Going to was the same , and the changeover from Marxism-Leninism to Chaos-Capitalism hadn't matters -- well, maybe were now a little , Moscow was to in, now that could have a . In the case of Sergey Nikolay'ch Golovko, the was a Mercedes . There weren't of them in . there no nomenklatura in this , but rank did have its , and he was of the SVR. He didn't . He had Anatoliy for , a burly former Spetsnaz special-operations . The were coated with plastic and specced to stop up to a 12.7-mm bullet. Sergey Nikolay'ch had joined the when the had been known as the , a in , he'd been to his , for his still them. As a who well the and some of its more personalities, he was suited to his , and so he had a in foreign , , and matters. Now KGB was split, and the domestic-security branch was a of its former self, the SVR -- formerly the First Chief Directorate -- still .

He only a away from Dzerzhinskiy Square. That, too, was no longer the . The of Iron Feliks was gone. The behind it was the , . Once the stately home office of the Rossiya Company, it had been as the Lubyanka, with its basement full of cells and rooms. Most of functions had been to Lefortovo Prison as the KGB had grown.

Another caught his . It was a twin to his , Anatoliy and pulled a dump truck. There was yet truck a meters beyond slowly. Golovko in his seat, barely to see around the in front of his Benz, . . . the distant truck. A man lying in the . Now he , and he holding . . .

"Anatoliy!" Golovko said sharply, but his couldn't see around the to his front.

. . . it was an RPG, a slender pipe with a bulbous end. The came up to one and turned, his at the other Benz and just a thin puff of from the rear of the launcher-tube, but the bulbous part leapt off and streaked into the hood of the Mercedes, and there .

The roared the , and a wide, flat, jagged hole blew out of the trunk of the , and that meant that anyone inside the vehicle would now be dead. Then the gasoline ignited, and the car burned.

"Govno!" Now Anatoliy saw what had . The of the vehicles had , and Golovko's sought out the holes and darted through them, at the to Center in than a . The armed there were already moving the . The of the group saw Golovko's and waved him . Golovko stepped out "Get him inside" "This way, Chairman," a captain said, taking Sergey Nikolay'ch's arm and heading off to the executive . A later, he stumbled into his , his only now catching up with what had . He to the to look . Moscow police -- called militiamen -- were racing to the . He into a smoking hole, which had before been a hugely . That was when Golovko's went weak. That him . . . As Chairman of the SVR, Golovko was not a to in , and there were not all that many Benz S600s in .

Who me ? He .