Ganglands, Russia

by Ross Kemp

  ‘You haven’t slept there,’ Alexei said meaningfully.

  Madison patted him on the arm. ‘Good luck,’ he said. ‘I’ll be here when you get out.’

  The Englishman watched with his arms folded as Alexei crossed the empty plaza towards the skyscraper. With most of the surrounding buildings still to be completed, this part of the business centre was eerily quiet. Alexei hurried over to the revolving door at Moskva Heights’ entrance, took a deep breath, then pushed his way inside.

  He walked through a sparse lobby completely devoid of decoration, its walls painted a neutral cream colour. No signs or logos gave any clue as to the business that was conducted here. The only person visible was a receptionist sitting behind a high counter, typing at a computer as she talked into a headset. She rang off at the sight of Alexei, her lip curling with disdain.

  ‘Can I help you?’

  ‘I’ve got a message for Boris Lebedev,’ he replied, leaning on the counter.

  ‘Mr Lebedev isn’t here,’ she said curtly. ‘And I doubt he’s interested in anything you’ve got to say. Please leave immediately.’

  From nowhere, a hulking man in a suit appeared at Alexei’s side, and placed a firm hand on his shoulder.

  ‘He’s in, all right,’ countered Alexei, ‘and believe me, he’s going to be very interested in what I’ve got to say.’ His voice dropped to a whisper. ‘Tell him I’m from Darknet Security.’

  The receptionist paused, and then gestured at the bodyguard to step back. She tapped a number into the phone on her desk, and spoke quietly into her headset. Reluctantly, she looked over to the man in the suit and nodded.

  ‘Take him upstairs,’ she said.

  The bodyguard placed a hand in the small of Alexei’s back and propelled him towards a hallway hosting a row of lifts. Two more men were standing guard either side of a lift at the end of the corridor, the outline of short-barrelled machine pistols clearly visible in shoulder slings beneath their jackets. At a sign from the bodyguard at Alexei’s side, one of them pressed a button, and the steel door opened. All four of them squeezed inside. There were no buttons inside the lift: clearly, it only travelled to one destination.

  Sandwiched between the three hulking bodyguards, Alexei had barely enough room to breathe. He stared at the floor counter display as it ticked endlessly upwards, willing it to stop. Finally, on floor 46, the lift beeped and the doors opened.

  They walked out into a small holding room surrounded by Perspex walls. One of the men pressed his palm against a reader, and the facing wall slid to one side. He gestured for Alexei to enter.

  ‘We’ll be watching you,’ he growled.

  Alexei walked into a vast, open-plan space with floor-to-ceiling windows that drenched the room in sunlight. The office had been decorated with the same lack of restraint as Lebedev’s dacha: animal-skin rugs covered the thick white carpet, and precious vases balanced on slender wooden tables. Behind a marbled desk at the far end of the office, a row of television screens displayed a continuous reel of stock-market prices.

  Lilya was lounging on a plush leather sofa by one of the windows, her long limbs stretched out across the cushions. A flat-screen television flickered from one brightly lit video to another as she flicked idly through music channels. She didn’t bother to look at Alexei as he entered the room.

  Boris Lebedev was standing in front of his desk, the tycoon’s burly frame covered in a black suit and a white shirt with its top button undone. There was a look of thunder on his face. He gestured curtly at the bodyguards.

  ‘Wait in the foyer. I’ll take it from here.’

  Lebedev waited until his men had lumbered back outside, then rounded angrily on Alexei.

  ‘What the hell are you doing here?’ he shouted. ‘I told Viktor not to contact me until our business had been completed. And now you waltz up to my office like it’s some kind of Nazi beer cellar!’

  Alexei shrugged. He was too tired, and had been through too much, to be intimidated any more.

  ‘Viktor sent me to pass on an urgent message. It couldn’t wait.’

  ‘So why didn’t he contact me over the darknet?’

  ‘That’s the point,’ Alexei replied calmly. ‘He’s not sure how secure it is any more. His sister got cold feet about how you were going to dispose of the package. Viktor wanted you to know in case you ended up saying something you shouldn’t on the email.’

  Lebedev thumped his fist down on the desk.

  ‘Amateurs!’ he seethed. ‘He can’t even trust his own sister?’

  ‘A guy once told me there’s just some things you can’t control,’ Alexei replied implacably. ‘Guess family’s one of them.’

  The tycoon lunged towards him, grabbing Alexei by the neck. He dragged him powerfully over to the window, squashing his face against the glass.

  ‘You see that city, smartass?’ he hissed, pointing to the jumbled Moscow skyline. ‘It’s growing as we speak. Built by my plans, with my bricks and mortar, by my labourers. That’s my city you’re looking at. And I will run it. By the end of the year, my party will be the most influential in the city. I will not let you and your imbecile street thugs ruin my plans.’

  He pulled Alexei away from the window and shoved him in the direction of the door.

  ‘Go back to Viktor, and give him this message from me: if he can’t trust his sister, then he should do something to nullify her as a threat. I would consider that a sign that my faith in him has not been misplaced. Do you understand my meaning, or do I have to spell it out to you?’

  ‘Oh, I understand all right,’ Alexei said gravely.

  ‘Then get the hell out of here.’

  Lebedev turned his back on Alexei and fixed his attention on the TV screens. Inwardly seething, Alexei walked over to the sofa and picked up Lilya’s hand. She looked up at him, startled, as if seeing him for the first time.

  ‘It was a pleasure to see you again, Lilya,’ Alexei whispered into her ear. He fingered the diamond-encrusted watch on her wrist. ‘This is almost as beautiful as you are. Almost.’

  The woman rewarded him with a dazzling smile. ‘Very kind of you to say so,’ she murmured.

  ‘Guards!’ roared Lebedev. The men came rumbling back into the office and yanked Alexei away from Lilya.

  ‘Throw this little shit out through the back entrance,’ spat the tycoon. ‘And don’t be too gentle about it.’

  As the men fell upon Alexei and manhandled him back into the lift, Boris Lebedev paced up and down his office, muttering darkly to himself. Lilya sighed and returned to flicking through the music channels, unaware of the miniaturized electronic bug now silently recording on the back of her watchstrap.

  23. Hate Mail

  The bodyguards followed Lebedev’s instructions to the letter, hauling Alexei out of the lift and throwing him out through the emergency exit on the ground floor, sending him sprawling to the concrete.

  ‘Come back here again and you’re dead,’ one of them snarled. Adjusting their suits, the bodyguards stomped back inside the skyscraper and slammed the door shut behind them.

  Alexei gingerly picked himself up off the concrete and jogged back through Moskva-City. Richard Madison was leaning against a set of railings by his black people carrier, a pensive expression on his face.

  ‘You OK?’ he asked, as Alexei approached.

  ‘Lebedev’s goons showed me the quick way out of the building,’ Alexei replied ruefully. ‘Could have been worse, I guess – at least they didn’t set me on fire.’

  ‘It’s all relative, I suppose. Did you manage to plant the bug?’

  ‘Think so. Won’t know if it’s working until we try it. You said I can call it from my mobile?’

  Madison nodded, and unlocked the people carrier with his beeper. ‘Better off out of sight. Get in.’

  They clambered inside the vehicle, where Alexei put his mobile on speakerphone and dialled the number Madison gave him. There was no ring tone, only a click and then a loud rustling sound filled t
he car. In the background, Alexei heard something smashing – one of Lebedev’s expensive vases, he guessed.

  ‘Calm down, baby!’ a woman’s voice pleaded, over more rustling. ‘You’re scaring me!’

  Madison’s brow wrinkled. ‘That rustling sounds like clothes. Where did you put the bug?’

  ‘On Lebedev’s girlfriend’s watch.’

  ‘Right in front of him?’ The Englishman laughed in amazement. ‘Jesus, you’ve got some balls!’

  Alexei shrugged. ‘I figured she wouldn’t be on her guard. And wherever he goes, she goes.’

  ‘Sound thinking. You’re a natural, lad.’

  Over the bug, there was a click as someone picked up a telephone receiver, and then stabbed in some numbers on the handset.

  ‘Viktor?’ Lebedev barked. ‘Yes, I know this is a surprise, shut up and listen to me. One of your little shits has just been in my office … How the hell should I know his name? He came to the dacha with you … yes, that one.’ Lebedev paused. There was an increasingly incredulous silence.

  ‘You think he’s a what?’ roared the tycoon.

  ‘I’d pay money to hear what Viktor’s saying right now,’ Alexei said gleefully. ‘I bet he’s shitting himself.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me this before?’ Lebedev raged. There was another brief pause. ‘Well it doesn’t sound like you’re dealing with it, you cretin! He was in my office! … I don’t know what he wanted, but my men threw him out. Does this mean our usual communication channel is secure? … Well at least you haven’t managed to bungle that. It looks like I’m going to have to pay closer attention to this matter than I would have wanted. Email me the details for tonight, and contact me when it’s done. I don’t want to see you or any of your men until then.’

  Lebedev slammed down the phone, cursing loudly.

  ‘Bloody idiots!’ he shouted. ‘They’re going to ruin everything!’

  There was some more crackling, and then Lilya said in a breathy whisper: ‘Why don’t you stop work for a while? I know how to help you relax …’

  Madison reached across and switched off Alexei’s phone. ‘Bugger,’ he muttered. ‘Looks like we’re going to have to try and hack Lebedev’s account to get hold of the location.’

  ‘I don’t think that’ll work,’ Alexei said doubtfully. ‘The darknet is almost impossible to hack into, especially in a few hours.’

  ‘Don’t be too sure. We’ve got some of the best computer guys in the business back at Taganka.’

  ‘OK, then,’ agreed Alexei, unplugging his phone and opening the car door. ‘You go back to the monastery.’

  Madison raised an eyebrow. ‘And where might you be off to, son?’

  ‘There’s someone else who might be able to help.’

  ‘Not sure this is the right time to be dividing our forces. You want me to come with you?’

  Alexei shook his head. ‘This one I’ve got to do on my own.’

  It was dark by the time Alexei jogged through the square towards Moscow State University. If anything, the monolithic building was even more imposing at night. There seemed to be some kind of party brewing – the entrance to the university was busy with young people carrying bottles of spirits and crates of beer.

  Tagging on to the back of a group of drunk students, Alexei slipped into the lobby and hurried up the stairs, desperately trying to remember the route Marat had taken the last time they had been there. From somewhere, he could hear a thumping dance beat echo through the walls, and faint shouts and squeals of delight.

  As he hurried along a corridor, he passed a girl sat on a windowsill, cradling a bottle of vodka. She grabbed his arm and thrust the bottle under his nose; Alexei shook himself free and walked away.

  ‘Screw you, then, asshole!’ she shouted drunkenly after him.

  No matter how hard Alexei tried to recall the way to Nadia’s room, it wasn’t long before he was hopelessly lost. In desperation, he stopped a group of boys and asked if any of them knew her. One of the teenagers grinned knowingly and directed him up two floors. Alexei bounded up the stairs, relieved when he finally recognized the door at the end of the corridor. He knocked on it quietly.

  There was a shuffling sound within, then the door opened a crack and Nadia cautiously peered outside. Her eyes widened with surprise.

  ‘Alexei!’ she gasped. ‘What are you doing here? If Viktor finds out he’ll kill you!’

  ‘He’s tried that once already,’ Alexei replied grimly. ‘Can I come in?’

  Nadia bit her lip, then beckoned him inside. Her room was swathed in shadows, a lone bedside lamp struggling to ward off the darkness. Nadia wrapped her dressing gown tightly around her and sat down on the edge of the bed. Even in the half-light, Alexei could see the bruises on her neck where her brother had choked her.

  Catching the line of Alexei’s gaze, Nadia’s eyes flashed defiantly. ‘Viktor says you’re a spy. Is that true?’

  Alexei took a deep breath, and sat down beside her. It was all or nothing now. ‘Yes,’ he said finally. ‘I’m working for a secret organization that’s trying to bring the Eagles down. When Viktor found out I wasn’t to be trusted he tried to have me killed.’

  ‘That sounds like him,’ Nadia said softly. ‘I suppose I should thank you for not lying to me.’

  ‘I’m sorry I had to come here,’ Alexei said. ‘I know that being here puts you in danger too. But I didn’t have any other choice. You’re the only person who can help me save Rozalina Petrova.’

  She stiffened. ‘You know?’

  ‘Everything,’ nodded Alexei. ‘I know the Eagles kidnapped her. I know she was held at Boris Lebedev’s dacha until I spooked them. I know she’s going to be killed tonight. The only thing I don’t know is where they’re going to kill her. But you can help me find out.’

  ‘You must think I’m a monster,’ Nadia said, her voice trembling. ‘Ever since I learned about her kidnap, I’ve had nightmares about them killing her. But if I help you and Viktor finds out, you don’t know what he’ll do to me!’

  ‘Listen to me,’ Alexei said fiercely, clutching her hand. ‘I don’t think you’re a monster. I saw what happened outside the club. I know Viktor hurts you. I understand why you help him. But this isn’t you, Nadia! You’re not a Nazi! You’re not evil like he is!’

  ‘You understand, Alexei?’ Nadia said bitterly. ‘You’ve known Viktor for five minutes; I’ve spent my life with that bastard. Our parents died when I was a baby – he brought me up. You get used, eventually, to the beatings and the intimidation. I spend time with his subhuman cronies; I upload their sick videos. But you know what the worst thing is, the realization that really breaks you?’ She looked down at her hands. ‘He’s all I’ve got.’

  Nadia sat motionless as tears fell silently from her eyes.

  ‘Hey,’ Alexei said softly, putting his arm around her. ‘I can’t begin to imagine what you’ve been through. But if you let Viktor get away with this, then nothing’s ever going to change. Help me stop him, Nadia. Don’t let this woman die.’

  They sat in silence in the shadowy room. Then Nadia wiped the tears away with the back of her hand and briskly stood up. Opening her laptop, she began tapping away on the keys. Within seconds she was logged on to the darknet.

  ‘Viktor protects his email with a password. Luckily for us, he never changes it – and I hacked his account a few months ago.’ She pointed at the screen. ‘See? He sent Tsar a message an hour ago.’

  She clicked on the message, which said only:

  2200 hrs. Novodevichy Cemetery.

  ‘They’re going to kill her in a graveyard,’ Alexei said, suppressing a shiver.

  ‘That sounds like Viktor,’ Nadia said darkly. ‘He always knew that Rozalina’s death would be a more powerful symbol than Borovsky’s release could ever hope to be.’

  Alexei glanced at his watch. ‘I’d better make sure it doesn’t happen, then. Haven’t got long to get there.’

  ‘You can’t go to the cemetery, Alexei!’
gasped Nadia. ‘It’s too dangerous! What about this secret organization of yours; or the police?’

  ‘I can’t trust the police. I’ll call my company but they’re on the other side of Moscow, and we haven’t got the time.’

  ‘But they’ll kill you!’

  ‘That’s a risk I’m going to have to take.’ Alexei scribbled down his phone number on a writing pad. ‘If you get into trouble, call me. Whatever happens, I’ll make sure that Viktor doesn’t hurt you. I promise.’

  He hugged the girl gently, whispered ‘thank you’, and turned for the door.

  ‘Wait!’ Nadia grasped his arm. ‘Before you go, tell me one thing: why are you doing this?’

  Alexei hesitated. ‘Some of the Eagles beat up my girlfriend, Lena,’ he said finally. ‘She’s still in a coma now. I swore that I’d get revenge – Trojan just came along at the right time.’

  ‘Oh my God.’ Nadia’s hand flew to her mouth. ‘Did it happen on the metro?’

  ‘Yes! Did you hear about it? Do you know who did it?’

  Nadia nodded. ‘It was Marat and Medved. Marat boasted about it to me. He thought I’d be impressed.’

  Alexei felt his stomach tighten with rage. All the time he had been around the Eagles, it had been the people he’d known best who had hurt Lena. They had been within his grasp all along.

  ‘What are you going to do?’ asked Nadia.

  He looked back at her from the doorway. ‘First of all I’m going to find Rozalina. Then I’m going to kill as many of the bastards as I can.’

  24. Grave Trouble

  The party was spiralling into chaos. As Alexei marched back towards the stairs leading down to the lobby, students were spilling out into the corridor, arms draped around one another as they stumbled back to their dormitories. Music thundered out from one of the rooms, speakers crackling with the sheer volume. Stepping over the prone form of a boy asleep in the middle of the hallway, Alexei got out his mobile and called Trojan. Darius Jordan answered on the second ring.

  ‘We’re nowhere here,’ he admitted. ‘What have you got for me?’