The Wizard of The Kremlin by Guiliano Da Empoli

For a long time, the most disparate reports had been circulating about him. Some said he'd retired to a monastery on Mount Athos to pray among the rocks and lizards, others swore they'd seen him partying at a villa in Sotogrande with a cast of coked-up supermodels. Still others said he'd been spotted on a runway at the Sharjah airport, at the militia headquarters in the Donbas, or wandering the Mogadishu ruins.

Since Vadim Baranov quit his post as advisor to the tsar, stories about him had been multiplying rather than fading away. This happens sometimes. For the most part, men in power derive their aura from the position they hold. When they lose it, it's as if a plug had been pulled. They deflate like one of those giant puppets at the entrance to amusement parks, and if you see these men in the street you wonder how they ever stirred such passions.

Baranov was of a different order.... A video taken on the fringes of an official meeting showed him laughing, a rare sight in Russia, where even a smile is considered a sign of idiocy.


Translated from French by Willard Wood