Introducing Russian gangster Alexei Volkovoy. A firefight reverberates through Moscow's dark streets; shattered glass and screams echo in the air. In the lawless ways of Russia's capital city, the gunmen melt away into the night. Two men are dead--the targets not what they seem. A shadowy figure known as Volk lopes along the riverbank outside the Kremlin walls. A battle-hardened veteran of Russia's brutal war in Chechnya, he prowls Moscow's grim alleyways, a knife concealed in his prosthetic foot. Both a major player in the black market and a covert agent for the Russian military, Volk serves two masters: Maxim, a psychotic Azeri mafia kingpin; and a man known only as the General. By his side is Valya, an exotic beauty charged with protecting her lover from his unsavory associates. Together they are commissioned to steal a long-lost da Vinci painting from St. Petersburg's Hermitage Museum.--From publisher description.