Moscow Gold (SOKOLOV Book 5)
Page 16
He walked five hundred meters to Moll dels Pescadors or Fishermen’s Wharf. The fiery sunset cast golden reflections in the black water, mirror images of the yacht hulls glimmering on the sea surface.
The smell of seawater filled his nostrils, clearing the lingering stench of Molotov cocktails.
There she was, the Catalina, moored at the pier. A tri-deck beauty of steel and aluminum, her streamlined white curves beckoning, awash with light. The pride and joy of one Anatoly Shaloy, money man of the Kremlin mafia. Dealer of misery and death.
Sokolov felt determined to bring some of it back to him. For Klimov. And for Dima and his mother. He had to rescue her.
The yacht was berthed stern-to. He approached the gangway, throwing caution to the wind, and boarded the aft deck.
He dropped the bag and extracted the SIG rifle. No sooner had he gripped the gun than armed men came out shooting at him without warning, the bullets hitting the teak boards at Sokolov’s feet.
He held down the trigger, emptying the magazine on full auto, bringing death to the death dealer’s doorstep. The Commando belched fire, ejecting spent casings faster than a rapper could spit out his rhymes.
A trio of dead thugs hit the deck, their flesh ripped up by fine Swiss lead.
So much for stealth.
With any chance of silent entry gone, Sokolov inserted a fresh mag, ascended to the main deck and ventured inside the superstructure.
The Catalina looked gorgeous outside but her interior was every bit as sophisticated. The rosewood flooring and oak wall paneling screamed luxury.
Entering the main lounge, he found a man sitting alone at a lacquered dining table.
Bull-necked and bullet-headed, with arms as thick as tree trunks bulging beneath an Italian shirt.
It was Anatoly Shaloy.
He was enjoying a glass of red wine, swirling it in his hand between swigs.
Shaloy didn’t act surprised when he saw Sokolov as if expecting him.
He said, “This Rioja, a gran reserva, was a favorite of hers, did you know?”
Shaloy’s mouth crooked in a sadistic grin.
Sokolov felt rage churning inside him like the wine in the glass.
He leveled the gun, aiming at Shaloy’s forehead.
“Where’s Paulina?”
“Let me guess,” Shaloy replied. “You’re Sokolov. And I thought you were irrelevant. That was a mistake. You’ve killed my men. In Moscow, in New York, even here in Barcelona. Now you’re going to kill me. And for what? All because of a woman? Some dumb broad?”
“No,” Sokolov said.
“What if I told you that you’d never see her again if you killed me? Well, what are you waiting for? Pull the trigger!”
Sokolov squeezed the grip of the submachine gun, anger rising.
Shaloy laughed.
“See, it’s not about me. It’s about her. Don’t lie to yourself. That’s why you’re here. And that’s why you’ve made a mistake, too. It’s your weakness. She made it too personal for you.”
“No,” Sokolov repeated. “You made it personal when you killed my friend. I vowed to take away everything you have. Your vile dreams, your power, your money, your woman, and your life. Operation X is finished. Moscow Gold has been uncovered. Now comes the final part. That’s why I’m here.”
“It doesn’t matter, Sokolov. She’s gone anyway.”
At that moment, Sokolov felt the cold metal of a gun barrel pressed against the small of his back.
“Drop it, kid,” a voice from behind said in a southern American drawl.
“Blackfox,” Sokolov muttered. He cursed himself for dropping his guard, believing Shaloy was alone and letting him get under his skin.
Sokolov tossed the SIG rifle sideways and it clattered on the polished floor.
The U.S. Senator might have been an old man who was out of shape but it didn’t take high fitness or reaction levels to pull a gun trigger. Brathwaite would face no moral dilemma about shooting him. Politicians didn’t have any morals.
Shaloy pushed back his chair and headed toward Sokolov.
He had to do something quickly if he wanted to stay alive.
“You do love her more than anything, Shaloy, don’t you?”
Confusion crossed the old gangster’s face.
“The Catalina,” said Sokolov. “Such a shame.”
He reached into his pocket, his fingers finding the button of a wireless detonator.
He pushed it.
The radio control switch set off a brick of PE-4A concealed in the duffel bag he’d placed at the stern. As the bomb exploded, blowing away a chunk of the aft deck, the yacht’s superstructure shuddered from the blast.
Brathwaite lost his footing, the gun wobbling in his hand.
Now.
Sokolov whipped a spinning backfist ura ken blow that fractured Brathwaite’s cheekbone and dropped him to the rosewood floor.
“My boat! No!” Shaloy bellowed. He was someone who cared only about his possessions and the damage caused to the Catalina made him lose his mind.
He flung himself madly at Sokolov, fists flying.
Sokolov evaded the attack, sidestepping, and planted a roundhouse kick into Shaloy’s midsection.
Shaloy grunted.
Despite his age, he was still as big as a bear and he made up for his loss of agility with pure aggression. He came back at Sokolov with the heavy hits of a former heavyweight boxer.
Sokolov parried, raising his arm in a block, but Shaloy’s right hook was too powerful. It bruised Sokolov’s shoulder and he staggered.
Shaloy followed up with an uppercut and another hook but Sokolov’s superior footwork saved him as he dodged the blows.
Shaloy kept throwing punches at him wildly. Sokolov lashed out with a foot but it felt like kicking a brick wall.
Shaloy was cornering him. The mad mafioso swung his arms around him and they grappled. Shaloy whirled around and locked his arms around Sokolov’s neck in a choke.
Sokolov tried to wrestle free, thrusting a backward elbow, driving it into Shaloy’s ribs. The Kremlin man yelled in pain but wouldn’t ease the constricting hold.
Sokolov stomped a heel, fracturing Shaloy’s metatarsal with an audible crack of bone.
But the crushing pressure on Sokolov’s throat was only increasing, as though he were being strangled by a python.
His vision dimmed. His breathing came in shallow spasms.
Sokolov’s hand shot up, clawing at Shaloy’s mug, gouging his eye with a thumb.
Shaloy howled in agony and unclasped his arms, clutching at his injured eyeball instinctively.
Sokolov broke free from the viselike grasp, pivoted and pummeled him like a punching bag in a quick combination of blows, before a devastating sidekick propelled Shaloy backward to collide with the dining table, the tabletop breaking in half as the big thug smashed through it, landing on the floor.
Sokolov picked up the SIG Sauer Commando, aimed it at Shaloy’s head, and pulled the trigger.
A hail of 5.56 NATO bullets erased the Kremlin gangster’s features in a red mist.
Sokolov panted wearily, rubbing his neck but his job wasn’t done yet.
You’d never see her again if you killed me, Shaloy had lied.
Sokolov walked past the corpse further down the salon, to a narrow, carpeted passage leading to the staterooms.
He opened the nearest door.
Paulina Pavlova lay on the bed. She was naked. Hematomas covered her beaten and broken body with black-and-blue marks. Caked blood from her split lower lip and an ugly swelling on her left cheek marred her face, a waxen mask frozen in pain for eternity, her gaze fixed vacantly at the ceiling.
“No … please, no …” Sokolov murmured.
He placed two fingers to her carotid artery, feeling for her pulse but it was missing. The skin of her neck was pale and cold. He grabbed her wrist but her limbs were stiff as rigor mortis had already set in.
His mind screamed in protest.
No amount of grieving or self-blame could change it. He’d save it for later. Now only cold rage took over. He wished he could kill Shaloy a second time.
Sokolov leaned over the lifeless mannequin and gave Paulina a farewell kiss on the forehead.
Then he returned to the lounge.
The Senator had regained his senses and was sitting on the floor, clutching the handgun and staring in stupor at the gory mess that was Shaloy’s head.
Sokolov fired a single round into his right biceps and Brathwaite screamed, writhing in pain.
Sokolov kicked the gun away.
“What did you do to her?”
“Please don’t kill me!” Brathwaite whimpered.
“Did you kill her?”
“It wasn’t me! It was him! Shaloy! I swear to God. He raped and beat her to death. I had nothing to do with it.”
“Nothing?”
“Listen, you can’t just murder a U.S. Senator and get away with it!”
“Maybe. Maybe not. Will it matter to you when you’re dead?”
Brathwaite was a scumbag who deserved to be wiped off the face of the earth and he was complicit in Paulina’s death. He and Shaloy had either gang-raped Paulina together or Brathwaite had certainly been a willing spectator. But Sokolov wasn’t a murderer and killing the slimy bastard wouldn’t bring her back.
He knew that for the likes of Brathwaite, there was something worse than death.
“Let’s be reasonable, Sokolov. What do you want? Money?”
The American believed that every Russian was corrupt.
“You know how to strike a deal, Senator.”
“Do you have a crypto wallet?”
“Yes.”
“I can send you the money right away. Name your price. A million dollars? Two million?”
“No,” Sokolov replied. “Three. Three hundred million.”
Brathwaite gaped. “What?”
“You heard me, buddy. Three hundred million U.S. dollars. And it’s not my price. It’s yours. The price you sold out to the Kremlin for. I know about every transaction made to every bank account of Blackfox Capital, so don’t bullshit me. And I know you transferred everything to crypto.”
“But … But … It’s all I’ve got,” the Senator muttered.
“That’s the point. I don’t want it for my gain, Brathwaite. I want it for your loss. I want all your treachery to amount to nothing. So you’ll give your piece of Moscow Gold away. Call it charity if you want. Unless you don’t value your life so much.”
Sokolov raised the SIG.
“All right, all right!”
Wincing, Braithwaite took out his phone and tapped at the screen with trembling, blood-slicked fingers.
“What’s your crypto address?”
Sokolov gave it to him.
“Done. It’s all gone. Are you happy now?”
“No,” Sokolov replied, ice-cold.
“But we had a deal!” BLACKFOX shouted as he saw Sokolov’s finger tighten on the trigger.
Sokolov kept his word.
He didn’t kill the scumbag.
With a well-placed bullet, Sokolov shot him in the crotch.
Then he left the man alone, to scream over the loss of his manhood in private.
He went out to the main deck which, he discovered, was equipped with a personal watercraft. A sleek Sea-Doo PWC.
Smoke rose from the Catalina’s stern from the blaze started by the explosion of the small plastic charge. It had caused superficial damage, insufficient to sink the yacht but enough to draw attention.
Emergency lights were flashing in the distance, approaching the marina, alerted by the fire.
Thanks to him, the Spanish cops were having a nightmare.
Without him, though, they’d be facing a catastrophe of epic proportions.
It was time to let them deal with the dead and the living aboard the Catalina.
He engaged the lifting sling, climbed on the PWC as it lowered into the water, detached the harness and jet-skied into the sunset.
ANDORRA
40
Three days later, Constantine and Eugene Sokolov sat in a café with a picturesque mountain view in Andorra la Vella, the capital of the sixth smallest nation in Europe. The minuscule Principality was lodged in the Pyrenees between France and Spain, a leisurely two-and-a-half-hour drive away from Barcelona by Audi R8.
It was also an attractive offshore jurisdiction, thanks to its first-class private banking services, favorable taxation, and a stable political climate.
Constantine was leafing through a fresh copy of Le Figaro over morning coffee and traditional pastries.
“Uh-hmmmm.”
“What?”
“It says here that the Catalina was equipped with hidden surveillance cameras which were discovered during the police search. Shaloy gathered kompromat to blackmail some of his guests and keep them on a short leash. In particular, the recordings were found to contain rather unsavory sexual practices involving the Catalan President, Gerard de Puig, who turned out to be a pedophile.”
“Ouch, that’s horrible.”
“Indeed, but perversely it’s a blessing in disguise for the CNI. They were reluctant to go after de Puig for his Russian connection in order to avoid a political scandal but now the Spanish authorities will have to lock him up.”
“What about Senator Brathwaite?”
“No mention of him here. He’s vanished.”
“And Chepa? Still in the farm’s outbuilding?”
“No, we dropped him off somewhere along the Interstate. Jeff has quietly passed enough evidence of his Mafia involvement to the State Department to have him expelled. He’ll become persona non grata in every civilized country.”
“So it’s all over, then?”
“It’ll never be over and you know it. Not as long as Saveliy Frolov is still in the Kremlin. I know you’ve been ravaged by guilt these past couple of days, Gene. But it’s the Kremlin Khan who’s responsible for the deaths, not you. God knows how many lives you saved back there.”
“People I’ve never met and never will. But I failed to protect those I knew and cared about.”
“Then stop blaming yourself. We must act.”
“How? The CIA isn’t interested in doing anything to stop Frolov’s influence operations all across the world. And the Europeans are either in bed with him or too spineless to confront him in their own backyard.”
“That’s been the challenge faced by all Russian intellectuals since 1917. Waiting for the West to help fight the thugs who took over Kremlin. Their hopes were dashed time and time again but they kept praying for Allied intervention. We’d be foolish to repeat the same mistake. There’s a new kind of war going on now and one we can wage on our own. We’ve got what it takes.”
“And how exactly do we fight this Hydra?”
“We fight fire with fire. The Kremlin has weaponized money. We can turn Moscow Gold against Moscow.”
“You want to use the Blackfox money? Three hundred million dollars?”
“What else can we do with it? Give it away? We can’t claim any moral high ground unless we make it work for a worthy cause. There’s no better use for this dirty money than battling against the evil that it came from.”
Sokolov thought about it for a moment. “That won’t be enough. Even that kind of financing is a drop in the ocean compared to the Kremlin’s resources. The bulk of Moscow Gold is still out there.”
“And we can keep following it,” Constantine said. “We’ve got the greatest asset of all. Information. The Pavlova Papers. An untapped treasure trove revealing the disruptive Kremlin activity across the globe. Certainly, we can’t donate it to any foreign intelligence service. The data will be more devastating to them than WikiLeaks. Only we can handle it carefully and get the most out of it.”
Sokolov began to see his brother’s point. “We’ll play by the rules of hybrid warfare, hiding in the shadows where Frolov cannot rea
ch us,” he mused. “We’ll stay invisible behind a structure of offshore shell companies as we build up a global asset network. As non-state actors, we’d have the freedom and the budget to fight Frolov that no one else could afford. A fluid transnational organization that will enable us to thwart Frolov’s rogue ops in whichever country he tries to attack next. We can begin laying the groundwork here in Andorra. And save those countries that can still be saved from the Kremlin cancer.”
“Hit him where it hurts,” Constantine said. “And now we’ll know exactly where to strike.”
THE END
Take a Look At: Czar of England (SOKOLOV #6)
More precious than gold…is the power it buys. Will the brothers be able to stop the new President? The Sokolovs suspect there’s a plot, but it will take a level of brilliance to unravel it. On one side is the Russian mob and on the other the Kremlin. Both are gunning to stop them. Are they working together? What is the end game? How do events around the world play their part? Far from the Motherland a coup in Spain threatens the lives of millions. It’s just one more piece of the puzzle. Will they be able to put it all together in time? The race against the clock has begun. You’ll love this heart-pounding thriller because the action is intense and barely gives you a chance to breathe. It will keep you guessing until the end.
Get it now.
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Ian Kharitonov
About the Author