Game Over by Andrew Klavan

cared whether Kurodar was miserable or not.
    The woman with the pot of food stood beside the creature, spooning soup into the toothless hole of his mouth. Two other men, also South African villagers, also dressed in old khaki, stood tending the machines and screens that blinked and fizzled all around the room. They glanced over at Hepplewhite when he entered, then quickly glanced away. Their eyes were wide and frightened. They had been expecting him and only hoped he would leave them alive after dispatching Kurodar. He would. He did not kill for pleasure, after all. It was just a business to him.
    Kurodar’s huge, insanely bloodshot eyes also turned in Hepplewhite’s direction. If the scientist felt fear, he didn’t show it. He merely lifted one withered branch of an arm and made a gesture, brushing the woman away. She withdrew, taking her food with her and, with a quick, frightened backward glance, hurried out of the room.
    â€œHepplewhite,” said Kurodar. Whatever his voice had once been like, it was now a dead echoing thing. It sounded like something dropped into a deep well. His Russian accent was still thick, and the loss of his teeth and the atrophy of his lips made his words indistinct. “Have a seat,” he said.
    But Hepplewhite remained standing, slouched, his hands in his pockets. “No need,” he said. “I won’t be here long.”
    Kurodar’s laughter sounded like a big hollow gong being struck repeatedly. “You mean simply to kill me and be on your way?” he said in a more or less pleasant tone.
    Hepplewhite shrugged. “You know how it is. You are a loose end. Loose ends must be tied up.” The sight of Kurodar disgusted him, but he forced himself to look into the red-streaked eyes. There was an intensity of feeling in them, but what feeling? Hepplewhite wasn’t sure. “You don’t seem to be afraid,” he said.
    Kurodar laughed again. “Of you? No.”
    â€œOf death then. Are you at peace with death?”
    Kurodar stopped laughing suddenly. Suddenly his tone was dark and seething. “I am at peace with nothing,” he said. “I wake up in a rage every morning and go to sleep in a rage every night. Between waking and sleeping, I think of one thing only: vengeance, nothing but vengeance. I am never at peace.”
    Hepplewhite nodded. His handlers at the Assembly had briefed him on Kurodar. He knew what the terroristsaid of himself was true. Doshenko had been the son of a high-ranking KGB official in the old slave state of the Soviet Union. The KGB was the brutal Soviet security agency—their spies and secret police. Kurodar’s father, Adam Doshenko, had had enormous power. With a single word and for no apparent reason, he could have almost anyone thrown in prison, order him tortured, order him killed. Kurodar’s father could make his enemies disappear forever with a fingersnap—and he often did.
    When the Soviet Union collapsed, a mob had dragged Kurodar’s father out into the street. In their fury at a lifetime of oppression, they had beaten the man to death right in front of his son’s eyes. Kurodar had worshipped his father, and the killing had marked him for life. He had nursed his anger inside him until it grew into a titanic and obsessional rage.
    He wanted vengeance—not on the people who had mobbed and beaten his father. He wanted vengeance on America. The Americans were the ones he blamed. It was the Americans more than anyone who had hemmed in the U.S.S.R. and brought her down, all without firing a single shot. And why? As Kurodar saw it, all his father wanted—all the Soviets wanted—was to make all people equal. That’s why they had killed tens of millions of their citizens. That’s why they had conquered hundreds of millions more. What else could they do? People were not naturally equal. You had to make them so! Cut them all down to the same size and kill the ones who