THE OLIGARCH: A THRILLER (by G W Eccles)

Prologue

 Upright in the backseat, the FSB officer waited for the Range Rover to glide to a halt outside the battlemented walls of Novodevichy Convent. Founded in 1524 as a place of exile for high-ranking women in disfavour, its cluster of onion-domed churches had served as a barracks for Napoleon during the occupation of Moscow and as warehouses during the Soviet era. Now, once again, the complex functioned as a place of worship.

The officer climbed out, hunching his heavy overcoat tightly around him, and strode briskly down to the pond by the side of the monastery. A woman sat on a bench, huddled from the cold, faceless in the flower-patterned shawl that wrapped her head and shoulders. Her fingers worked the beads of a wooden rosary as she stared out over the frozen stretch of water. Sitting down next to her, he placed a cassette player the size of a pack of cards between them and pressed ‘Play’.

“The rebels have been biding their time, waiting for the right moment,” the voice grated, coarse as gravel, too loud in the stillness that surrounded them. The FSB man reached down to adjust the volume. “But now they’re ready for the off.”

“That’s him, Ramaz, the informant,” he filled her in through tight lips.

The woman slid her hand over to stop the machine. “What’s behind this?” she pressed, her voice low in the frosty air. She paused, as her fingers continued to flick the smooth beads. “He’s from Ingushetia himself. You’d think he’d be all for his own country grabbing the chance of independence?”

“Money, of course – and his own self-interest,” the FSB man replied, his eyes trained on the rutted grey ice of the pond before them. “Ramaz has always spoken out against the separatists loud and clear. His fortune’s here in Russia. Billions of it - and he’s all too aware that a revolt in Ingushetia would risk the same backlash the Chechen businessmen got a few years back. If that happened, he’d lose the lot.”

“So whose feeding him his inside information?”

The officer shrugged. “We don’t know, but you’re right to ask – it’s a priority to find out. The Ingush in Moscow are a pretty tight-knit bunch, but we’d gone out of our way to ensure Ramaz was kept in the dark. We must assume we have a mole somewhere.”

The woman restarted the tape.

“But where’s the money coming from?” a second voice interjected. Again, it was a man’s voice, but lighter toned. He spoke in Russian, but with a strong American accent. “Ingushetia itself doesn’t have the resources to take on Russia.”

“Of course not,” the rougher voice scoffed. “Blok’s dealing with that angle himself through his Tyndersk connection.”

“Who’s the foreigner he’s talking to?” the woman asked.

“We’re working on that too,” the FSB man replied.

Pocketing the cassette player, he stood up. “Your job is to take Ramaz out. No need for subtlety. We need to make an example.”

The woman’s hand clenched on the rosary as he walked away, and the quiet clicking of the beads stopped. Almost on cue, the bells on the nearest tower swung into action, spilling their discordant jangle into the cold and hovering mist as she watched him leave.

                                                               **************

 Outside the pristine grandeur of the National Hotel demonstrators swarmed in untidy hordes. The roads had been closed off to traffic since dawn in anticipation of the influx of protesters, and many thousands had converged on central Moscow, cramming the wide avenue from pavement to pavement. Nearby, from the Tverskaya metro entrance, a steady stream augmented the main throng, pressing towards Red Square where the rally’s official start was due to get underway in less than an hour.