Ganglands, Russia

by Ross Kemp

  The hospital was an imposing modern building set back from the road. As the taxi pulled up outside the entrance, Alexei stuffed a ten-rouble note into the driver’s hand and scrambled out. Running at full pelt through the automatic doors, Alexei nearly crashed into the reception desk. A nurse looked up from her computer with surprise.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I’m looking for my girlfriend,’ Alexei panted. ‘Lena Saroyan. Is she here?’

  ‘One moment.’ The nurse tapped the computer keys as she checked her records. ‘She’s in surgery right now.’

  ‘Surgery?’

  ‘I’ll get a doctor to come and explain everything to you,’ the nurse replied. ‘In the meantime, if you could please wait over there.’

  She pointed to the waiting room, where a handful of relatives were sitting expectantly for news of their loved ones, their faces drawn and pale in the weak strip-lighting. They kept glancing warily back to the other side of the waiting room, where an imposing black man was sitting on his own, his arms folded. Alexei paced across the floor, trying to ignore the horrible thoughts about Lena his mind was conjuring up. As he muttered to himself, he became aware that the black man was watching him with a coolly impassive gaze. Annoyed by the scrutiny, Alexei was about to confront him when a doctor appeared and drew him to one side.

  ‘What’s going on?’ asked Alexei. ‘What’s happened to Lena?’

  ‘Your girlfriend was attacked on a metro train this evening.’

  ‘Attacked?’ echoed Alexei. ‘What … what do you mean, attacked?’

  ‘A gang of youths beat her up – very badly, I’m afraid to say. Lena sustained some internal injuries that demanded we operated on her immediately.’

  ‘How is she now?’

  ‘We’ve staunched the internal bleeding, but she also suffered severe head trauma.’ The doctor paused. ‘Lena’s in a coma right now.’

  ‘But she’ll wake up, right?’ Alexei said desperately.

  ‘There’s no way we can predict anything at the moment,’ the doctor said sympathetically. ‘For the time being, she’s stable. Would you like to see her?’

  Alexei nodded. Numbly, he felt the doctor take his arm and lead him through the hospital to a small room on the third floor. Nothing could have prepared Alexei for the scene within: his girlfriend stretched out on a bed, her eyes closed, her body hooked up to a mass of machines via a complicated system of tubes. A heart monitor bleeped monotonously in the silence. Seeing Lena lying there, Alexei was overwhelmed by emotion: grief at the bruises covering the girl’s face, and an icy rage for the people who had inflicted them upon her. Trying to fight back the tears, he sat next to Lena’s side and gently held her hand.

  Alexei had no idea how long they sat together in that tiny room. Eventually the doctor returned, and told him in a low voice that he had to leave Lena until the morning. Reluctantly, Alexei let go of his girlfriend’s hand and left the room.

  In the corridor outside, he was surprised to see the black man from the waiting room standing by a water cooler, his hands folded behind his back. The man nodded at him.

  ‘How is she?’ he asked.

  ‘What the hell is it to you?’ snapped Alexei.

  The man seemed unfazed by his reply. ‘Dark times require friends,’ he said, in a deep American baritone.

  Something clicked in Alexei’s head.

  ‘It was you!’ he exclaimed. ‘You’re the guy who phoned me!’

  The American extended a hand. ‘Allow me to introduce myself: I’m Darius Jordan, head of Trojan Industries. We have a lot to talk about, Alexei.’

  3. Recruitment Drive

  Alexei stared at the man’s outstretched hand.

  ‘What do you mean, we have a lot to talk about?’

  Jordan glanced around the hospital corridor. ‘This isn’t the best place to discuss business. Why don’t you take a walk with me?’

  ‘Why don’t you get the hell out of my face?’ snapped Alexei, reddening with anger. ‘What’s it got to do with you, anyway?’

  There was a polite cough behind him. Alexei turned round to see a bespectacled man in green surgical scrubs politely interject himself between Alexei and the American. ‘Mr Jordan?’

  ‘Mr Karpin.’ Jordan shook the man briskly by the hand. ‘I hear that the surgery went well.’

  ‘As well as can be expected, given the circumstances. The patient is lucky that you are paying for her treatment. The facilities here are among the best in Russia.’

  ‘The surgeons too, I hear.’

  The bespectacled man smiled. ‘Very kind of you to say so. I have another case to attend to now – but be assured we’ll be doing everything we can for Lena.’

  The man walked away, leaving Alexei in a state of complete confusion. Why had a complete stranger paid for Lena’s treatment?

  ‘I’m not rich, you know,’ he confessed to Jordan. ‘I don’t know if I can pay you back.’

  ‘Not monetarily. This place doesn’t come cheap, let me assure you. But maybe there’s other ways we can work together. If you’ll come and discuss it with me …’

  ‘Talk here or not at all,’ Alexei insisted. ‘I’m not leaving Lena alone.’

  ‘I understand completely,’ the American replied, unruffled. ‘Perhaps you’d be better off not knowing after all. I’m sorry to have troubled you.’

  He turned to walk away.

  ‘Wait!’

  Jordan stopped and looked back, his eyebrow raised quizzically.

  ‘I’d be “better off not knowing” what?’ asked Alexei.

  ‘Trojan has certain information about what happened to Lena that I thought you might want to hear. Information you might not get from the authorities.’

  Alexei’s eyes narrowed. ‘Then how do you know about it?’

  ‘It’s my job to know these sorts of things. Listen, Alexei, I know it’s difficult to take everything in right now. I wish this dreadful thing hadn’t happened to Lena, and that you and I hadn’t had to meet in these circumstances. All I’m offering you is a chance to understand what’s going on. The rest is entirely up to you.’

  ‘And if I don’t come with you, what happens to Lena?’

  Jordan spread out his palms. ‘I’m a businessman, Alexei,’ he said. ‘As long as Trojan Industries has a reason to be in Moscow, I can take care of Lena. But if we can’t do business, then that’s a different matter.’

  Jordan turned on his heel and strode away, not waiting to see if Alexei followed him. Alexei glanced back at Lena through the shuttered window of her room, then jogged down the corridor after the tall American. Jordan didn’t acknowledge him when Alexei caught up – something about the man’s manner suggested he was used to people obeying him. They walked in silence back down to the main entrance.

  Outside the hospital, Alexei zipped up his tracksuit and pulled his hood over his head. The thick winter snows might have melted away, but there was still an icy sharpness to the night air. A large black people carrier with tinted windows was parked next to the loading bay. Jordan opened the rear passenger door and gestured for Alexei to climb inside. Alexei hesitated, his simmering anger tempered by the first gnawings of fear.

  The American noted the pensive look on Alexei’s face. ‘Don’t be nervous, son,’ he said. ‘The safest place to be is right by my side.’

  He spoke with a no-nonsense briskness that Alexei found reassuring. He climbed inside the people carrier and settled into the back seat. Two other people were sharing the vehicle’s gloomy interior: a man in the driver’s seat, softly drumming his fingers on the steering wheel; beside him, a woman smoked idly out of the passenger window. Neither of them said a word to Alexei as Jordan joined him in the back seat.

  ‘Take us for a drive, Richard,’ the American said crisply as he closed the door behind him. ‘Nice and easy – I don’t want any unnecessary attention.’

  The man in the driver’s seat nodded, flicked on the people carrier’s headlights, and nudged the vehicle out into the tr
affic. As the car ploughed on through the dark streets, Darius turned to Alexei.

  ‘You’ll have to forgive my caution,’ he said, ‘but I prefer to talk business in a secure environment.’

  ‘I don’t know why you keep talking about business,’ Alexei said stubbornly. ‘All I care about is what happened to Lena.’

  ‘It’s all business, Alexei, one way or another. But OK. The police are still collecting reports on the attack tonight, but our man on the inside has had a chance to review the CCTV footage from Sokol station. The pictures aren’t clear enough to make any positive identifications, but we’re convinced that your girlfriend was attacked by a skinhead gang called the Moscow Eagle 88s.’

  ‘Skinheads?’ Alexei echoed incredulously. ‘Why would they attack Lena?’

  Darius Jordan glanced out of the window. ‘I wish I could give you a proper reason, son, but it looks like a simple case of wrong place, wrong time. Today’s April the twentieth – skinheads like the Eagles often go looking for targets on this day.’

  ‘What’s so special about April the twentieth?’

  ‘It’s Hitler’s birthday,’ the woman in the front seat said, her voice deathly cold.

  Alexei listened in dumb shock as Jordan continued: ‘Seems your girlfriend stepped in when these thugs started beating up a Tajik on the metro. Compared to Lena, the old guy got off lightly – he’ll be out of hospital within the next few days. Owes his life to your girlfriend.’

  ‘Typical Lena,’ Alexei said faintly. ‘She never walks away from a fight.’

  ‘She sounds like quite a girl. The worst things always happen to the best people. Don’t know why the world has to work like that, but it does.’

  Alexei frowned. ‘But how do I know that this is true? How come you can get hold of this information so quickly?’

  ‘Contacts,’ Jordan said simply. ‘By now you might have guessed that Trojan Industries isn’t like other businesses, Alexei. We’re not interested in selling products or making money or anything like that.’

  ‘So what are you interested in?’

  Jordan’s eyes glinted in the darkness. ‘Gangs,’ he said. ‘Trojan is a shell, a front for a covert military operation. Under its auspices, we travel from country to country trying to break up the world’s most violent gangs. Three months ago, we had our first successful operation in Brazil. We came to Russia because of the Moscow Eagles – our sources here have been tracking them for quite some time. Even by neo-Nazi standards, they’re a brutal bunch. Now we have the perfect opportunity to take them down. Look at this.’

  Opening up a slim briefcase, Jordan produced a copy of the Moscow Times, the city’s English-language newspaper, and passed it to Alexei. On the front page, a photograph showed an angry-looking skinhead in handcuffs being marched through a crowd by a policeman.

  ‘Recognize this man?’

  Alexei shook his head.

  ‘His name is Nikolai Borovsky. He’s a member of the Moscow Eagles. He’s currently on trial for the murder of two Azerbaijani workmen last August. The verdict’s in tomorrow – and it looks like he’s going to jail for a long time.’

  ‘OK,’ Alexei said slowly. ‘But what’s this got to do with me?’

  ‘Borovsky is the Eagles’ main enforcer – losing him is a massive blow to their organization. Right now, they’re vulnerable to infiltration. Trojan needs an agent to gain the gang’s confidence and gather enough evidence to enable us to smash the 88s for good.’

  Slowly, the pieces began to fall into place in Alexei’s head. ‘Are you saying you want me to do this?’

  ‘That’s exactly what I’m saying, Alexei. Be under no illusions: this is a dangerous assignment. The Eagles are a violent and unpredictable outfit, and if you get into trouble I can’t guarantee that we can help you. Trojan is a black-ops organization – if the Russian authorities find out about us, it will be an international scandal. It would spell the end for us.’

  ‘This is crazy!’ exclaimed Alexei. ‘I’m not a spy! I can’t do this!’

  ‘I think you underestimate yourself,’ Jordan said calmly. Returning to his briefcase, he pulled out a brown file and began flicking through it. ‘Alexei Zhukov,’ he read out, pursing his lips. ‘Judging by his school records, he’s an exemplary student. Shows particular promise in the sciences – potential to study engineering at university. Outside of school, he’s a trained kickboxer who’s competed at state level.’

  ‘An all-round high achiever,’ remarked the driver drily. ‘I hated kids like that when I was at school.’

  ‘It’s not that surprising, Richard,’ Jordan replied. ‘Not when you look at his family. His grandfather, his uncle and his father can all boast distinguished military service for the Red Army.’

  ‘The boy’s got heroism in the genes,’ the driver agreed.

  Jordan snapped the file shut. When he spoke again, any trace of lightness had disappeared from his voice. ‘In short, Alexei – you’re a perfect candidate for Trojan Industries.’

  As the car pulled up to a set of traffic lights, Alexei stared out of the window at the night sky. ‘This is too much,’ he said quietly. ‘First Lena, now this spy stuff … I can’t deal with it.’

  ‘You have my sympathy, son. But we can’t pick and choose our moments to fight, and Trojan needs your help. We have to make sure that what happened to Lena doesn’t happen to anyone else.’

  Alexei shook his head. The shock of the night’s events had suddenly hit him like a brick wall. He was worried he was going to burst into tears. Seeing the distress on his face, Jordan returned the file to his briefcase saying, ‘Why don’t you sleep on it, and get back to us?’

  The American opened his wallet and handed Alexei a business card. ‘You can contact me on that number any time, day or night. Whatever you decide to do, I need to hear from you in the next twenty-four hours. Time is of the essence.’

  Alexei slipped the card into his back pocket. ‘Can you let me out here, please?’ he asked wearily.

  The driver glanced round in surprise. ‘You don’t want us to take you back to the hospital?’

  ‘Just stop the damn car!’ Alexei shouted.

  The driver hurriedly pulled over to the side of the road. Before Jordan could say anything else, Alexei yanked open the door and leaped out, running away down the street. He had no idea where he was running to – all he knew was that he had to put distance between himself and the American. Risking a look back over his shoulder, he was relieved to see the people carrier turning round and heading away in the opposite direction. As Alexei sprinted around the street corner, the car dimmed its headlights, disappearing into the night.

  4. Courting Trouble

  The next morning, in a courthouse in the Arbat district of Moscow, Rozalina Petrova nervously awaits the return of the jury. A human rights lawyer who specializes in racist attacks, she has been in this situation countless times before. Usually she keeps her emotions under control; quietly celebrating her victories, resolute in her defeats. This case, however, is different.

  The defendant, Nikolai Borovsky, stands quietly in a metal cage in the centre of the courtroom: a towering man in a prison jumpsuit. As Rozalina watches him, he carefully runs a hand across the top of his bald head, mapping out the slight bumps and depressions of his skull. Rozalina doesn’t scare easily – she couldn’t do her job if she did – but there is something about Borovsky that chills her to the core. During her prosecution speech, he leaned against the bars, a dreamy half-smile playing on his lips. She doubts he heard a word she said.

  It’s the lack of emotion that bothers Rozalina. After all, she has seen the photographs of the two men Borovsky killed, their bodies dumped at the bottom of an empty and abandoned swimming pool, staining the cracked tiles with their blood. The Azerbaijani immigrants had been so badly beaten that their corpses could only be identified by their fingerprints. Apparently Borovsky hadn’t shown the slightest surprise when the police had come to arrest him – Rozalina has the nasty suspici
on that he is pleased to be associated with this crime, and his ‘not guilty’ plea at the trial’s outset was the work of his defence lawyer.

  She is surprised that this one case has affected her so much. Ten years of campaigning for justice for victims of racist attacks has hardened Rozalina to the hazards that accompany her work: the hate mail, the graffiti daubed on her car, the threatening phone calls. Every time she speaks to her parents on the phone, they beg her to take up other kinds of cases. Although it breaks her heart to cause them so much worry, she has a stubborn streak that runs as deep through her soul as a Pacific trench, and this is something she’s willing to risk her life for.

  There is a stir in the courtroom as the jury files back in. Rozalina stands, her heart racing as the judge asks the foreman for his verdict.

  ‘Guilty,’ he replies.

  Rozalina feels a small surge of triumph; unconsciously, her fist clenches. A murmur of excitement ripples through the room. Someone shouts ‘Rot in hell, you bastard!’ from the gallery – a relative of one of the victims. The skinhead barely seems to register the verdict. As he is led away from his cage, Borovsky searches out Rozalina and smiles at her. Then, lifting up his manacled hands, he draws an invisible dagger across his throat. A policeman manhandles him away, but Borovsky’s laughter echoes in Rozalina’s head long after he has vanished into the bowels of the courthouse.

  People line up to shake her hand; Rozalina smiles politely and accepts their congratulations, but all she wants to do is get into her car and return to her flat. Borovsky has unsettled her more than she cares to admit. She quickly packs up her briefcase and leaves the courtroom.

  A crowd has gathered on the steps outside, a volatile mixture of reporters waving microphones, protesters brandishing anti-Nazi placards, and a knot of skinheads chanting and making fascist salutes. Steeling herself for the crush, Rozalina clutches her briefcase close to her chest and tries to thread her way through the crowd. A thin line of policemen struggles to clear a path for her, buffeted on both sides. The air is thick with cheers and boos and the threat of violence. As Rozalina forges down the steps, she is assailed by different sections of the crowd: