Free Shattered Bone by Chris Stewart

seemed to think he could handle it himself.
    â€œAfter he meets the pilot in Kiev, he is going back to South America to get the money.”
    â€œWe are running out of time,” Golubev muttered.
    â€œMorozov won’t disappoint us,” Lomov assured his friend. “Yevgeni, haven’t you learned that by now?”
    â€œWhat about the girl?” Golubev quickly asked.
    â€œThat news isn’t good. We’ve been watching her apartment, but she hasn’t returned. Apparently she just disappeared. It could be hard to track her since we don’t want to use any of our official people. Liski is working on it.”
    Lomov nodded as they watched the sedans approach. The back doors of the second car began to swing open before it even came to a stop.
    The two men climbed down from the aircraft. They turned to meet the welcome party, but before they were surrounded, the Prime Minister whispered under his breath. “Keep me informed, Victor. We have come too far to let things start slipping through the cracks. If the pilot is here by Wednesday, I want to meet him for myself. And soon. It would be nice to wait for the perfect excuse, but we can’t afford that luxury. Time will not allow it.”
    â€œBe ready to go hunting,” General Lomov nodded as he walked toward the waiting cars. “I will let you know.”
    MOSCOW, RUSSIA
    The Russian president studied each man in the room, staring into their faces, summing them up, seeking their thoughts through their eyes. Some of the men returned his gaze with equally unblinking and cold-hearted stares, while others, generally the younger ministers, began to fidget in their seats. The Interior Minister seemed particularly anxious as he drummed nervous fingers across the arm of his chair. A few of the men stared off into space, too fearful to even look at Fedotov. The room nearly crackled with stress and only the generals seemed relaxed and at ease.
    As the Russian president studied the faces, he almost smiled. Stalin was right. Nothing could be quite so persuasive as fear. The plan was so simple. Kill off the main competition, hit hard and hit fast, then watch the sheep as they flock to your side.
    Fedotov sat at the table and gathered his notes. He was a wiry man, with thin brown hair atop a narrow face and pointed chin. Black eyes sat deep within his pock-marked face and his roman nose jutted out above pale, thin lips. Above his left eye was a jagged red scar, his badge from the night on the bridge. Behind his back, his enemies called him “Whorlest”-the “little mink.” Fedotov knew of the insulting nickname; but it never bothered him. In fact, he found it somewhat amusing. “Little mink.” It wasn’t much of title, but it would do.
    To most of his subordinates, Fedotov was a mysterious man, shrouded in a veil of paranoia and fear. He was a shadowy figure, a hard and ambitious man who had risen to power with such speed and direction that he left no trail in his wake. His personal life, if he had one, was a complete blank, nothing but a sheet of white paper, and it spoke volumes of the Russian republic that such a ghostlike figure could ever rise to such a position of power.
    Unfortunately for the ministers and generals, Fedotov didn’t suffer from the same lack of information about his rivals and enemies. There wasn’t a single man seated around the table about whom Fedotov couldn’t have instantly recited the most intimate personal details—from their habits of personal hygiene to their latest travels, from their political sympathies to conversations they had with their wives while lying in bed. Over the past thrce years, Prime Minister Vladimir Fedotov and his conspirators had committed enormous resources to collecting such information on the power elite, the most interesting and useful of which was compiled into thick but tidy dossiers and tucked away in his safe.
    Fedotov looked up. “Comrades