This far outside the city, he had no close neighbors, and the woods lining both sides of the road were already pitch-dark. Glowing a spectral white in his high beams, row after row of slender birch trees appeared briefly and then vanished in the blackness.

Abruptly, there was a muffled bang from his right front tire. The steering wheel jolted under his hands and then tugged hard to the right.

“Sukin syn!” Obolensky muttered, wrestling the car back straight and braking to a stop. “Son of a bitch!” One of his tires had just blown out.

Still grumbling under his breath, he switched off the ignition—leaving the headlights on—and climbed out onto the graveled road. It was too dark to make out anything outside the arc of the sedan’s beams. With a sigh, he pulled out his cell phone and activated the flashlight. Using it to light his way, he moved around the front of the Lexus and leaned over to inspect the damaged tire.

And then the world flashed bright red as a terrible blow smashed into the back of Obolensky’s head. Blood spattered across the sedan’s shiny, polished side panels.

Dazed, he dropped to his knees. His right hand fluttered upward, weakly feeling for the site of the injury.

His attacker brutally slapped that away and caught him in a tight hold, dragging his head hard back into an armpit. Suddenly terrified, Obolensky fumbled at the arms that gripped him. It was too late. A single quick, powerful twist snapped his neck—killing him instantly.

The attacker, dressed in dark clothing and gloves, a face mask, and a hood, knelt briefly beside the corpse. He scooped up the dead man’s cell phone from where it had fallen. Then, quickly and efficiently, he went through the doctor’s pockets, retrieving his keys and wallet. Satisfied, he got back to his feet, opened the car door, switched off the headlights, and tapped a control to pop the Lexus’s trunk.

It required only a couple of minutes’ more work for him to manhandle the body over to the trunk and stuff it inside. With a little luck, he thought, it would be at least a couple of days before anyone investigated the abandoned car and found Obolensky’s corpse. And with a bit more luck, it would look enough like a robbery gone wrong to satisfy the local police.

Sweating slightly despite the cool night air, Colonel Alexei Petrov used the dead man’s cell phone flashlight to survey the scene one more time. It was vital to make sure that he hadn’t forgotten anything that would raise unnecessary questions or lead back to him. Beneath his mask, a slight, confident smile crossed his face. There was nothing. Just a few scuffed footprints around the front of the sedan and faint smears of dried blood that would match that of the victim, not him.

Finished, Petrov turned away and headed back through the darkened forest to where he’d parked his nondescript rental car. Part of him regretted killing Obolensky. But he knew the act had been necessary. Nothing could be allowed to interfere with the project he had undertaken. That was true now more than ever. Dmitri Grishin, the oligarch who was backing his plan, believed he was primarily motivated by money. This was not the time to disabuse him of that notion.