Ganglands: Russia: Russia (21 page)

He had just turned into Stepan’s home street when there was a loud squeal of tyres, and a white car sped away from the entrance of his uncle’s apartment block.
A sudden fear washing over him, Alexei sprinted down the street and bounded up the stairs to Stepan’s apartment.
Hammering on the door, he was relieved when it quickly opened, revealing his uncle.
Stepan was wearing a white vest and dark-brown trousers, a pair of reading glasses perched on his nose.
His face brightened with surprise.

‘Alexei!’ he cried, enfolding his nephew in a warm bear-hug. ‘I’m so pleased to see you again!’

‘You are?’ Alexei replied, laughing with surprise.

‘Of course!’ Stepan exclaimed.
‘I know I was angry, but it’s because I was so worried – and upset you wouldn’t tell me what was going on.’

‘Before you say anything else, look.’ Alexei pulled up his sweatshirt, revealing a fresh tattoo on his chest: a phoenix, soaring up from a bed of flames.
The swastika had been completely obscured, erasing the last grubby fingerprints of the Moscow Eagles.

‘I got rid of the swastika, like I promised I would,’ Alexei said solemnly.
‘I’m sorry that I still can’t tell you why I had it, though.’

‘No need.
I’ve just had a visitor who’s explained everything to me.’

Alexei’s eyes widened.
‘What –
everything
?’

‘Well, everything she can.
I’m a soldier, Alexei – no one has to tell me the importance of mission secrecy.
But I do know that an innocent woman is alive today because of you.’ Stepan gave him a sober look and patted him on the cheek.
‘I am very proud of you, nephew.
And your father would be too, if he knew.’

‘You won’t tell him, will you?’ Alexei asked anxiously. ‘If word ever got out, it could spell trouble – not just for me, but Lena too.’

Stepan placed a hand across his heart.
‘You have my solemn word. Now come inside!
You look like you haven’t eaten since I last saw you.’

His uncle ushered him into the lounge, which was thick with smoke. Cigarettes were piled high in the ashtray.
Alexei smiled.
It appeared that Valerie Singer had given him a parting gift of sorts, after all.

The call came for him in the middle of the night.
Immersed in a dark, shapeless dream, it took Alexei
several seconds to rouse himself and answer his mobile.

‘Hello?’ he said drowsily.

‘Alexei!’ A girl’s voice.
She was sobbing hysterically. Alexei sat up in bed.

‘Nadia?
What is it – what’s wrong?’

‘I’m sorry, Alexei!’ she cried.
‘I tried not to tell him but he was hurting me …’

‘Slow down, Nadia!’ urged Alexei.
‘Who hurt you?’

‘Medved,’ she said miserably.
‘He jumped out at me as I was getting into my room.
He said that you’d turned up at the cemetery and ruined everything.
He figured out that I must have helped you, and asked me all sorts of questions about you.
At first I pretended I didn’t know what he was talking about, but then he started getting rough …’

‘It’s OK,’ Alexei said soothingly.
‘I understand. You did all you could.
What exactly did you tell Medved?’

‘I told him about Lena.
About how he’d hurt her and that she was now in the hospital and that’s why you were doing what you were doing.’

A cold shiver of dread ran down Alexei’s spine.

‘Listen to me, Nadia: where’s Medved now?’

‘I don’t know.
As soon as I told him about Lena he stormed out of my room.
I think he may have gone after her.
Hurry, Alexei!’

He was already halfway through the door.

Alexei didn’t remember much of his journey to the hospital.
It was a long nightmare of rainy, empty streets.
He tried to flag down every car that passed, but no one was willing to pick him up.
He ran until his lungs were burning and his legs heavy with tiredness.
His face
glistened with rain and sweat.
With every stride, Alexei was driven on by the thought of Medved, and what he might do to Lena if he was alone with her …

Eventually the hospital drew into view.
Alexei skirted round a parked ambulance and exploded into the reception.

‘Hey!’ the nurse cried out as he ran past her desk. ‘Where do you think you’re going?’

A doctor tried to grab him by the arm – Alexei shoved him off, and bounded up the stairs three at a time.
Ignoring the shouts of protest from behind him, he sprinted along the hospital corridor, crashing through the door into Lena’s room.

His girlfriend was still lying frozen in the bed, the steady beeping of the heart monitor the only clue to the fact that she was alive.
Only now she wasn’t alone.
There, looming over Lena’s bedside, was Medved.

27. Death Match

‘Get away from her,’ Alexei said, through clenched teeth.

Medved didn’t move.
He was staring at Lena, a large hand ominously stroking her cheek.
The giant skinhead’s clothes were torn and stained with mud. Usually a blustering whirlwind of rage, there was an eerie calm about Medved that only deepened Alexei’s unease.

‘I remember this girl,’ Medved rasped.
‘She stuck her nose in where it wasn’t wanted.
Just like you.’

‘If you touch a hair on her head,’ Alexei began, ‘I’ll …’

The skinhead halted him with a scornful look.
‘You’ll what? Where are your friends now, Alexei?
Where are their guns?
It’s just you and me.
Do you really think you can stop me?’

Alexei stepped forward meaningfully.
‘If I have to,’ he said. ‘But it doesn’t have to come to that, Medved.
Viktor’s dead.
Pavel and Marat are in jail.
Whatever happens here, the Eagles are finished.
Don’t make things any worse than they already are.’

Medved shook his head.
‘It’s not over yet,’ he said. ‘We’re still here.’

‘Look, the police are going to be here soon,’ Alexei
tried, desperation creeping into his voice.
‘If you leave now, maybe you can get away.’

‘I don’t want to get away,’ the skinhead replied, in a far-away voice.
When he looked up at Alexei again, his eyes were granite-hard with intent.
‘I want everyone to know what I’ve done.’

As Alexei gazed at Medved, in the stillness of the hospital room he could almost hear the tension crackling between them.
Lena’s heart monitor continued to mark time – her steady rhythm a sharp contrast to the skittish pounding within Alexei’s chest.

‘Your quarrel is with me,’ Alexei said quietly.
‘Leave Lena out of it.’

‘Don’t tell me what to do.’

Beep, beep
, persisted the heart machine. Alexei tensed.

It was almost a relief when it began – Medved rumbling across the hospital room like an avalanche.
Alexei slipped into a fighting stance and threw a right cross at the skinhead, but the punch glanced off the side of his head.
With a feral roar, Medved enfolded Alexei in a crushing bear-hug and lifted him off the floor.
The air rushed from Alexei’s lungs as the skinhead’s burly arms tightened around his chest.
He squirmed as he fought for breath, his arms pinned to his side, his feet dangling helplessly in mid-air.
Medved bellowed in triumph, his face flushing with effort.

Alexei’s ribs felt like matchsticks in his chest, and he was becoming giddy from the lack of oxygen.
As a black tide overwhelmed him, he pulled back his head and drove it into Medved’s face.
The skinhead yelled with pain,
dropping Alexei as he reeled backwards, blood gushing from his nose. Alexei collapsed, his lungs gasping painfully for air.
At the back of his mind, he was aware of an alarm bell ringing somewhere in the hospital.
Even if help was on its way, he knew that it wouldn’t be here quickly enough to save him.

Pinching his bleeding nose, Medved stumbled back over to Alexei and kicked him viciously in the side.
Alexei cried out, crumpling like an empty crisp packet.
He curled up into a ball, hands over his head, as the skinhead rained blows upon him.
In desperation, Alexei lashed out a leg, catching Medved in the gut and knocking him backwards.

It was only a temporary reprieve; Medved came mercilessly back at him, holding Alexei down with one hand as the other thundered into his face again and again. Numb with adrenaline, Alexei didn’t feel pain, only a sense of overwhelming helplessness as the skinhead’s fist rose and fell.

And then the blows stopped.
Alexei felt the skinhead release him, heard his slow, deliberate footsteps as he moved to Lena’s bedside.
Alexei groaned, his mouth thick with the taste of blood.
Medved snorted.

‘Your girlfriend put up more of a fight than you did,’ he said dismissively.
‘Stay there if you want, while I mess up her pretty face some more.’

Spluttering blood, Alexei rolled on to his front and began clawing hand-over-hand across the floor towards Lena.
He reached out and grabbed hold of Medved’s jeans, feebly trying to drag the skinhead away.
Medved
looked down at him, his bloodied nose twitching with amusement.

‘You don’t give up, do you?’ he said.
‘Guess I’m
really
going to have to hurt you.’

He lifted his foot into the air, leaving it hovering above Alexei’s head for a second.
Then his boot came stamping down.

Missing Alexei by inches as he rolled out of the way.
Grabbing the skinhead’s leg, Alexei buried his teeth into Medved’s calf like an animal. Medved howled with agony, stumbling into the heart monitor as he tried to shake Alexei off.
Alexei let go and scuttled backwards, trying to block out the pain as he staggered to his feet.

Blinded by rage, Medved charged towards him and threw a wild haymaker in his direction.
Alexei ducked out of the way, moving on sheer instinct.
As the punch sailed over his head, ten years of kickboxing told Alexei that the skinhead had left himself exposed.

It was a split-second gap – no time to think.
Alexei exploded upwards, channelling every ounce of muscle, every raging nerve-end into a soaring uppercut.
All his years of pounding away at punchbags during training, of trading blows with opponents inside the ring, of winning and losing and picking himself off the canvas to fight again, seemed to meld into one glorious punch.
He felt Medved’s chin shudder as the uppercut connected.
The impact of the blow knocked the skinhead off his feet: he was unconscious before he had hit the floor.

Alexei slumped down by the side of the hospital bed.
His limbs were shaking, and his muscles felt utterly
drained.
Blood dripped down from his face, staining his clothes.
Too exhausted to feel anything, he sat quietly, listening to the wail of police sirens as they approached the hospital.

Drawing on his aching muscles one last time, Alexei pulled himself up to Lena’s bedside.
A lock of hair had fallen across his girlfriend’s face. Alexei gently tucked it behind her ear.

‘You’re safe now,’ he whispered.
‘No one will ever hurt you again.’

As he laid his head on her chest, Alexei felt Lena stir beneath him.

EPILOGUE: Old Friends

Secreted in the midst of a well-to-do area of Moscow, Patriarch’s Ponds provided a serene retreat for its locals.
Swans glided across the small lake, its waters rippling in the sunshine.
It was a warm June day; the bitter snowfalls of winter now a distant memory.
As the afternoon ripened into early evening, Muscovites escaped from their stuffy offices to stroll round the edge of the pond, and soak up the sun on the benches that lined the broad footpath.
Lazy jazz music wafted over from a nearby cafe.

As the last of the afternoon’s light began to fade, a young couple appeared.
They were both in their late teens: a tall boy in jeans and a T-shirt, and a girl in a flowing summer dress.
They walked slowly, tentatively, the boy glancing down with concern at his companion.
Even though the top of the girl’s head was swathed in thick white bandages, she still drew admiring glances from the men who passed by. Sheltering within the protective embrace of her boyfriend’s arm, she didn’t seem to notice.

‘Are you OK?’ Alexei asked.
‘We can turn back if you’re tired.’

Lena laughed softly.
‘We haven’t been here five minutes!’

‘The doctor said you shouldn’t be out for too long.’

‘And he’s just as big a fuss as you are.’ She reached up and kissed Alexei on the cheek.
‘Thank you, though.
You have no idea how nice it is to breathe fresh air again.
I thought I’d never get that hospital smell out of my nose!’

‘Your parents will be pleased to hear you’ve been outside.’

‘A little
too
pleased,’ Lena replied solemnly.
‘They want me to go back to Volgograd as soon as possible.’

‘After everything that’s happened, I can’t blame them for that,’ Alexei said.
‘But what about you – what do you want to do?’

Lena sighed, and looked out across the pond.
‘I don’t know,’ she admitted.
‘The modelling’s certainly out for a while.
I don’t think fashion photographers are all that keen on the bandaged look.’

‘You’re still the most beautiful girl I know,’ Alexei said quietly.

Lena smiled, and squeezed his arm.
‘Maybe I
should
go back to Volgograd,’ she continued, ‘but it doesn’t feel right somehow … kind of like I’m running away.
Does that sound crazy?’

‘Not to me.’

‘But you’d like to stay in Moscow, wouldn’t you?’

Alexei shrugged.
‘Maybe.
I’d still like to study here one day.
But right now, wherever you go, I’m going too.’

He had known that from the very second Lena had woken up.
It was the only thing that Alexei was sure of
any more.
The previous eight weeks had been a crazed blur of activity.
Having escaped down the hospital’s back stairs moments before the police had arrived in Lena’s room, Alexei had been relieved that his true identity had remained a secret.
Although Rozalina Petrova’s release had been splashed across the news reports and the papers, in her account of her ordeal the lawyer had never once mentioned his name, or that of Trojan Industries.
The identity of the so-called ‘Good Samaritans’ who had saved her in Novodevichy Cemetery had remained a mystery, despite one tabloid offering a reward of 100,000 roubles if they stepped forward.
Comforted by his anonymity, Alexei was able to attend the trials of Pavel, Medved and Marat – which had been fast-tracked due to the intense media glare surrounding their case.
He concealed himself at the back of the gallery, watching with silent satisfaction as Rozalina provided a confident and damning testimony against the three men.