February 1997 | Age 22 | Neva Group Headquarters, St. Petersburg
The February cold was brutal, even by St. Petersburg standards. Temperatures had dropped to minus twenty-five Celsius, and the Neva had frozen solid enough to support truck traffic. Alexei stood at his office window, watching a convoy of cargo trucks cross the ice—a shortcut that saved hours of detour.
Ivan entered without knocking, which had become his habit when the news was bad.
"We have a problem," Ivan said. "Different from last month. This one's closer to home."
Alexei turned. "Explain."
"I intercepted a message. Not from a Chechen warlord. From someone inside St. Petersburg. Someone with connections to your competitors."
He placed a folded piece of paper on the desk. Alexei unfolded it. The message was brief, written in Cyrillic block letters:
"THE YOUNG ONE GROWS TOO FAST. CUT HIM DOWN BEFORE HE BECOMES A TREE."
No signature. No return address.
"Where did this come from?"
"One of my men picked it up from a dead drop near the Moscow train station. The courier was a low-level criminal—paid five hundred rubles to leave the note. He didn't know who hired him."
Alexei studied the paper. The phrasing—"cut him down before he becomes a tree"—suggested someone who knew Russian idioms. Someone educated. Not a common criminal.
"This isn't Gelayev," Alexei said. "This is someone else."
"I agree. Gelayev wanted money. This is personal. Someone wants you gone, not for ransom, but because you're a threat."
---
Boris joined them ten minutes later, summoned from his office down the hall. The three men sat around Alexei's desk, a whiteboard now covered with names.
"Possible suspects," Boris said, writing as he spoke. "Category one: direct competitors. Transneft executives. The oil companies we've displaced. The pipeline operators losing business to our network."
He wrote three names.
"Category two: political enemies. The faction in the Duma that opposes private infrastructure. The regional governors who wanted bribes we didn't pay."
Two more names.
"Category three: other oligarchs. Berezovsky already has investigators on us. Khodorkovsky views us as a threat. Abramovich is an unknown—he doesn't show his hand."
Alexei stared at the board. Five names in categories one and two. Three in category three. Any of them could have sent the note.
"We need to narrow it down," he said. "Who benefits most if I disappear?"
Boris considered. "Transneft, obviously. Without your pipeline, their monopoly returns. But Transneft doesn't operate this way—they use regulatory weapons, not assassins."
"Berezovsky?"
"Possible. He's eliminated rivals before—not personally, but through intermediaries. He views any independent businessman as a threat to his system."
"Khodorkovsky?"
"Unlikely. He's too smart. He knows that if you die, your assets get scattered—probably to the government or to other oligarchs. He'd rather buy you out than kill you."
Alexei nodded. "So we're looking at someone less strategic. Someone who wants me dead but hasn't thought through the consequences."
"That narrows it to the desperate ones," Ivan said. "The competitors we're driving out of business. The ones with nothing left to lose."
Olga's intelligence team spent three days running down leads. They came back with a name: Arkady Belov, former owner of Volga Transport, a small pipeline operator that Alexei had bankrupted when his Samara-Volga line opened.
Belov had lost everything—his company, his mansion, his influence. He now lived in a rented apartment on the outskirts of Moscow, drinking heavily and cursing Alexei's name to anyone who would listen.
"He's been heard saying 'Volkov should be shot' at least four times in the past month," Olga reported. "And he has connections to the criminal underworld through a cousin who runs a protection racket."
"Could he have sent the note?"
"He has motive and opportunity. But he doesn't have the phrasing—'cut him down before he becomes a tree' is too literary for Belov. He's a former Soviet apparatchik, but not a wordsmith."
"Then someone else wrote it. Someone using Belov as cover."
Olga nodded. "That's my assessment. Belov is a useful idiot. The real sender is someone who knows how to write, how to plan, and how to evade detection."
---
Three days later, a second message arrived. This time, it was slipped under the door of Alexei's apartment—his new fortified apartment, with twenty-four-hour security.
The security footage showed a woman in a heavy coat dropping the envelope and walking away. Her face was obscured by a scarf.
Ivan was furious. "Someone got past my men. Unacceptable."
"Someone got past your men because they knew the patrol patterns," Alexei said calmly. "That means inside knowledge. Someone on the inside."
The second message read:
"YOU SURVIVED THE FIRST WARNING. THE SECOND WILL NOT BE A NOTE."
Boris paled. "This is escalating."
Alexei read the note again. The handwriting matched the first—same block letters, same paper stock. The message was clearer now: the sender wasn't just threatening. They were promising action.
"We need to leave St. Petersburg," Ivan said. "Temporarily. Go somewhere safe."
"No. If I run, they win. I stay. I find them. I end them."
"How?"
Alexei picked up the note. "This paper. It's not standard. It's high-quality, watermarked. Not something you buy at a corner store. Trace it."
Olga took the note. "I'll have our contacts at the paper mills check the watermark."
"And the woman in the coat. Track her. Find out who she is, who she works for, who she's sleeping with."
---
By the end of February, Olga had her answer.
The paper came from a specialty supplier that served government offices and major corporations. The watermark identified it as paper used by the Ministry of Fuel and Energy—the same ministry that regulated Transneft and approved pipeline permits.
"The note was written on government paper," Olga said. "Someone with access to the Ministry's supplies. That doesn't mean the Ministry sent it—anyone could have stolen the paper. But it narrows the search."
"The woman?"
"Identified. Her name is Irina Mikhailova. She's a secretary at the Ministry of Fuel and Energy. Low-level, no clearance. But her boyfriend—"
"Her boyfriend?"
"Her boyfriend is a mid-level manager at Transneft. A man named Dmitri Volkov. No relation."
Alexei's blood ran cold. Not from the name coincidence, but from the implication. A Transneft manager, dating a Ministry secretary, using her access to deliver threats.
"We have our link," he said. "Transneft is behind this. Not officially—they wouldn't be stupid enough to authorize it. But someone in their organization decided to take matters into their own hands."
"What do we do?" Boris asked.
Alexei thought for a long moment. He could go to the police—but the police were corrupt, and Transneft had friends everywhere. He could go to the media—but that would escalate the conflict into a public war.
Or he could handle it himself.
"Find Dmitri Volkov. Bring him to me. Quietly."
---
Three nights later, Dmitri Volkov sat across from Alexei in a warehouse on the outskirts of St. Petersburg. Ivan's men had picked him up outside his apartment, blindfolded him, and driven him in circles for an hour before depositing him in the chair.
He was a nervous man—thinning hair, sweating profusely, hands trembling.
"I know about the notes," Alexei said. "I know your girlfriend delivered them. I know you wrote them."
Dmitri said nothing, his eyes darting around the warehouse.
"Here's what's going to happen," Alexei continued. "You're going to tell me who told you to write those notes. If you lie, I will know. And then this conversation becomes unpleasant."
"It was my boss," Dmitri whispered. "Yuri Krasnov. Head of Regional Operations at Transneft. He said you were destroying the company. He said someone needed to scare you off."
"Scare me off. Not kill me."
"Just scare. The notes were supposed to make you leave St. Petersburg. That's all. I swear."
Alexei studied the man. He was telling the truth—or at least, he believed he was.
"Here's what happens next," Alexei said. "You're going to resign from Transneft. You're going to break up with your girlfriend. And you're going to leave St. Petersburg within the week. If you're still here in seven days, Ivan will find you. And the next conversation won't be as pleasant."
Dmitri nodded frantically.
"One more thing," Alexei said. "You're going to deliver a message to Yuri Krasnov. Tell him this: 'The young one is not scared. The young one is patient. And the young one remembers.'"
That night, Alexei wrote in his journal:
February 28, 1997
The warning wasn't from an assassin. It was from a coward. A middle manager at Transneft, trying to frighten me away.
It almost worked. Not because I was afraid—but because it reminded me how many people want me gone.
The note said: "Cut him down before he becomes a tree."
I am becoming a tree. Deep roots. Wide branches. Hard to cut.
But trees get cut down all the time. By storms. By axes. By men with enough patience.
I need to grow faster than the axes can swing.
Transneft will try again. Their manager will be replaced by someone more competent. The threats will return.
So I'll build higher walls. Deeper moats. Stronger alliances.
And I'll remember: the best way to survive is to become too big to kill.