OLEG SEDOV WAS MAD FOR SEVERAL reasons, first because he had trusted the VTB bank, which was controlled by the Russian Federal Agency for State Property Management, secondly because they had recommended Vishnevsky. On their advice important people had invested in the Caribbean on his recommendations, and any backlash would directly affect Sedov. He needed a scape goat, Vishnevsky had already been taken care of, now it was the turn of the VTB's Real Estate investment manager, Anton Nazarov, who had recommended him.
Using well tested KGB methods Sedov needed to deflect responsibility and cover his links to the business.
Anton Nazarov left the gleaming Federation West Tower, a complex of two towers, the West with its 63 stories and the East 97 stories, the home of the VTB Bank. It stood amongst the cluster of proud glass towers in middle of the Moscow International Business Center situated in the Presnensky District overlooking the Moskva River.
He headed for the Vystavochnaya metro station where he took the line to Arbatskaja. It was already past seven, he had been trying to untangle the investments that had been caught up in the pandemic and he was late for a meeting with his girl friend at a restaurant off ulitsa Arbat.
He hurried out of the metro, the evening was fine, he was feeling better, looking forward to his evening, it was Annika’s birthday, he could forget all his worries for a few hours.
At forty-five, Anton was dynamic and his career was on the road to great things, that is until the Black Swan appeared on the horizon in the form of a virus. He had risen to manager of investments in the Caribbean thanks to the favours he had rendered to influential string pullers in the Kremlin. Now he was struggling to save what he could as a chain reaction of events made the development projects they had invested in worthless.
He was frightened by Vishnevsky’s fate.
Turning onto a side street he saw the window of the restaurant a little further along, he glanced at his watch, he was about ten minutes late. At that moment, from the shadow on a doorway, a form emerged, before Anton knew what had happened he hit the stone slabs of the sidewalk, dead, two shots to the head from a silenced 8mm Makarov PB, another in the heart as he lay on the ground.
The killer turned and calmly headed out onto the Arbat where he faded into the evening crowd.
He was a hired hitman, one of the vory, a Chechen, the most forbidding settlers of commercial grievances. Sedov wanted a debt settled, Sedov called a Chechen.