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still young enough for an American
     girlfriend barely thirty-two who’d modeled for Victoria’s Secret among others. Surrounded
     by his youthful staff and his lover, he would defy time and live forever because life
     was good. Life was fun.
    Without question, these uptight American journalists would refer to him as an oligarch
     in their reports, a continent-hopping mogul who’d made his fortune after the fall
     of the Soviet Union. They’d say he was a wild man who had the president’s ear and
     was, like the country’s other oligarchs, heavily influencing the government because
     of his connections and wealth. He would dismiss those shopworn claims and give them
     something more impressive to write about that would enthrall their readers. To begin,
     he would discuss the ambitious nature of his new offices in Peru and the great work
     he was going to do there.
    They stood now on a balcony overlooking the hundreds of individually decorated cubicles
     and walls of classic arcade games. Banks of enormous windows brought in the snowscape
     and frozen Moskva River beyond. “It is wonderful, is it not?” he asked.
    The reporters nodded, issued perfunctory grins, then launched quite suddenly and aggressively
     into their questions, as though the sheen of his celebrity and success had suddenly
     worn thin.
    “What do you think about social media websites like Facebook, Instagram, and others?”
    Kasperov refilled their vodka glasses as he spoke. “Freedom is good thing. We all
     know this. But too much freedom allows bad guys to do bad things, right?”
    “So you don’t like Facebook.”
    “I’m
suspicious
of these websites. We have VK here, right? It’s like Facebook clone, very popular,
     even my daughter who’s in college has account. But these websites can be used by wrong
     people to send wrong messages.”
    “You said freedom is a good thing. But exactly how much freedom do
you
have?”
    “What do mean? I have much freedom!” He gestured with his drink toward the work floor.
     “And so do they.”
    Kasperov knew exactly what they were getting at, but he preferred not to discuss it.
    In Russia, high-tech firms like his had to cooperate with the
siloviki
—the network of military, security, law enforcement, and KGB veterans at the core
     of President Treskayev’s regime. Kasperov worked intimately with the SVR and other
     agencies to hunt down, expose, and capture cybercriminals who’d already unleashed
     attacks on the banking systems in the United States and Europe. In turn, the Kremlin
     had given him enough freedom to become the successful entrepreneur he was, but their
     arrangement was their business—not fodder for American journalism.
    “You work very closely with the intelligence community here, don’t you?”
    “What is it they say in
Top Gun
movie? I could tell you, but then I must kill you, right?” He broke out in raucous
     laughter that wasn’t quite mimicked by the reporters.
    “Mr. Kasperov, there have been some allegations linking you to the VK blackout during
     the elections. Some say you helped the government bring down the social media website
     to help quell the opposition. After all, they
had
struck a rallying cry on social media.”
    “I’ve already commented on that. I had nothing to do with this. Nothing at all. We
     detected no attacks on VK. None at all. We don’t know what happened.”
    “And you don’t find that—to use your word—
suspicious
?”
    “Of course I do, but it’s all been investigated and put to sleep. Don’t you have any
     more fun questions? If not, I have some stories to tell you.”
    The journalists frowned at each other, then the taller one spoke up again: “Your company
     is valuable to the Kremlin, so do you think you can ever really be independent of
     it?”
    Kasperov tried to quell his frustration. He had been told this would be an interview,
     not an interrogation. “There’s no problem here. We work together the same way other