pavement of the alleyway. He struck his head as he fell. He was either dead or unconscious as Trofimov stood over him, checked his pockets and took his wallet.
“Hey, kid,” one of the enforcers said. It was the one who had taken a knee to the groin. “Gimme that wallet.”
Trofimov tossed the wallet to the man without hesitation, as if this had been his intent from the start. He regarded the enforcer coolly; the enforcer stared back. Finally the other man said, “What? What the hell you want?”
“I want a job,” Trofimov said.
The enforcer seemed to think about that for a moment. He looked down at the debtor and then back to his partner, who was slowly struggling to his feet. “What do you do?” he asked.
“Name it,” Trofimov had said.
The enforcer laughed. Eventually he nodded. “Come on, then.”
That had been the humble beginning from which Yuri Trofimov built his empire. He had at first worked his way up in the hierarchy of organized crime in Miami, learning the violent ropes. His talent for persuading people, his guile, his natural, snake-oil charm served him well. He moved up within the ranks. When he had enough support, when he had co-opted enough of the organization, he took it over from within, then fought a war with those who disagreed with his palace coup. Finally he ruled uncontested. He leveraged his money and his power into several legitimate enterprises; the boom in consumer electronics and the new Internet age helped him along the way.
When he had the time, he attended college. In business school he learned the formal terms behind what he had found through hard-won and bitter experience. Then, in journalism school, he found the true means of channeling his natural abilities. Always, he branched out, expanded, reinvested. His legitimate empire, on the backs of his criminal enterprises, became truly, remarkably, breathtakingly powerful.
He expanded from electronics into heavy industry, buying shares in the few Russian businesses that showed financial promise, greasing the wheels back home and in the United States with plenty of bribes. When he couldn’t use his power or his money to get what he wanted, he knew who to hire. He learned just how much was possible if one sought the services of armed, amoral men, the types of men who fought wars for hire, the types of men who could be counted on to take their money and quietly go about their business. As his ties to such mercenaries deepened, his reach grew. Those who wouldn’t bend to the will of Yuri Trofimov often found themselves dead, victims of random street violence, presumed gang shootings or even open massacres whose perpetrators were never caught.
Always, Trofimov was careful to keep his own record, his own reputation, clean. He knew as well as anyone that the government of the United States had its suspicions, but was hamstrung by its own rules. For all its tough talk about homeland security, its posturing and its saber rattling, it didn’t have the killer instinct it needed to deal with the likes of Yuri Trofimov. Thus he would continue his work, under their very noses. They would be able to prove nothing. They would never be able to assign to Trofimov the blame for the storm that was to come.
Eventually he bought his United States citizenship. It was easy enough—a bribe here, a favor there, the gentle application of political power over there. He followed the models established by other businessmen before him, never reinvented the wheel if he didn’t have to do so. When TBT and its news network finally burst on the scene, Trofimov was more than prepared to take market share by giving his viewers what they wanted. He traded in the sensational, the outrageous, the bloody, the messy. Always, his hatred of the West came through, and it tapped the streak of self-destructive, self-loathing guilt some of his now-fellow Americans seemed to feel about themselves and their nation.
For many men, this would have been enough. Riches. Influence. Swaying the cultural pendulum and affecting the collective consciousness of the most powerful nation in the world.
Yuri Trofimov wasn’t most men.
He wouldn’t be truly satisfied until the United States, the embodiment of the hated West, suffered as his homeland had suffered. Only when the arrogant United States knew the pain of losing its military might abroad, only when the miserable United States was humiliated on the international stage as the Soviet Union and later Russia had been, only when the United States military—the truncheon with which the Americans beat all around them—was utterly disgraced would Yuri Trofimov be truly satisfied.
And thus he had, using the great wealth and power available to him, embarked on the elaborate plan that was to be his life’s crowning achievement. He was going to destroy the United States military, using the Americans themselves to help him do the work.
He had, of course, no compunctions about breaking the law. He had begun his life as a criminal; laws were for other men, not the rich and powerful like Trofimov. As long as he was smart enough not to get caught, and he had always been smart enough not to get caught, he could do as he willed, pay whom he wished to kill whom he wished. It was the way of things. Simple violence solved many problems. Complicated, crafty, deceitful violence…well, that solved so much more. And of what use was power if it wasn’t applied, used to shape the world in the way the man wielding that power saw fit? That was, after all, what had first attracted Trofimov to wielding power over others: the ability to manipulate and shape the world by affecting the will of other men and women. He let his hatred guide him. He would shape the world.
He started by infiltrating and then co-opting most of the Peace At Any Cost group. It was the largest and had the most influence on the antimilitary scene within the United States, a fact born out by the copious research his people at TBT News conducted at his direction. It was simple enough to liberate from the group those members willing to take the next step, to use actual violence in fighting the hated American military and what it represented. Trofimov himself had selected the first targets. He had made certain that these baby killers, these returning war criminals, knew that they weren’t safe in their own country, weren’t safe from the horrors they had inflicted overseas.
He hadn’t counted on the American government covering up the crimes, however. This robbed his murders of the impact they were to have. He fought his propaganda campaign on many fronts, including spreading and sensationalizing the reports of the latest high-profile military atrocities, and he manufactured these accordingly when it was required. This helped, but it didn’t fully compensate for the covered-up killings of returning military personnel. Then TBT News had run a report on the growing popularity of protests of military funerals, and Trofimov had another stroke of brilliance. He had his PAAC people use their groups to promote more such protests, and when the time was right, he had the elements within PAAC that he controlled break away and begin the killings anew.
Of course, the peace activists were difficult to control, and had no training in violence or the use of weapons. That didn’t matter. Trofimov had access to more than enough men and matériel to train and direct these useful idiots. He had called in his mercenaries and made sure they knew what he wanted, then allowed them to run the operations as they saw fit. He still suggested targets, but on the whole, the operation ran without his direct involvement. This was good; it increased the level of plausible deniability he held, further insulating him from exposure, keeping him and his reputation safe while his people brought his will to fruition.
But all of this was just the start. It was a taste of what was to come, the barest tip of the operations his personnel were running. When Trofimov actually stopped to consider the vast scope of the operation, the world-changing audacity of it, it awed even him. It was a fitting life’s work, as he saw it. It was an appropriately bold testament to the power wielded by one Yuri Trofimov, and the legacy left behind by the application of that power would be a different world. That world would be one in which the United States military, humiliated and diminished, would have far less power over the lives of every other person on the planet…and
