Just before midnight, at the plush Moscow Hyatt, several blocks from Red Square, a loud knocking jolted the American lawyer awake. Robert Amsterdam heard gruff voices, hard fists striking his door as if attempting to break it down, and then a man shouting in English.

“Moscow police. Open up!”

He stood, barefoot, dizzy from the vodka he’d consumed with dinner. His first thought was, They’ve come for me. And then he thought, I’m going to fucking die.

If he disappeared that night, he wanted people to know. So he started making phone calls—a Moscow attorney friend, another colleague from his office. And then, about four minutes after the knocking began, he stepped into a hotel-issue white robe, opened the door, and went outside.

There were six men in the hallway—muscular, clean-shaven, and wearing poorly fitted suits—a gang of extras from The Godfather. Bulges at their waists made Amsterdam think that the men were packing guns. Badges were flashed. But Amsterdam was convinced that the badges were fake and that the men were actually enforcers sent by the Kremlin.

“You will come with us, Mr. Amsterdam,” the oldest member of the group declared. “It is time to go.”

It was September 22, 2005. Earlier that day, Amsterdam’s legal team had entered a final appeal for his client Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the Russian billionaire who had chosen Amsterdam to defend him in one of the world’s most complex (and dangerous) corruption cases. Before his life was upended, Khodorkovsky ran Yukos, Russia’s largest and highest-profile private oil company. President Vladimir Putin had sent clear warnings to the so-called oligarchs—Russia’s ultrawealthy business tycoons—to avoid politics, but Khodorkovsky had defied him and paid for it.

Even before he was formally charged, Yukos’ offices were raided, and shareholders were detained by police. After an 11-month trial, at which he was showcased in a metal cage, he was convicted of looting public assets and evading hundreds of millions of dollars in taxes.

When Amsterdam stood in the courtroom on that autumn day, his stated goal was to have the verdict reversed and expose the Kremlin as a kind of selectively vengeful god. The appeal was rejected, though Khodorkovsky’s sentence was reduced by one year. The men now standing outside Amsterdam’s hotel room seemed intent on stomping out any lingering questions.

“We’ve come to take you,” the thug continued.

Amsterdam then did something that probably saved him: He lied. He claimed a contingent of journalists were coming to meet him in the lobby downstairs; he said the State Department was on its way.