January 16, 1991, 2:14 AM
The apartment smelled of old man, illness, and boiled cabbage.
Alexei shut the door softly behind him, the click of the lock echoing in the dark hallway. He leaned back against the wood, eyes closed, breathing in the familiar, suffocating scent of his grandfather's decline. For a moment, he just stood there in the dark, listening to the rhythmic wheeze from the bedroom—the sound of a heart slowly giving up.
He didn't turn on the light. He knew this apartment by touch. Four rooms in a pre-war building on Vasilievsky Island, overlooking the frozen Neva. A general's apartment, once. Now just a museum to a dying way of life.
He peeled off his coat, hung it on the hook his father had installed in 1984, and walked to the kitchen. The floorboards groaned underfoot. In the faint blue light from the window, he filled a kettle at the sink, the pipes shrieking in protest. The gas stove hissed to life with a blue flame.
While the water heated, he leaned against the counter and looked at his hands. They were shaking. Not from cold. From something else—the adrenaline of watching a life end, of crossing a threshold there was no returning from.
She's gone.
The thought arrived without ceremony. A simple statement of fact. His mother was dead. His father was dead. His grandfather was dying. He was alone.
The kettle whistled. He poured the water over tea leaves in a chipped porcelain cup—the one with the faded Olympic bear from the 1980 Moscow Games. He carried it down the hallway, past the photographs: Grandfather in uniform at the Reichstag, 1945. Father in paratrooper gear, Afghanistan, 1984. Mother at her university graduation, 1981, smiling with impossible hope.
He paused at the last one—a family photo from 1987, before the last Afghanistan tour. All of them together. Father's hand on his shoulder. Mother's smile. Grandfather's stern pride. Him, eleven years old, not knowing he was living the last good days.
He pushed open the bedroom door.
Vladimir Sergeyevich Volkov lay propped on pillows, his reading glasses perched on his nose, a book open on his chest. He wasn't reading. He was staring at the ceiling, his ice-blue eyes seeing something far away.
"They called?" His voice was gravel, worn smooth by sixty-six years of command.
"Twenty minutes ago," Alexei said, placing the tea on the bedside table. "She went peacefully."
The old man didn't move. Didn't blink. Just kept staring at the ceiling. A full thirty seconds passed before he spoke again.
"Peacefully." The word came out like a curse. "There's no peace in dying in a hospital that's out of medicine. There's no peace in watching your country die around you."
Alexei said nothing. He pulled up the wooden chair that had always sat beside this bed—first when his grandmother was dying in 1978, then when his father's body lay in state in 1988, now this.
"I sold the Order of Lenin today," Grandfather said. "To a collector in Moscow. Paid through a bank transfer I don't trust."
"How much?"
"Five thousand dollars." A bitter laugh escaped him. "The highest military honor of the Soviet Union. Worth five thousand American dollars. What would Stalin say?"
"He'd probably have you shot for selling state property."
That earned him a glance—sharp, assessing. "Your humor is getting darker, Alyosha."
"I'm not joking."
Another silence. The clock on the wall ticked. A Leningrad winter night pressed against the windowpanes.
"I failed her," the old man whispered. "Failed your father. Failed you."
Alexei leaned forward. "You gave her three extra months. You spent everything—"
"Everything wasn't enough!" The sudden roar filled the room. Vladimir Volkov pushed himself up on his elbows, his face flushed. "I commanded tanks at Kursk! I trained two thousand officers! And I couldn't save my own daughter-in-law because the country I served doesn't have penicillin anymore!"
He collapsed back, breathing heavily. The anger drained out of him as quickly as it came, leaving behind exhaustion.
Alexei waited. He'd seen this cycle before—the outburst, the collapse, the guilt. The doctor had said the heart couldn't take much more stress. The doctor had also said there were no beds available if he had another attack.
After a minute, the old man's breathing evened. He reached for the tea, hands trembling. Alexei helped him, holding the cup steady as he sipped.
"You need to leave," Vladimir said quietly.
"Leave where?"
"Russia. The Soviet Union. Whatever it's going to be next week." He set the cup down. "It's finished, Alexei. The coup last August was the death rattle. The Union is dissolving. What comes next..." He shook his head. "I've seen regime change before. It's never pretty. It's always violent. And the young men like you—the smart ones, the connected ones—they either get rich or they get dead."
"I'm sixteen."
"You're Vladimir Volkov's grandson. That makes you a target or an asset, depending on who's looking." He reached for something on the nightstand—a black leather notebook, worn at the edges, tied with a faded red cord. "Which is why you need this."
Alexei recognized it. He'd seen it his whole life—on his grandfather's desk at the Suvorov School, in his study here at home. The book he never let anyone touch.
"The address book," Alexei said.
"Not addresses," Grandfather corrected. "Debts. Obligations. Leverage." He untied the cord with stiff fingers. "Two thousand, one hundred forty-seven men passed through my school between 1965 and 1990. I trained them. I disciplined them. I promoted some, held back others. I wrote recommendations. I saved careers. I ended a few."
He opened the book. The pages were filled with neat, precise handwriting—columns of names, ranks, postings, and in the margins, brief notes in a cryptic shorthand.
"Every man in this book owes me something," Vladimir said. "A favor. A silence. A loyalty. Some know they owe it. Some don't. But the debt exists."
He turned the book around and pushed it toward Alexei. "It's yours now."
Alexei didn't reach for it. "Why?"
"Because I'll be dead by spring." The statement was flat, factual. "The doctor says six months if I'm lucky. I think three. And when I'm gone, the debts die with me unless someone collects."
He tapped the book. "These men are everywhere now. Ministry of Defense. KGB. Regional committees. Factory directors. Military bases across the Union. In the chaos that's coming, they'll be looking for advantage. For protection. For ways to profit."
He looked directly at Alexei, and for a moment, the old general was back in his eyes—the strategist who had outmaneuvered German panzers at the age of nineteen.
"You understand what's coming better than most," he said. "I've watched you. You read the economic reports. You listen to the BBC. You ask questions no sixteen-year-old should be asking."
Alexei felt a chill that had nothing to do with the draft from the window. "How much does he suspect?"
"Use the book," Vladimir said. "But use it wisely. A favor called too early is wasted. A debt collected too aggressively becomes an enemy. This isn't a list of friends. It's a list of tools."
Alexei finally reached out and took the notebook. The leather was warm from his grandfather's hands. He opened it to a random page.
Sokolov, Konstantin Vasilyevich - Class of 1968
Current: Deputy Director, Resource Allocation, Ministry of Defense, Moscow
Note: 1970 incident at the dormitory. He remembers. Useful for materials access.
Markov, Yuri Grigorovich - Class of 1971
Current: Commander, Karaganda Air Base, Kazakhstan SSR*
Note: Average student. Limited initiative. Loyal to superiors. Currently overseeing base closure. Vulnerable.
Orlov, Gennady Petrovich - Class of 1975
Current: Captain, Militia, Moscow Precinct 24
Note: Strong moral compass (weakness). Wife's medical debts. Clean but poor.
Page after page. Two thousand lives reduced to data points—strengths, weaknesses, secrets, debts.
"This is..." Alexei searched for the word. "Power."
"It's potential power," Grandfather corrected. "It becomes actual power only if you know how to wield it. And you must wield it, Alexei. Because if you don't, someone else will. And they won't be kind."
He lay back, the effort of the conversation draining him. "Start with the small ones. The desperate ones. Test your approach. Learn to negotiate. Learn what men will do for money, for safety, for a promise of future advantage."
He closed his eyes. "And remember one thing: no matter what you build, no matter how rich you become, you must build something real. Something that lasts. Not just wealth. Not just power. Something that would make your father proud. Something that would have saved your mother."
Alexei looked from the book to his grandfather's face—the lines of pain, the pride, the defeat. The last of a generation that had won the Great Patriotic War and lost everything that came after.
"What if I don't want this?" Alexei asked quietly.
"Then burn it," Vladimir said without opening his eyes. "And pray you're poor enough to be beneath notice when the wolves come. But you won't burn it. Because you're my grandson. And you're your father's son. And you watched your mother die. Men like us don't choose peace when war is offered."
Alexei stood, the book heavy in his hands. It felt like holding a loaded weapon.
"Get some sleep, Grandfather."
The old man waved a dismissive hand. Already half gone into whatever dreams visited dying men.
Alexei left the room, closing the door softly behind him. He walked to his own room—small, sparse, the bed still made with military corners from habit. He sat at the desk, turned on the lamp, and opened the book again.
He flipped to the first page. The earliest entries, 1965. Men who would now be in their late forties, at the height of their careers. He flipped to the last pages—1990, the final graduating class. Young officers entering a military that would dissolve beneath them.
Two thousand, one hundred forty-seven connections.
He thought of his mother's last words: *Use it.*
He thought of his father's death for a disappearing country.
He thought of the corporate knowledge in his head—mergers, acquisitions, vertical integration, supply chain control, leverage.
The pieces clicked together. Not all at once, but the first few, forming the outline of a plan.
He turned to a fresh page in a school notebook and began writing. Not a diary. A business plan.
Phase 1: Liquidation Capital
- Target: Military bases closing across USSR
- Asset: Surplus equipment (metals, fuel, vehicles)
- Method: Use address book to contact base commanders
- Key: Provide "official disposal" cover in exchange for percentage
- Timeline: 6-12 months (before all bases stripped)
- Capital target: $500,000 minimum
Phase 2: Infrastructure Foundation
- Acquire transport (trucks)
- Acquire storage (warehouses)
- Acquire export access (port terminals)
- Build logistics network before privatization rush
Phase 3: Banking
- Obtain private banking license
- Use for internal financing, leverage
- Intelligence gathering via client accounts
Phase 4: Asset Acquisition
- Target: Oil, minerals, utilities
- Method: Voucher privatization (1992-1994)
- Key: Focus on assets that need my infrastructure
Phase 5: Vertical Integration
- Control entire supply chains
- Create dependencies for competitors
- Build economic moat
He wrote for an hour, the plan unfolding with a clarity that felt both thrilling and terrifying. This wasn't a school project. This was a blueprint for becoming something Russia didn't have yet—an oligarch who built rather than stripped, who controlled infrastructure rather than just assets.
He looked up at the small mirror above his desk. A sixteen-year-old face stared back—dark hair cut military short, steel-grey eyes inherited from his father, features already hardening into something older than their years.
"Who are you going to be?" he asked the reflection.
The boy in the mirror didn't answer. But the man behind the eyes already knew.
He turned back to the address book, flipping to the Kazakhstan section. Yuri Markov. Karaganda Air Base. Closing imminently. Copper wire inventory needing "disposal."
He calculated. A thousand tons of copper wire. Black market price: approximately $1.50 per kilogram. Gross value: $1.5 million. What would a desperate base commander take? Thirty percent? Twenty?
He needed a team. Transport. Security.
He thought of Ivan Morozov. His father's sergeant. The one who had written them a letter after the funeral: "If you ever need anything, Alyosha. Anything at all. I owe your father everything."
It was time to call in that debt.
Alexei closed the address book. The leather felt alive in his hands, like a heartbeat.
Down the hall, his grandfather coughed—a wet, painful sound that went on too long.
Outside, a snowplow rumbled past, its blade scraping against the cobblestones of a city that would soon have a different name.
Somewhere in Kazakhstan, a colonel was sitting in an office, wondering what would become of him when the base closed and the Union dissolved.
And in a small room on Vasilievsky Island, a sixteen-year-old orphan opened a drawer, took out his father's old rotary phone, and prepared to place the first call of his new life.
The game had begun.