One day in April last year, as war raged around Tripoli, two Russian operatives set out from the Libyan capital to meet the man they hoped to install as leader.
Saif al-Islam Gadhafi, the son and heir apparent of deposed dictator Moammar Gadhafi, had been holed up in an area around the Zintan plateau ever since his father was killed in a 2011 rebellion. A fugitive from the International Criminal Court, he was planning to claim what he saw as his rightful place.
Along came Maxim Shugaley, a veteran St. Petersburg election consultant, and his translator and colleague, Samir Seifan, with an offer to help make that happen. Russian polling showed that after years of civil war, nostalgia for the old regime was strong and the younger Gadhafi was among Libya's most popular politicians.