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A thin man with graying hair and tinted glasses appeared in the doorway and hurried toward him. Mikhail Zhestakov was the CEO of Utkin’s primary holding company—a man in his early forties with no ties to Soviet corruption or organized crime. By all reports, he was a highly competent and reasonably honest businessman. At least when viewed through the lens of Russian commerce.
“I’m so sorry to have kept you waiting,” he said, extending a hand. “Dmitry is ready for you now.”
Azarov stood and followed him through a dimly lit hallway with the two former special ops men following close behind. It finally opened into what had once been an opulent outer office but now smelled like the den of some unidentified animal. The entire back wall was frosted glass, with a single door of the same opaque material.
They passed through and he found himself in an expansive office that seemed to have been renovated just for this meeting. The dust and grime were gone and the overhead lights cast a fluorescent glare across the room. Furniture was still sparse, but centered along the back wall was a large desk.
Azarov initially ignored the man at it, instead taking in the details of his new environment. There were no windows and the soldiers he’d entered with went immediately for the corners of the room behind him. The
third had taken a position to his eleven o’clock. Zhestakov retreated to the remaining available corner, looking increasingly nervous.
It was clear from Zhestakov’s background and demeanor that he was not a threat, so Azarov deleted his existence from his mind and glanced back over his shoulder. The frosted glass wall had a horizontal crack about a meter from the floor that crossed almost its entire length. The door appeared to have been left unlocked but was too large and heavy to open quickly.
“It was my understanding that this was to be a private meeting,” Azarov said, finally turning to face Utkin.
“These are my most loyal men. I trust them with my life. More than I would say for you, Private Filipov.”
It was a name Azarov hadn’t heard in many years and he didn’t bother to hide his bemusement.
“Of course I know who you are,” Utkin said. “A poverty-stricken nobody from a place no one has ever heard of. A failed athlete and a soldier whose service was so brief as to be completely inconsequential. An errand boy a long way from home. You’d do well to remember who paid for your training, boy. Remember who made it possible for you to become what you are.”
His words were an overstatement, but not without a kernel of truth. While Azarov worked for Russia’s president, it was impossible to separate the government from the oligarchs who acted as the country’s nobility. Russia existed as a complex web of political bureaucracy, organized crime, and unrestrained capitalism. The enormous sums of money generated by men like Utkin was made possible by the favoritism of the government. And that favoritism was paid for through an elaborate system of bribes and patronage controlled by President Maxim Vladimirovich Krupin.
“Why has Krupin sent one of his representatives here?” Utkin said, glancing at his security men for reassurance. “And why you, Grisha? Am I supposed to be frightened?”
It was an excellent question. Though he could be quite persuasive, Azarov wasn’t a negotiator. He was a problem solver.
“You’ve spoken out publicly against the president and you’ve met with exiled men in London, sir. Understandably, this has caused the president concern.”
“Exiled,” Utkin repeated. “That’s a pleasant characterization.”
Azarov nodded noncommittally. The men in question had made the mistake of displeasing Krupin. In retaliation, the FSB had accused them of corruption and tax violations, forcing them to flee with little more than the clothes on their backs. Once they were gone, their holdings had been split up and doled out as patronage to more loyal men.
It was an arrangement that took advantage of the greed of the remaining oligarchs and had worked for decades. Those simpler times were now coming to an end, though. Russia’s economy was collapsing and that was emboldening its power elite. Utkin most of all. He, more than the others, had a predator’s ability to smell weakness and exploit it.
“Are you here to make me one of them, Grisha? To chase me off to the West? To take all that I’ve worked for?” He shook his head. “The world has changed, my friend. I have interests that range far outside Krupin’s shrinking sphere of influence.”
“I think you misunderstand my purpose.”
Utkin ignored him, warming to his subject. “Russia is drowning in its own filth, Grisha. It’s a closed system based entirely on corruption, threats, and the rape of its natural resources. No other country will respect Krupin’s wishes with regard to me. I’ll be a billionaire living in Monaco, not a pauper. He may believe he still has that kind of power but, if so, he’s delusional.”
“Might I remind you that the corruption and rape of natural resources are what generated your great wealth? You didn’t buy your mineral and energy rights. They were given to you.”
“But not by Krupin. By one of his long-dead predecessors.” Utkin waved a hand around the office. “And now I’m being slowly bled of what I have. Mother Russia can no longer provide.”
Azarov thought of the garish mansion at the edge of town. “And yet you seem to be living well.”
“For how much longer, Grisha? Tell me that. There are strikes all over the country. Teachers, health care workers, and low-level bureaucrats are walking off their jobs because they haven’t been paid. Oil prices have collapsed because of American production and the Saudis flooding the market. And as if that wasn’t enough, economic sanctions caused by Krupin’s military adventures are twisting the knife in my side. The ruble has become so volatile that my wife can’t use them to buy jewels and shoes from those French pigs she loves so much. I might as well relocate my business to Nigeria.”
“I understand the weather this time of year is quite beautiful.”
Utkin smiled but otherwise didn’t respond.
All of the oligarchs had the same complaints, but Utkin had taken his grievances one dangerous step further. He had gone to a rally and publicly placed the blame for Russia’s problems at Maxim Krupin’s feet. He’d then written a check for the back pay of government workers in towns his company controlled. The idea that this was an act of kindness or benevolence was laughable. The man was capable of neither. Much more likely it was a first step into the political arena—a poorly veiled threat to Azarov’s master.
Utkin put his feet on a drawer pulled out from the desk. “I want you to understand my position, so that you can report it accurately, Grisha. I don’t give a shit one way or another about Russia. But the fact that it’s collapsing causes problems for my business. And while I acknowledge that the drop in oil prices is beyond our control, Krupin’s mismanagement of the country is not. Russia’s government has become nothing more than a tool to bolster the power and wealth of one man.”
“A man with an eighty-three percent approval rating.”
