A summary of Chingiz Abdullaev’s "The Perfect Target"

This book is a detective story about the struggle between the secret services, officials, and hired guns. The plot is constructed through the juxtaposition of two perspectives: that of analyst Drongo and retired state security officer Edgars Veidemanis, who is dying of cancer. The author completed work on this manuscript in 1999, basing the plot on the high-profile bankruptcy proceedings of strategic oil companies and the dire social consequences of the financial collapse of August 1998.

The novel is the latest addition to the personal series about a nameless expert nicknamed Drongo. It follows such works as "Blue Angels," "An Almost Incredible Murder," "The Defector’s Style," and "Manhunt." It is number twenty-six.

Arrest at the Ministry and the Thief’s Escape

On the morning of June 27, prosecutors detained Deputy Minister of Fuel and Energy Rashit Akhmetov right in his office. The safe contained sixty thousand dollars. Fearing personal retribution for shady dealings involving the sale of shares in the Tyumen oil company LIK, the official denounced the names of Silakov, the official’s contact, and the ruthless crime boss Yevgeny Chiryaev, nicknamed "The Fighter." The middleman was eliminated a week later. Chiryaev’s gunman executed Silakov in a forest near Moscow, saving his high-ranking clients from unwanted publicity. The crime boss immediately flew to Germany.

Berlin police intercept a gangster at the Tegel Airport border checkpoint at the request of Interpol. His accomplices staged the arrest. Isolation abroad effectively shields the gang leader from Russian investigators. The head of the special investigative team, Vsevolod Romanenko, realizes the case could collapse without testimony from the missing company director, Dmitry Trufilov. On May 12, a Berlin court will hear Chiryaev’s extradition appeal. In search of the fugitive military intelligence major, the prosecutor turns to analyst Drongo, who possesses unique professional insight. The detective accepts the challenge.

During dinner at the Monte Cristo restaurant, the detective openly informs Akhmetov’s lawyer, David Bergman, of the hunt for Trufilov, deliberately provoking his shadowy adversaries to retaliate. Bergman warns his guest of mortal danger. The experienced lawyer acknowledges the inevitability of reprisals against any daredevil who stands in the way of the patrons of the ministerial elite. Drongo remains calm. The psychological game initiated by the analyst forces his adversaries to immediately lay their cards on the table.

Provocation in Moscow and the choice of the doomed

Employees of the private security company "Chagcharan" immediately set up a 24-hour covert surveillance post near the detective’s Moscow home. Drongo sets a daring trap. Detective Galina Sirenko blocks the security firm’s director’s company car at a narrow exit, allowing her partner to enter for a brief, heated interrogation. The frightened director, Artemyev, refuses to reveal his employer. A sudden burst of gunfire from the recovering bodyguards allows the analyst and his partner to safely escape their pursuers in their damaged Zhiguli. Technical specialist Zakhar Lukin intercepts Artemyev’s panicked call to retired Colonel Oleg Kochievsky, head of security at the giant Rosneftegaz concern. Two hours later, Artemyev is shot dead in the stairwell outside his own apartment.

Shortly after the death of the security agency director, an expert visits his young mistress, Alevtina Zhuchkova, at a safe house. The visit yields results. The frightened woman mentions a mysterious co-owner of the security agency with the rare patronymic "Innokentyevich." She hands over the businessman’s business card. Suspicions are further corroborated by the testimony of the frightened witness. The circumstantial evidence gathered by the detective definitively confirms the involvement of the raw materials giant’s management in a series of ruthless assassinations of witnesses.

A tense evening of negotiations at the elite suburban restaurant "Tsarskaya Okhota" immediately ends in utter and predictable failure. Former military intelligence officer Kochievsky cynically offers the detective a large monetary payment to end the dangerous search for a witness. The analyst categorically rejects the deal. At a secret service apartment, counterintelligence general Potapov arranges a surprise meeting. The high-ranking security official bluntly warns the analyst of a brutal behind-the-scenes battle between two Kremlin factions prepared to eliminate any independent witness. The authorities demand that the private investigation be stopped. Rejecting the influential general’s warnings, Drongo decides to pursue the fugitive’s search to the end.

Then the frustrated head of corporate security recruits the terminally ill retired lieutenant colonel of state security Edgars Veidemanis to help search for the fugitive witness.

For the sake of his daughter’s future, the officer agrees to the deadly role of a human target. The clients guarantee the doomed lieutenant colonel’s family a large advance and daily payments of a thousand dollars into a special bank account in Germany. The proceeds are used to purchase an apartment. A fatal illness makes the security officer the perfect tool in someone else’s cynical game. Following the doomed security officer on a scheduled flight to Amsterdam, two proven, brutal criminals — Osip Kharchenko and Sergei Kokotin — board. The bandits back the agent’s every move. The lieutenant colonel’s longtime colleague, Major Viktor Kuzmin, armed with a long-range sniper rifle, becomes the secret assassin on the European route.

A trail of blood in the Netherlands and Belgium

The first bloody tragedy unfolds right on board a passenger jet during a scheduled international flight from the Russian capital to Schiphol Airport in the Netherlands. A passenger is stabbed to death near the toilet. The deceased tried to warn Veidemanis of the mortal danger posed by those accompanying him. In the quiet seaside town of Heizen, a retired security officer unsuccessfully attempts to learn the fugitive’s current whereabouts from an old agent, Ruud Krebbers. As he exits, the host is shot dead by a rifle. An unseen shooter fires two deadly bullets directly from the attic window of a brick building opposite. Veidemanis narrowly escapes death. In Antwerp, a lieutenant colonel forces businessman Igor Rzhevkin to reveal the Paris address of the fugitive major’s longtime girlfriend. An explosion destroys the witness’s car.

In an abandoned house in the neighboring town of Scheton, bandits Kharchenko and Kokotin brutally torture two captured Caucasians from a rival gang led by crime boss Samar Khashimov. The victims are shot in cold blood. Belgian patrols discover only cooling bodies in the empty rooms. Drongo, who arrived by helicopter with local police, examines the charred frame and fresh evidence of violence. They are able to reconstruct the chronology of events. After comparing hotel lists and train routes, the expert takes an overnight bus to the French capital.

In response to the deaths of his fighters, Khashimov orchestrates the kidnapping of fourteen-year-old Ilze Veidemanis in Moscow, demanding her father immediately hand over Trufilov under threat of violence against the girl. The lieutenant colonel finds himself in a tight spot. The crime boss’s cynical telephone blackmail finally deprives the desperate officer of the saving opportunity for open maneuver.

The Paris Trap and the Hunt’s Finale

On a dark, rainy night, a gravely ill retired Chekist secretly enters the fashionable apartment of Sybille Duverger on the spacious Avenue General Leclerc in Paris. The landlady denies any connection with the fugitive. Her aggressive young lover, Marcel, suddenly emerges from the bedroom with a loaded pistol. Under pressure from her exhausted guest, the Frenchwoman inadvertently reveals the fugitive Major Trufilov’s secret hideout, the quiet country villa of retired military mission official Eugène Blanchot in the small suburb of Jossigny. The glass shatters. Accurate shots from Major Kuzmin, lurking on a nearby rooftop, instantly end the young Frenchman’s life.

Giving chase, the officer catches the armed liquidator at the fire escape and, at gunpoint, forces the killer back into the blood-soaked room. The mercenary cynically beats Sybille. Protecting the distraught woman from being strangled with a sofa cushion, the lieutenant colonel shoots the sadist point-blank with a captured weapon. In the morning, Drongo enters the Chekist’s hotel room. Assessing the critical situation of the terminally ill officer, the renowned detective immediately takes control of the complex, multi-step plan. In Moscow, a prosecutor’s team swiftly frees fourteen-year-old Ilse. The officer’s elderly mother decisively throws boiling water directly into the face of the bandit leader, thwarting an attempted armed blackmail.

The Parisian finale unfolds rapidly. Khashimov’s gunmen shoot Kharchenko and Kokotin point-blank in the street as they sit in a car. The killers confidently ascend the stairwells. Drongo cuts the power to the elevator on the fourth floor, trapping the armed robbers in a tight metal cage. The lieutenant colonel, Khashimov’s gang leader, appears next, and coolly knocks him down with a heavy blow from the butt of his rifle, after which the expert places the killer’s weapon in the bandit’s fingers. French police apprehend the robbers. That evening, the detective and the lieutenant colonel find Trufilov at the Villa Blanchot, convincing the major to voluntarily fly to Moscow to testify.

After returning home, Veidemanis collapses from extreme exhaustion. Drongo saves his partner. The renowned analyst fully covers the cost of the Chekist’s complex surgery at the capital’s oncology center. A difficult fight for life lies ahead.