PART ONE
A good man, maybe. But itâs best to shoot him.
âOLD RUSSIAN PROVERB
CHAPTER ONE
July 2000,
Kuntsevo Dacha, Fili District
THE SILENCE WAS EXCRUCIATING, the minutes ticking by thick and heavy, time itself gorging on the tension in the humid air. Even though the shades had been drawn back from the trio of windows pocking the long plaster walls of the cavernous dining room, it was impossible to tell how deep into the afternoon the day had drifted; the dense forest that surrounded the isolated, two-story compound cast deep shadows across the reinforced glass panes, shifting whatever remained of the bright summer light toward an ominous, gunmetal gray.
For the eighteen middle-aged men in dark suits shifting uncomfortably in their seats as they waited in that palpable silence around an oversize dining room table, it was hard to believe that they were still technically within Moscowâs city limits. Though, to be fair, this aging, stone house tucked in the middle of the dark woods, surrounded by a pair of chain-link fences topped by barbed wire, was a symbol of a much different Moscow than the rapidly growing metropolis beyond the wire. The men in this room had traveled back in time more than fifty years the minute they had been ushered out of their chauffeured limousinesânow parked in glistening rows behind the double fencesâand led through the dachaâs front door.
The setting of the meeting was not lost on any of the men. The invitation that had been delivered by official courier to each of them in the preceding weeks had been met by everything from incredulous laughter to expressions of suspicion. Every soul knew what this place was: whose house this had once been, and what had supposedly taken place here. None of the men looked carefully into the shadows that played across the aging walls, darkening the corners of the vast, high-ceilinged room.
Even though this house had fallen into disuse a generation agoâand was now more museum than functioning dachaâthe meetingâs address had meaning far beyond the invitation itself. And the longer the men were forced to wait for whatever was going to happen next, the more ominous the setting seemed.
Under the best of circumstances, these men were not accustomed to waiting. To describe them as powerful businessmenâor even billionairesâwould have been a laughable understatement. Among them, they represented the largestâand fastestâaccumulation of wealth in modern history. Within the Russian media, they had garnered the label Oligarchsâa term that was usually derogatory, defining them as a class apart and above. According to the popular notion, over the course of the past decade, as the former Soviet nation had lurched into capitalism through a complex, often shadowy process of privatization, this classâthe Oligarchsâhad accumulated insane riches, and they had used this wealth to imbed and twist themselves, like strangling vines, into the ruling mechanisms of the nationâs government, economy, and culture.
Most of the men in this room would have bristled at the designation. If anything, they saw themselves as representatives of the new, free, and modern Russia. Almost all of them had come from poverty; many had clawed their way out of childhoods filled with deprivation and prejudice. Many at one point had been mathematicians, scientists, or academics before they had turned their ambitions to business. If they had succeededâand yes, as a group they had succeeded to a degree perhaps unique in historyâit was despite the chronic corruption and cronyism of the shifting Russian paradigm, not because of it.
Oligarchs or not, men who earned billions were not known for their patience. Eventually, the silence got the better of the room, and one of the invitees, seated closest to the door that led back into the interior of the house, cleared his throat.
âIf some Chechen managed to get a bomb in here and blew us all to hell,â he asked, âdo you think anyone would mourn?â
Awkward laughter riffed through the room, then trickled away into the shadows. The macabre joke may have hit too close to home. Whatever the men thought about themselves, it wasnât exactly the best time to be a billionaire in Russia. Worse yet, the idea of a bomb going off in the dining room of such an ominous address wasnât as far-fetched as they would have liked to believe.
Before anyone could break the silence again, there was a rush of motionâa door opening on the far side of the dining room. The air seemed to tighten still further, like a leather strap suddenly pulled taut. After a brief pause, a lone man entered through the doorway. Head down, every step and movement controlled and determined, from his forceful, athletic gait to the way his lean, muscled arms shifted stiffly at his sides. Short of statureâfive foot seven at the mostâwith thinning hair, pinpoint eyes, a narrow, almost daggered jawâhis presence was somehow well beyond the amalgamation of his parts. As he strolled in, warmly shaking each manâs hand in turn, none of the billionaires at the table could have turned away even if they had dared. He didnât just project an imposing aura: he was a mystery, an unknown, and these gathered businessmen had built their livesâand fortunesâon their abilities to procure and use knowledge. Even though some of them had been responsible for their hostâs ascension to powerâhad in fact hand-picked him for the role he now playedâthey had done so without knowing much about him. In truth, that had been one of his main selling points. He was purposefully obscure, a supposed nobodyâa loyal cog. They had thought that a man like that would be easy to control.
There was nothing easy about him as he took position at the front of the room, facing the table.
And then he smiled.
âĐĐŸĐ±ŃĐŸ ĐżĐŸĐ¶Đ°Đ»ĐŸĐČĐ°ŃŃ.â
A warm welcome, my colleagues.
He looked around the room, matching each of the gathered billionaireâs eyes.
âSome of you supported me,â he continued, his voice low and steady, as he paused on a few of the staring faces.
âSome of you did not.â
Again, he lingered on a handful more.
âBut none of that matters now. You have done very well for yourselves. You have built vast fortunes.â
He waited, the room as silent and still as a pane of glass.
âYou can keep what you have. Business is important. Industry is important. But from here on out, you are simply businessmenâand only businessmen.â
Before any of the men could react, there was another flash of motionâand then a group of lower-ranking officials took over, ushering a team of butlers into the room, each carrying a tray laden with porcelain and gold tea settings. Collective relief moved around the table; at the same time, it dawned on most of the men in the room that they had made an immense miscalculation. This loyal nobody, this obscure cog had become something else. Every moment of the meeting had been choreographed, from the very moment he had invited them here, to this place, imbued with so much brutal meaning.
Just a few yards down, off the hall now bustling with servers carrying tea into the dining room, were the study and living quarters where Joseph Stalin had spent his final two decades. This houseâStalinâs Moscow homeâhad been the symbolic headquarters of the most infamous, powerful, and brutal regime in their nationâs history.
And Vladimir Putinâthe man at the front of the room now trading niceties with the nearest of his guests, while butlers served tea up and down the dining room tableâhad just sent them a clear, explicit message.
Putin was not a simple cog they could twist and turn as they wanted.
The Oligarchs had been warned:
You can keep your billions.
But stay out of my way . . .
CHAPTER TWO
Six Years Earlier
June 7, 1994, 5:00 p.m.,
Logovaz Club, 40 Novokuznetskaya Street, Moscow
FORTY-EIGHT YEARS OLD, DARK hair thinning above bright, buoyant features, Boris Abramovich Berezovsky had the unique ability to appear to be moving, even on the rare occasions when he was standing still. In his more usual stateârushing from one meeting to the next, compact shoulders hunched low over his diminutive bodyâhe was an ambition-fueled bullet train emancipated from its tracks, a frantic dervish of arms and legs.
Bursting out into the covered rear security entrance of his companyâs headquarters, a renovated nineteenth-century mansion situated halfway down a tree-lined private road in an upscale section of Moscow, every molecule beneath Berezovskyâs skin seemed to vibrate, as one hand straightened his suit jacket over his pressed white shirt, while his pinpoint eyes navigated the few feet that separated him from his waiting limousine. As usual, the gleaming Mercedes-Benz 600 was parked as close to the door as possible, so that the overhanging concrete eaves provided ample cover. If that wasnât enough, there was also the hulking bodyguard standing beside the open rear door of the automobile, as well as the driver, nodding through the reinforced front windshield.
The car was already running. Berezovsky was a businessman, and in Russia in the mid-1990s, it wasnât good business for a man in his position to spend more time than necessary going between office and car. Even here, on his home turf, behind the pre-Revolution manor that heâd painstakingly restored to a state of opulenceâlavish interior filled with expensive furniture, impeccably dressed attendants, even an oversize aquarium running along one wallâhe had to be cautious.
He kept his gaze low as he hurried toward the car. The covered security entrance was designed to ensure the privacy of those who most needed it; since the entrance was essentially enclosed, it would be impossible for a stray passerby to stroll close enough to see anything. But even if somehow someone had wandered inside the security entrance in time to watch Berezovsky give an officious wink toward the bodyguard and slide his minute form into the backseat of the Mercedes, the pedestrian would have known to look away quickly. Berezovsky wasnât particularly famous, but he emanated powerâfrom his expensive suit to his frenetic pace. Those who did recognize him might have described him as an entrepreneur. They might have called him a vastly successful car salesman, or a former academic who had turned to finance. All of these things were trueâand all of them were laughably insufficient. Even those who knew him well could only hope to scrape the surface of what he wasâand the heights toward which his ambition was driving him.
Safely ensconced in the interior of the car, Berezovsky waited for the bodyguard to join the driver up front. Then the car immediately started forward.
Berezovsky tried to relax as the Mercedes navigated away from the curb and entered the sparse, late-afternoon traffic. It was hard for him to believe it was only Tuesday. It had been a long week already. The past forty-eight hours had been filled with meetings, mostly with executives from AvtoVAZâRussiaâs largest car maker, known mostly for its signature automobile, the boxy, functional Lada, affectionately dubbed âthe peopleâs carââand with Berezovskyâs underlings at LogoVAZ. Heâd formed the company five years ago, originally to supply AvtoVAZâs computer software, but it had evolved into Russiaâs largest Lada dealership, with showrooms all over the country. Those forty-eight hours had been full of banal conversations, only made bearable by the sumptuousness of the setting, his Logovaz Club. No matter how busy things got, Berezovsky often made sure that the last appointment of each day took place in the private apartment he kept on the top floor of his headquarters, where a stunning, young girlfriend might keep his top shelf vodka poured and waiting.
Though the meetings had dragged on, and as tedious as the subject matter had been, it was the time between each assignation that Berezovsky hated most. That was why most of his business took place at the club, where he could quickly pirouette between appointments, losing mere seconds in transit. Going off-site meant dealing with the necessary delays of the outside worldâtraffic, physical distance, the whims and inefficiencies of other peopleâs schedules. It wasnât just Berezovskyâs internal wiring that made him miserable at the thought of wasted minutesâthe fact that he couldnât sit still, even with his back against the most luxurious leather that Mercedes could manufactureâit was the knowledge of how valuable every lost minute could be. To him, the Breguet on his wrist didnât measure time; it kept track of lost opportunities.
Berezovsky was well aware that this impatience was yet another symptom of the seismic shift that had engulfed his world, beginning less than a decade earlier. Impatience, ambition, the ability to dream big and live even biggerânone of these things had mattered in the Russia of his childhood. The best a young, mathematically gifted Jewish kid from Moscow, with no connections among the Communist elite and no knowledge of the outside world, could have hoped for was a doctorate in mathematics from one of the few universities that accepted the less desirable ethnicities. No matter how many awards heâd gone on to win, or papers heâd published, heâd been heading toward a simple, quiet life of books and laboratories.
And thenâPerestroika, the lightning bolt that had shattered everything. First, the old world fell in fits and bouts to Gorbachev and, rising parallel to him, Yeltsin. Then a chaotic new world haphazardly emerged, buoyed by an infant form of capitalism that was just now reaching its chaotic teenage years.
Suddenly a man who was good with numbers, could think theoretically and far enough ahead not to get bogged down in the absurdities of the nearly lawless momentâand light enough on his feet to dance over the inevitable aftershocks of a science-fiction-level restructuring of an entire nation from the ground upâsuddenly, such a man had a chance at a brand-new future. Being different, being an outsider, the very qualities that had impeded success in a world built behind walls, were a form of insulation when those walls came crashing down.
Berezovsky hadnât wasted a moment wondering what would come next. Heâd turned his attention toward a world where money suddenly had meaning. That, in turn, had led him to what he earnestly believed to be the holiest relic of this new, free, capitalist system his country hoped to become.
Berezovsky grinned as he ran his gaze over the parked cars flashing by on either side of his limousine. Aside from the odd foreign modelâmostly German, like his Mercedes, or almost as frequently Japanese, Toyotas and Hondasâthe majority of the cars they passed were Ladas. Squat, compact, rugged, and without a hint of glamour or wasted expense, each Lada represented the culmination of a previously unimaginable dream. Perestroika or not, a Muscovite didnât simply wake up after 1991 with a pile of rubles under his bed, ready to stroll to the nearest car dealership.
In truth, the Lada had become the first symbol of the new, free Russia. Owning a Lada was everything, and to get one a person needed more than money. You also needed knowledge of the right person to bribe.
Berezovsky hadnât set his sights on owning a Lada; heâd set his sights on the company that made them. Initially, heâd worked with the skill set heâd acquired in his academic life; heâd founded LogoVAZ as a computer software company aimed at solving numerical payment issues for the newly accountable auto conglomerate.
Working his way deeper into the sprawling corporate behemoth, heâd quickly realized that the men whoâd been placed in charge of AvtoVAZ were functionaries of the old world: dinosaurs who didnât understand the economic changes exploding around them. These Red Directors, as the history books would eventually label them, had been handed the reins of major companies across every industry by a government that itself hardly understood the capitalist world that perestroika had unleashed.
In the back of the Mer...