One of the world’s richest and certainly one of the world’s most dangerous men, thirty-nine-year-old Pavel Kazakov, the son of one of the Russian Federation’s most highly decorated and most respected army generals, was under house arrest in Iceland, charged with hundreds of counts of murder, conspiracy, fraud, extortion, grand larceny, drug trafficking, and a laundry list of other crimes against several nations from Kazakhstan to the United States. He had been captured by some as yet unidentified commandos, probably Americans, and sent to a Turkish prison. But since so many other countries had lodged charges against him, the World Court ordered that he stand trial in the International Crimes Against Humanity Tribunal in The Hague. With some good lawyers—backed up by generous bribes—Kazakov got some valuable concessions. Turkey usually does not allow extradition of its capital prisoners, but Kazakov agreed to waive his extradition rights in exchange for no death penalty, and he was transferred to a maximum-security facility in the Netherlands.

Then Kazakov started to talk. Within days, Interpol had made dozens of major arrests around the world of suspected narco-traffickers, money launderers, con artists, and gem and art thieves. The authorities had confiscated millions of dollars of stolen weapons, valuables, property, stocks and bonds—even nuclear weapons—in a very short period of time. Pavel Kazakov, still considered the world’s most dangerous criminal mastermind, was quickly turning into the biggest and most important informant ever in the history of law enforcement. Some of the world’s most feared terrorists, notorious drug smugglers, and slipperiest criminals—men that had been on the run for years, some for decades—had been captured. As much as Pavel Kazakov had cost the world in loss of life and destruction of property, the value of the property alone that his information caused to be recovered or captured topped it by a factor of one hundred.

But, of course, Pavel saw it differently. To him, it was a way to save his own skin, get out of prison—and eliminate the competition. Besides, what did the World Court care about ethnic fighting in Albania or Macedonia, or military men in Turkey, or polluted waters in Kazakhstan? They gladly traded information on drug dealers in Europe and North America for reducing, and then eventually eliminating, Kazakov’s prison sentence.

Details of his plea bargain with the World Court were kept top secret. As far as anyone knew, Kazakov was in complete isolation in a prison in Rijssen, the Netherlands, awaiting trial. No one ever suspected that any court would even consider releasing him. and the World Court did not have a witness protection program. But in short order, one was created for him—and Pavel Kazakov was free.

Yes, he was nearly broke—but “nearly broke” for him still meant more wealth than some Third World countries. It still offered him an opportunity to do what he did best— build his wealth back up again any way he could, whether it meant dealing drugs, weapons, humans, or oil. Plus, he could do it all from an untraceable apartment and telephone, with a new fully documented identity—all bought and paid for by the World Court in exchange for having the World Court eliminate his enemies for him.