• For the clarified consommé:
-Wash the green part of leek and pat dry. Remove the stem of the tomato, wash, cut the tomato into quarters, and remove the seeds. Mince the sole trimmings, leek, and tomato finely. Add the egg white, lightly season with sea salt, and mix vigorously.
-Transfer the sole consommé to a pan high enough to skim off the scum. Stir constantly until it boils. Gently simmer for 10 mins. on the edge of the stove so that a cap is formed for clarifying the stock. Adjust the seasoning; filter the stock through muslin placed over a stainless steel container. Cool immediately.
• For the champagne sauce:
-Quickly fry the lobster claws in butter without browning. Add the shallots and celery, sweat on the corner of the stove. Deglaze with half of the champagne. Reduce half of the jus. Add the sliced mushrooms, the shellfish juice, and the cream and concentrated fumet. Cook for 30 mins. over low heat.
-Add the lovage and the pepper. Leave to infuse for 20 mins.
-Filter, store in freezing compartment. To use, heat the preparation to 80°C, season. Add the rest of the champagne and 160 g of emulsified butter.
• For the truffle scented spinach:
-Blanch the spinach in salted water (80 g salt/L).
-Cool, drain, squeeze, and finely chop the spinach. Sweat the shallots in butter and oil. Add the diced truffles, pour in the cream, cook for 5 mins., and add the chopped spinach. Correct the seasoning and set aside.
• For the truffle puree:
-Sweat the truffle in a little olive oil. Moisten with mineral water and cook, covered, over low heat for 20 mins. After cooking, mix the truffles with the cooking juices in a thermo blender to obtain smooth puree.
• For the truffle croutons:
-Melt the butter in a frying pan, add breadcrumbs, and stir constantly with a whisk until golden. Remove from heat and cool over ice. Before it is completely cooled, add the chopped truffle, the truffle puree, the chopped garlic, and a tour of the milled pepper.
-Spread the crust between two sheets of baking paper. Make sure that it is regular and as thin as possible. Let harden. Cut out a rectangle 12 cm x 3 cm and store in the freezer.
• For the sole:
-Clean and gut the sole. Remove the white and grey skins. Fillet and remove delicately the outside membrane with a thin-bladed knife. Flatten the fillets by placing them between 2 plastic sheets that have been previously moistened to prevent the meat from sticking to the plastic sheets. Spread the thicker fillet (from the side opposite the stomach) on a board. Butter the fillet lightly, season with a little French salt and lay down slices of truffle. Season again with some French sea salt and put the other fillet on top of the truffles. Roll the fillets by enveloping them tightly in plastic wrap for vacuum cooking (pressure at 3.2/welding 7).
-Immerse the vacuum bag of fillets in a bath at 85°C for 5 mins., and then leave the fillets in the vacuum bags to rest for 2 mins. Remove the fillets from the bag. Put the truffle crouton on top and brown lightly under the broiler. Bevel the sole.
• To finish:
-Put the truffle-scented spinach in the centre of a Reynaud rectangular plate. Put the sole on top of the spinach. Spray the plate with the emulsified champagne sauce.
-Put 3 frozen crayfish in a separate bowl. Decorate with a thin julienne of truffle and sticks of mushroom. Serve the broth in a transparent sauce boat. Decorate the plate with chervil and truffle juliennes.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Corporate Offices of European International Conglomerate, No. 13 Upper Belgrave Street, London, February 2, 1959
The five-story metal and glass office building stood out like a proverbial sore thumb in its neighborhood and had been the subject of such vitriol when it was first proposed to the Council of the City of London in 1955 that it failed as a business venture almost before construction was complete. The failure of the building left a vacant eyesore so incongruous with the wealthy center of the world’s foremost financial center that the residents and citizens of The City had serious cause to reflect on their choice. Because of the massive expense of the construction, no buyers came forward even with the asking price having been cut by three quarters. The City felt there would be no recourse but to raze the building and incur a massive expense which would strain the municipal coffers to the limit.
Upper Belgrave Street extended from the southeast corner of Belgrave Square to the northeast corner of Eaton Square in the very center of the City of London—the most prestigious and expensive area of The City. The street was a wide one-way residential street lined with very imposing white stuccoed buildings, most of which were originally exclusive large single family residences—and remained among the most expensive properties in the world. It was adjacent and comparable to Eaton Square. After World War II, some of the largest houses ceased to be used as residences or townhouses for the country gentry and aristocracy; but the new uses were generally restricted to certain categories, including embassies, charity headquarters, and professional institutions. By 1955, many of the houses were being divided into expensive flats, an indicator of the trying times in England’s economy. Number 13 had been the home of the Duke and Duchess of Wellington, then the summer residence of his nephew who proved to be a wastrel and allowed the building to deteriorate. His son was a humiliation to the family and allowed the once elegant mansion to burn almost to the ground during a particularly wild party in 1948.
The building was razed, and the property remained vacant until 1955 when a consortium of wealthy foreigners proposed to the City Council that they be allowed to build the first commercial building on the neglected property. It was the lesser of evils; so, a waiver of exception was given by the council and permission was granted for construction of the new building, despite general misgivings. The mistake made by the council was to fail to require an escrow account to return the building site to its pristine empty condition in the event of bankruptcy. By November of 1958, the homeowners and other concerned citizens of the exclusive area began to demand that something be done. The council passed a plan for razing the new building at the expense of the taxpayers—£9,000,000. The original project had cost £71,000,000, and the great losses were considered to be a serious political issue for the upcoming elections.
Then, in December, the chairman of the council, Sir Sedwick Grayson, received a communication from a prominent Swiss financier by the name of François Caussidière who represented clients backed by UBS of Geneva. The chairman of the bank’s investment department—Liert Beili Amstutz—and Caussidière made an offer of £5,000,000 and a guarantee that the building would be restored to full value. The guarantee was in the form of an escrow account valued at £9,000,000 should the venture fail. The council chairman was convinced that the purchase of the property and building was a godsend, and he convinced the council and the neighbors that this was the best solution they would ever see.
The sale was completed in record time, and renovation began almost immediately. By the fifth of January 1958, the building was formally dedicated for business with the Lord Mayor and every member of the city council in attendance. The senior partners of the new ownership group, Laird Eagen and Randolph Bellwether, were also in attendance but chose to occupy an inconspicuous role. Herr Caussidière was the public spokesman for the consortium. The owners occupied the upper two floors as their offices for the Corporate Offices of European International Conglomerate. No one questioned particularly strongly exactly what the business of the conglomerate was.
On February 2, 1959, Messrs. Eagen and Bellwether met in their private offices with representatives of a Russian interest group and several others regarding expansion of their business activities. The two senior Russians—Leonid Zaslavskevich Breslava and Nicolai Andreavich Putansky—and their Byki [Lit. bulls– bodyguards] had had to clear several hurdles to be able to come to the meeting. The Politburo itself had needed to grant a temporary exit visa for the men to fly to England, a rare exception to the guarded policy of the
Soviet Union in the era of the Cold War. They had some difficulty finding the correct recipients of a generous gift they felt obliged to offer to receptive officials. Finally, they had to make elaborate arrangements to travel incognito with carefully crafted false documents because they were considered persona non grata in the United Kingdom owing to their alleged connections with Russian organized crime.
Breslava was the Pakhan—the Boss or Krestnii Otets [Godfather] of the vory v zakone [thieves-in-law] Solntsevskaya Bratva [brothers or brotherhood; bratva is a brigade], and Putansky was Breslava’s Brigadier [or Avtoritet (Authority), similar to Caporegime in Italian-American Mafia crime families and Sicilian Mafia clans, the intermediary through whom Breslava controlled his four close personal criminal cells, each having six Boyeviks and Shestyorkas [the organization’s errand boys who form the lowest rank in the russkaya mafiya]. Breslava had a close business relationship with the premier of the Soviet Union and his cronies in the nomenklatura [the power elite of the country, corrupt officials all] who ran the Soviet Union along with criminal bosses. Breslava considered the nomenklatura—for good reasons—to be partners in his criminal enterprises.
The Pakhan could have passed for Communist Party General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev—dark brown hair with a low set forehead, very bushy eye brows, thuggish face, bad teeth, cheap suit and all. Breslava would be the first to deny vehemently the resemblance in private and the last to deny it in public; it would be impolitic to do so.
The other Russian in the room was Ivan Dragonovich Brudzinski, the Sovietnik [support person, advisor, and close trusted friend of Breslava], comparable to the Consigliere of Cosa Nostra. He never spoke except to whisper into Breslava’s ear occasionally. Ivan was the invisible gray man who was seldom seen, almost never heard; and whose influence and power was never questioned. He and the Pakhan laughed about the intellectuals comparing them to the seventeenth century Éminence Rouge [the red-robed Cardinal de Richelieu] and his advisor behind the scenes, the Éminence Grise [the gray-robed Capuchin Friar François Leclerc du Tremblay, the right-hand man of Cardinal Richelieu].
The organization of the russkaya mafiya was very complicated, and Breslava was limited in which of the men in his system he could bring. He settled on his brigadier, but had to keep the brigadier’s ‘Two Spies’ in a separate set of rooms and not bring them to the meetings. It was their job to watch over the action of the brigadiers to ensure loyalty and that none of the four became too powerful. He elected to bring his Sovietnik (support group man) and to leave his Obshchak (security group man) at home, a choice that made him uneasy. Breslava left his Krysha— literally “roofs,” or “covers”—always extremely violent enforcers and sometimes cunning individuals. The Krysha were employed by Breslava to protect his business from other criminal organizations. It was a significant measure of his trust for Antoine and Michaele—in the phony identities Breslava knew—that he left some of his men he would never travel anywhere in Russia without. He left his Torpedo [contract killer] in Moscow, but he brought his two Byki with him. He never left his house without at least two of them.
From France was Pierre Saint-Denis who was the godfather of the Paris Milieu. Pierre was a dandy; he walked with a minsing step; he dressed in flamboyant colors; and his long honey-blond hair and delicate features were very suggestive. No one living had ever questioned Pierre’s masculinity, however. For the time being—following a masterful coup—Pierre was also the boss of the most well-known local criminal underworld in Belgium—the Milieu Liègeois, which was headquarted in Liege. The Milieu Liègeois is a loose-knit web of organized criminals from the impoverished suburbs and towns surrounding the city of Liege. They planned and executed brutal armed robberies on security vans. Pierre Saint-Denis commanded respect in that corner of the European underworld because of his well-earned reputation as a violent and hair-trigger killer. He developed the modus operandi of using military-grade weapons such as AK-47s and grenades to obtain the contents of armed cars. Saint-Denis’s other criminal activities in Belgium and France included the more mundane crimes of extortion of businesses, illegal investments in real estate, drug, and weapons trafficking. Another major activity that had in the past led to particularly sensational trials was the perpetrating of contract murders. After his third such trial ended in yet another acquittal, he was usually called by the flattering moniker of “Slick Pierre.”
While there was no British comparable to the Cosa Nostra or Solntsevskaya Bratva, Gregory “Freight Train” Withers was the nearest thing to a godfather the Brits had at the time, having defeated the Sabini family of the old Clerkenwell area of London–the previous dominant crime family. Withers and his East Enders were in the process of establishing their dominance, which was a bloody ongoing process. Withers was the polar opposite to Pierre Saint-Denis in appearance and mannerisms. He was a thug—or as the cockneys who were his main men called him, “a spiders and bugs.” His hair was cut short with no attempt to be in style or groomed or even clean. It was graying, but might well have been more of a brown color after one of his rare showers. He had a pugilistic face with bent nose and cauliflower ears. He had had his two front teeth knocked out in a fight and never bothered to have any cosmetic dentistry done to repair them. He loved to grin at men he was about to pulverize. His suit was too large in the shoulders and too small at the waist. He wore a gray shirt that was once likely white and a gravy-stained tie. His shoes were never polished, but they fit his huge feet comfortably. He wore a ring on every finger of both hands. No one with good sense ever criticized his attire, his bodily aroma, or his choice of jewelry. The public, the newspapers, and the coppers refrained from referring to him as a “spider and bugs.”
“We’re glad you could make it today. As Mr. Bellwether and I told you when we requested that you meet here, we would like to establish a profitable and safe syndicate. I don’t need to tell you that there have been too many wars within and between organizations. We will fare better if we agree to some common ground rules. We’re here to decide those rules, whether or not we can control our own spheres of influence, and whether we can trust each other.”
Antoine and Michaele had never divulged their pseudonyms to anyone outside of the very tight circle of confidants in Switzerland.
“War is wasteful and makes it so we can’t enjoy the profits we earn. Probably the best example is the Bitch Wars in Russia. Vor Breslava can certainly relate to this. For those of you who are not familiar with Russian history, let me give you a very brief overview: after Hitler‘s invasion of the Soviet Union during World War II, Stalin was desperate for more men to fight for his nation. He offered prisoners in the gulags freedom if they joined the army. A great many men in the gulags considered themselves to be Russian patriots despite all that Stalin had done to them, and they agreed to help out in the war. This was based on the questionable idea that they could trust Stalin. This is where our proposal for an agreement comes in.
“The agreement and joining the army betrayed one of the main oaths sworn by the Thieves’ World that there could be no agreement or cooperation with the government. Trust in Stalin proved to have been a mistake. When the German war was over, Stalin sent every known prisoner back to the gulag. The Thieves-in-Law who had fought in the Stalin’s war referred to those who had not as traitors—sukas [bitches]. The fighters heavily outweighed the sukas; so, the bitches landed at the bottom of the hierarchy of the Thieves-in-Law. The sukas became outcasts and separated from the majority and formed their own scattered groups and power bases by collaborating with prison officials in the gulags which got them the luxury of comfortable beds and decent clothing and food.
“As might have been expected, the bitterness between the groups boiled over into a series of what the Thieves called ‘Bitch Wars’ that lasted from 1945 to 1953, with many useless killings every day. The prison officials laughed at the Thieves-in-Law and actively encouraged the violence and killing because it was a convenient and easy way to empty the gulags and cut down
on the cost of running the system. For the first six or seven years, the gulag officials—more corrupt and murderous than the Thieves-in-Law—profited handsomely. They failed to report the deaths and continued to receive rations and funding for the prisoners still on the rosters. They turned around and sold the food on the black market while the prisoners starved or ate worm-ridden meat and weevil-infested wheat.”
“And we agree with Laird and Randolph that we don’t need that crap anymore. Bad for business. I say we oughta hear the two of them out,” Breslava interjected.
“So what’s your plan, Laird?” asked Pierre Saint-Denis of the Paris Milieu.
“I’ll get right to it,” Antoine answered. “First of all, Randolph and I will withdraw our people from the prostitution, bookmaking, horse racing, protection business, gambling, extortion, drug trafficking, and smash-and-grab raids—all of the local rackets—and turn all of our territories to the rest of you provided you agree today.”
“Youse goin’ soft and legit?” asked “Freight Train” Withers.
“I think you don’t need me to answer about the ‘soft’ part, but the ‘legit’ of your question is fair. We plan to grow our legitimate businesses—especially our banking interests—in order to protect ourselves from law enforcement while we handle your money affairs. Think of us like a Solntsevskaya Bratva Kassir or Kaznachey [the bookmaker who collects all money from various brigadiers and bribes the government and other legal entities] who tends to the Obshchak [money intended for use in the interests of the group as a whole].”
Breslav was impressed with Antoine’s intimate knowledge of the inner workings of the russkaya mafiya.
The Charlemagne Murders Page 29