Leo Filipov sat back in his executive chair and gazed through the window behind his antique desk at the Kremlin’s red towers. Another ten-hour workday under his belt, he blinked away the burning in his eyes and stared glumly at the pile of documents neatly stacked in front of his computer monitor. Even after promoting several associates and hiring more staff, he was still playing catch-up with the deal flow left by his brother after his untimely death – labeled an accidental suicide by the press but in reality a murder, he knew from the footage he’d retrieved from a hidden security camera in his building.
The police had been predictably worse than useless when he’d approached them with it, pointing out correctly that the woman captured on the film could have been anyone and that without hard evidence that she’d forced Anatoly to overdose on booze and pills, she could have been an innocent visitor – a hooker or a girlfriend being the likeliest.
Leo had explained until he was blue in the face that there was no way his brother, who was cautious and paranoid in the extreme, would have had a romantic dalliance at his home, especially with a pro; but the police, while listening politely and agreeing to investigate, had been clearly unimpressed with Leo’s conjecture, and after a year of lackluster effort, nothing had come of it.
But Leo was persistent, and when the locals hadn’t been able to discover a connection, he’d spent weeks ferreting through Anatoly’s cases until he’d discovered an encrypted file describing a murder contract he’d activated in retribution for the execution of a prominent young oligarch.
Leo had taken the file and his suspicions to Rudolf, one of his cronies in the successor agency of the Soviet KGB – the FSB – who also handled sensitive issues like security for him. Rudolf had agreed to exhaust every line of inquiry in exchange for a considerable sum. That had been months ago, and aside from making a large wire transfer and meeting with Rudolf every few weeks, there had been no progress.
Which was why Rudolf’s call this afternoon, suggesting they get together for an evening cocktail at a bar near Red Square, had come as a complete surprise. Usually it was Leo who summoned Rudolf, not the other way around.
Leo tightened his Hermès necktie and adjusted it, feeling the compact knot with satisfaction. He stood and glanced at his rose-gold Patek Philippe 3940 watch – a small luxury, but one he could more than afford with his legal practice and, more importantly, the profitable sideline he’d been operating for the last three years.
The office was quiet except for the tapping of keys from the outer chamber, where a phalanx of word processors toiled through the night, transcribing from tape. His secretary was long gone, having checked in before she’d departed to verify that he didn’t have any last-minute requests, leaving only Leo and the night manager, Vaslav, whose surly disposition was legendary among the night staff.
Leo shrugged on his tailored jacket and made a quick cell phone call to his driver as he strode from his office, briefcase in hand, his step the deliberate one of a man with weighty matters on his mind. Once comfortably ensconced in the rear seat of his black Maybach sedan, he allowed himself to relax on the ride to Red Square. The evening traffic was gridlocked, as usual, but made bearable by the comfortable cabin with its opaque bulletproof windows, the outside world held at bay by sound dampening and a custom-tuned suspension.
The driver coasted to a stop in front of the Russian landmark, and Leo climbed from the car. He looked around the square and smiled to himself at how much the city had changed in just a few short years. A decade ago he’d have never thought to go out in a public area like Red Square without at least two armed bodyguards in tow, but now he felt no menace in the swarm of pedestrians around him, the social climate no longer the one of constant danger and lawlessness that had followed the collapse of the Soviet state.