Ganglands: Russia: Russia (14 page)

‘At least the locals aren’t talking,’ Alexei remarked. ‘We’ll find a way out up here.
But stay low, all right?’

They scurried round the gangway, past a row of long processing tables covered in giant slabs of meat.
Thankfully, there were no workers on this level to impede their progress.
Turning the corner of the walkway, Alexei caught sight of a door set into the far wall.
If their luck was in, maybe there was a way out through there.

Alexei had covered half the distance when he skidded to a halt, triumph turning to despair like ashes in his mouth.
Another processing table had obscured the fact that another staircase came out on to the gangway – and an Uzbek had just appeared at the top of it.

Startled, the youth tried to shout out a warning to his
companions, but the clanking machinery drowned him out.
Instead he snatched up a meat cleaver from the nearest table and waved it threateningly at Alexei.

‘He’s got a blade!’ cried Marat, backing away. ‘Let’s get out of here!’

‘Where, exactly?’ Alexei replied, through clenched teeth. ‘We’ve got to get past him!’

The Uzbek slowly advanced upon them, the sharp edge of the cleaver glinting malevolently.
Alexei assumed a fighting stance, trying to block out the noise and the mayhem surrounding him as he concentrated on his opponent.
The youth twitched, and suddenly the cleaver was whistling through the air.
But Alexei had already dropped to the ground, and with a low sweeping kick knocked his assailant to the floor.
He leaped on top of the Uzbek, grabbed the hand holding the cleaver and repeatedly banged it against the metal gangway.
With a howl of pain, the youth let go.

Alexei rolled to one side and drove his elbow into the Uzbek’s face – heard a sickening crunch as he made impact.
As the youth clutched at his face, Alexei pulled him to his feet and hurled him over the guardrail.
The Uzbek screamed as he plummeted downwards, landing heavily on one of the conveyor belts.
His bloodied face contorted with dismay as he was carried helplessly away on a sea of raw meat.

Before Alexei could catch his breath, a cry went up from one of the men on the factory floor.
They had been spotted.
Immediately the Uzbeks flocked towards the stairs.

Alexei turned around to see Marat still cowering by
the processing table.
‘What are you waiting for?’ he shouted. ‘Move!’

He hared along the gangway and yanked open the door, entering a dingy toilet that flooded his nostrils with the smell of urine.
Three cubicles stood side-by-side in front of him, next to a grimy washbasin that was only just managing to cling to the wall.
There was no way out.

‘Shit!’ spat Alexei, kicking a bin.

Marat peered back outside through a crack in the door. ‘They’re coming!’ he wailed.
‘What the hell are we going to do now?’

In desperation, Alexei opened the first stall, and then the other.
Inside the farthest cubicle, his heart leaped to see a small latched window set into the back wall.
He hauled Marat inside the cubicle and locked the door, trying not to gag at the sludgy brown mess stagnating in the toilet bowl.
Opening the window, Alexei looked down the three-metre drop to the street below.
Marat dubiously followed his gaze.

‘Big drop,’ he said.

‘Fine.
You can stay and hang out with them if you want.
I’m getting out of here.’

‘All right, all right,’ Marat said hastily.
‘I’ll go first.’

He unzipped his jacket and stuffed it through the window.
Then, standing on the toilet, he climbed up to the window and tried to wriggle through it.

‘Tight squeeze,’ he muttered.

There came the sound of footsteps outside, and then the door to the toilets creaked ominously open.
Marat’s belt buckle had caught on the windowsill; the blond teenager
scrabbled furiously as he tried to free himself.

Alexei could hear the men creeping into the toilet.
There was a crash as the first stall door was kicked open.

‘Hurry up!’ Alexei hissed.
With a final squirm, Marat slipped out through the window, tumbling down to the pavement below.
Alexei dived after him, instantly wedging himself in the window frame.

He heard the second stall door fly open.

Wriggling violently, Alexei felt his skin tearing on the rough wooden frame.
He didn’t care any more: all he could think about was getting himself free. As the final stall door exploded open, Alexei wrenched himself through the narrow gap, and plunged headlong to the ground.

It didn’t start to hurt until later.
Picking themselves up from the pavement, Alexei and Marat had staggered blindly away from the meat factory, their only thought to put as much distance between themselves and their attackers as possible.
Eventually Marat had stopped, wheezing heavily as he pulled out his mobile phone and dialled a number.

As a result of the ensuing conversation, Alexei now found himself standing at a quiet crossroads, digging his hands into his pockets as night fell.
He had been waiting for over an hour, and the temperature was rapidly dropping towards freezing.
The left side of his body ached from where he had hit the ground, and all he wanted to do was get inside in the warm and lie down, but Marat had insisted that they stay put.
Having fallen to pieces in the factory, the blond teenager seemed intent on reasserting his authority.

It wasn’t just the cold Alexei was worried about. He kept checking the intersection for any signs of danger.
After all, if the Uzbeks had managed to track them all the way to the CSKA match, there was no reason why they couldn’t pick up the trail again.

Shivering, he turned and gave Marat a reproachful look.
The Eagle was perched dejectedly on the back of a bench, his feet resting on the seat.

‘Whatever we’re waiting for, it’d better be worth it,’ griped Alexei.
‘I’m freezing my balls off out here.’

‘I was given an order,’ Marat said stubbornly.

Alexei was about to tell the boy exactly where he could shove his order when a white van hurtled across the crossroads and screeched to a halt alongside them, its engine still running.
Marat got down from the bench, jogged over to the back of the van and opened up the rear door.
As he climbed inside, Alexei was surprised to see Viktor Orlov sitting calmly in the front passenger seat.
Next to him, Medved had one hand on the steering wheel and another holding up his mobile phone, his massive fingers clumsily spelling out a text.
As the skinhead pulled away from the side of the road in a cloud of exhaust fumes, the leader of the Eagles swivelled round to look at Alexei.

‘Give me your report,’ he said curtly.
‘Leave nothing out.’

Alexei told him everything that had happened since the football match. Viktor listened intently, his gaze never straying from Alexei’s face.
After he had finished, the leader of the 88s thoughtfully pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose.

‘A close shave,’ he said.
‘The Uzbeks must have been watching you for a while, waiting for the moment to strike.
I’m impressed that you managed to escape from the situation unharmed.’

‘That was down to Alexei,’ Marat confessed.
‘If he hadn’t been there, I’d have been screwed.’

‘Really?’ Viktor’s eyes glinted in the darkness. ‘Is that true?’

Alexei shrugged.
‘We got out,’ he said simply. ‘Doesn’t matter how.’

‘Perhaps not,’ Viktor agreed.
‘But that doesn’t mean I’m not grateful.
The Eagles are brothers, Alexei – we have to take care of one another.
Especially in the face of such a cowardly enemy.’

Medved angrily thumped the steering wheel.
‘Those dirty Uzbek bastards!’ he roared.
‘I’m going to put some men together and end this!’

‘You’ll do nothing of the sort,’ Viktor said sharply. ‘Right now this is just a sideshow to other, more important matters.
We
will
hold them to account, Medved, don’t you worry.
But not just yet.’

‘So we do nothing?’ the burly skinhead said bitterly. ‘Sit on our asses and twiddle our thumbs?’

‘Just because we choose not to fight tonight, doesn’t mean we have to do nothing,’ said Viktor.
‘Our young friends here have proved the bravery of the white man in the face of greater numbers and a surprise attack.
Surely that deserves something of a celebration?’

‘Oh,’ rumbled Medved.
‘You mean Orbit?’

‘Where else?’ Viktor replied, with a smile.

18. Night Lights

The white van rattled down a broad floodlit street, passing a row of casinos drenched in cascades of sparkling lights.
Impossibly beautiful faces stared down from giant adverts for films and perfumes.
When they had first moved to Moscow, Lena had joked to Alexei that she was going to appear on a billboard in double-quick time, in order to keep an eye on him in the big city and make sure he was behaving himself.
When’s your horror film coming out then?
he had quipped back, earning a sharp pinch on the arm for his troubles, and five minutes of angular silence until he had apologized.

Despite the fact he hadn’t been here long, even Alexei had heard of Orbit.
It was renowned as the most glamorous nightspot in Moscow – no small claim, in a city this hedonistic.
Given that only the most well-to-do and fashionable Muscovites were allowed past Orbit’s notoriously brusque bouncers, Alexei wondered exactly how the Eagles were planning to gain entrance.
Only Viktor was dressed smartly enough to get in, while Alexei and Marat’s clothes were stained and torn from their encounter in the meat factory.

‘Shouldn’t we go change or something?’ Alexei asked, as Medved parked the van out of sight at the bottom of the
street. ‘There’s no way they’re going to let us in looking like this.’

‘Alexei!’ Viktor said chidingly.
‘You’re an Eagle!
We can drink wherever we want!’

A queue of young people was snaking hopefully down the street from Orbit’s entrance, forming a glittering landscape of sculpted hairstyles and designer clothes.
To their amazement, the Moscow Eagles marched straight past them to the front door, where a well-built man with a shaved head and an earring was standing guard.
As Viktor approached, the bouncer lifted up the red rope cordon and gestured for him to pass through.
There were shouts of incredulity from the queue – although the wiser clubbers were careful to keep their protests to a mutter.
Viktor smiled benignly at the shaven-headed man.

‘Thank you, Dmitri.’

The bouncer nodded respectfully.
As he replaced the rope cordon, Alexei noticed the number ‘88’ tattooed in blue ink on the web of skin between the bouncer’s right thumb and forefinger.
Suddenly, everything became clear.
As they swept straight through into the club, Alexei wondered how far Viktor’s contacts stretched.
How many doors were opened to him?

Orbit was a honeycomb of dingy rooms drenched in red strobe lights. Alexei passed through an archway into a large hall decked with drapes and baroque decorations.
Even though it was early, statuesque women were already dancing to the thumping Eurobeat, their bodies moving sinuously in time with the music.
Men watched admiringly from the side of the dance floor.

Viktor slid into a space at the crowded bar and began ordering a round of drinks.
As he waited, Alexei’s eyes were drawn to a group sitting on a mezzanine overlooking the dance floor.
The men were dressed expensively – in tailored suits with gold chains draped around their thick necks, and bejewelled watches adorning their wrists – and were accompanied by two blonde women in stiletto heels and micro-dresses.
The table was cluttered with glasses and ice buckets chilling bottles of champagne.
As one of the women stood up, presumably to go to the toilet, her boyfriend gestured curtly for a subordinate to follow her.

Alexei felt a hand press against his elbow.

‘You’d be wise not to stare at those men too closely,’ Viktor said softly, presenting him with a beer.
‘They’re gangsters – not the sort of men who take kindly to being watched.’

‘Oh, right,’ Alexei said hastily.
No matter where he looked, the temperature inside Orbit appeared to be rising.
Back at the bar, an overweight American man was sat on one of the stools, surrounded by a coterie of beautiful Russian women.
As Alexei watched, one of the women stepped forward and inserted a long, slender leg between his, straddling his thigh before lowering herself carefully into the man’s lap.
She took the drink from his hand and took a long, meaningful sip from it.

‘Looks like that guy’s going to have a good night,’ Alexei remarked.

‘I hope for his sake he can afford it,’ replied Viktor. ‘Women like that don’t come for free.
And their pimps aren’t known for their easy-going nature.’

The leader of the 88s slipped away across the dancefloor,
replaced by Medved, a bottle of beer in each hand. ‘Right,’ he growled.
‘I’m going to find myself a woman. I’ll see you later.’ He gave Alexei a warning glance.
‘If Svetlana hears one word about tonight, me and you are going to have words.
Clear?’

‘Crystal,’ Alexei replied.

The skinhead grunted, then strode off into the midst of the crowd.
Marat hurried after him, pinching a girl’s bottom as he negotiated a way past her.
She responded with a look of complete disgust that made the teenager snigger.
Alexei lingered at the bar, content to take in some of Orbit’s dirty glamour.
He sipped his drink slowly, watching the men and women slowly circle around one another, marking their targets before going in for the kill.

Eventually Viktor reappeared, this time holding the hand of a young woman in a figure-hugging black dress.
He smiled at Alexei.

‘You remember Nadia?’

Alexei gaped with surprise.
Looking closely, it was indeed Nadia, although this girl in the low-cut dress was a very different creature from the shy student he had met at Moscow State University, or the serious onlooker at the hospital complex.

‘Hello, Alexei,’ she said, with a flickering smile.
She was undeniably beautiful.
She was also, Alexei had to remind himself, a member of the violent neo-Nazi gang who had put his girlfriend in a coma – and quite possibly Viktor Orlov’s girlfriend.
The thought instantly sobered him up.