The Tatum Chronicles

During daylight, Tatum's life was equally vigorous. An unapologetic advocate of hypercapitalism, he had a bitter public feud with Moscow's autocratic bowling ball-shaped Mayor Yuri Luzhkov (an expected presidential candidate in 2000). Tatum hosted several high-profile dignitaries at his hotel, including Clinton. When Russian President Boris Yeltsin's communication lines were severed during an attempted 1991 coup, it was Tatum who slipped through a barricade of hostile rebel tanks and soldiers to give the trapped Russian Federation president a satellite link to the White House. Ironically, the day Tatum was gunned down, he had been enjoying Frederick Forsyth's latest international-espionage thriller, Icon, a tale of an American secret agent in Moscow.