need a couple of days off, boss. Kick back with a couple of bottles and some decadent Iranian musicals. Maybe a game—when did you last go on an epic quest?”

The First Citizen brightens. “You’re right, Felix. I should skip school more often!” You nod, encouraging.

It’s got to be a horrible life, trapped here in a hermetically sealed bubble inside a presidential palace, unable to go out in daylight without a platoon of soldiers with fixed bayonets on all sides, children grown up and wife dead of a stroke these past three years. Not to mention that fucking annoying Georgian extradition warrant floating around Interpol like an unexploded bomb—you know Bhaskar didn’t order the guards to fire on that crowd; it was a horrible fuck-up by an idiot second lieutenant—but the upshot is he’s stuck here in the middle of Bishkek, not even able to go to the casinos in St. Petersburg for an evening at the roulette table. (Or whatever it is that he enjoys: Knowing Bhaskar, given the choice he’d probably disguise himself as a professor, sneak into the university campus, and teach a seminar on the history of monetarism. If all the Republic’s previous presidents’ vices were as recondite as his, Moscow would be coming to you for loans.)

You’ve had a ringside seat, seen what it’s doing to your childhood friend, watched him reduced to fishing for assurances that he’s still loved, shuffling around his carpeted pleasure-prison in the dark. If any smiling bastard tried to convince you to front a coup, you’d shoot him yourself, you think, just to stay out of the presidential padded cell.

Then the First Citizen puts a friendly arm around your shoulder and drops you in it head first:

“But tell me now, how is the Przewalsk business coming along? I’ve been fielding questions from the EU ambassador’s office, but they’re becoming more insistent, and that whining louse Borisovitch in State is starting to give me back-chat . . .”

THE OPERATION: Blofeld Blues

There is no sabre-scarred monocle-wearing bullet-headed bad guy stroking a white cat at the centre of this conspiracy.

Nor are there any tropical-island bases patrolled by Komodo dragons, assault-rifle-toting boiler-suited henchmen, or stolen nuclear weapons.

The wildest conspiracies are the quietest.

This one started out as a venture-capital partnership that has opted for mutual unlimited liability in lieu of filing certain important papers that the Internal Revenue Service would be very interested in seeing.

In this decade, the United States faces a cumulative gross budget deficit of around 30 trillion dollars—or about 16 trillion euros, or 20 trillion renminbi. It’s the hangover from a century of imperial overstretch, the flip side of the butcher’s bill from trying to force the world to play by the conqueror’s rule-book for too long. The IRS is grabbing every bent cent they can find these days, trying to outrun the law of compound interest. However, their intrusive banking compliance regime doesn’t reach as far as it did a decade or more ago because foreigners aren’t terribly scared of Uncle Sam anymore. For the rising powers of the BRIC, helping the US government balance its books is not exactly high on the agenda of realpolitik. So while most Americans get to tighten their belts and swallow a painful prescription from the IMF, the few, the lucky—those who invested their assets overseas, before the money supply exploded in the wake of one banking crisis too many—are stranded, facing a 90–per cent marginal tax rate if they try to repatriate their wealth.

Hence, the Operation. Invest overseas, invest efficiently, invest for maximum growth, and who gives a fuck about collateral damage? They’re foreigners. They got us into this mess, and now they’re holding our heads underwater by debasing our currency. Fuck ’em if they can’t take a joke!

The Operation is nominally headquartered in California.

To the IRS—and anyone else who enquires—it appears to be a small, somewhat lackadaisical investment partnership, with a software subsidiary who maintain the expert systems its strategic planning runs on. A couple of successful companies huddle close to the parent organization’s feet: a small ISP, a private management college (not that anyone’s paying for MBAs this decade, when they could be training as plumbers or auto mechanics instead), and an off-shore secretarial bureau. As VC firms go, the only thing distinguishing the Operation from its peers is how undistinguished it looks. Its managers seem to have poor judgement, funding too many second-rate entrepreneurs who drop out of sight after a couple of months. It’s almost as if they don’t want to make a profit, don’t feel the visionary’s urge to set the world ablaze.

Komodo dragons, nuclear missiles, and island bases are all high-maintenance overheads. They’re inefficient. And the Operation values efficiency above all else.

The Operation proactively recruits executive-calibre material from among the unfairly-discriminated-against neurodiverse. It provides a supportive and caring environment in which these battered souls can grow and be all that they want to be. The hate-word “psychopath” conjures up visions of knife-wielding maniacs, but that’s a far cry from the reality of the Operation’s entrepreneurial spirit. In reality, it’s an unacknowledged truth that amidst the cut and thrust of boardroom politics, a touch of antisocial personality disorder is an asset—the Operation merely makes the best of its human resources, polishes and trains them to keep their natural impulsive drives harnessed to the wagon of success. Their classes in corporate and managerial ethics really are first-rate: By the time they graduate and leave the nest, the new entrepreneurs know exactly what they must do to succeed.

One of the dirty little truths of organized crime is that for the most part its management is incompetent. No