Savage Recruit (Ryan Savage Thriller Series Book 8)
world.”Florin nodded. Mikhail was right. They had come a long way together. When they met all those years ago, Florin had been working a drab desk job in a drab office with Romania’s Foreign Intelligence Service. Mikhail, a carryover from the KGB, was working as a mid-level officer in Moscow’s Federal Security Service.
They were first introduced at a dinner party at the Russian Embassy in Bucharest. The evening was perfectly ordinary; nothing memorable about it. Just a typical assembly of intelligence officers, politicians, and administrators. Jokes were told about how things had been before the Iron Curtain came down, a speech was made by Romania’s president, who praised the blossoming relationship between his country and Russia, and alcohol was plentiful and free flowing. Toward the end of the evening, a mutual colleague in the FIS had introduced Florin to Mikhail. The two had spoken no more than five minutes, briefly offering their opinions of the president's speech and the champagne. And that was it. The next morning, when Florin returned to his office nursing a hangover, he almost did not recognize the large Russian waiting for him behind his desk. Even now, Florin recognized the pattern that had always been there. Mikhail did not ask for permission to do anything. Not back then, and not now. He had a way of inserting himself into your private space without asking and without apology. It was his way of asserting a psychological advantage, wordlessly informing you who was in charge.
Mikhail had asked Florin to shut the door to the office and invited him to have a seat in the chair in front of his desk. The Russian then informed, Florin of his need for certain information. He needed access to the Deputy of the Interior’s personal call logs and banking records and had been told that Florin might be able to help him. To grease the wheels, Mikhail had reached into the inside pocket of his blazer, brought out an envelope, and set it on the desk. And that was how Florin’s betrayal of his country had begun. He hadn’t even blinked. The offer was made, he had accepted, and that was it. He never looked back, fully unpossessed by guilt. Nevermind that the Deputy of the Interior was mysteriously found dead at a villa in the Alps, not a month later.
Thereafter, Florin became Russia’s go-to source for any and all workings within Romania, functioning as an informant for nearly fifteen years. If Russia needed something—anything—and Florin could get his hands on it, then Russia always got it. Over the years, he received many more envelopes filled with cash and payments substantial enough to warrant a healthy deposit into an untraceable bank account in the Caribbean.
Eventually, Mikhail took his leave of the FSB and entered the private sector, specializing in back-channel deals and black market industrial trade. Within a decade, he was one of Russia’s unofficial oligarchs, one of the exceptionally wealthy who pulled the nation’s levers behind the vast array of curtains. Florin remained with Romania’s Foreign Intelligence Service, moving up in rank and acquiring greater access to clandestine files and sensitive information. He was happy with the arrangement, content to stay under the radar building the means to a nice retirement. Until, that is, an opportunity presented itself that made all the money the Russians had paid him to date look like cheap coins.
A trusted source had informed Florin that Tanzania, in a move intended to offset a portion of their sovereign debt burden, was making plans to devalue its currency. The information came straight out of Africa and was known to no one else outside of the highest officials in Tanzania. There were no whispers of it in any of the global financial markets. Florin presented the details to Mikhail, who, after commissioning the research, confirmed the accuracy of the inside information. Mikhail gathered a small group of trusted billionaires and together they shorted the currency. Florin recognized the golden opportunity and also claimed it for his own, dumping everything he had into it. When it was all said and done, Florin was a very wealthy man, and Mikhail, already affluent in his own right, even richer.
The deal had served as the fulcrum Florin needed to pry himself away from government work. He turned in his notice, but not before greasing the palms of anyone in Bucharest who might wonder why his lifestyle was about to change radically for the better. Money had a way of bringing nosy people to sudden disinterest.
So he stepped out into a life of newfound wealth and, following Mikhail’s lead, utilized his extensive network of political connections to increase his net worth many times over. He purchased vast holdings of real estate in Dubai and London, black market oil contracts in Libya, and cornered the shadow gambling economy in Singapore. As it turned out, the Romanian intelligence officer possessed a great deal of business acumen that had lain dormant during his years with the FSI.
His business interests eventually diverged from those of Mikhail Ivanov. The two men came to speak only on rare occasions and then, only when they needed a favor that would help leverage a deal or introduction in their favor. Over time, Mikhail had solidified a reputation as a hard-nosed and even backstabbing associate, leaving business partners hanging out to dry or using them as scapegoats until the earlier respect and admiration Florin had had for the older Russian was all but gone, disdain and distrust taking their place.
So it had only been with great reluctance that Florin had come to Mikhail with this latest of opportunities. The upside was too large, the possibilities too vast to pass up. And because the nature of the opportunity related directly to the Kremlin, Florin had no choice but to bring it to the former KGB officer.
That was eight months ago now, and everything had been proceeding perfectly, until several days ago, when it all imploded. Florin hadn’t seen it coming. No one had.