Ganglands: Russia: Russia (17 page)

Alexei was beginning to think he had been stood up when the door to the sauna opened and two men walked in.
They were older than Alexei; broad-shouldered men with shaven heads, one with a badly scarred face.
They were also fully dressed.

A prickle of apprehension ran down Alexei’s spine.

‘You Alexei?’ the scarred man asked roughly.

‘Yeah,’ Alexei replied, trying to keep the fear out of his voice.
‘You from Storm Hammer?’

The man snorted derisively.
‘Storm Hammer?
Never heard of them.’

‘Then there must have been some kind of mistake,’ Alexei said urgently.
‘Pavel sent me here to talk to Storm Hammer!’

‘There’s been no mistake,’ the scarred man replied, cracking his knuckles threateningly.
‘Pavel didn’t send you here to talk.
He sent you here to die.’

21. Flesh Wounds

Alexei backed away against the sauna wall.

‘Wait!’ he said, holding out his palms in a pacifying gesture.
‘You don’t want to do this!’

The scarred man cocked his head.
‘Don’t we?
The word is that you’re some kind of grass.
Killing you is going to be a pleasure.’

Alexei frantically weighed up his surroundings.
There wasn’t enough room in the cramped sauna for evasion – he was going to have to take the men head on, whether he liked it or not.

As his assailants advanced upon him, Alexei picked up the wooden bucket filled with water and tossed it on to the stove, sending a cloud of hot vapour into the air.
Caught too close to the blast of heat, one of the men cried out and clutched at his face; Alexei followed up like a cobra, cracking the assailant in the side of his head with the bucket.
The man fell to the floor, poleaxed.

His scarred accomplice inclined his head.
‘Not bad,’ he said admiringly.
Opening up his jacket, he slowly pulled a knife from his belt.
‘But I’d rather a blade than a bucket.’

They began a macabre dance, Alexei jockeying around
the stove as he strove to keep his attacker at arms’ reach.
The scarred man was artfully quick, and pretty soon Alexei’s hands were covered in defensive wounds, blood mingling with the sweat on his palms.
Grinning wolfishly, the man darted in and sliced a painful cut across Alexei’s chest.
He wasn’t rushing to finish him off.
He was having too much fun.

As his assailant lunged towards him again, Alexei waited until the last second and then sidestepped the attack, grabbing the man’s wrist and clamping it against the burning stove.
The scarred man bellowed in pain, dropping the knife to the ground with a clatter.
Alexei drove a knee into his gut – only for the man to break free of his grip and direct a headbutt into his face, sending Alexei stumbling back over a bench.
Tears springing into his eyes, Alexei staggered to his feet to find the other man waiting for him, gingerly holding his scalded right hand.

‘Now you’ve made me angry,’ he rasped.

With a roar, Alexei dropped his head and charged forward, hitting the man squarely in the midriff.
He drove forward, his legs pumping, sending the two of them crashing out through the sauna door.
Alexei was dimly aware of a brighter room, and slick tiles beneath his feet.
As he charged blindly onwards, the scarred man punched him repeatedly in the back, desperately trying to bring them to a halt.
Then, suddenly, Alexei felt the ground disappear beneath his feet, and the pair of them went tumbling into the plunge pool.

The landing hit Alexei like a punch in the stomach,
ripping the towel from his waist.
Disorientated, he flailed underwater, his limbs entangled with the other man.
Sheer survival instinct made Alexei claw his way towards fresh air, exploding through the surface of the pool with a gasp.
His assailant was a second slow to follow him – seizing his momentary edge, Alexei grabbed the man’s head, his fingers searching out the man’s right eye and boring into the socket.
The man gave out a high-pitched scream, churning the water around them as he writhed in pain.

Finally relenting, Alexei pushed his attacker’s head away and began splashing towards the side of the pool.
As he reached out imploringly for the side, Alexei felt something fasten on to his left leg.
He turned round to see the scarred man gripping his ankle, a manic look in his remaining good eye.
Grabbing the side of the pool for leverage, Alexei lifted his right leg out of the water and directed a booming kick directly into the man’s jaw.
His head snapped back, and he slumped back into the water.

Using every last ounce of strength in his drained muscles, Alexei hauled himself out of the pool.
He crawled across the tiles, coughing up water.
Blood was running from the knife wound on his chest.
The scarred man was floating face-up in the water, unconscious.
Even so, there was no time to recover: Alexei wasn’t safe yet.

He forced himself to his feet and stumbled, naked, through the bathhouse, staining the tiles with a pinkish mixture of water and blood.
The skinhead behind the reception desk shouted something at him as he staggered through the lobby: Alexei ignored him.
Hurtling out
through the front door, he raced barefoot into the street.
Behind him, he heard the bathhouse door crash open again – and looked over his shoulder to see the skinhead chasing after him.

As Alexei reached the end of the side street, a car screeched to a halt in front of him, blocking his path.

‘Get in!’ a voice urged him.
It was Richard Madison.
The Englishman leaned across and opened the front passenger door.
Alexei dived inside the car, which hurtled away, leaving his pursuer choking on a cloud of exhaust fumes.

‘Ow!’ Alexei protested, his voice echoing around the draughty monastery.

‘Don’t be such a baby,’ murmured Valerie Singer. ‘Do you want these wounds to get infected?’

The Israeli agent had rolled up her sleeves and was now efficiently washing and bandaging the cuts on his hands and chest.
To Alexei’s immense relief, he had been spared any withering appraisals of his nudity by Richard Madison, who had dug out a pair of combat trousers and a thick woollen sweatshirt before Valerie had appeared.
The three of them were the only people in the monastery – the banks of laptops and television monitors hummed away unmanned.
Despite the icy wind howling down through the patchwork roof, and the shadows clustering at the edge of the spotlights, after the bathhouse Trojan HQ felt like the safest place in the world.

‘Those guys did quite a number on you,’ Madison remarked. ‘It’s a good job ladies like a scar on a bloke.’

Alexei winced as Valerie cleaned out the deep cut on his chest.
‘It would have got a lot worse if you hadn’t shown up.
How the hell did you know I was there?’

‘Valerie organized a seance,’ Madison replied, deadpan. ‘The ghost of Rasputin pointed us in the right direction.’ He laughed. ‘How do you think we knew?
You haven’t been out of our sight, you bloody fool!’

Alexei stared at him incredulously.
‘I thought you lost me when they took us from Marat’s apartment!
You followed us to the dacha?
Then you know about Boris Lebedev?
He’s the guy who’s really in charge – he’s the Tsar!’

The Englishman nodded.
‘That much we managed to piece together.
I must admit, I was a bit worried when you and that other lad were marched out of his apartment.
Of course Valerie stopped me from interfering.
And of course she was right.’

‘I always am,’ Valerie retorted.
‘If we’d have stepped in then, your mission would have been over, and none of us would have known about Boris Lebedev.’

‘Touché,’ said Madison.
He grinned at Alexei. ‘However, when you legged it out of that sauna with your bollocks flapping in the wind, something told me it was time to intervene.’

‘Wait a minute …’ Alexei said slowly.
‘If you know about the dacha, you must have seen where they took Rozalina Petrova!
They took her away in the middle of the night!’

Madison and Valerie exchanged glances with one another.

‘We saw the car leave,’ the Israeli woman began, ‘and tracked its progress on satellite.’

‘Where did it go?’ Alexei asked, his voice rising with excitement.

‘We don’t know.
Our feed went down.
By the time we’d got pictures again, the car had gone.’

‘You’ve got to be kidding me!’

‘Even Trojan’s resources have limits, Alexei.’ Madison swept an arm around the dilapidated monastery.
‘Look around you.
We do the best we can in the circumstances, but there are always going to be things happening outside of our control.
Unfortunately, this happened to be one of them.’

‘Great,’ Alexei said bitterly.
‘All this has been for nothing, then.’

‘I wouldn’t say that,’ a loud American voice intoned. Darius Jordan came striding through the monastery, a sheaf of papers in his hand. ‘Thanks to your little trip to the countryside yesterday, I’ve been able to find out a bit more about Mr Boris Lebedev.’

Madison frowned.
‘I still can’t work out why he’s risking associating himself with the Eagles.
Compared to this guy, Viktor and Pavel are small-time.’

‘Allow me to clear that up for you.
I’ve spoken to one of our contacts at the Russian Parliament.
It seems as though billions of roubles aren’t enough for Mr Lebedev – he wants power of a different sort.
Word is that he’s begun filing registration papers for his own far-right political party.
Which he, of course, will lead.’

‘What’s that got to do with Viktor?’

‘If you ask me, Lebedev views the Moscow Eagles as his private street army.
He gets the 88s to stir up trouble on the streets; people get scared; issues like immigration and order become national concerns.
That creates the perfect conditions for a far-right politician to increase their vote.’

‘If you think that sounds far-fetched,’ Valerie added, ‘it’s worked before.
Hitler’s SA – the Brownshirts – did a similar job for him in Germany during the 1920s and 1930s.’

‘And by organizing this fight with the Eagles at his plant,’ Alexei said slowly, ‘he’s got the perfect alibi if anyone tries to accuse him of being involved with them.’

Jordan nodded.
‘That seems to be the gist of it.’

‘There’s got to be some way we can stop him!’

‘Nothing easy.
We’ve got no conclusive evidence of his involvement with the gang, and given his level of contacts we’d need to present a cast-iron case for the authorities to take it seriously.
At any rate, Lebedev isn’t our most pressing concern.
Tomorrow the deadline for Rozalina expires. I’m sorry to say that we’ve got no idea where she’s being held now – or any leads.
The Moscow Eagles have gone underground.
The gym’s shut and they’re not at any of their other usual haunts.’

‘So that’s it?’ Alexei said glumly.
‘We’re giving up?’

‘Maybe,’ replied Jordan carefully.
‘Maybe not. There’s one possible tactic left we could try.
It’s a Hail Mary play, and a potentially dangerous one at that, but both our time and our options are limited.’

Richard Madison leaned forward.
‘It’s up to you, Alexei.
We know what you’ve gone through to try and break the Eagles – you’re going to have the scars to prove it.
Believe me, no one’s going to judge you if you walk away.
But what do you say?
Do you want to give this one last shot?’

A kaleidoscope of images from the last few days flickered through Alexei’s mind.
He had brawled in the street, been ambushed in a bathhouse, and been set on fire.
He had narrowly avoided being chopped into pieces in a meat-processing factory.
He had spent a week in almost constant danger.
And at every turn, behind almost every move, he saw the malevolent hands of Viktor Orlov and Boris Lebedev pulling the strings.
Alexei imagined the gleeful look on their faces if their plans succeeded.

‘Try and stop me,’ he said grimly.

22. Risky Business

Situated by the bend of the Moscow River towards the north-east of the city, Moskva-City was a sprawling, unfinished promise.
A brilliant forest of skyscrapers and half-constructed steel towers, the business centre was rising towards the sky pane by pane, rivet by rivet.
Cranes swung lazily from side to side, their easy movements disguising their vast loads.
Banks of windows gleamed in the crisp spring sunshine.

Even in this landscape of monstrous glass edifices, one structure on the quayside towered above the rest: Moskva Heights.
Alexei shielded his eyes from the sunlight as he peered up to the summit of the central tower.
Beside him, Richard Madison let out a low whistle.

‘Not a bad gaff, even for a billionaire,’ he said.
‘You certain it’s Lebedev?’

Alexei nodded.
‘He’s got a model of it in his dacha.
Says he spends most of his time there.’

‘Wish we had more time to reconnoitre the place,’ said Madison, with a grimace.
‘I don’t like sending you up there without knowing exactly what’s inside.
Especially seeing as you’re going in on your own.’

‘You could come with me, but I reckon it’s going to
be hard enough getting in as it is.
Do you really think no one’s going to have told Lebedev about me?’

‘I’d lay money on it, Alexei, and I’m not a gambling man.
Listen, without Lebedev’s backing the Eagles are just another street gang, right?
They need to show they can carry off the big stuff if he’s going to trust them.
What do you think old Boris is going to say if Viktor rings him up – a day before Rozalina Petrova is supposed to be killed, remember – and tells him that they think they’ve got a spy in the ranks?
Not only that, but they’ve tried and failed to kill him.
Why do you think Pavel didn’t slit your throat in the cellar?
Why did he wait until he could get hired hands to do his dirty work for him somewhere quiet and out of the way?’

‘Because he didn’t want Lebedev to find out?’

‘Exactly.’ Madison’s expression grew serious. ‘That doesn’t mean he’s not a dangerous man, though.
Just because Lebedev doesn’t fight on the streets like Pavel or Medved, he’s still capable of causing great harm.
Don’t take any more risks than you have to.’

Alexei shook his head.
‘You’re telling me that
now
?’