Guy N. Smith

The slowly decaying corpse lay on the bed in the Kremlin. The icy silence of a news blackout lending a chilling unreality to an occasion of monumental significance. For the Russian leader is dead. A shape, blacker than the shadows; a thing that smelled of putrefaction and emanated a coldness beyond the iciness of the Siberian wastes. Lips screwed into a bestial snarl, eyes sunken and staring. Suddenly his powerful chest is heaving, drawing in breath and expelling it noisily, learning to breathe again. Learning to live again.