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come power. With power had come corruption, and with corruption had come crime, to the point that the FBI was nearly as active in Moscow as CIA had ever been. And with reason.
    The union between the former KGB and the former tolkachi was creating the most powerful and sophisticated criminal empire in human history.
    And so, Reilly had to agree, this Rasputin -- the name meant literally “the debauched one” -- might well have been part of that empire, and his death might well have been something related to that. Or something else entirely. This would be a very interesting investigation.
    “Well, Oleg Gregoriyevich, if you need any help, I will do my best to provide it for you,” the FBI agent promised.
    “Thank you, Misha.”
    And they parted ways, each with his own separate thoughts.
     
     

Jack Ryan 11 - Bear And The Dragon

Chapter 1 -- Echoes of the Boom
     
    “So, who were his enemies?” Lieutenant Colonel Shablikov asked.
    “Gregoriy Filipovich had many. He was overly free with his words. He insulted too many people and -- ”
    “What else?” Shablikov demanded. “He was not blown up in the middle of the street for abusing some criminal's feelings!”
    “He was beginning to think about importing narcotics,” the informant said next.
    “Oh? Tell us more.”
    “Grisha had contacts with Colombians. He met them in Switzerland three months ago, and he was working to get them to ship him cocaine through the port of Odessa. I heard whispers that he was setting up a pipeline to transport the drugs from there to Moscow.”
    “And how was he going to pay them for it?” The militia colonel asked. Russian currency was, after all, essentially valueless.
    “Hard currency. Grisha made a lot of that from Western clients, and certain of his Russian clients. He knew how to make such people happy, for a price.”
    Rasputin, the colonel thought. And surely he'd been the debauched one. Selling the bodies of Russian girls -- and some boys, Shablikov knew -- for enough hard currency to purchase a large German car (for cash; his people had checked on the transaction already) and then planning to import drugs. That had to be for cash “up front,” too, as the Americans put it, which meant that he planned to sell the drugs for hard currency, too, since the Colombians probably had little interest in rubles. Avseyenko was no loss to his country. Whoever had killed him ought to get some reward...except someone new would certainly move into the vacuum and take control of the pimp's organization...and the new one might be smarter. That was the problem with criminals. There was a Darwinian process at work. The police caught some -- even many -- but they only caught the dumb ones, while the smart ones just kept getting smarter, and it seemed that the police were always trying to catch up, because those who broke the law always had the initiative.
    “Ah, yes, and so, who else imports drugs?”
    “I do not know who it is. There are rumors, of course, and I know some of the street vendors, but who actually organizes it, that I do not know.”
    “Find out,” Shablikov ordered coldly. “It ought not to tax your abilities.”
    “I will do what I can,” the informant promised.
    “And you will do it quickly, Pavel Petrovich. You will also find out for me who takes over Rasputin's empire.”
    “Yes, Comrade Polkovnik Leytnant.” The usual nod of submission.
    There was power in being a senior policeman, Shablikov thought. Real human power, which you could impose on other men, and that made it pleasurable. In this case, he'd told a mid-level criminal what he had to do, and it would be done, lest his informant be arrested and find his source of income interrupted. The other side of the coin was protection of a sort. So long as this criminal didn't stray too far from what the senior cop found to be acceptable violations, he was safe from the law. It was the same over most of the world, Lieutenant Colonel Yefim Konstantinovich