Silin, a silver-haired, determinedly courtly man, savoured the word, enjoying it. The pinnacle: the absolute peak. Where he’d been for so long. And intended to stay. Complacent again, he thought: wanted to stay. And would, at any cost. But not to himself. To others.

Through thick-lensed glasses Silin gazed steadily around the assembled group, decided who those others were going to be, separating friend from enemy. Wrong again, like complacency. No friends. Never had been. Theirs wasn’t a business of friends. Theirs was a business of stronger or weaker, winner or loser, living or dying. Who then, until it suited them to change, was loyal; which of these six, each the head of a Family in his own right, was prepared to go on supporting him as boss of bosses of the Dolgoprudnaya?

Impossible to assess, Silin decided. Making everything so uncertain. He should have moved on his earliest suspicions of an overthrow, not waited for Markov to confirm it. He’d given Sobelov time to get organized, to trickle his poison and make his promises and establish the rival allegiances. Too late now to cut out the cancer by the obvious incision. By now the bastard most probably had his informants within the Dolgoprudnaya itself – Silin’s own Family – so Silin knew he couldn’t risk a hit being turned back upon himself.

He had to do it another way and knew he could. He simply had to be cleverer than Sergei Petrovich, prove himself and his worth to the Commission, and let them make the choice. Which he was sure they would when he declared his own intended coup. And in his favour. Because he had the way – a better way than a bullet or a bomb – although none of them knew it yet. All he had to do was let Sergei Petrovich Sobelov over-expose himself and his inadequacies for the rest of them to realize how close they’d come to disaster by doubting him. That would be the time physically to dispose of Sobelov.