UKRAINE July 24, 2014
Recent events weighed heavily on fifty-nine year-old, Viktor Tamarov, a Ukrainian Cabinet of Ministers member. The Cabinet, highest body of state executive power governing Ukraine, faced a monster on its eastern border. As former head of the Russian Special Operations Department and Afghan war veteran, Tamarov was selected as the Cabinet Secretariat, a position giving him control of military operations. Under normal circumstances, Article 116 of the Ukrainian Constitution governed his duties. These were not normal times.
Tamarov placed the red phone back onto its new micro-suction mobile Desk Station Stand sitting neatly on his oak desk. Whenever he was in deep thought, Tamarov walked over to the large, floor to ceiling glass window and stared out at the Kiev skyline and Dnieper River. Stopping briefly to glance at the 24 hour analogue wall clock hanging like a giant eye on the beige European plant wallpaper, he saw that it 13:45, Coordinated Universal Time (UTC).
Tamarov’s eyes caught sight of the 8 x 10 picture frame of his daughter, Shararah, and his three grandchildren on the polished mantle. Even with the horrible news just delivered, he still managed a smile at the thought of them. Shararah, Asha, Seth, and Caleb, all smiles, stood behind the Bow of Tamarov's super yacht, Vicem Bronko, docked on the Black Sea. The name, Flame could be seen below the rails.
His daughter and grandchildren had finally come to visit him on the first of June, a visit Shararah had promised him would someday come. They stayed only two weeks but it was one of the most memorable times that Tamarov experienced in a very long time. Overjoyed to see his grandchildren for the first time, they quickly won over his heart and became his pride and joy. Twelve year-old Asha, reminded him of his own Shararah, and in some ways, his former wife; headstrong, independent, and beautiful.
You look just like your grandmother and mother, he had told her over and over. Tamarov chuckled at Asha’s response, which was always the same. Really? He always replied, yes, really. I tell the truth.
Staring out the window, he shook his head. Though a powerful and proud man who had seen the rigors of war in Afghanistan, he allowed a tear roll down his cheek. What is this world coming to? He thought.
After a deep breath, he walked over to his private white ceramic wash basin, decorated with solid brass spigots and washed his face. Looking into the mirror, he adjusted his black silk, Louis Vuitton neck tie, and departed his office. He would have to think of something astute, and quick. The Prime Minister had called an emergency meeting to discuss the disaster that had just taken place twenty minutes earlier, when a Malaysian commercial airliner was shot out of the sky by a Russian SA-11 surface-to-air missile launched by Russian backed rebels in eastern Ukraine. Initial reports indicated that all 298 passengers on board were presumed dead. Tamarov dispatched the Berkut, Ukraine’s special military police, in an effort to arrive ahead of rebel forces who reportedly were rushing to the fields littered with debris and bodies to confiscate any remaining evidence.
The whole world will know by now, Tamarov thought.