In the letter, he had pleaded his case directly to the president. He had asked the man-the same man he had spent the past thirteen years vilifying, attacking, threatening, and blaming for countless murders-to forgive him for his actions in exile, to allow him to return to Russia. To pardon him, as a Christian, to allow him to spend his remaining years in his homeland. In the letter, he promised to stay out of politics, to be a simple mathematician. Perhaps to teach at some university, inspire a new generation to think mathematically. Even in this letter, he hadn't been able to resist offering up his services-if the president should need them-as an adviser, to help with running the country. But in the end, it was a simple request to let him come home.

He had sealed the letter in an envelope, and had pa.s.sed it along to a person he knew would be able to deliver it-and had waited for a response.

As of that evening, he had heard nothing back.

Exactly, he thought, what he should have expected. A powerful man like Putin, receiving the letter of an unimpressive man.

Perhaps he should have ended the letter the same way he'd ended the interview with the young journalist from Forbes.

"I don't know what I should do," he'd told him, seeming to sink beneath his black scarf and into his dark turtleneck sweater, like a turtle into its sh.e.l.l. "I am sixty-seven years old. And I don't know what I should do."

I lost the meaning, he had said. The meaning of life.

Maybe he hadn't understood what he had meant. Maybe the only people who could truly understand were those who had been there, throughout it all. The players, big and small.

Alone in the bar of crimson and black, he closed his eyes and concentrated on those fingers against ivory, the scales that seemed to go on forever.

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT.

March 23, 2013.

Ascot, Berkshire, England.

SEVENTEEN MINUTES PAST THREE in the afternoon.

A carpeted hallway bisecting the second floor of a sprawling, gated mansion in one of the most exclusive suburbs of London.

A man in a dark suit took the last few steps of the hallway at a near sprint, then hit a locked bathroom door shoulder first. The wood splintered like a bomb going off, and then the man was inside, shoes skidding against the tiled floor.

Almost immediately, he saw the body. Fully dressed, splayed out across the tiles, slight of frame but already beginning to bloat. Even from across the room, the man in the suit could make out the intense bruising around the corpse's neck, as well as the ligature digging into the skin just above the mottled throat. A dark scarf, his favorite, according to his family, which he wore almost daily, whatever the weather. Similar material hung from a metal shower rail, directly above.

Christ. The man in the suit blinked, hard. He knew what he was supposed to think happened here; and really, he had no reason to believe that the scene in front of him wasn't as simple as it would soon appear to the veritable brigade of police officers that would descend on this lavish mansion within the next few hours. The body on the floor, the suited man's employer of many years, whom he had last seen alive just eighteen hours earlier, had over the past few weeks become visibly depressed, despondent, and withdrawn. His final interview, which he'd given the night before, had almost been a suicide note: a despondent, lurching conversation, full of self-incrimination, dripping with desperation. A broken man, appearing even older than he actually was.

And no wonder; his boss's change in fortune over the past decade, and especially over the past few months, had been immense, the stuff of epic. This ending, a bathroom door locked from the inside, an apparent suicide by hanging, followed by the inexorable pull of gravity that had brought the body to the floor, capped a tragic spiral that probably couldn't have ended any other way.

But still, standing there in the doorway, seeing his boss lying there, cold, bruised, and twisted, it was hard not to wonder: could things really have been as simple as they seemed? And if so, how the h.e.l.l had it come to this? How the h.e.l.l had it all come crashing down?

The corpse on the floor had gone from being one of the richest men in the world to selling off his belongings-paintings, houses, cars-to pay off bills both professional and personal. His divorce from his second wife had cost him somewhere in the order of a quarter billion dollars. The lawsuit he had just lost had cost over one hundred million more, and there was a chance he was also on the hook for his opponent's legal feels, equally immense. He had split with his longtime partner, the Georgian, and had just finished battling his dead best friend's widow in court for a piece of her inheritance. In France, the government had taken most of his a.s.sets, at the behest of the Russian government that was trying to recoup what they accused him of having looted from a variety of businesses.

And his financial problems were only part of his descent; he had gone from being one of the most powerful kingmakers in modern history to living in a sort of gilded exile. Bodyguards, armed security, bulletproof cars and boats and planes, all were a way of life for a man who had survived multiple a.s.sa.s.sination attempts-some real, some threatened, some perhaps imagined.

Yet somehow he had always recovered, clawing his way back into history again and again. Perhaps the only real surprise here, in this second-floor bathroom, was that this dead man's third act had dragged on so long.

Whatever the truth, the man in the dark suit knew that these things were well beyond his pay grade. He was simply a bodyguard, who no longer had a body to guard. Eventually, the police investigators would arrive. They would come with radiation detectors and chemical sniffers, they would dust for fingerprints and scan for any signs of foul play. And no doubt, they would find nothing that would lead them to any conclusion beyond the most simple and obvious.

Still, no matter what the police officers found, no matter what their eventual inquest into this apparent suicide concluded, the man in the dark suit was certain that his boss wasn't killed by a scarf around his throat, a fall that broke his neck, or even by way of a sip of polonium-laced tea.

Boris Berezovsky was killed months before his corpse hit the bathroom floor, felled by a judge's gavel. A judgment not simply of a civil case-even the biggest in recorded history-but of an epic story, and the unique, ambitious, sometimes delusional man at its core.

EPILOGUE.

FIFTEEN HUNDRED MILES AWAY, in an empty, wood-paneled office, atop a cavernous desk, a dark red folder lay open, revealing monogrammed pages covered in a scrawl of handwriting-letters and words carefully applied, though running together in some places, mimicking their author's style of speech. Natural light spilled across the pages, mid-morning sun leaking into the room through a sliver between the thick, heavy drapes that covered one of the office's ma.s.sive windows. Sunlight caught, refracted, and then reflected by the metallic coat of arms hanging high above the desk itself-a glorious double-headed eagle, talons on one side clutching a magnificent scepter, claws on the other clutching an ornate orb. Each head bore a matching crown, with a third crown even higher.

A few feet away from the desk stood an athletic man in a perfectly tailored suit, hands clasped behind his back. He didn't relish mornings; nor did he particularly like to spend time in this office, though it lay at the heart of the country he loved, and had vowed years earlier to fiercely protect. But sometimes, this office-and that enormous desk-were an unavoidable part of his job.

As for the letter in the folder-which he had indeed read, with a mixture of amus.e.m.e.nt, pity, and maybe even disgust-well, that, on the other hand, was perfectly avoidable. Whether it would end up filed away somewhere or at the bottom of a drawer in that desk, he hadn't yet decided.

But whatever the case, he had more important things to think about than a sad, desperate, old man's letter, the etchings of an Oligarch who had enjoyed a spectacular rise-and an equally dramatic fall. In the end, in this room, in this place of true power-it was nothing more than ink on paper.

He had a long day ahead of him. A hundred problems to solve. A dozen people to meet. A handful of minor fires to put out.

A nation to rule.

He crossed the distance to the desk in two purposeful steps, and closed the folder, obscuring forever the handwritten pages inside.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS.

ONCE UPON A TIME IN Russia began with a phone call from the director/producer Brett Ratner, who told me I needed to get on a plane to London to meet someone with an incredible story to tell. I could not have imagined the adventure-both wonderful and terrifying-that would begin the minute I stepped off that British Airways flight; so first and foremost, I am indebted to Brett, whose energy and genius made this book possible. Likewise, I am extremely thankful for the generosity of my unnamed sources, who were willing to open up their lives to me during the year it took to research this book. I am in awe of the events described in this narrative, and am grateful to have been able to hear much of this story firsthand.

I am immensely grateful to Leslie Meredith, my wonderful editor; Donna Loffredo, a.s.sociate editor; and the entire team at Atria/Simon & Schuster. I am also indebted to Eric Simonoff and Matthew Snyder, agents extraordinaire. Many thanks to James Packer, John Cheng, and everyone at Ratpac for pushing me to write the best book of my career.

As always, I am indebted to my parents, and to my brothers and their families. Special mention to Trina Palance, who helps my family run smoothly. And to Tonya, Asher, Arya, and Bugsy-this is all for you.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR.

Ben Mezrich graduated magna c.u.m laude from Harvard. Since then he has published twelve books, including the New York Times bestsellers The Accidental Billionaires, which was adapted into the Academy Awardwinning film The Social Network, and Bringing Down the House, which has sold more than 1.5 million copies in twelve languages and became the basis for the Kevin s.p.a.cey hit movie 21. He has also published the national bestsellers Ugly Americans, Rigged, and Busting Vegas, and Bringing Down the Mouse, a book for young readers. He lives in Boston.

BEN MEZRICH is the author of twelve books, including the New York Times bestsellers The Accidental Billionaires, which was adapted into the Academy Awardwinning film The Social Network, and Bringing Down the House, which has sold more than 1.5 million copies in twelve languages and was the basis for the hit movie 21. He lives in Boston.

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