The main character is Alekei "Volk" Volkovoy. Volk fought and was severely wounded in Russia's war against Chechnya. On the surface Volk is a powerful gangster with a hand in virtually all underworld rackets. Really, Volk is a powerful killing machine, still working as a covert military Colonel.
Volk is hired or maneuvered to hijack a recently discovered and priceless Leonardo Da Vinci painting, Leda and the Swan, from the Heritage, a St. Petersburg museum.
Brent Ghelfi has served as a clerk on the U.S. Court of Appeals, been a partner in a Phoenix-headquartered law firm, and now owns and operates several businesses. He has traveled extensively throughout Russia. You know with certainty that Ghelfi has been to Russia. So much history in this tough, dark, and poor country. We look at the new Russia since the fall of the wall and the Chechnya war, through Ghelfi's eyes or Volk's and see a wild west where the threat of violence is everywhere.
I was struck by the bleakness of Moscow when Ghelfi, writes about the powerful Maxim pointing out his window at Red Square:
...where thousands of executions have been carried out before cheering throngs. Then it aims at the Konstantin and Yelena Tower, also known as torture tower, for the suffering it housed. Then it sweeps to take in Annunciation Tower, which Ivan the Terrible used as a political prison for the doomed. Finally it angles down to the subterranean bowels, where buckets of Russian blood have been spilled for sadistic sport, running in red rivulets of sorrow and pain into the Moscow River.I highly recommend Volk's Game and look forward to the sequel."Tourists," he says almost spitting. "They snap their pictures. Drink and eat until they are so fat they can hardly move. And they admire those walls. How Russian, they say. How historic. How beautiful."
He drops his arm and snorts disgust. "What fools. This place is fucking death, inside those walls and out. Invaders, patriots-they all die suffering. Nothing changes. But for now, in a nothing time, the blood is washed clean, and the herds of cattle see art."
Putin is much hated for putting one of the oligarchs in jail and returning his ill gotten billions to the Russian state treasury. Putin has about 70% approval rating from Russians because he has paid pensions and salaries, something the oligarchs prevented as they stole so much government money. He is also authoritarian but there is no doubt he remains the best thing to happen in Russia since the Berlin Wall fell.He recently arrested the guys who helped kill the anti-Putin journalist but the story was put onto an inside page of the LA Times, whereas the murder was put on the front page with a slant to make you think Putin caused the murder. The Volk novel I suspect is one more effort to blacken Russia. By the way, I am of German, Polish and English descent and have zero self interest in Russia. In fact, when it was part of the Soviet Union, I was a US intelligence analyst and foreign service officer working hard against the USSR. Sorry to post such a long piece but feel strongly about some aspects of the Volk book. bob baker see attached historical item re Red Square not rpt not used for exections.
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The Lobnoe mesto
The Lobnoe mesto in Moscow Kremlin The circular stone platform which stands before St. Basil's was constructed in 1598, on the site where a wooden dais had previously stood. The platform and its predecessor were used for proclamations to the crowds gathered on Red Square and not, as is often claimed, for public executions. The most famous of these - the quartering of Cossack rebel Stepan Razin, Ivan the Terrible's gruesomely inventive torture of hostile boyars, and Peter the Great's mass execution of the Stresltsy Kremlin guard, all took place nearby.
From here the orders of the Grand Princes were announced by criers. It was also here that Ivan the Terrible, with quite a flare for drama, performed public penitence and several times declared his abdication. It was also traditional for heirs to the throne to be presented to the people here on their fourteenth birthdays. On religious holidays, a lectern was placed on the Lobnoe Mesto, turning St. Basil's into the altar of a vast open-air cathedral comprising the whole of Red Square.
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