Boris traveled to meetings and watched with deep bitterness as the old order fell apart. Men who had once been respected were now shaking down street kiosks, taking percentages from frightened business owners, and openly working with police.
It went against everything the old code stood for. But there were too many of them now, and too few of the old guard left. In 1994, Skala was killed.
He was shot in the entryway of his own building in his southern city. The hit was clean and professional. He never even got a hand to his gun. Boris came at once for the funeral.
He stood silently by the open casket and understood that what was being buried was not just one man, but an entire era. In 1996, the Thinker was murdered too. By then he had been released and was living quietly in a remote northern village.
They found his body in his own garden. His head had been split with an ax. The neighbors all told police they had seen and heard nothing.
The case was closed quickly as a drunken domestic killing. Boris knew better. It was no accident and no random violence. Someone was systematically removing the old authorities so the younger predators could do as they pleased.
In 1998, Valera Sedoy was killed. His car was blown up in the center of an industrial city. Boris learned of it the next day.
He came to the scene and stood there a long time, looking at the blackened patch of pavement, the scattered glass, the smell of burned metal. Late that same evening, Boris made a final decision.
He could not keep living that way. The endless criminal war was devouring everyone. One by one, the old men were dying.
The younger generation had no interest in reason or restraint. The old rules of honor had become empty words. Boris was tired—tired of blood, funerals, and betrayal.
So he disappeared. Through an old contact in law enforcement, a man he had known since youth, he got new papers.
From then on, he was Pyotr Ivanovich Kuznetsov. He moved to a remote settlement in the far north. There he rented a worn little house from an elderly widow.
He found work as a night watchman at a small sawmill. He lived quietly, modestly, and kept to himself. He never told anyone about the life he had left behind.
For seventeen long years, he stayed hidden in that quiet shadow. He kept a garden, read books, and went fishing. The neighbors knew him only as old Pete—a harmless, peaceable man who minded his own business…
