Rules of Vengeance

56

The plane was a Cirrus SR22, a single-engine turboprop capable of seating six with a top speed of 200 knots and a range of 900 kilometers. Mikhail Borzoi, chairman and sole owner of Rusalum, Russia’s largest aluminum producer, majority shareholder of six of the country’s ten largest commercial banks, single largest public patron of the Kirov Ballet (private patron to three of the company’s leading dancers), and first counselor to the president, completed his preflight check. The pitot tube was free and clear. The stall flap was functioning nicely. The oil level was more than adequate, and the gas tank was filled to the brim.

“We’re good to go,” he called to his copilot before climbing into the cockpit and strapping himself into the left-hand seat.

Borzoi unfolded the map on his knee and plugged the coordinates of his flight plan into the Garmin computer. He was fifty-five years old, of average height and less than average build. Once long ago someone had said he was shaped like a pear, and the description still held true. But if he were a pear, it would be of the prickly variety. Mikhail Borzoi was not a nice man. Nice men did not control the world’s largest producer of aluminum. Nice men did not amass a fortune worth some $20 billion, and that was after the stock market crash. Nice men did not rise from an impoverished childhood to stand at the president’s side and be among the three candidates certain to take his place in the next election. Not in Russia. In Russia, nice men got trampled, chewed up, and spit out.

Borzoi radioed the flight tower and received his clearance to taxi. He had always dreamed of being a military pilot. As a youth, he’d attended the annual May Day parade in Red Square and gasped as the squadrons of MiGs and Sukhois and Tupolevs flew overhead. He had envisioned himself soaring high into the stratosphere and speeding back to earth. Those dreams ended at the age of ten, when the optometrist plunked a pair of hideous horn-rimmed spectacles on his nose. If he couldn’t be a fighter pilot, he would settle for second best. He would be a spy.

Borzoi taxied to the end of the runway and turned his aircraft into the wind. Today’s flight plan showed a quick 300-kilometer trip from Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport to the town of Norilsk, where he maintained his largest smelting plant. Total flying time was calculated at one hour, thirty-three minutes. Weather was clear, with visibility of 10 kilometers. It was a perfect day to fly.

Borzoi powered up the engines, then released the brake and sped down the runway. At 120 knots, he rotated the wheels up. The Cirrus’s nose rose and the small aircraft climbed magnificently, rising like a leaf in an updraft. Borzoi smiled, looked at his copilot, and said, “Doesn’t this little devil just love to fly?”

The copilot did not respond.

When the Cirrus reached a height of one thousand meters above ground level, an explosive device containing fifty grams of high-grade plastique planted next to the gasoline tank automatically detonated. The Cirrus holds fifty gallons of high-octane aviation or test fuel. As Borzoi had earlier noted, the tank was filled. The explosion that ensued was monstrous. One moment the plane was climbing at a rate of two hundred meters per minute. The next it was a raging ball of flame.

The Cirrus cartwheeled and fell to earth.

There were no survivors.

The crash was ruled an accident and later graded “pilot error,” though no details were ever provided.

Word of Borzoi’s death reached Sergei Shvets less than five minutes later. The FSB was proud of its network of sources, and Shvets liked to brag that he was the best-informed man in the country. Upon receiving the news, he cast a dour face and professed his sadness. Borzoi was a friend of long standing and, of course, a fellow spy.

Privately, Shvets smiled.

Two down. One to go.

Only Igor Ivanov stood between him and the presidency.