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tonight.”
    “Tonight? Not even close. This was about as dangerous as taking on a nun in a ruler smackdown.”
    “Well, if you do ever get around to dying, don’t let it be on my watch. I don’t need the hassle.”
    “Thanks for caring.”
    “Where to now?”
    “Dublin.”
    Frank said curiously, “Why?”
    “Vacation. Maybe you don’t think I deserve one after tonight.”
    “Oh, you can go, but you’ll be back,” Frank said confidently.
    Shaw rose, let the blanket slide off his shoulders, and handed his empty cup to Frank. His skin was itchy as hell and it felt like his hair was falling out.
    “Just as soon as you send me a picture of you swimming in the canal. Naked, of course.”
    “Right. Still glad you came over to our side?”
    “I really didn’t have a choice, now did I?”
    “Have a nice time in Dublin, Shaw.”
    “You can see for yourself, can’t you? Your boys will be right on my ass.”
    Frank lit up a Dutch cigar and gave Shaw a smirk through the curtain of smoke. “You think you’re important enough for us to chase all over the world? My God, what an ego.”
    “May you never grow old, Frank.”

CHAPTER 8
    “R EMEMBER KONSTANTIN” HAD REACHED fever pitch. There were rallies against the Russians in fifty countries and the United Nations had formally asked a furious President Gorshkov for a more thorough response. And yet calmer, or at least more skeptical, minds were establishing a wall against this groundswell of anti-Russian sentiment.
    A good number of political leaders, journalists, commentators, and think-tank types, stung in the past by rushes to judgment, urged caution and restraint in the wake of the “Remember Konstantin” outrage. More questions had been raised about the authenticity of the man and the video, particularly in the wake of detailed denials and unprecedented access to classified records provided by the Russian government to outside media. Soon after this measure of cooperation by Moscow, the worldwide sentiment that Russia was evil incarnate had begun to ebb a bit. And leaders around the globe began to breathe a little easier. However, this was merely the calm before the real eruption.
    Two days later the world received another collective shock when digitally goose-stepping across servers around the globe came the names and photos of thousands of Russians allegedly slaughtered by their own government. They included men, women, children; young, old, pregnant, and disabled. And included with the faces and names were details as to each of their lives and gruesome, tragic deaths. More damaging still, these files all possessed the indicia of coming right from the classified files of the Russian government.
    The “RE:” line of the accompanying blast was simple and devastating: “Remember More Than Konstantin.” Soon everyone from so-called experts to expatriate Russians and people from former Soviet bloc countries went on TV, radio, and the Web to attack Russia for its obvious descent back into a maniacal, world-power-grabbing menace.
    It was as though the image of poor, tortured Konstantin, bolstered by the indelible imprint of thousands of “new” dead, had given people the courage to finally speak out. On a bizarre note, coffee mugs, and T-shirts silkscreened with Konstantin’s haunted image, apparently now the Che Guevara of his generation, flooded global markets. And the 1960s had suddenly returned with accompanying images of mushroom clouds alive in people’s collective nightmare.
    Folks claiming to be family or friends of Konstantin appeared on news shows around the world, telling and retelling the plight of a man who had never existed. Yet they spun their yarns with gusto, having apparently convinced themselves that he was real and they had known him. He was a martyr, famous and beloved, and now they were too. Their poignant appearances captured the attention and the hearts of people around the world.
    The talk show hosts and news anchors asked these