Several guards and retainers exchanged a glance—Gaza was not somewhere to be taken lightly; it was probably the only place in the world that made Afg… - Terry Hayes

I wandered past the stacks of drying wood, thinking about how many great skills the world had lost, how many things of value had passed without any of us even noticing. The old men with their chisels and handsaws would have once been the most highly paid members of their community and what had we put in their place? Financial engineers and young currency traders.

“Then what happened?” I asked.
“The Russian stopped calling, more important, the bills weren’t paid—I guess he either went broke or another oligarch had him killed.”
Probably the latter, I thought. That was the way most business disputes were settled in Russia.

The killer had obviously grasped one important concept, a thing that eludes most people who decide on her line of work—nobody’s ever been arrested for a murder; they have only ever been arrested for not planning it properly.