From where he stood, he could see the newly built offices of KPMG, Ernst & Young, and Norton Rose. It wasn’t enough that they’d won the war. Now they’d come to build monuments on the ashes of the vanquished.

Even German firms were building dazzling new towers, glittering edifices taller than anything Moscow had ever seen. AEG, IG Farben, ThyssenKrupp, the very companies that brought the Wehrmacht within sight of the Kremlin. Hitler hadn’t been able to knock down the door by force, so the Duma did it for them.

And now, rumors of a hundred-floor hotel bearing the American president’s name.

Within a year, the last of the aerodrome, including the runway, would be gone.

The GRU itself was being rehoused in a modern building that would share services with the headquarters of a French defense company.

In fifty years, he doubted the country would exist at all. At least not the one he’d spent his life defending.

He’d been a sniper in a previous life, and his Dragunov SVD rifle was still in its case beneath his desk. He had thirty-two confirmed kills with it. He thought about taking it from its case now and picking off a few construction workers, adding to his total. They were dismantling the country as surely as any foreign soldier ever had.

A knock on the door pulled him from the thought.

“I said I didn’t want to be disturbed,” he said irritably to his secretary.

“It’s Timokhin,” she said.

Igor turned. He looked at her a second. Her face betrayed nothing. The spectacles, the mole on her cheek, the thin lips. She was as impervious to his suspicions as a stone.

She took no joy in her life, and allowed none in his.

And they’d assigned her to him permanently.

He’d never trusted her. She was too intelligent. Too quiet. And she’d pretended to orgasm when they slept together. No one did that without an agenda.

“Igor,” she snapped.

“Bring him in,” Igor said. “Bring him in. We must not keep such an important visitor waiting.”

Her lip curled. She knew something.

She left and a moment later, a dark hulk appeared in the doorway.

“Mr. Direktor,” Igor said, scuttling around the desk.

Timokhin had always been more bear than man. He didn’t walk, he lumbered. As he entered the room, he ducked slightly.

Igor pulled out a chair for him.

“I’ll stand,” Timokhin said.

“A drink then? Or cigar?”

“This will only take a minute.”

“Of course,” Igor said, backing away.

Timokhin looked around Igor’s little kingdom like a landlord come down to the slum. The place was distasteful to him, unsanitary, disease-ridden. He stepped as if the carpet might soil his shoes.

“I see you got a view of the runway after all.”

Igor nodded. He didn’t know whether to sit or stand. He pulled out his chair but stood behind it.