It was a sad gathering for the SHaRCs. Nearly in tears over being hunted by Popov, Yuri sat in a rented mansion. His unfocused gaze wandered down the slope where the lights on yachts bobbed on gentle sways in the cove. They were on Saint Barthélemy, commonly referred to as St. Barts, in the Caribbean. He felt worse than General Grachev at the Battle of Grozny. Gloom filled the sunny island air. He had failed them.
The other surviving members of SHaRC arrived, one at a time. They piled their bags and backpacks in the living room. Roman handed out room assignments, gave them instructions, and a glass of vodka. They milled about on the veranda, chatting with each other in low tones. They related their narrow escapes.
Yuri listened to their voices with a heavy heart. Their rash decision to become stateless was costing them far more than they had bargained for. But then, revolutions always require sacrifice.
Sodade by Césaria Évora, the saddest song in human history, streamed in his ears. The Brazilian singer sang of longing for something missing in life. While he could relate, he had to concentrate. He turned it off.
He had already committed his melancholy little speech to memory. All he needed to do was deliver it and hope it helped. Threatening Roman worked, but Roman was different. He had eagerly learned the grim things that must be done in desperate times. Yuri worked with him in Brazil, teaching him how to kill drug dealers for practice. The young man had come a long way. Now Roman was the kind of lieutenant who would execute orders without remorse. The others were still young and idealistic. The world had not yet jaded them.
Which led him to wonder why his men meant so much to Popov. Why commit such vast resources to hunt down a few hackers? It would make more sense to forget about them. His people were good, maybe the best, but no one is irreplaceable. Even if his men were that good, the reasonable solution would be to assign three bandas to the project. Popov had unlimited resources. They would never miss eleven young men and a major.
Unless Yuri possessed something he didn’t fully appreciate.
Which must be the case.
Yuri observed his men across the pool through his open doors. What made them so special? Was it because he could tell the Americans who was behind #HuntersFail? Not without spending his life in jail. Popov knew they were on the run. That was better for everyone involved. So why kill Aleksandr on the balcony? Why send so many men to Belo Horizonte?
He looked at the pieces of the puzzle and realized his view was too limited. To a soldier like Yuri, Strangelove and Popov were as high up the food chain as he could see. But Popov was just a servant to someone else. Maybe several someone elses. Strangelove had alluded to being pushed around by strutting young peacocks.
Yuri thought back to the basic building blocks of modern Russia’s economic and political structure: the oligarchy. It had risen from the ashes of the Soviet Union. At first, the oligarchy was in constant state of war inside Russia. Gang versus mob. Medevtin tamed them, but he never harnessed them as a team.
Yuri looked across the turquoise bay and put on his sunglasses to minimize the excessive sunshine. The glasses rubbed at his still-tender face.
Yeschenko, Prokhorov, Usmanov—in fact, all the Russian oligarchs—had gigantic egos. Their success in their given fields gave each man an unrealistic but resolute belief in his own omnipotence. They were vultures picking at the carcass of the global economy. They would tolerate each other, even work together to drive off competing species of scavengers. But they would peck the other’s eye out if one of them felt disrespected. Yuri considered how the Americans—Roche, Ellison, Koch, Walton—were similar.
Each of these ultra-rich men had carved out his own slice of the world’s pie. Each of them had convinced themselves he alone could run the world. All he needed was free rein.
As the world’s twenty-first-century billionaires rose in power and stature, something parallel happened in politics. Globalization created a free market tightly governed by the politicians. And therein lay the billionaire’s problem. When governments disagree, tycoons are often sacrificed at the whim of the officials.
Billionaires don’t like to bow to bureaucrats. They don’t bow to anyone.
A cool ocean breeze stroked Yuri’s face.
He tapped a pen on his chin. Then what are the billionaires trying to accomplish? What do they want?
The eternal pursuit of all the money in the world.
That’s where governments get in the way.
When Yuri earned his master’s in American history, he was struck by the ferocity of postwar American national pride. The Great Generation knew that to overcome the Depression and the world at war, their best hope was selfless teamwork on a national scale. That same national commitment had glued the Soviet Union together for the second half of the twentieth century despite its obviously failed economic system. A population committed to a common goal was a powerful entity. Working together, they put men in space and cured diseases, built highways and schools, and achieved a higher standard of living for everyone.
After the Cold War, the world changed. The oligarchs didn’t fight the regulations or the regulators. They fought the concept of regulations. They shredded the “United We Stand” idea, believing they could unleash unlimited growth if they were unfettered. Billionaires financed libertarian ideas. News organizations, owned by billionaires, challenged the federal model that had built the USA. Over the last thirty years, national pride transformed into a strange hatred of centralized government. Hatred of the very centralized government that saved them from the Great Depression, the savings and loan debacle of 1987, and the Great Recession of 2008.
Most surprising about this American movement was that the American economy was the biggest, most productive economy in the history of civilization—yet politicians were campaigning to disrupt and dismantle what they called the “administrative state.”
Why? Yuri scratched his head.
American billionaires, along with wealthy English and Germans and French, wanted to be more like their Russian counterparts. No holds barred. And the Russians wanted freedom from the arbitrary rules dropped on them by Western democracies.
The vultures had a common cause.
He laced his fingers behind his head and stared up at the ceiling. For twenty years, traditional governments like Russia, Germany, and the United Kingdom had tried to keep the billionaires in check. Enter Chuck Roche, America’s President-Elect. He worked with Popov and Strangelove to disrupt governments that dared say no to his business interests. They had a common enemy: democracy. Russia wanted western governments that are too paralyzed to act. Regulations that, if not repealed, are ignored. Sanctions that can be disregarded. Dysfunctional governments.
Yuri’s men had been bringing about that disrupted state with their relentless planting of fake news. They had been effective. Very effective. Soon, there would be no governments, no democracies, no sanctions—only oligarchs.
George Orwell had been wrong when he forecast the Oligarch Collective as the future political system. Their egos were too big to work together. Instead, the oligarchs were reverting to the Dark Ages. Each billionaire’s corporation would fend for itself like an ancient fiefdom. Soon they would conscript their own armies to fight never-ending wars between city-state-corporations. Each oligarch could rule his corporate “nation” by decree.
Brilliant!
Yuri almost laughed out loud when he understood how far ahead of him they were. But there were three problems. First, he was not yet an oligarch. Second, Popov was trying to eliminate him. And third, the Americans wanted him to answer for Flight 1028.
His Stateless Hacktivist and Resistance Collective wasn’t just good at what it did—it was too good. Strangelove had been jealous, maybe even afraid. Popov also had that fear. If Yuri’s men could disrupt an American election, they could easily expose Popov and his little machinations using the same methods.
Where did mysterious Brad fit in?
But there was a fourth faction in the mix. The useful-yet-dangerous Jacob Stearne and his boss, Pia Sabel. What did they want? They imagined themselves as the last defenders of a hopeless democracy. Fools. If SHaRC could sway an election, they could certainly take down a young woman and her mad soldier.
Yuri examined the young men milling about on the veranda and thought about where they were in the big picture. SHaRC was in a Hobbesian trap with Popov: they represented an escalating fear leading to pre-emptive strikes. Popov struck first by killing Alexandr.
And that was all he needed to know. Yuri knew how to win the war.
He rose and strolled around the pool to the veranda. The others stood in a big circle. Three of them, like Yuri and Roman, had bandage-wrapped faces. Those three were the first to commit to SHaRC in a visible way. He was proud of them.
The brilliant mathematician, Petr, was holding forth. “If we had ten thousand friends from Moscow to stand with us, then freedom from Viktor Popov might be more than a daydream.”
Yuri patted Petr’s shoulder and put his arm around him. “Petr, why wish for that? If we lose, then our sacrifice will be smaller in number and therefore better for the hacker community. But if we win, our brothers will revere us as gods—or even Jedi!”
A few men laughed sadly.
“No, my friends,” Yuri raised his voice, “don’t wish for one more man than stands with us here tonight. It’s not about the money we can make. We can make money anytime we wish. This is about our freedom. This is about the respect of our peers. Think about it, gentlemen. When we win this war with Viktor Popov, we will bask in the admiration of every hacker from here to Moscow. We won’t stop there. We’ll wage war on the oligarchs. Our victories will be legendary. Why share the glory with any of them? No, I don’t want more than the lot of you. You are the best.”
He caught the gaze of each man in the circle.
“Not everyone agrees with me, I know.” He waited while they looked from one to another. “It is a difficult journey. We’ve lost friends and family. It will get worse. I am a professional soldier while you are not. Nonetheless, I understand your anxiety. If you wish to go home, I will give you what you need: money, ID, whatever you want. Because.” He tightened his mouth and lowered his voice. “I have no desire to die in the company of men who live in fear. If Popov wins, I have no intention of going out with a whimper. I’ll fight to the end. And I’d be proud to die standing next to any of you.”
Yuri felt Petr’s arm lock around his shoulder. Petr said, “It sounds crazy, but—I’m with you.”
A few others wrapped an arm around a comrade.
“You know what day this is in America?” Yuri asked. “Thanksgiving. On this day, Americans give thanks for all their riches. From this day forward, we will celebrate it as the day we were thankful to be in the company of real men. Brave men who resolved to fight the devil himself. Honorable men who chose not to run but to stand up to Viktor Popov. He is afraid of us because he knows what we can do. He is right to be afraid. We will not sit here and wait for Viktor to find us. We will do what he made us do to the Americans. We will hack through his security. We will find out where he lives. We will disrupt his life with fake emails and postings. We will find the evidence we need to convict him. And we will take him down.”
Someone shouted, “Damn right!” Several others agreed.
The circle locked together, their arms grasping each other.
Yuri brought his voice to full-thunder. “We will kill Popov and anyone who wants to fill his chair. We will do it for all those who lost their lives to that beast. We will do it for Aleksandr. We will do it for Vasili. We will do it for Alexi!”