Tsar

KGB general who had served under Rostov in the bad old days when they shared an office at Moscow’s Lubyanka Prison, better known as the Gateway to Hell. Nikolai was one of a few men the president had known most of his life. The ten men, known as the siloviki, always maintained a tight orbit around their president. Proximity to power was the defining political imperative inside the Kremlin walls.

Since Vladimir Putin’s arrest and imprisonment at Energetika, a plot in which they were all equally complicit, they had constituted Rostov’s Soviet-style politburo. Together, this small cadre was the executive and policymaking committee responsible for restoring Russia to world prominence and moving the motherland forward into a glorious new age.

The limo was going far too fast for the narrow drive. And General Kuragin was an hour early. What the hell? Rostov stood, irritation plain in his cold blue eyes, left the table, and went upstairs to dress.

Ten minutes later, the president sat behind the desk in his private day office, listening to Kuragin’s fascinating tale of recent events in Miami. He was absentmindedly drumming his fingertips on the desktop, a habit he’d formed early in his life and one of the few he’d never been able to break. It was nerves, he knew, nerves and repressed energy. There was so much to do in Russia, so many vast acres of lost ground that needed covering.

“And Ramzan is confirmed dead?” the president asked the smartly uniformed man in the chair opposite. Nikolai wore custom-tailored black uniforms that gave him the look of a Nazi SS Obergruppenfuhrer, which Rostov knew was a resemblance he cultivated. Even to the close-cropped grey hair dyed an unconvincing blond.

Kuragin was not pretty to look at above the neck-or below it, for that matter. He was a tall skeleton of a man with dark eyes sunk deep in shadows above a long thin nose. His flesh, a pale greyish yellow, hung from his bones. His smile was thin and often cruel.

It was his lovely mind Rostov cherished. He knew everything, he remembered everything, past and present, as if he lived in a room full of clocks and calendars. Kuragin kept the working details, the vast minutia of the president’s official life, in perfect working order. He was indispensable and so prized above all.

“Vaporized, my dear Volodya. I have the pictures from Miami party here, jpegs downloaded at KGB Lubyanka not an hour ago. You may recognize some of our old foes.”

Nikolai passed a sealed red folder across the desk. Rostov took it, broke the seal, and extracted two dozen or so glossy eight-by-ten color prints. Without a word, he began to scrutinize each photograph, staring with fierce intensity at the faces of the hated Chechen leadership as he had done for years, waiting for the pop of recognition.

He found the face he was looking for, and doors within doors of his memory were opened as if by magic.

Rostov found himself looking at a picture of Ramzan’s decapitated head lying upside down against a blackened palm tree. He angrily threw the photo onto the pile.

“I wanted this Chechen pig arrested, Nikolai, not eliminated. As you well know, it was my intention to speak privately with this scum in the basement at Lubyanka.”

“Yes, sir. This is indeed most unfortunate. We had tracked him to Miami and were hours away from making that arrest. But someone else got to him first. He had many enemies here in Moscow.”

“Do we know who?”

“We are working on it.”

“Has Patrushev seen those photographs? Or Korsakov?”

Nikolai allowed a wan smile at this small joke. General Nikolai Patrushev, director of the KGB since 1999, was Kuragin’s immediate superior. But Nikolai’s lifelong allegiance was to two men only: his old comrade seated behind the desk and Count Ivan Korsakov, a man whom Nikolai believed Rostov might one day order him to eliminate. If the president were to maintain his grip on power within the long halls of the Kremlin, he could not long tolerate rivals as strong as Korsakov.

The count, a national hero, was growing in power every day. Rostov was clearly aware of it yet never mentioned it. Nikolai believed it was only a matter of time before the two men came to a crossroads. Only one of them would walk away. The general was shrewd enough to keep his powder dry for the moment, playing both sides against the middle.

“I thought perhaps you should see them first.” Kuragin smiled, showing his yellowed teeth. “It’s the reason I’m a bit early. I have a meeting with Count Korsakov and Patrushev at two o’clock.”

“Good. Where was this party?” Rostov said, examining a print.

“Miami. The residence of Lukov, a man we’ve been watching for the last month. A birthday party for Ramzan. One of my Miami field officers, Yuri Yurin, was looking into reports of Ramzan’s possible presence at this event. Genady Sokolov and Yurin managed to get inside the house, posing as hired security, and shot these photographs surreptitiously.”

Rostov threw a photo across the desk and said, “Here is Ramzan arriving. Find out who was driving his limousine. Talk to him. If he knows anything, talk to him some more. I want to know who was sheltering him in Miami.”

“Yes, sir.”

“These pictures are remarkable. I want a name to go with every face at this party.”

“By Monday.”

“This woman on the stage. She’s beautiful.”

“An entertainer. Singer. You’ll see her in the next shot. A large black man grabbing her and leaping off the stage. Just before the explosion.”

“The bomb was probably in the cake. This hornye had foreknowledge of the explosive device’s existence. How did he know? Was it his? Get his name first.”

Nikolai strongly disapproved of the derogatory slang the president had just used but nodded in the affirmative and said, “Notice also the big man in white. He has a name, ‘Happy,’ embroidered over his left breast. Perhaps he is in league with the black man? This one delivered the cake, and then, and now here, you see him quickly moving away, pushing through the crowd surrounding the stage. Our agents in Miami are looking for him now.”

“Who do we have in Florida now?”

“Nikita Duntov and Grigori Putov and their crew. I pulled them out of Havana last night.”

“Using what cover?”

“A couple of movie producers from Hollywood. Korsakov’s new production company, called Miramar.”

“Perfect. This man Happy, he won’t be happy long,” Rostov said, now staring at the last few photographs. “This yacht intrigues me, too. Moored at the dock, one man on deck with binoculars, another at the top of this fishing tower. Hand me that magnifying glass.”

Kuragin and Rostov examined the picture closely.

“The Fado. See the name on the stern? That’s what she’s called. Come take a look, Nikolai. Up here, the man at the top of this superstructure. What is he doing? Some kind of equipment, not for fishing, I don’t believe.”

“Cameras?”

“Yes, exactly, surveillance cameras. It appears others besides ourselves were interested in Ramzan that night. The hornye and the singer leaped aboard this boat seconds before the explosion, and here, the boat leaves the dock just in time to avoid the blast. I want them all taken care of, understand?”

“Fado. I’ll get everything I can on it and call you first thing in the morning, sir. Is there anything else? I’m afraid I must get back to the office if I’m to meet with our friend at two.”

“There is always something else, Nikolai. But for now, I’m going to finish my breakfast and enjoy a quiet afternoon worrying about our country. Thank you for bringing this to my attention. I want to know who killed Ramzan.”

“The enemy of my enemy is my friend,” Nikolai said with a smile.

“Friends till death.”

They both laughed.

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