Chapter Two
Four Months Ago
Moscow is the largest metropolitan area in Europe, has a population of over seventeen million, consistently ranks as one of the most expensive cities in the world in which to live, and, in spite of recent efforts that have reduced its numbers, still has one of the largest concentrations of billionaires in the world.
Former capital at one time of both the Tsardom of Russia and the Russian Empire, and the home of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics - brutal autocracies all - the “City by the Moskva River,” is over eight hundred and fifty years old. Like any concentration of mankind that has survived almost a millennium, its history has not been without its turbulent times. In fact, the name “Moscow” is believed to have been derived from an ancient Baltic-Finnic language, in which it means “dark” and “turbid.” Mysterious. Hidden. Tumultuous.
Two hundred and fifty feet below the Armory building in the Kremlin, three men sat around a long table in the middle of a sixty-by-twenty-foot room. A massive, circular, ultra-modern, cobalt steel vault door dominated one end of the room. At the other was a small break room and bathroom. Five identical walk-in safes lined each wall on either side of the table. One safe door was open.
A fourth man, middle-aged like the others, stepped out of the open safe and picked up a long, narrow, metal drawer from the table. The drawer was filled with two dozen small thick plastic bags. A note card was attached to each. Faded hand-written notations identified the weight, color, and clarity of the single rough diamond inside.
Yevgeny Andreyivich Dubrinin was fifty-two, plump, and had a fashion sense that was mired in Soviet-era sartorial splendor. The thick-rib corduroy pants he favored were either brown or navy-blue, an easy match for a not-so-finely-woven, less-than-white (because-bleach-was-a-luxury-in-Soviet-times) button-down cotton shirt. Over that he wore a pullover sweater, usually red, that looked like it was knitted by a blind grandmother, but was, in fact, a gift from his wife. Topping it all off was a horribly obvious comb over.
In spite of his rather drab appearance and a job that rarely released him to the light of day, Yevgeny Dubrinin was perpetually cheerful. Seldom did he let a working day pass without relating a joke or humorous anecdote to his colleagues.
The three men that worked with Yevgeny were about as nondescript as he was. Innokentiy and Vladimir were in their late forties, with Alexei the youngest at forty-three. All were of average physical appearance. If passed on Red Square the only thing anyone would be likely to notice - besides, respectively, the comb over, a bald head, a pockmarked face, and a bushy black mustache and eyebrows - was that they had just walked out of the Kremlin.
Yevgeny picked up the drawer and carried it to the nearest safe. Its Diebold Craine door was over sixty years old, and the space inside was roughly six feet deep, seven feet high, and four feet wide.
The back and left walls were concrete, but the right wall wasn’t really a wall at all, but floor-to-ceiling rows of metal drawers, like safety deposit boxes. Twelve rows of twelve, with one empty slot.
Yevgeny slid the drawer in.
