Free Patriots Betrayed by John Grit

looking out over the city he ruled with an iron hand, or at least the underworld part. His ostentatious villa in the high-income neighborhood was better guarded than any other home in the country, its windows bulletproof, its walled grounds patrolled by his private security. Infrared cameras, motion detectors, and all the latest technological innovations protected him from a world filled with rivals, enemies, and common street thugs.
    Exhaling noisily, Janowski moved from the window to the mahogany bar, where a bottle of Jack Daniels – one of the few American products he liked – stood next to crystal tumblers and a full ashtray. After ripping into a pack of Marlboro Menthols – another American product he enjoyed – he shook out a cigarette and put it between his lips, then poured a stiff shot of whiskey into one of the glasses, lit the Marlboro with a 14-karat gold lighter, and drew the smoke deep into his lungs before blowing a gray stream into the room’s atmosphere. He raised the glass to his lips and sipped the whiskey. Nobody would dare question his preferences in anything, so he didn’t really care that it wasn’t a product of Russia. Hell, he wasn’t Russian, either. Born in a hellhole of a little farming community in a hellhole of a little country under the thumb of Russia. Far from Moscow and the concerns of those ruling the former Soviet Union, he endured grinding poverty as his parents worked him close to death in the fields. Only by chance did he escape the world he was born into. Two government suits, straight from Moscow, appeared one day at his two-room school and had every child take an extensive examination, a series of tests that measured not only mental abilities, but physical. The two strangers, who might as well have been from outer space as far as the wide-eyed children were concerned, seemed to be interested in him above the others for some reason and had him perform such feats as jumping over pits with sharp stakes in the bottom, pointing up to kill any child who fell in. The memory of those days had never left him, though he was only eleven at the time.
    One test involved walking a narrow beam between two buildings one hundred feet above the ground. Only two other children would attempt it, and one of them fell to his death just before it was his turn. The one girl who had the nerve to try turned back after only two steps. The government suits watched closely as he stood at the edge of the roof, and he knew they were wondering if he had the balls after seeing his fellow classmate die. No one would make a coward of him. There was no hesitation as he stepped off into empty space and walked the three-inch wide beam as casually as if he were on solid ground. When he stepped onto the other roof and turned, the suits were nodding and muttering something to each other. It was then he knew they had chosen him, and only him out of eighty children. But for what? The next thing he knew, he was saying good-bye to his cruel parents and the crueler world of a peasant. The years that followed entailed grueling training that turned him into an efficient killer and one of the best espionage agents Russia had ever produced.
    Janowski paused from his reminiscing to savor the taste of American whiskey, appreciating the burn. After another drag of smoke, he turned and retired to the custom-made brown leather chair he always sat in and no one else, bringing the bottle with him. Such luxuries were part of being one of the most powerful and wealthy men in Russia. His empire spanned the globe. Shipping, export and import of both legal and illegal products, such as weapons of war out of Russia and drugs into Russia. One of his most lucrative export items was girls for the sex slave trade. Many of the women and teen girls went to parts of Europe and the U.S., but some wound up in obscure, far-flung reaches where blue-eyed blonds were sold to oil-rich sheikhs at a premium. With connections at the highest levels of the