The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin

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I woke up because someone was shaking me. Kate’s face looked terrified. “They are saying something about Galina on the radio,” she half whispered. “And a gun. I think… I don’t understand.”

I got out of bed and stumbled into the tiny kitchen, where Kate had been making breakfast and listening to Echo Moskvy, the country’s best news and talk radio station. It was a Saturday morning, unusually light and crisp for November in Moscow. And I was not worried: somehow, Kate’s fear did not impress me. Whatever she had heard—or, with her limited Russian, misheard—might be the beginning of yet another great story. As the chief correspondent for Russia’s leading newsmagazine, Itogi, I felt all great stories were my fiefdom. And there were a lot of great stories. In a country that was inventing itself, every city, every family, and every institution was, in some sense, uncharted territory. The year was 1998. Since the early 1990s, virtually every piece I wrote was a tale no one had told before: I spent about half my time outside Moscow, traveling to conflict zones and gold mines, orphanages and universities, abandoned villages and burgeoning oil towns, writing their stories. The magazine, which was owned and financed by the same magnate as Echo Moskvy, rewarded me by never questioning my extravagant travel schedule and by frequently placing my stories on the cover.

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