7. They try to assassinate me

Igor awaits me in front of the helicopter. He looks newly shaven, but his eyes are bloodshot and have a wild streak. “You look much better today, My President!” he screams over the roar from the helicopter rotors “Strong!” I wonder if he is on some medication, but I don’t want to ask.

Igor is the head of the FPS presidential division, in other words, the boss of my personal bodyguards. He is a short, muscular man with an oval head and thin glasses. Patrushev once told him he looked like Laurentia Beria on anabolic steroids. Igor beamed with pride. But today, he looks distraught!

As we enter the helicopter, Igor's eyes darts in all directions. I realise his red eyes are not, as I assumed, the result of some new FSB drug, but simply the result of no sleep.

There has been an increase in threats against me lately. It is the “war” of course. It lures the worms out of the moist earth. Most of the attempts have been embarrassingly amateurish. A psychotic housewife from Perm with a pair of scissors throwing herself in front of my motorcade. A drunk soldier trying to throw a landmine over the fence here at Novo Ogaryovo. In no case have they been even close to hurting me. But Igor does not care whether they are failures or not.

From Igors perspective, ALL risks are unnecessary risks. This means that everything except sitting in the new bunker under my home.

I suppose it is his job to worry. But I also have a job. And to do that, I need to go to Sochi because that is where the overweight clown Alexander Lukashenko, the president of Belarus, always wants to meet me. The sky is grey as the helicopter takes off.

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