Reamde

Sokolov worked for a security consultancy based out of St. Petersburg, with discreet branch offices in Toronto, New York, and London, that derived much of its income from working for people like Ivanov. As in any business, customer satisfaction was of paramount importance. Usually this meant doing whatever one was told to do by the client to whom one was assigned. At least in theory there ought to be exceptions in the rules for brain-damaged clients. But, to keep things simple, the company’s founders, all retired Spetsnaz brass, had carried over the chain of command, culture, and traditions from the military unit where they had built their careers and from which they hired most of their employees. Going over the boss’s head was frowned on and could lead to miserable repercussions on Sokolov. He might find out the hard way, for example, that Ivanov wasn’t crazy at all and was actually carrying out direct orders from higher up. If so, the mission—whatever the hell it was—was important, and screwing it up would cause only that much more trouble for Sokolov.

SOKOLOV:

He had taken this job because he thought it would be simple and easy compared to being active-duty military. Until recently he had not been wrong. For exactly that reason he had been somewhat bored. Now he was far from bored but feeling many of the same stresses that had caused him to retire from active duty in the first place. Was it possible to find a station in life with just the right level of interest? Was it possible to be normal without being someone’s dupe?

THE SQUAD:

Sokolov had worked with most of them before, and they would carry out his orders professionally and with no questions asked. Though rumors did circulate that sometimes the higher-ups would plant a spy in such a unit, reporting home via a back channel, and this might be especially true in very strange situations like this one. He had summoned them on extremely short notice and had been unable to supply an explanation of where they were going or what the mission might be.

CSONGOR:

The least of Sokolov’s worries. Obviously the Hungarian did not want to be here, but he knew the rules of the game, had been tangled up with Ivanov for a long time, and would be docile as long as he believed he would get out of the situation alive.

PETER:

Sokolov put the odds at 100 percent that Peter would, sooner or later, do something stupid and cause enormous trouble. Peter would do this because he believed he was clever and because he thought only of himself. It would be safer to take him out and shoot him now, but disposing of the body would be difficult and the shock of it would probably disturb the equilibrium of Zula.

ZULA:

The only person here whom Sokolov might be able to deal with productively. “Productive” being the operative word here in that she seemed like one who might do something not utterly predictable and not capable of being done by Sokolov himself.

She was also a problem of large proportions in that Ivanov would almost certainly want to liquidate her, and she was the only person involved in this clusterfuck who didn’t actually deserve it. Waging war on his enemies had been Sokolov’s habit and his professsion for a long time, but being chivalrous to everyone else was simply a basic tenet of having your shit together as a human and as a man. He had always been worried that he might get into a situation like this one. It had never happened until now.

HE GOT COFFEE and went into the meeting room before anyone else got there. He spent a while looking out the window, appraising the battleground.

From this remove it did not look hugely different from other places; just more crowded. Humidity and smog caused buildings that were only a few blocks away to be shrouded in mist, like matte paintings in the background of an old Soviet movie, creating the feeling that everything was farther away than it really was. This made it difficult to get a sense of how far the city sprawled. The hot and humid climate was inconvenient, since it limited the sorts of things that one could carry in one’s clothing, or else forced one to go about conspicuously and suspiciously bundled up. This, however, would not really be a problem until they set out to liquidate the Troll, and based on what Zula and Peter and Csongor had been saying on the plane, they wouldn’t have that information for a few days at least.