The previous week, Oleg had been reviewing contracts and billing statements.

Now he found himself at the vortex of the most serious national crisis since the collapse of the Soviet Empire itself.

As he followed the chief of staff into a conference room adjoining the prime minister’s office, Oleg vividly remembered the day the Soviet flag was lowered for the last time. Every Russian did. December 25, 1991. Oleg was still a teenager at the time. But he remembered being huddled around his parents’ television, watching the momentous events unfolding hour by hour. He would never forget his mother’s tears or his father’s dumbfounded silence. His parents hadn’t been elated like some of their neighbors were, as if the nation were somehow going to be free. Rather, they’d feared their country was going to unravel.

For the first time, Oleg understood their emotions.

A door opened. Prime Minister Luganov entered, flanked by bodyguards. Once the door was closed, the cabinet took their seats around the conference table. Luganov, of course, sat at the head. The bodyguards took up posts at each of the doors, in the four corners of the room, and directly behind him. Several advisors accompanying Defense Minister Petrovsky and FSB Chief Nimkov sat in a row of chairs against the side walls, behind their principals. Oleg joined them, sitting just behind Zakharov, notebook and pen at the ready.

“Mr. Prime Minister, I regret to inform you that there has been another attack,” said the defense minister as he handed Luganov a leather dossier.

“Where?” the prime minister asked, opening the file and sifting through its contents.

“In the south, sir —Volgodonsk,” Petrovsky replied.

Oleg looked up from his note taking. He knew Volgodonsk. It was near the Black Sea, not far from the border of Ukraine. His maternal grandmother lived there, as did several of his cousins. As a boy, Oleg had gone fishing along the Don River with his grandfather.

“The initial evidence suggests this was a truck bomb,” Petrovsky continued. “It went off in front of yet another apartment building —sheared off the entire face of the building, nine stories. If you’ll permit, Mr. Prime Minister, the FSB has video taken on the scene.”

Luganov nodded, and the video began to roll. Oleg gasped as unedited images flickered onto three large televisions mounted on the far wall. The devastation was beyond anything he had ever witnessed. Certainly images this graphic were not going to be broadcast on nationwide TV. What was visible was mostly rubble, but there was also a severed torso that the cameras kept focusing on. Ash-covered mothers clutched their crying children in their arms.

“How many?” asked Luganov, stoic and dark.

The FSB chief took that one. “We know of seventeen dead so far,” Nimkov replied. “But it’s early.”

“Injured?”

“The latest count I have is sixty, but again, Your Excellency, we expect that number to climb.”

“Has anyone claimed credit?”

“No, sir,” Nimkov said. “Not yet.”

“But the MO is the same as the others?”

“Essentially, yes.”

“Chechens,” Luganov said coolly.

It wasn’t a question, Oleg observed, but a statement. He wrote it all down.

“That’s our best guess, sir —yes,” said Nimkov.

“Zakayev?” the prime minister asked.

Oleg instantly recognized that name. Ramzan Zakayev was a fundamentalist Muslim warlord in the Russian province of Chechnya. He had become a household name during the period of 1994 to 1996, when he led a separatist movement trying to break Chechnya off from the Russian Federation. He was known for his ruthlessness and barbarism. When Russian air strikes began and ground forces first tried to retake the rebel capital of Grozny, Zakayev had declared a jihad, or holy war, against Moscow. More than a thousand Russian soldiers had lost their lives in the Battle of Grozny. Many of them had been slaughtered in a ghastly manner, and in the process Zakayev had become the country’s most wanted terrorist. He had been thirty-six years old.

The FSB chief sat back in his leather chair, took his reading glasses off, and set them down on the notepad before him. He looked at Luganov and sighed. “Based on all we know right now, I would put the probability that Zakayev and his forces are behind all these bombings at 90 percent or better.”

Scribbling down the conversation as fast as he could, Oleg felt his blood boiling. Like most Russians, Oleg was certain of Zakayev’s guilt —so certain, in fact, that it did not even occur to the young lawyer that no actual facts were being presented, no actual evidence was being offered by the head of the Russian Security Service. Only later would he realize that there was no discussion of incriminating fingerprints found at the scene or intercepted communications between the Chechen warlord and the men who had carried out these attacks. Nothing was being said about wiretaps or recorded conversations with Zakayev or even a single Chechen informant implicating him in these crimes.

Luganov turned back to his defense minister. “Are your forces ready to move?”

“At your command, sir,” Petrovsky replied.

Oleg again looked up from his notes. He watched as his future father-in-law signaled his consent, then signed the orders as acting president. The second Russian invasion of Chechnya was about to begin.