Disclaimer: Same as before, the characters aren't mine and I have not copyright on them.

Chapter II

Moscow, Russian Federation

2318- June 8, 2030

The club was classic techno and 90s New Age, heady with smoke and body heat from the dance floor. Catering to the business crowd from the local offices, it was the epitome of the new economic boom Russia was undergoing after the war with the Chinese that had ended six years earlier. Cocktails, mixed drinks, imported brew mixing with the Russian standby of vodka. A band made up of a Pole, two Serbs, and a Ukrainian blared out the background music whilst the young people on the dance floor gyrated.

Close to the dance floor, a blonde young man in his late 20s was sipping tea in a booth, meeting with the local middle-aged gang boss. Both were dressed in the same attire of business suits as the crowd, only theirs was of a finer cut and quality, being imported from the finest New York and London tailors. The boss, owner of the club, was nursing a bottle of vodka, and wondering how much time the young man before him was going take to die. Said young man had worked his way up as the mover and shaker behind the effort to launder the Czar's money during the last year. The Czar, who happened to be the head of the council of Russian Mob families that in turn controlled an illegal criminal empire worth billions of US dollars, had needed someone to ensure that their billions were moved and hidden without the attention of international authorities, notably the Americans as they turned their attention on a new international crackdown on organized crime.

Said mission had been accomplished over the past eight months by the young man, who had set up contacts in dozens of American and European companies to make sure the Mob's money was processed and used to buy up legitimate businesses that ran the gamut from computer software wholesale to defense contracting. Unfortunately, it had come to the attention of the Mob that the young man with whom they had entrusted their money with may have found information, accidentally or perhaps otherwise that was best kept silent. Information like the pay lists the Mob kept (a legacy from the Cold War of the 20th Century being that thousands of Soviet KGB trained personnel made their way into Russian Organized Crime (ROC)) of the people in the US they bribed, to include judges, federal agents, and other civil servants. That was one reason. Another had been the fact the Czar feared that the young man was a spy planted by the American FBI, and based on previous information that they had discredited earlier coupled with the newer information, had ordered the boss to see to the execution of the traitor.

The boss, a man named Stefan Gorchko, looked over at the man across from him and counted him as a friend. Said friend, name of Yevgeny Renko, was considered that for during a recent gang war had saved Stefan's life during an assassination attempt earlier in the year, when the Chechen mob had made a move against the Russians for control of Moscow's streets. Now, Stefan had orders to ensure that the man before him, his friend, was a dead traitor as he had had to admit the evidence made sense. He would kill him because it had been ordered, but he wanted to look in the face of the man he was going to kill when that happened. Stefan felt that traitor or not, Yevgeny deserved at least that much from him. It was why he planned on having a good evening drinking with his friend, taking him back to the traitor's home, and killing him there with a Czech pistol (one that was a knock-off of the the German Sig-Saur P228) he had stashed in his jacket.

Stefan took a drink, and still found it hard to believe that the man before him was an American stooge. Earlier, he had watched the man complete another day's work playing with the week's haul and payments on the laptop he always used, and nothing had seemed to be out of order. Stefan decided he should see his friend's reaction when he told him how the bosses were worried of a high-ranking rat. Despite the evidence, he still had his doubts. One naturally had them when one was discussing whether or not the guy who saved your life when he didn't have to was also the same kind who would stab you in the back.

"So, Yevgeny, have you heard the boss is looking for a rat?"

Renko shook his head, and took another sip of his tea. "Any ideas, on just who precisely this asshole may be?"

Stefan laughed, "Gregor, that fuck, told me it was you, would you believe that?" Gregor was the Czar's obese and rather stupid son, and not held in high esteem by anybody.

Renko laughed, too, and the doubt grew in Stefan's mind. No surprise, nothing but laughter and humor. Much the same way he would act if he heard someone like Gregor was calling him a traitor: something to laugh at, not something to take seriously. There was no way that the man who was as smart as any university asshole and as brutal as the most vicious street thug was a traitor, Stefan thought to himself. Renko then leaned over, and whispered like a schoolboy with a secret, "Stefan, let me tell you a little secret, my friend." Stefan sipped his drink, and leaned over, so their faces were only inches apart. "I am the traitor. And I knocked your young daughter Svetlana up, too" Renko laughed, and Stefan joined him uproariously, as he thought his friend was making light jest as his daughter was a 18 year old lesbian with pink hair he really didn't think too much of.

Stefan was still laughing when Renko left hand, which he had kept under the table, slammed a four-inch, bone-handled hunting knife into his throat, right into the jugular. Renko was still smiling as he left the blade there, blood flowing out of it and down the side of the blade. Even though they were surrounded by people, Renko had done it so fast nobody had noticed, as the boss's bodyguards (eight of them) weren't paying any attention. Indeed, they had largely been hired by Renko in the first place after the losses during the Chechen War, and pretty much all of them were busy drinking or on the dance floor.

Renko picked up a large, plate-glass ash tray and smashed it into Stefan's face. Once, and his head whip-lashed back. Blood flew, and landed on a few people in the booths surrounding them. A woman screamed, and Renko knew the bodyguards must be aware of what was going on. Not wasting anymore time, as the prospects of a quick and quiet kill were long gone out of the window, he drew a pistol from the small of his back and fired. The round, a .40 SW hollow-point fired from a Czech 110 semi-auto pistol he had picked up off the black market, entered Stefan's head at the bridge of his nose and splattered his brains on the booth, and the people around him, Renko included.

By now the club was full of screaming people, music long stopped, all making their way towards the exits. Ignoring them, Renko dug into the pockets of his friend for the keys to the Mercedes he had parked near the club, and picked up his attaché case. That held the laptop and papers he used to work. Glancing around, he could see the men he had recruited trying to move through the crowd towards the door, obviously expecting him to go that way. Renko instead ran through the booths towards the ladies room, which he knew had a window above the stalls leading to an alley next to the club.

Slamming his body into the door, he entered with his pistol in one hand, and his briefcase in the other. It was fortunate that he did so, for he saw Arkady, one of Stefan's bodyguards, trying to untangle himself from some Armenian woman that wasn't his wife. Renko raised his pistol, and fired three rounds, taking Arkady in the shoulder, chest and neck. The woman was screaming as Renko saw the window above the stalls was open. His briefcase he threw out of the window, and heard it land onto the ground below, and he climbed through it and jumped to the alley a few feet below via the sinks.

Landing on his feet, he picked up his case, and threw his pistol into the trash. Taking the keys from his pocket, he ran to the 2028 Mercedes sedan that Stefan had stashed in the alley next to the club, and opened the door. It was unlocked for the same reason Stefan had it parked in an area tempting for any petty criminal to steal: he had the power to crush them if they touched what was his. Unfortunately, that same arrogance and domination was now helping Renko escape as he threw the case on to the passenger's seat, slammed the door, and locked them. Quickly, he inserted the key, started the car, and got it going at forty miles an hour down the alley. Flying out, he took a left and heard shots being fired. Looking in his rearview mirror, he saw that a few of Stefan's men had spotted him and were shooting at him.

Putting the pedal to the floor, he spent a good fifteen minutes driving aimlessly through the dark, Moscow night, just to make sure he wasn't being followed. Renko reached into his jacket, and pulled out a cell phone the inner pocket. Punching in a series of numbers, he put it to his ear, and waited for someone to pick up. "You have reached the Office of the American…" Swearing, he disconnected the phone thinking, So much for contingency planning.

Not fazed in the least, he punched in another series of numbers, and a sleepy voice answered, "Captain Green, speaking."

"Stan, its Ghost. I'm coming in. Vehicle is a gray 2028 Merecedes Benz."

The sleepy voice got all serious, and answered, "Roger, out" Again the line got disconnected, and Renko drove for twenty minutes, taking a roundabout route to the American Embassy. He knew that he probably wasn't being followed, but he wasn't taking many chances. The last time someone had gone bad as high-up as he was within ROC, they had fed him into a plastic shredder feet first.

Renko knew that for a fact, as he had been the one feeding the bastard into the shredder.

Spotting the lights on the walled compound, Stars and Stripes lit up so that everybody could see that it was the Embassy was US soil, Renko drove towards the iron gates. Marines carrying M8A2s at the ready in full battle rattle, with magazines in and rounds doubtless in the chambers, opened the gates and waved him in. Another one directed him to the path that lead to the underground parking garage for the embassy, and Renko started to take the path. Renko was glad when he saw the Embassy guard, and a flood of memories came back when he saw their uniforms. Reminders of a life he had once led, of a life that sometimes he wished he still lead.

Driving slowly now, he stopped the car in the garage, and waited until the garage door is close before he gets out, attaché case in hand. Captain Stanley Green, two Marines, and three suits come up to him. The suits were Special Agent Tom Marlboro, a tall, lanky, fifty four year old Southerner from South Carolina about to retire from the FBI after almost thirty four years of service with the FBI, mostly in Organized Crime and Intelligence. He was the Embassy's legal attaché, and the man in charge of handling the operation. Besides him were Jim Wilson, the local CIA station chief, and the pudgy brown haired figure of Special Agent Ed Conrad, another long-service FBI veteran.

Conrad called out to Renko, "Welcome back, Special Agent Black."

His world went red when he saw Conrad. Tossing the attaché case to Wilson, he ran and jumped with a snarl on Conrad. Conrad went down, as Black/Renko had both hands around his neck and was trying to squeeze the life out of him. Marlboro and Green stepped in, grabbing his arms and trying to pull him off of Conrad. It ultimately took one of the Marines to butt-stroke him in the small of Black's back before he let go. Marlboro looked at Black, and demanded, "What the fuck is the matter with you, Will?"

Pointing a finger at the rather blue-face figure of Conrad, Special Agent Will Black, Federal Bureau of Investigations, began yelling, "That son of bitch is on the Mob's take. I found the fucking records on the Czar's computer to show that this fucker sold me, and Ivanov before that, down the goddamn river!" With that Black made another attempt at ending the life of Ed Conrad.

This time the Marine had to knock him on the head, to put him out, to prevent him from killing Conrad.