Arctic Storm Rising

Seven

Mercury City Tower’s glowing, bronze-tinted reflective glass made it stand out among the five other ultramodern skyscrapers that formed Moscow’s International Business Center. Slanting, steplike recesses along one side of the building gave the nearly 340-meter-high tower a unique, tapered look that only added to its apparent height. And inside its reinforced concrete-and-steel exterior, high-end restaurants, stores selling luxury goods, business offices, and opulent apartments filled the seventy-five floors soaring above the ground.

Two hundred meters and forty-four stories above street level, the corporate headquarters for one of Russia’s largest and most successful industrial and financial conglomerates, Severnaya Zvezda Stolitsa, or North Star Capital, occupied three full floors. In theory, North Star was a shareholder-owned corporation. In practice, it was completely controlled by its chairman and CEO, Dmitri Grishin.

Grishin maintained a palatial private office on the topmost of those three floors. Floor-to-ceiling, east-facing windows offered him an unobstructed view of a loop of the Moskva River, the centuries-old Arbat District, the Kremlin’s redbrick walls, and much of the sprawling metropolis beyond. On good days, he savored the view.

Today was not such a day.

Grishin glowered down at the report he’d just finished reading. Irritably, he scrawled his signature across the last page, closed the folder, and tossed it onto a growing stack of similar documents. Early on in his quest to amass wealth and power, he’d learned the importance of closely monitoring the decisions made by his subordinates. Staying near the top of the heap in Russia’s chaotic, ever-churning business and political climate required an almost infinite capacity for hard work and careful attention to even the smallest details. As a result, senior managers across his far-flung corporate empire were expected to provide weekly summaries of their operations — production costs and profit figures, personnel moves, interactions with federal, local, and foreign officials, consumer feedback, and a host of other useful data.

Unfortunately, none of the reports he was studying now made pleasant reading. For months now, persistently low world oil and natural gas prices had been wreaking havoc with Russia’s economy, which depended heavily on the energy sector. More than a sixth of the nation’s GDP came from oil and gas, along with half its government revenues, and more than two-thirds of its export income. Because of depressed prices affecting those industries, incomes were down, unemployment was sharply up, and the broader economy was sliding fast toward a severe recession. And aware of the growing strains on government finances, foreign creditors were increasingly reluctant to lend money to Moscow except at exorbitant interest rates.

Grishin’s frown deepened. The worsening slump threatened both his own personal wealth and Russia’s political stability. In the past, his fellow countrymen had proved willing to surrender their freedoms in return for a measure of prosperity and security. The current government’s increasingly obvious failure to live up to its end of that bargain was dangerous. Already, there were protests and demonstrations in the streets of Moscow, St. Petersburg, and other large cities. They were peaceful so far, but the slightest spark could turn them violent. Worse still, there were unpleasant rumors that the Kremlin might soon be forced by its fiscal woes to cut pay and pensions for the armed forces and the police. And if unrest spread through the two strongest pillars of the state — the military and law enforcement — Russia’s ruling elites could lose their grip on power in the blink of an eye.

The oligarch had no illusions. Although he had been one of the earliest and strongest supporters of his nation’s authoritarian president, Piotr Zhdanov, he knew the Kremlin leader would not hesitate to sacrifice even his closest allies to save his own skin and position. “Lightening the sleigh”—throwing the weak overboard for the wolves to devour first — was an old and cruel Russian tradition. Under serious threat, Zhdanov would eagerly seize the opportunity to toss the mob a scapegoat or two. And during an economic crisis, blaming the nation’s troubles on “criminal capitalist billionaires” was an obvious play.

Finished with his depressing reading, he signed the last report and sat back with a heavy sigh. The omens all pointed in the same dark direction. His status, his fortune, and even his personal safety and that of his immediate family were all increasingly at risk. He looked up from his desk, noticing that outside his office windows, the morning’s weak sunshine and pale blue skies had yielded to looming gray clouds. Wonderful, he thought dourly. Even the weather matched his mood. From the look of those clouds, Moscow’s first real snowfall of the season was on the way.

Then Grishin laughed harshly. Enough moaning and pissing, Dmitri, he told himself. He had no intention of sitting frozen in fear, like a mouse transfixed by the hungry, burning gleam of a cat’s eyes. His determination to act first against the threats he saw emerging had been the genesis for the audacious, highly risky scheme he had privately code-named Akt Ischeznoveniya, Vanishing Act.

Leaning forward again, he picked up a secure internal phone. Teams of professionals checked and rechecked North Star’s communications and computer networks every day to make sure they were safe from unauthorized access by corporate rivals and snooping government agencies. Like all rich and powerful men in Russia, Grishin had many secrets that were too dangerous to share. “Send in my visitor,” he ordered tersely.

Moments later, his office door buzzed and then swung open to admit a tall, fit man in his early thirties. From the stylishly tailored shoulders of his Savile Row bespoke suit to the narrow tips of his expensive, Italian leather dress shoes, Pavel Voronin appeared to be the consummate, high-level corporate courtier. He had been educated overseas at the best schools in the United Kingdom and the United States, and it showed. Anyone meeting him for the first time would have pegged him as a polished yes-man — more used to crafting bland, inoffensive memos and massaging delicate executive egos than engaging in the rough-and-tumble, red in tooth and claw, real world of Russian business infighting.

The facade the younger man presented to others amused Grishin.

In reality, Voronin was his top troubleshooter — in all senses of the word. Outwardly genial and cultured, he was actually ruthless, driven, and completely amoral, willing to go to any lengths needed to accomplish whatever task he’d been assigned. In the bad old days of the Soviet Union, he would have been snapped up by the KGB or the GRU at a relatively early age and trained in the dark arts of “wet work,” murder and assassination. Fortunately, Grishin’s talent scouts had spotted him before Russia’s revamped intelligence bureaucracies realized the depths of his ambition and skills. And there was no doubt that the younger man found working for his current patron far more interesting and lucrative than government service. To enhance his effectiveness, only a handful of the oligarch’s closest aides knew that Voronin worked for North Star Capital. On his rare visits to the Mercury City Tower, he used Grishin’s own private executive elevator.

Currently, Voronin was responsible for handling the operational details involved in Vanishing Act. That included acting as Grishin’s discreet liaison with Colonel Alexei Petrov. As their plan drew ever nearer to activation, it was no longer safe or sensible for the two of them to meet in person, or even by phone or email.

Grishin nodded brusquely at the single chair in front of his desk. He waited while the younger man sat down and crossed his perfectly creased trouser legs. “I hear there was an unfortunate incident during the most recent PAK-DA prototype flight?”

With a hint of a smile, Voronin nodded. “So there was.” He shrugged nonchalantly. “Apparently, a simple, easily fixed programming error created a very dangerous situation — one that could easily have led to the loss of the aircraft and its crew.” His smile widened. “Fortunately, Colonel Petrov’s flying skill, courage, and dedication to duty saved the entire stealth bomber program from catastrophe.”

Grishin nodded. “That is excellent news.” He raised an eyebrow. “I hope the colonel’s merits are appreciated by his superiors?”

Voronin nodded. “My sources inside the Kremlin assure me that the powers-that-be fully understand the bullet they just dodged. Losing the PAK-DA prototype would have been an utter political and strategic disaster. In fact, I hear that President Zhdanov himself phoned Petrov to offer his thanks and congratulations.” His pale gray eyes gleamed with amusement. “As of this moment, our illustrious national leader is convinced that the colonel is someone who can do no wrong.”

“And this computer glitch?” Grishin pressed. “The one that caused all this trouble?”

“Investigators are already digging into its origin,” Voronin said calmly.

“Will that be a problem?”

“No,” Voronin said simply.

Grishin eyed him. “You seem very confident of that, Pavel.”

“Tragically, the Tupolev software engineer responsible for that piece of flawed code is no longer available for interrogation,” Voronin explained. “Apparently, he accidentally fell out of a window last month. According to the police report, he was heavily intoxicated.”

“How… unfortunate,” Grishin commented dryly.

Voronin shrugged again. “Alcoholism is the sad national curse of our beloved Motherland, is it not? Certainly, it serves as a useful explanation for a multitude of sins.”

Slowly, Grishin nodded. Inwardly, he felt a momentary chill. There were times when the younger man’s casual willingness to kill unnerved even him. Then again, he reminded himself, Voronin’s cold-blooded efficiency was a survival trait — and one that profited his employer as well. After all, there were no prizes for second place in the high-stakes game they were currently playing, only disgrace, humiliation, and, in all probability, execution for treason.