There was nobody else in the store apart from the guy at the register, who didn’t seem interested in him.Īfter making the first withdrawal, Shimomura printed a receipt. When the screen asked him which language he preferred, he felt a tremor of nerves while selecting “Japanese.” He withdrew a hundred thousand yen, then another, and then another. He walked to a 7-Eleven, where he bought a rice ball and a Coke, to settle himself. On Sunday morning, Shimomura rose early, and dressed in jeans, sunglasses, a baseball cap, and an old T-shirt. Finally, each volunteer was told to memorize a PIN. They could keep ten per cent of the cash.

After making nineteen withdrawals, they should wait an hour before visiting another 7-Eleven. The volunteers were told to choose the Japanese language when prompted-an indication, Shimomura realized, that the cards were foreign. If anybody made twenty withdrawals from a single A.T.M., his card would be blocked. The gangsters should each withdraw a hundred thousand yen at a time (about nine hundred dollars) but make no more than nineteen transactions per machine. They could not use a regular bank A.T.M., or one in another convenience store. The superior read instructions from a thin manual: early the next morning, a Sunday, they should go to any 7-Eleven and use their white card at the store’s A.T.M. There was no chip on the card, no numbers, no name-just a magnetic strip. Each volunteer was given a plain white credit card. The superior finally arrived, and the five men moved into a private room. Like many yakuza, he is of Korean descent, and two of the others were also Korean-Japanese for a while, they spoke in Korean.

(Shimomura, who has since left the Yamaguchi-gumi, asked to be referred to only by his surname.) When Shimomura showed up, he found three other gangsters, none of whom he knew. The superior assured him that the scheme was low risk, and instructed him to attend a meeting that evening at a bar in Nagoya. But he was a minor figure in the organization: a collector of debts, a performer of odd jobs. Thirty-two years old and skinny, with expressive eyes, he took pride in his appearance, often wearing a suit and mirror-shined loafers. It was May 14, 2016, and Shimomura was living in the city of Nagoya. When one of his superiors asked him if he wanted to make a pile of fast money, he naturally said yes. A control rocket would order nuclear strikes from across Russia's vast armoury.Shimomura was a member of the Yamaguchi-gumi, the largest yakuza crime family in Japan. If a nuclear attack were confirmed, Putin could activate the so-called 'Dead Hand' or 'Perimetr' system of last resort: essentially computers would decide doomsday. Such orders cascade swiftly down different communications systems to strategic rocket force units, which then fire at the United States and Europe. If Russia thought it faced a strategic nuclear attack, the president, via the briefcases, would send a direct launch order to general staff command and reserve command units that hold nuclear codes. The briefcase is activated by a special flashcard, according to Zvezda. In a section called 'command' there are two buttons: a white 'launch' button and a red 'cancel' button. Kazbek supports another system known as 'Kavkaz'.įootage shown by Russia's Zvezda television channel in 2019 showed what it said was one of the briefcases with an array of buttons. The Russian defence minister, currently Sergei Shoigu, and the chief of the general staff, currently Valery Gerasimov, are also thought to have such briefcases.Įssentially, the briefcase is a communication tool that links the president to his military top brass and thence to rocket forces via the highly secret 'Kazbek' electronic command-and-control network. The so-called nuclear briefcase, or 'Cheget' (named after Mount Cheget in the Caucasus Mountains), is with the president at all times. The doctrine allows for a nuclear strike after 'aggression against the Russian Federation with conventional weapons when the very existence of the state is threatened'. The Russian president is the ultimate decision maker when it comes to using Russian nuclear weapons, both strategic and tactical, according to Russia's nuclear doctrine.

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