No one in Moscow talked about it.

But everyone knew about it.

Igor was used to living his life according to certain rules of conduct. He dealt in death every day, but the rules gave the game a modicum of order. They made it possible for him to live a relatively normal life, to have a family, to sleep at night without fearing for his life, to eat in restaurants, to walk in parks.

The Dead Hand didn’t play by those rules, and the people involved enjoyed no protection under them. To them, nothing was sacred. Like the Perimeter system, if the criteria were met, they pulled the trigger.

Igor was beginning to sweat.

He logged out of the database and shut off the computer.

This was the kiss of death.

52

Roth later called it the night of the long knives, a reference to the night the Nazis purged almost a thousand of their own most loyal members in a single night in 1934.

It was a devastating attack.

A purge.

The four most skilled assassins in the nation, all of them with flawless records, all attacked simultaneously in four separate operations.

Three of them were successful.

Between them, the assets had completed dozens of the most complex and dangerous covert actions ever conceived. They’d assassinated heads of state, infiltrated the most secure of secure locations, rooted out moles and traitors deep within the military-industrial complex.

And all without leaving a trace.

Roth had known there’d been a breach of his network since the night of the glitch. What he hadn’t realized is how pervasive it was.

The audit revealed a specific type of cyber attack technology that could only have originated from one place. A group so deep within the Russian intelligence apparatus that even hardened Kremlin officials didn’t dare speak of it. A group so ruthless they killed Russian politicians, Russian military commanders, even Russian judges. They had one objective, and that was to protect the Russian president and ensure his continued rule.

They were bound by no laws, and did things other parts of the Russian military would never dare consider.

When your objective was to protect the nation, you acted in a certain way. You were predictable. You were logical. You didn’t pick fights you couldn’t win, or that would lead to massive casualties without any tactical gains.

When your objective was to protect the interests of a single man, even if that man was president of the federation, all those calculations were drastically altered. Fruitless conflicts could suddenly become highly valuable. Ruinous wars could have massive benefits. If losing a thousand soldiers was unthinkable to an ordinary commander, it could be very thinkable to a president who saw it as an election advantage.

Roth could see what was coming and he needed desperately to speak to the president. Someone was about to wage all out war. But the president hadn’t been returning his calls.