“Okay,” said one of the bikers. “Let’s get this started.”
Only he didn’t say it in Russian. He said it in English, with a broad Jersey accent.
Vasiliy stepped forward and introduced himself, clasping hands and kissing cheeks. I listened to the men, memorizing their names. Every one of them was American and I heard accents from New York to California. I felt sick. The weapons I’d seen in the yacht’s hold were heading straight for my home country.
“I want to thank you for making the trip,” said Vasiliy in English. “Some things are better discussed in person.”
I remembered what Adam had said: that Vasiliy was the figurehead now and Luka ran the business. Vasiliy would have brokered this deal and persuaded all these men to fly out here and then drive God knows how many miles to wherever the hell we were, somewhere isolated and totally private. Vasiliy was the showman and the face they’d come to trust. But, now that the pleasantries were over, it was time for Luka.
I’d grabbed Luka’s hand again as we stood there listening to his dad. Now he dropped it, looking at me almost apologetically. Then he walked forward and, suddenly, he was all business, the mask coming down. I felt my heart slowly icing over again as he reminded me, word by word, what he really was.
The way things were done now, with big shipments of guns coming to America in cargo containers, was dangerous and costly, he explained. “One shipment is lost, and it’s hundreds of thousands of dollars. And when the weapons do get into the country...what then? You still have to get them across several states to reach your customers. Every state border means another chance of getting caught.” He glanced at some of the bikers. “Paying off rival motorcycle clubs, bribing the police. It’s a mess.” He shook his head. “No more.”
“We are going to do for guns what McDonalds did for hamburgers and what Starbucks did for coffee,” he said. He described a complex network of distribution, with legitimate, Russian-owned businesses trucking the guns across America to exactly where they were needed. “No more big deals,” he said. “A million small ones. Too small to track, too small to trace. If one shipment gets caught…”—he shrugged theatrically—”so what?”
As I listened, my blood ran steadily colder. It wasn’t just the audacity of the plan he was outlining. It was the way he sounded just like his dad. Not quite as slick or polished as Vasiliy’s showmanship, but he was getting there. In a year, maybe two, he’ll be just like him.
This was why I needed to be his salvation. But how? How could I save him when my whole purpose here was to take him down?
When Luka had finished, the Americans looked at each other. Eventually, one of them spoke up. “It sounds good,” he said. “But what about Ralavich? Most of us buy our guns from him. You’re taking a big slice of his business. What about repercussions?”
Vasiliy stepped forward. “I’m not scared of Olaf fucking Ralavich. His operations in the US are a mess. I’m surprised he’s lasted this long. It’s time for a change.”
Luka called for the guards and they trooped in, carrying the crates I’d seen on the yacht. “A sample,” said Luka. “To show we mean business. Yours to keep—a crate each.” He picked up a crowbar and cracked the top off one of the crates. It was filled with gleaming assault rifles.
The Americans exchanged glances, impressed. Meanwhile, I was reeling. A sample?! This huge pile of crates was just a sample?! There must have been hundreds of guns there.
I understood, now. Luka wasn’t setting up a gun deal; he was setting up a business. A steady, poisonous flow of guns into my country.
Luka handed out loaded magazines and the men slotted them into the rifles. The guards placed some of the old cardboard cartons that littered the place on top of the machines to serve as targets.
A second later, the air erupted into a deafening roar as the men test-fired the guns. The huge room was lit up with flickering white fire and the windows shook from the noise.
Luka looked at me, worried. Then he put his big hands over my ears, blocking out the sound. It helped but, as I looked up into his eyes, I couldn’t find the man I knew there. You always knew he was an arms dealer, you idiot, I told myself. But, somehow, I’d been imagining him selling a few handguns to some far-off country or maybe a tank to a Middle-Eastern regime. Not this. Not crime on a corporate scale.
I stared at him in the near silence, the thump of the guns just a vibration through his hands. My eyes pleaded with him and, just for a second, I saw the conflict start again in his face. The wish that things could be different.
I was starting to realize, with horrible certainty, that things could never be different. He was trapped in a role and so was I. He had to do what his father expected of him, just as I had to follow orders from Adam.
The guns finally ran out of ammunition and Luka gently lifted his hands from my ears. I turned to look. The men were laughing and grinning, high on adrenaline. All of them were nodding that they’d take Luka’s deal.
I looked at the cartons they’d been shooting. The cardboard had been shredded by the bullets and inside—
It had been a doll factory. Naked plastic carcasses were piled in the cartons, their heads and arms and legs ripped off by bullets, holes punched clear through their bellies and chests. A thousand tiny murders, a warzone in miniature.
I turned around and threw up all over the floor.
“Who the hell is that?” asked one of the Americans
I could feel Vasiliy’s eyes burning into me with disgust. “No one,” he muttered.
Outside, the Americans filed into a fleet of black SUVs, still laughing and joking. Luka embraced his dad before the older man climbed into a limo with blacked-out windows. I guessed it was probably armored, too.
Vasiliy waved and gave me a big, fake smile as he got into the car. Then he pulled Luka close and I heard him say, in Russian, “She’s trouble, Luka. You’ve fucked her—now break it off.”
Luka didn’t nod...but he didn’t argue, either. He just closed the car door and watched as the limo pulled away. What did that mean?
It hit me that I now had the perfect excuse to end things. My mission was done, after all. I knew all about the deal and had enough information for the CIA and the Russian cops to bust Luka’s business wide open. When we got back to Moscow, I could break up with him and it wouldn’t seem at all suspicious. Hell, he might even break up with me before I could do it.
All simple and clean. So why did it feel as if pieces of jagged glass were being pulled from my heart?
Luka walked over to me and told the guards to give him a minute. They waited a respectful distance away, still watching out for snipers but looking a little less jumpy than before. Now that the guns and Vasiliy—the two big targets for any rivals—had departed, things felt slightly safer.
“Are you okay?” asked Luka, taking my hand in an oddly old-fashioned gesture. His hand completely covered my much smaller one. “You”—he searched for the right word for threw up—”You unwelled.”
Despite everything, that made me smile. “I’m okay now. I just…” I shook my head. “I wasn’t ready for that.” I could feel my face going pale again. “Jesus, Luka, you’re going to flood the market.”
He gave me a strange look, and I realized I’d spoken with too much authority. I didn’t sound like a tourist. I tried to brazen it out. “I took some business classes,” I said. “And that’s what you’re doing, isn’t it? Flooding the market. Thousands of cheap guns. So that your competitors look expensive and you force them out, and you control everything.”
He slowly nodded. “Exactly.”
“But it’s guns. So many guns. Just one of those could be used in a robbery or a murder and you’re talking about thousands.”
“Hundreds of thousands, over the next decade.” He put his hands on my shoulders. The touch would have been warm and comforting any other time, but it wasn’t working now. “But I don’t control what people do with them.”
At that, I lost it. Hot anger bu
bbled up from right down in my chest. “That old excuse?”
He stared at me and I could see his own anger growing, too. “It’s just business, Arianna. I’m taking the violence out of it. Once we control the whole market, there’ll be no more fighting with rival gangs. Much better than if bastards like Olaf Ralavich control it. The deals, the smuggling—it can all be clean and bloodless.”
“But it’s guns! It’s never bloodless! You’re ignoring what happens when the guns get to where they’re going!”
His eyes narrowed. “I didn’t make your criminals want to kill each other. I didn’t even make them demand guns. I’m just filling the demand.”
“What about kids?” I said savagely. And, at that, I saw him hesitate and almost wince. For a second, those hard eyes softened. “What about kids of fourteen, fifteen—even younger, who get mixed up with street gangs and shot with one of the new, cheap guns? What about them?”
He glanced away, not meeting my eyes. “That is unfortunate.”
“But you could do something about it! Once you control the supply, you could set conditions! Threaten to cut off their guns if they hand them out to teenagers.”
He held my gaze for a split second, his eyes widening in surprise. And something else. Respect. But then he shook his head and looked away. “Arianna, you don’t know this world. I couldn’t do that. It shows weakness. Besides, my father would never support it.”
“You have to!” I blurted. And then realized I’d said far too much already. What was rattling around my head was, you have to, because if you’re really this cold then I don’t know if there’s any hope for you.
His lips pressed together in a tight line and he loomed at me. “I don’t have to do anything,” he said sharply. But then he stared at me for another beat, half furious and half...something else. “You’re not, are you?” he muttered.
“Not what?”
“Not scared of me. No one ever stands up to me.”
“I am scared of you,” I said in a low voice. “I just...say stuff anyway.”
He held my gaze a second longer and then he glanced off down the road. There was nothing in sight, but I knew what he was thinking. He was gazing at the point where his dad’s car had vanished into the distance. Reminding himself that he and I could never work. He sighed. “Come,” he said. “We should go.”
***
The trip back to Moscow would be much quicker than the outward one. Now that we’d got rid of the guns and didn’t have to dodge the coastguard, Luka explained, we could take a more direct route. Five hours on the yacht, a flight and we’d be home.
Luka spent most of the time on the bridge with the captain. Given that there wasn’t anything to see except for the featureless gray ocean, I knew he was avoiding me. And I knew why. He was debating breaking up with me.
I lay on the bed in our stateroom and tried to figure out my feelings. I should be happy! The mission was nearly over and it was a complete success. I’d done everything asked of me and soon I’d go home. Some weeks or months down the line, there’d be an epic bust. I’d be hailed as a star field agent and Luka would spend the rest of his life in a Russian prison.
So why did I feel ripped apart inside?
It was as if everything good we’d had was being twisted like a knife into my guts. I’d used his feelings against him.
He was an arms dealer. He was evil. But I was worse.
***
Back in St. Petersburg, Yuri transferred our bags to a car and we set off for the airport. Luka and I both sat there brooding, staring out of opposite windows. It seemed like we’d sit like that for the entire flight back to Moscow, too.
Until, suddenly, Luka’s cell phone bleeped. Not a call or a text—some sort of app. And his face lit up with genuine pleasure for a few seconds before he reigned himself in. He leaned forward to Yuri and muttered something I couldn’t hear, and we turned off the highway.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
Luka grinned at me. I could still sense the storm on the horizon—we both knew, now, that this couldn’t last. But just for a second, he was happy and he wanted to share it with me. He showed me the screen of his phone—a map of the area, with an airplane symbol on St. Petersburg. “Jet is here,” he said with satisfaction.
“Jet is here?” I said blankly.
“Jet is here.”
***
“Another trophy?” I asked, eying the sleek white business jet.
He shook his head. “I bought this myself.” He stroked the wing lovingly. “She was having work done on her engines—that’s why we had to take a normal flight on the way here. But now she’s back.”
She?
On board, the pilot and co-pilot greeted us, all smiles and enthusiasm. Luka asked after their wives and kids. I saw the same fierce streak of loyalty in the pilots I saw in Yuri—for all his evil, Luka obviously treated his staff well.
He was still grinning when we sat down in the huge leather armchairs and buckled ourselves in for take-off. He took my hand and, as the engines spun up, he squeezed it.
He was...excited. This huge bear of a man, that nothing seemed to phase, was excited.
I blinked. I’d known there was tenderness inside him but I hadn’t expected to see...fun. He’d always been larger than life to me, but this was the first time he’d seemed complete—a man who’d make a good friend, a good father. He hid all that away.
“You like planes,” I said.
His hand loosened in mine. “What? No. Jet is to impress others. Symbol of status.”
“Status symbol. And no it isn’t. The yacht was a status symbol. You like this plane.” I paused, studying him as we sped down the runway. “No, you love it.”
He squirmed in his seat, just a little. I’d found his weakness. It was incredibly reassuring that he had one. “You’ve liked planes ever since you were a kid, haven’t you?” I said, figuring it out. “It reminds you of those days. When you didn’t have to think about all this stuff.” I felt the wheels leave the ground. “It must be nice to have something pure—one thing in your life that isn’t about guns and violence.”
He locked eyes with me and held my gaze. I’d been talking about the plane, but it occurred to me that I’d just described myself.
“You Americans and your psycho-analyzing,” he muttered. But it was a good-natured mutter. As if he didn’t mind someone finding out his weakness....as long as it was me. We stared at each other and I knew he could feel the connection as strongly as I could. That sense that this was right, that we worked together...even though we both knew it couldn’t last. His dad had told him to break up with me and, even if that didn’t happen, I was going to betray him.
It just felt so good, though, to finally meet someone I clicked with. I leaned over and wound my arm around his much thicker one, spiraling them so we were entangled, and put my head on his shoulder. He let out a long sigh—not aimed at me, but at the situation.
“What are you doing here, Arianna?” he said. “Why not in America with stockbroker?”
We stared at each other. We both knew the answer. “A stockbroker isn’t what I want,” I said quietly.
He shook his head. “You don’t want monster, either. You think you do.” The seatbelt sign went off. He unfastened his belt and patted his lap.
I slowly got up. He guided me to sit astride his legs, facing him. He folded his arms around my back and the warmth of him, after all those hours brooding alone on the yacht, made me melt inside. “I know what I want,” I said firmly.
“Between your thighs,” he rumbled. “But what about the rest of the time? I am what I am, Arianna, just like my father.”
I grabbed his hand. “Not just like your father. You’re your own man.”
He laughed gently and shook his head. “You want me to rebel and open a coffee shop in New York with you? That isn’t how the Brotherhood works. You don’t leave. This is my life. This will always be my life.”
“But you could do it...I don’t k
now...your own way. Like making sure the guns don’t get handed out to teenagers.” It wasn’t that I was hung up on that one thing. It was that, if he could make that one concession, I’d know there was hope for him.
He studied me. Then he leaned forward and kissed my forehead and rested his own head against the tingling mark he’d made. “My father ran most of Moscow for many years. Everyone respects him. Everyone fears him. I have a lot of...expectation riding on me.”
I nodded, letting him feel the movement of my head against his. Both of us had our eyes closed, which I think is what made the next part possible.
“Your father’s dead, isn’t he?”
I nodded again, feeling the pain rise up into my throat, a jagged lump of ice.
“Your mother, too?” he whispered.
I nodded again. This time, a tear fell down between us and hit his thigh.
His arms tightened around me. “I’m sorry, Arianna.” He just held me for a long time. Then he said, “My father is all I have left. I can’t just go against him.”
I nodded, fresh tears forming in my eyes. I wasn’t supposed to know what his dad had said about me, so supposedly we were still talking about the gun deal. But I knew he was meaning breaking up with me, too. He was going to do just what his dad wanted and dump me as soon as we got back to his penthouse.
We landed at a tiny airfield just outside Moscow. One of Luka’s many guards met us with a car and Yuri got behind the wheel.
I immediately began to translate each billboard we passed, to try to get my mind off the fact I was sitting in a car. I’d spent more time in cars in the last few days than I had in the previous few years and it hadn’t gotten any easier. On the outward trip, focusing on Luka had made it bearable but now, with both of us consumed by our thoughts, there was just tense silence. Even Yuri looked uncomfortable.
I had maybe twenty minutes until we reached his penthouse. Then he’d dump me and have Yuri drive me back to my hotel. I’d call Adam and he’d get me on a flight the same day. By tomorrow, I’d be back at my desk in Langley and I’d never see Luka again. And within weeks, he’d go to jail for the rest of his life.
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