Kill or be killed.
If you must be certain, shoot for the face.
So, this is another mafia story? Gangsters, hoods?
Well, no. It's a book about lawyers and bankers.
But these lawyers and bankers are trapped in the beginnings of what quickly turned out to be the most criminal society of modern times.
Public servants, police, ministers all the way up to the top are looking for targets.
Tax officials don't bother with polite letters. They raid their victims, go through every file, sell business secrets to competitors, blackmail owners into destitution.
Jason Rogers, Texan, jumped at the opportunities thrown open by the collapse of Communism.
Carl Fitzmaurice, South African lawyer, young, bored with the easy money in the London financial behemoth, joins in.
Kandinsky, oligarch, stretches his financial luck, and aims to get out of his nearly billion-dollar debts.
Pearson, London lawyer, only in it for the money - helps Kandinsky hide his money, or thinks he does.
Akhmatov hails from a part of the East that has been a battleground for centuries. He hacks the legs off accountants and lawyers to order. That's his employers' way of collecting debts.
Ovchinnikov is a murderer for hire, too. But he keeps a sense of proportion. When he needs to shoot the bodyguard, he thinks it only fair to shoot the celebrity, too.
Melnikov, Cabinet Minister, always in search of profits, blackmail, bribes.
Soloviev, tax inspector, not as cautious as he needs to be, targets Jason Rogers.
This is a world where a bottle of average Bordeaux costs the equivalent of one month's pension.
The people in this book, though, live the high life - champagne, caviar, top restaurants, smart young women who eat their male counterparts for breakfast.
And just about everyone comes to a grisly but spectacular end.