Despite the clock, Oleg dared not break into a run to get to the meeting on time.

He feared he’d be arrested, if not shot, for doing so. Rather, he walked as briskly as he could without arousing suspicion. Yet even as he did, he wondered if it was prudent to proceed at all. Surely his meeting had been canceled. No civilians in their right mind were anywhere to be seen. Perhaps it really was best that he head back to his parents’ home and reschedule. But still he kept moving forward.

By the time he had skirted the enormous redbrick walls of the Kremlin and made it to the visitors’ center at the Kutafiya Tower, it was clear to Oleg he would not have any lines to wait in. Police carrying automatic weapons were buttoning up every entrance to the seat of the Russian government. All tours had been canceled, as had all but the most essential meetings. Oleg showed his ID to one policeman after another and explained why he was there and with whom he was meeting. Each time —to his astonishment —he was permitted to proceed. When he made it to the appointments desk, he slid his papers into the drawer and waited for the guard behind the bulletproof glass to review them.

“Wait over there,” said the stone-faced guard. “Someone will collect you.”

“The meeting is on?” Oleg asked, still not clear.

“Wait,” the guard grunted without emotion. “Over there.”

Oleg turned and saw a bench. But he could not sit. Instead he paced, then checked his watch, then reached for his pack of cigarettes and realized he had left them in the car. His appointment was in eight minutes. He had made it on time. The meeting had not been canceled. He could not explain why. But now he regretted his decision to come on an empty stomach. Anger and self-doubt made a toxic cocktail. He desperately needed a smoke. For the moment he would settle for a glass of water. He would get neither. Moments later a colonel in full dress uniform emerged from a side door, gave Oleg a plastic visitor’s badge he was to clip on his suit jacket, and ordered him to follow.

Oleg was led to a security post manned by no fewer than four guards armed with machine guns. The colonel ordered Oleg to take any metal items out of his pockets and put them in a wooden bin. These were passed through an X-ray machine, along with his briefcase, which was also checked thoroughly by one of the guards as well as by the colonel. Then Oleg walked through the magnetometer. He cleared it without setting off any alarms, but this was not enough. A guard patted him down, then made Oleg take off his shoes, which were carefully examined. Only when the colonel and all four guards nodded to one another in agreement that Oleg and his few possessions posed no threat, and only after each man had signed a logbook of some kind attesting as much, was a vault-like door unlocked electronically.

Oleg followed the colonel down a long hallway to the magnificent Troitskaya Tower, eighty meters high and built more than five centuries earlier. A guard standing ramrod straight held open a door, through which Oleg and the colonel exited into the open air. Dark clouds were moving in. Russian flags were snapping in the intensifying breeze. Oleg could feel no rain yet, but clearly a storm was coming.

Oleg had never been to the Kremlin before, not even as a tourist. He had little time or interest for museums and tours and until recently couldn’t have imagined a circumstance that might bring him there. Now here he was. To his left stood the Arsenal, a pale-yellow, two-story building commissioned by Peter the Great that currently housed the security services responsible for guarding the Russian capital and its senior leaders. To his right was the massive marble-and-glass complex known as the State Kremlin Palace. Neither of these buildings, however, was their destination. Instead, the colonel led him past dozens more heavily armed soldiers to another pale-yellow building, this one shaped like an enormous isosceles triangle. It was known as the Senate.

This was more heavily guarded than any of the other buildings, yet the two men entered without obstruction. Inside, the colonel led Oleg through the cavernous vestibule to a guard station where they checked in, and where both men and their few possessions again passed through metal detectors and X-ray machines. A smartly dressed aide in her early thirties was waiting for them. She did not smile, did not shake their hands, did not salute the colonel as others at the guard station had. She simply led the two men to an elevator, took them up to the third floor, and ushered them through more security checkpoints and a maze of corridors lined with paintings of all the Russian leaders of the past —from Alexander the Great and Peter the Great to Ivan the Terrible and Nicholas II —until they finally reached an anteroom flanked by security men in dark suits and ugly ties and jackets bulging from the weapons they carried underneath.

A rather dour-looking older woman wearing a frumpy gray dress and sporting a hairdo that struck Oleg as a throwback to the days of the Soviet Politburo sat at a desk behind a large computer screen and a bank of telephones. She looked up at Oleg and the colonel but said nothing. She just pushed a button on one of the phones and then nodded at two agents guarding a large oak door.

To the left of the door Oleg noticed a waiting area with nicely upholstered couches and chairs and a mahogany coffee table. But there would be no waiting. No small talk. No greetings of any kind. Not today. For no sooner had Oleg arrived than the security men opened the door and the colonel motioned him to enter. Alone.

Oleg did as he was instructed and to his astonishment found himself standing before the next president of the Russian Federation.