Avenue of Thieves

by Sean Black

  That was the best-case scenario.

  It was just as likely that they’d kill him on the spot or move him somewhere quiet and take their time over it, as a warning to any other dynamic young businesspeople.

  Even with his hands trembling as they clutched the heavy steering wheel, and his bladder on the edge of opening, he didn’t like the sound of either option.

  All his life he’d felt trapped by the system. Now it was gone, the trap felt the same. The only thing that had changed was the uniform of the gangsters.

  If only they’d found out a few weeks later, he’d have had time to hire some of his own muscle.

  “If,” he muttered to himself. “If” never changed anything.

  They were walking toward him. The Bitch Killer was gesturing for him to step out of the car.

  Dimitri threw it into reverse, praying the night shift had been good enough at their job to install a functioning gear box.

  They had. He stepped on the accelerator, reversing back down the alleyway.

  The three gangsters stood, arms folded. They knew as well as he did there was no exit in that direction.

  But Dimitri didn’t plan on fleeing. Far from it.

  He wasn’t trying to run. He was making sure he had enough of a run-up. These Zhigulis might be slower than a weekend in jail, but they were heavy.

  He threw the car into first gear, gunned the engine, then hit the gas pedal.

  The Zhiguli barreled down the Avenue of Thieves, picking up speed as Dimitri moved up the gears. Ignoring the two burly heavies, he lasered in on the smaller man.

  It would be no use clipping him with the side of the car. He needed to hit him head on.

  As the three men realized what he was doing, they either ran back down the alley or made for the walls, pressing themselves in against them.

  The Bitch Killer opted for the former. His heels kicking up, he sprinted along the alley, away from the car bearing down on him.

  He was fast. But not that fast.

  The steering wheel shuddered in Dimitri’s hand. He kept his foot jammed down hard on the gas pedal. He aimed straight for his target, his teeth gritted so hard that, he would realize later, he had stripped off some enamel at the moment of impact.

  He had no thought for what would come afterwards. Of what the consequences would be. All he knew was that this was the only way. To meet force with force, or skulk back to a life of humiliation and despair.

  No. Better to die than live like this. To buckle under the old system was one thing. But to do it when opportunity beckoned? That was unforgivable.

  The Zhiguli’s metal bumper struck the back of the gangster’s knees. He flipped backward, his lower body going in one direction and his torso in the other.

  Somersaulting, the top of his skull slammed into the windshield, shattering it on the passenger side. His head and neck protruded through the shattered glass as he lay on top of the still-moving vehicle.

  Blood poured from his head and face. His arms flailed back and forth.

  He turned his head to look at Dimitri, blood pulsing from a deep cut in his neck. His eyes blinked furiously as he made a gurgling sound.

  The car kept moving, speeding down the Avenue of Thieves, the dying man atop the hood, like some kind of hunting trophy.

  Between the blood and the shattered windshield, Dimitri couldn’t see what lay ahead. Finally, he took his foot off the accelerator, shifted down the gears and brought the car to a stop.

  He climbed out, his legs shaking so hard he could barely stand. The gangster’s arms had stopped flailing. He lay motionless.

  The two heavies were nowhere to be seen. The alleyway was quiet, bizarrely so. Dimitri reached into his pocket for a packet of cigarettes, took one out and, with some effort, managed to steady his hands long enough to light it.

  He pulled the smoke deep into his lungs, wishing he’d kept back some of the vodka. He could have used a drink right about now.

  Some workers appeared at the far end of the alley. They watched but didn’t approach.

  Finally, Dimitri managed to compose himself. He waved to the men watching.

  “Who wants to make some money?”

  They didn’t move. They just looked from Dimitri to the man with his head smashed through the windshield.

  “Dollars, comrades, not rubles,” he added.

  One of the men started toward him. A few moments later, the others followed.

  4

  Thirty years later

  Bridgehampton, New York

  At first glance it was like any of the other multimillion-dollar oceanfront estates on Surfside Drive, a long, winding road that hugged the beaches in this part of the Hamptons. Home to Wall Street superstars and the occasional celebrity from the world of entertainment or professional sports. Only the name, Glasnost, a jokey reference to Gorbachev’s new openness, which had preceded the collapse of Communism, gave any clue to the origins of its owner.

  Like so much high-priced real estate purchased in and near New York, the two separate oceanfront lots on which the home had been built had been paid for via a trust based in the Cayman Islands. Originally untraceable, it was only years later when the house’s new name went up on the sign outside that the owner was revealed as the hedge-fund billionaire, Dimitri Semenov.

  Dimitri had arrived in the United States in the early 2000s, already a very wealthy man. That was a large part of the reason he had been allowed in. Borders were for poor people. The wealthy were welcomed by most countries.

  By the time he’d applied for and been granted his green card, his financial interests back home in Russia were deep and wide. From a chain of automobile dealerships to a steel plant, from financial services interests that included two Moscow-based banks, and on into the real money-makers, gas and oil.

  Automobiles had got him started. They had provided him with cash and working capital. The banks had been necessary to allow expansion―back in the 1990s no self-respecting oligarch was without their own bank. But it was the interests he had secured in Russia’s vast natural energy resources that had taken him, in under three decades, from poor to obscenely rich to wealthy.

  Not that any of this occupied his mind that morning as he showered. It was his experience that the thrill of money was fleeting. And it brought new problems of its own. The biggest being that people wanted you dead.

  Dimitri Semenov stepped out of the shower, grabbed a towel, and dried off. Stock prices scrolled over the bottom of the TV in the corner as an earnest business news anchor reported on Apple’s upcoming new product launch.

  He waved his hand toward the screen and it switched off. He knew what was being announced. He had spent an hour the day before on an investor call with Apple CEO Tim Cook.

  Over the past decade he had gradually been shedding his Russian investments and replacing them with others. Many were American, but he also had substantial holdings in the Far and Middle East.

  Naked, he walked out into the dressing room. He jumped up, grabbed the bar and busted out five sets of ten pull-ups interspersed with squats, burpees, and push-ups. He prided himself on being in excellent physical shape. Not just for a man of his age, but of any age.

  He didn’t drink alcohol. Smoking had been tougher. It had taken the birth of his daughter, Anastasia, ten years ago, for him to put that vice to bed. His only real remaining vice, if it could even be called that, was drinking too much coffee. And, of course, women. He was married to Elizabeth, Anastasia’s mother, had been for almost fifteen years, but he also kept a series of mistresses and girlfriends, mostly models.

  He dressed quickly in his usual uniform of black trousers, expensive leather sneakers, and a cashmere hoodie. He rarely wore a suit. Suits were for millionaires and people who worked for him. He wore what he found comfortable.

  He had meetings later, and he was running behind. Usually he would have taken his helicopter into the city, but the new security team had advised against it after the Karchov incident a few months
before. Karchov, a Russian oligarch based in London, had perished in a helicopter a few months back. It was widely believed that the crash had been far from accidental, and the result of someone having tampered with the aircraft. Helicopters were sensitive machines. It didn’t take much to bring one down.

  According to his security team, it was safer, for now, to travel by car. Given that he was paying them almost five thousand dollars a day to keep him alive, the least he could do was take their advice.

  5

  Three black Cadillac sedans waited out front, engines purring. His designated bodyguard, a former member of British special forces called Neil McLennan, opened the rear door of the middle vehicle.

  Dimitri thanked him, got in, and settled himself in the backseat. McLennan closed the door, climbed into the front passenger seat, and the convoy set off. Dimitri settled himself for the long drive into Manhattan, pulled out his iPad, and started on the mountain of reading he had to get through.

  His phone chirped as they drove out through the imposing black security gates, installed at the behest of his new head of security. It was his wife, giving him an update on Anastasia. Nothing had changed. She’d had a comfortable night and was resting. They would visit her later.

  He said a silent prayer and returned to his reading. He would trade it all, every single dollar he had, to take back what had happened to Anastasia. But there was no taking it back. He had to live with that.

  The three cars threaded their way through Bridgehampton onto the Southampton bypass, the sedans evenly spaced but not so far apart that another vehicle could get between them. The lead vehicle held two members of the close-protection team, a driver and a passenger. Their role was to scan the road ahead for anything out of the ordinary. The middle one held Dimitri and his designated bodyguard, McLennan. It was McLennan’s task to stay with their principal, and directly protect him. That included stepping in front and taking a bullet for him if the need arose. The sedan bringing up the rear had four men inside, a driver and three close-protection operatives. An assortment of British and American former special-forces soldiers, together they made up the counter-attack team. Their job was to engage any threat or threats, giving McLennan and the driver of the middle sedan enough time to get away.

  Apart from the President of the United States and visiting heads of state, CA (counter-attack) teams were rarely used in the United States. They were the preserve of high-threat environments, such as parts of Mexico, and areas of ongoing military conflict such as Afghanistan.

  The traffic was usually light at this time of year, and they were making good time. With any luck they’d be in Manhattan by eight, and he’d be in the conference room of his office on Avenue of the Americas in SoHo by eight thirty.

  He had a lunch booked with the CEO of a tech startup he was considering investing in, then an evening rendezvous with a young Ukrainian model, Ruta Sirka, who was tipped to be on the front cover of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition. He’d return to his townhouse on the Upper East Side and go with Elizabeth to visit with their daughter Anastasia for a few hours.

  The lead sedan slowed as they came up on the Shinnecock Hills golf course. A battered old pickup truck was pulled over on the side of the highway, the hood raised, and steam pouring out. A kid with long hair waved for them to stop.

  The two members of the escort inside the lead car looked at each other and chuckled. One of the first rules you learned in this line of work was not to stop, no matter how harmless the person seemed.

  The man in the front passenger seat pulled out a cell phone. “I’ll call the local LEOs. They can check him out and arrange a tow truck.”

  “More than I’d do,” said the driver.

  “Yeah, but I’m a nicer guy than you.”

  The sedan suddenly accelerated. The man in the passenger seat looked behind them and then at his companion.

  “Quit messing around, okay?”

  The driver glanced down at the pedals. “I’m not.”

  “Very funny,” said the passenger.

  The car picked up speed. A gap was opening up between them and the sedan behind them. The passenger’s radio crackled. It was McLennan.

  “What the hell do you think you two are playing at?”

  Alexei slammed the hood of the pickup shut and got into the cab. On the bench seat was an old Toshiba laptop. Cables ran from it to three display screens mounted on the dash. He brushed hair from his eyes and jabbed two fingers at the laptop’s keyboard. A string of barely intelligible mnemonics ran down the screen. He looked from the screens to the laptop display and back.

  Up close he was older than his carefully constructed “millennial slacker” outfit suggested. Late twenties rather than early. His skin was ghostly pale, and his eyes bloodshot from a schedule that involved very little sleep.

  Still, he was almost there.

  They’d promised him a good long break when the job was done. In a few weeks he’d be in Cancún, soaking up the sun and drinking tequila, with ten million tax-free dollars in his bank account.

  Now, he had to concentrate. He had done the hard part a few weeks before when he’d installed the new circuit boards. But there had been no real way of beta-testing how it would operate in the real world.

  The driver of the lead car jammed his right foot down on the brake pedal as hard as he could. The car was still accelerating. The digital display swept past fifty miles an hour and kept going.

  The passenger was staring down into the footwell. “Why is it speeding up when you don’t even have your foot on the gas pedal?”

  “How the hell would I know?”

  The gas pedal kept inching down into the floor, propelled by some ghost-like force.

  The driver wobbled the steering wheel, but the sedan didn’t veer off a straight line. Not even by a few inches. He was sitting in the driver’s seat, but he might as well have been reclined in back for all the good it was doing him.

  Dimitri unclipped his belt, grabbed at the back of the seats and pulled himself forward. “What’s going on?” he said to McLennan, as the car in front pulled further ahead of them, picking up speed with every second. “I thought they were supposed to stay just in front of us.”

  “They are,” snapped McLennan. “The driver says he’s lost control. The pedals aren’t working. Nothing is.”

  “You’re sure?” asked Dimitri.

  “That’s what he’s telling me.”

  “We need to pull over,” said Dimitri.

  “Sir, as soon as we get you to a safe location, we can debus you––”

  Dimitri was thrown forward, between the seats, his head colliding with McLennan’s as they were suddenly shunted from the back by the CA team car.

  “What the fu––?” said McLennan, shifting side on, trying to get a view out of the rear as to what had just hit them. “Sir, are you okay?”

  Dimitri slumped back into his seat. He pulled out a silk handkerchief and dabbed some blood from his hairline. “Yes, yes, it’s nothing.”

  “Sir, please put your seatbelt back on,” said McLennan, then keyed the button on his radio.

  “What the hell was that?” he barked into the radio.

  He released the button and waited for a response.

  “We don’t know, the vehicle just suddenly accelerated out of nowhere. The brake pedal wasn’t responding. Nothing was.”

  “What about now?” McLennan asked.

  “It seems to be back to normal.”

  There was a muffled conversation as the leader of the CA team checked with the driver.

  “Yeah, it’s operational now.”

  McLennan keyed his radio again, using the lead car’s call sign. “What about you guys?”

  Through the windscreen he could see that the lead vehicle had slowed again, allowing them to catch up. It was two vehicle lengths ahead, matching their speed precisely.

  “Everything’s working,” came the response. “Must have been some kind of temporary glitch.”

&
nbsp; “You’re sure?”

  “Positive. We’re good.”

  “Okay, next gas station, let’s pull in,” instructed McLennan. The last thing they needed was one of the cars losing control in the middle of the Midtown tunnel.

  “Roger that.”

  The driver next to him slammed on the brakes. The car in front had come to a complete stop. The glitch had returned with a vengeance.

  An RV’s horn blared as it slip-streamed past them in the outside lane.

  Then, as quickly as it had stopped, the lead car took off again. Fast. Not just a sudden lurch forward but like someone trying to discover how quickly it could get to sixty miles per hour from cold.

  In the lead car, the driver stamped repeatedly on the brake. The passenger screamed at him as both men were thrown back in their seats by the sudden burst of acceleration.

  Up ahead was the bridge that crossed the Shinnecock canal, a crossing point that signaled to summer vacationers they were entering, or leaving, the Hamptons.

  They were coming up fast on some other traffic. The driver honked his horn furiously to get people out of his way. If they didn’t move, he was going to slam into the back of them.

  “Move into the other lane,” the passenger shouted.

  The driver shook the steering wheel from side to side, the car staying on a straight line. “What do you think I’m trying to do?”

  “Let’s just hope the airbags on this thing are working.”

  They were still accelerating, the display showing them inching up past eighty. The driver stayed on the horn, all the while cursing loudly, and planting his foot as hard as he could on the brake pedal.

  The steering wheel began to move, turning so hard down to the right that the driver’s hands were wrenched from it. The tires squealed, struggling to stay in contact with the road.

  A red Mercedes convertible slammed side on into one of the rear doors. The Cadillac kept moving, its nose now pointed straight to the guard rail. The engine revved as it powered through the rail, flipping over in mid-air and landing on its roof in the canal below.