Flesh.ka

Contemporary Russia. This is a criminal thriller set in the world of the new generation of thirty-something, white-collar workers of modern corporate Russia, a world in which everyone pursues money and power in complete submission to the corporate culture of greed, lies, and treachery. The story opens as Andrey, a low-ranking executive at a large bank, is instructed to take a "fleshka", a small, memory flashcard, home to his wife. Andrey's wife, Viktoriya, is his superior at the bank, a position she got after cruelly accusing him of professional incompetence. She is a career woman: cold, calculating, ruthless, and uncompromising, driven by nothing but her lust for money and power, and the things they can get her. The flashcard contains all the hidden accounts where the illegal profits from the bank's many nefarious activities have been deposited. The net worth of this information is over 320 million dollars. Andrey comes home, earlier than usual, where he finds Viktoriya in the arms of her lover, an influential business partner. Livid at this final humiliating betrayal, Andrey decides to seek revenge, not only on his wife Viktoriya, but on the entire corporate hierarchy of the bank. He refuses to give Viktoriya the flashcard, and leaves. He returns to work, where he takes Igor, the bank's computer system administrator, hostage. With the "fleshka" in his pocket and Igor at gunpoint, Andrey leaves Moscow, and heads for Fedotovo, a small village on the Unzha River in the Kostromskaya Oblast. He has a good friend there, Aleksey, who once saved him from going to prison. And, over the past few years, Andrey has secretly built a dacha there on the bank of the river. He had hoped that he and Viktoriya could someday leave the the corrupt corporate "myshinaya voznya (rat-race)" behind, live there together, and perhaps recapture the lost innocence and love for each other they had once known. But, now his secret dacha will fulfill a new purpose. Andrey knows that everyone -- Viktoriya and his employers -- will pursue him from the "kammennye dzhungli (concrete jungle)" on the Moscow River to this quiet country village on the Unzha River. As the hunt for Andrey begins, all think that they will easily retrieve the "fleshka", get rid of Andrey, and return to their corporate quest for profits. Each thinks that they will be the one to get the money. But there are questions that, in their haste to get Andrey, none have thought to ask: Did all of this just happen, or is there someone behind it? - Did someone arrange for Andrey to come home early? - And, who, in the end, will get the money?