It should have been obvious earlier this summer when Russian President Vladimir Putin allowed pictures of him to be circulated showing off his muscular torso while out huntin' and fishin' in Siberia - surely a clear hint that this fit 55-year old wasn't ready to retire?
No wonder Kremlinologists were kicking themselves last week when they received official confirmation that Putin wasn't simply going to vanish from the Russian political scene – despite the fact that he's constitutionally banned from standing for the presidency again when his second term ends in March.
Contorted conspiracy theories have been floating around Russia for eons as those outside the immediate centre of power in Moscow - and it's a very small centre - struggled to work out what would happen in the post-Putin era.
Would the former KGB colonel’s wife Ludmilla replace him? Could someone be found who would conveniently step down due to ill health after a few months? Or would Putin be content to try and pull the strings behind the scenes?
Then the bombshell came. At the party conference of Russia's largest political force, United Russia, Putin announced that though not a party member he'd head its list and consider becoming the country's prime minister when his presidential term expires - on the strict condition someone he could work with is elected in his place.
The assumption is that someone who will follow Putin's orders will be installed - perhaps someone who is at least 66 and therefore banned by the country’s 70-year presidential age limit from building an independent power base and standing again in four years time. That someone, conveniently, could be the recently installed prime minister and former collective farm manager, Viktor Zubkov, aged 66.
Can slaloming around democratic rules be so simple? It depends on whether Putin is prepared to accept a lowlier office and nominally be at the mercy of someone else.
Then there is the question of other pretenders. There is a long list of potential successors within the current cabinet who have hinted at their ambitions without declaring.
Certainly, Russia's political system works nothing like the United States, where more than a year away from presidential elections, the names of Hillary Clinton, Barak Obama and Rudi Giuliani are battling away for internal party nominations. In Russia, the anointment of Putin is enough.
Even traditionally conservative Russian media outlets were somewhat aghast at the stage-managed way the announcement of Putin’s candidacy came through. One commentator joked that he'd watched the party congress on a black and white TV and felt he'd been transformed back to Soviet times.
Kremlin critics, like chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov, likened Putin's move to the repeat of the power struggle which triggered the Russian revolution. "It's very dangerous," he said, "like February 1917..."
But despite attacks on the centralisation of power and the country's assertive foreign policy - Putin seems to be genuinely popular in his own country.
After all, he's not playing the drunken fool like Yeltsin did as the country's economy collapsed and a handful of "businessmen" emerged as billionaires during the 1990s.
It's not to say there isn't corruption, and lots of it, in modern Russia. But the streets are safe, standards of living are rising fast and for an electorate that expects very little from its leaders, the feeling is Putin could be worse.
Of course, a very tame media helps, but so too does a fractured opposition.
Much of Putin's domestic economic success has been underpinned by high oil prices, and though the harbingers of doom correctly point out that a sudden price drop would be catastrophic for the Russian economy, no one predicts such a slump will happen anytime soon.
Putin's plans to stay on recall some other habits of the Soviet era, when leaders traditionally left office in a coffin. First there was the timing of the announcement – designed to coincide with the 50th anniversary of Sputnik, the first satellite to blast off into space. Then there were fresh announcements about Russia's plans to put more funds into its space programme - another sign of the empire striking back.
If it weren’t for the constitutional ban preventing a third successive term there's no doubt Putin would be re-elected. Of course, it's not at all clear he will even become the next prime minister, but Kremlinologists are already betting on a return to the residency - in 2012 or even before.