Shadowy arms dealer Viktor Bout may be key to Russia's release of WNBA star Brittney Griner

WASHINGTON — Viktor Bout has long been the type of shadowy figure who inhabits spy novels, a convicted arms dealer who commanded a billion-dollar operation of aircraft fleets to supply weapons to notorious dictators, drug lords and armies fighting wars — and sometimes one another.

Bout, a mustachioed Russian national and former Soviet army officer, was an equal-opportunity smuggler whose deliveries are alleged to be responsible for the deaths of thousands of Africans, Afghans and others.

And in the years before his 2008 arrest and imprisonment, first in Thailand and later the U.S., the "Merchant of Death" — a moniker he was given three decades ago by a British lawmaker — is believed to have become part of Russian President Vladimir Putin's