Malika's Revenge: A Powerful Mix for a Complex Noir Novel. An Organized Crime Thriller - not for the faint-hearted

by Phillip Strang

  ***

  With negotiations stalled in Kunduz and Ahmad Ghori unavailable, Oleg took the opportunity to visit a processing plant where the raw opium was converted into heroin. It took Alam and Oleg four hours to reach the factory along dirt tracks. The four-wheel drive Toyota struggled for the last few kilometres. As Alam explained, the factory was one of many and, as soon as one was discovered by the authorities, the production at the others was ramped up to compensate.

  Latif, the head of the heroin processing facilities attempted to explain the manufacturing process to Oleg, who had little interest in the subject.

  ‘It’s a simple process,’ said Latif. ‘It was developed by an English scientist.’

  ‘What was?’ Oleg replied.

  ‘Heroin, diamorphine.’

  ‘Diamorphine, what’s that?’ Oleg did not care to listen to a man whose voice grated on the ear.

  ‘That’s the medical term for heroin,’ said Latif. ‘He developed it as a non-additive form of morphine. It’s still used today in hospitals.’ It was clear that Latif, an eager little man with eyes that seemed too close together, was knowledgeable. Oleg, however, was not interested in how it was produced, only in how his people could make more money.

  ‘Very interesting.’ Oleg attempted to be polite, but Alam had received word that Ahmad Ghori was back in Kunduz, and he was not alone. Apparently, a significant person in the Afghan drug smuggling industry was with him. He knew Farrukh would be sniffing around at the first opportunity, and they needed to be back as soon as possible.

  Farrukh was continuing to irritate Oleg with his ingratiating to every politician and corrupt official he could find. Diplomacy was not Oleg’s strong point, he recognised that. He did not have the innate charm of his opponent, nor the charisma or the easy way with words. He had the Russian stance of being blunt, direct to the point and sometimes offending when no offence was intended.

  The Afghans responded to Farrukh’s approach more than to his, but he had money, and the size of the Russian mafia’s business was on his side. He only hoped it was enough.

  ‘Latif, our time is limited,’ Alam said.

  ‘Then it’s a quick tour you want?’ Latif finally sensed his visitors were not staying long.

  Oleg did not see a factory, more a varied array of plastic bins, 44-gallon drums, and bags of chemicals. It did not impress him, and how quality could be assured he did not know. He realised the quality received in Russia had never been substandard. On the contrary, it had been excellent, and it commanded a premium price on the street.

  ‘We scrape the poppies. From every ten kilos of poppies, we get about one kilo of opium which we roll into balls and place in barrels of hot water,’ Latif said.

  ‘And then what?’

  ‘We add a diluted solution of lime until the pH is high enough.’

  ‘What’s pH?’ Oleg asked.

  ‘It’s a measure to determine whether it is acid or alkaline.’

  ‘And you want alkaline?’

  ‘Correct. Once the pH is high enough, we leave it overnight to allow the oils and resins to float to the surface.’

  Oleg was not enjoying his education, but the Afghan with the irritating voice was not going to stop.

  ‘We then syphon out the morphine,’ continued Latif.

  ‘Our time is limited.’ Alam attempted to speed him up.

  ‘We then precipitate it by adding ammonium chloride to solidify the opium. Then we add acetic anhydride.’

  ‘Carry on.’ Oleg and Alam gave up. It was best to just to let him get on with it. Besides, Alam had received an update. No one was going to get in that day to meet with Ahmad Ghori and his associate. Time was no longer of the essence.

  ‘We pour the mixture in with warm water and filter it,’ said Latif. ‘Then we add bicarbonate of soda to release carbon dioxide gas and lower the acidity.’

  ‘Is that it?’

  ‘Not yet. It’s heroin, but a brownish colour. The white that you are used to requires some additional steps. It’s then diluted in a solution of hydrochloric acid.’

  ‘How’s the quality controlled?’ Oleg asked.

  ‘Constant filtering at every stage and watching the pH. The final process is when we evaporate the liquid. What remains is the heroin we send to you with a quality stamp.’

  ‘The facilities seem basic here,’ Oleg commented.

  ‘You’re right, of course, but we can hardly set up in a more professional manner. We need to be able to move at short notice, so if the facility is destroyed, we can set up again.’

  Oleg did not like the factory, peopled as it was by drug-addicted workers, but he saw no reason to complain and the Afghan production manager seemed competent, if tiresome. He would give a good report to his people in Tajikistan and Russia.

  ***

  Dmitry Gubkin was a man who valued his assets, whether they were artistic, motorised or female. He would not allow the disgrace of a wife, who he was sure would tell the world – or, at least, the world he circulated in – that he was a lousy husband, an even worse lover and that he had treated her abysmally, none of which were true. But he realised that truth is not the reality. It is the perception of the truth that people want to hear, the salacious gossip, the innuendo and the downright absurd.

  He had carefully garnered his reputation; he was not willing to allow a spoilt, vain and increasingly vacuous woman to destroy what he had fought for.

  He phoned Grigory. ‘I have a problem.’

  ‘Dmitry, your problem is my problem.’

  ‘There is a person who is about to present me with a great deal of trouble.’

  ‘And you want someone to deal with him?’ Grigory asked.

  ‘Yes, and it’s a “she”.’

  ‘It makes no difference.’

  Dmitry explained the situation, who he wanted to be removed and why, although he left out the part about his being a lousy lover.

  ‘What you ask is not impossible, but are you sure?’ Grigory asked.

  ‘I am sure.’

  ‘She is a beautiful woman. Can’t you plead with her to stay?’

  ‘Her lover is wealthier than I am,’ said Dmitry. ‘She sees love, but she is mercenary. Love with her comes with an inexhaustible credit card and whatever she wants. I have shown her every indulgence, yet she chooses another. My mind is firm.’

  ‘You will be party to a criminal act,’ replied Grigory. He had no issues with ordering the liquidation of anyone. He had done so many times in the past; but Katerina, Dmitry’s wife, was beautiful and young.

  ‘It is to be an accident,’ said Dmitry. ‘I must be devastated and show the appropriate remorse. No blame must fall on me. Is that clear?’

  ‘We are good at accidents,’ Grigory bragged.

  ***

  Yusup Baroyev had many problems to deal with. The smuggling village, where the bulk of his income had come from, was virtually deserted. The last three weeks had only seen one Afghan peasant make the dangerous night-time trek from his side of the border, and then it had only been two kilos, which Farshad, Oleg’s replacement, had discarded as inferior quality.

  Ahmad Ghori’s organisation was the main supplier of the drugs coming across the border, but it was not the only one. There were some freelance operators, but they were infrequent and unreliable. If discovered, Ghori’s people would visit, threaten and give them the opportunity to join the cooperative at a much lower rate than they would otherwise have expected. It was a persuasive argument: join us or you’re dead. Most joined without reservation, but some, misjudging the predicament they were in, had refused. None resisted for long, and some had died.

  The organisation, of which Ghori had become the de facto mouthpiece, was not his alone. Its tentacles stretched far throughout Afghanistan. There were others in the senior hierarchy. Ali Mowllah was the organiser; Ashraf Ghilzai, the heroic former Taliban commander, now responsible for the heroin production, whose loyalty to his previous colleagues was being questioned; and Arif N
oorzai, the determined senior Taliban in Kandahar, who saw the drug money as vital to his plans to reinvigorate the Islamic fundamentalists.

  Along with Ahmad Ghori, the respectable face of the group, the four were brothers in business, partners out of necessity, but never friends. Ali Mowllah was a businessman, interested in profit while feigning interest in the cause of fundamentalism. Ahmad Ghori, the politician, was interested in power and money, but primarily power.

  Ashraf Ghilzai, however, had seen through the Taliban and what it had become. It mouthed Sharia and piety, yet dealt with the misery and despair of drugs. He had no illusions. He intended to make himself rich and to hell with anyone else. He was a bad man in a country full of bad men.

  It was a country where an agreement in writing, or only spoken, was valid until a better deal could be renegotiated. None of the four, regardless of their protestations, affirmations and statements of goodwill, trusted the other and continually looked for the upper hand.

  Unbeknown to Farrukh and Oleg, all four had come together in Kunduz to discuss. While they debated, the two protagonists from the north waited. During the seven-day period of enforced idleness, they both followed their separate paths, sometimes overlapping. Farrukh would attempt to curry favour with the local politicians and men of influence, to impress them with the car he drove.

  ‘You could have one of these,’ he would say.

  Oleg overheard him making the statement to a local businessman. I will. Yours! he thought.

  Oleg spent time with Alam and met with Najibullah, who was exceedingly hospitable. Alam had been questioned enough by Oleg regarding the subject of women, which was now causing him sleepless nights due to his excessive subconscious hard-ons.

  ‘There are women,’ Alam finally admitted.

  ‘Then organise one for me,’ Oleg said.

  ‘This is not Kabul. There are no Chinese prostitutes here.’

  ‘Then who are these women?’

  ‘They are not easily found.’

  ‘Then find one for me.’

  ‘I will get you a phone number. You can make the arrangements.’

  ‘Very well,’ Oleg said.

  ***

  With the phone number supplied, Oleg was quickly on the phone. The woman at the other end of the line spoke in a pleasant manner, and his Tajik was suitably fluent. It was a short conversation, setting up the time and place.

  Farhana elaborated on her life the second time they spoke. On that occasion, it had been face-to-face – or, more correctly, face-to-veil, as she was enclosed in a burka.

  ‘I came back from Iran, where I had spent many years as a refugee, to a country that does not respect women.’

  She was a pretty twenty-two-year-old – once the burka was removed – with a slender face and an olive complexion. Their initial meeting was at a remote farmhouse on the outskirts of the city, which Alam had arranged. He either did not approve or was afraid, but he drove her there and waited outside while Oleg and Farhana concluded their business. He said he would wait and drive her back afterwards.

  ‘I had received a good education, but no one would employ me,’ she continued. ‘I worked for a foreign charity for a while, but they have since left the city.’

  ‘Are you not worried about doing this?’ Oleg asked. He found her pleasant to look at and interesting to talk to. He could not understand a male-dominated society where the men seemed to revel in each other’s company. Why men would hold hands, kiss each other on the cheek and hug and sit close to one another, legs sometimes intertwined, made no sense to him. A man should hold the hand of a woman, kiss her, sit close to her and make love to her as often as possible.

  Alam told him it was their culture. The men did appreciate the benefit of a warm woman in a warm bed, but they would not openly admit to it. Oleg did not understand; however, with Farhana in that small, unpleasant farmhouse with its open fire in one corner, a couple of chairs and an uncomfortable-looking bed, it was the least of his concerns.

  ‘You do this for money?’ Oleg asked.

  ‘That is all,’ she replied.

  ‘And if you are caught?’

  ‘My father would bury me alive for the shame I have brought on our family.’

  ‘Is it worth the risk?’

  ‘What else do I have? I must live, I must clothe myself; my father has no money.’

  ‘He would rather you starved than sell yourself?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I will support you and, with me, your secret is safe.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  For a woman who had arrived covered in the ultimate demeaning feminine attire, an Afghan burka, she was surprisingly easy to undress. Underneath the burka, she wore a long-sleeved white blouse and a pair of designer jeans, good quality but probably fake.

  She responded to his touch, even appeared genuine, although his hands were hard and rough and her skin pallid and smooth. She wore no bra, and her nipples were firm and erect, her breasts small and upright. It was not long before she stood before him naked. The bed was small, and both were holding onto the headrest to stop falling out onto the dirt floor, which was frozen hard. She was warm to the touch, and she pleased him.

  She did not have the skills of Malika or the roundness of Natasha in St. Petersburg, and he would have described her as a passive lover. It had been two hours in that small room. At the conclusion, Alam had driven her back to the city and left her at a remote corner not far from her house. She exited the vehicle and quickly disappeared down a side alley.

  ‘Was it worth it?’ Alam asked the next day.

  ‘You know it was,’ Oleg said with a smile.

  ‘If the Taliban catch her, you know what they’ll do?’

  ‘I assume they’ll kill her,’ Oleg replied.

  ‘Stone her to death.’

  ‘So it’s either a burial from her father or a stoning from the Taliban. It’s not much of a choice.’

  ‘What else can she do?’ Alam said. It was a remarkable admission.

  Chapter 15

  The Afghan four rarely met as a group. The seriousness of the situation decreed that they made an exception this time.

  Ahmad Ghori had assumed leadership of the meeting.

  ‘We need to decide on a strategy. Do we go with the Russians or our friends in Tajikistan?’

  Ali Mowllah, the businessman, saw it clearly.

  ‘The Russians,’ he said. To him, profit was the defining factor, and the current arrangement was rewarding him extremely well financially.

  Arif Noorzai, the Islamic fundamentalist, formed his decision by taking into account other criteria.

  ‘The people in Tajikistan are Muslims,’ he said. ‘The Russians are infidels and former invaders. We should not forget the atrocities they committed against our people.’

  Ashraf Ghilzai, a former Taliban and now the person responsible for the heroin factories in Badakhshan to the east of Kunduz, took a more pragmatic view.

  ‘Whoever pays the most.’

  Ahmad Ghori summed up the mood of the meeting.

  ‘We need to hear the presentations from both sides. The arrangement with Russia is working well, although it is only a matter of time before Baroyev attempts to interfere with the operation in Tajikistan.’

  ‘Then we kill him,’ Arif Noorzai said. It was the typical response of the Taliban. To them, death was an easier solution than negotiating.

  ‘Arif, are you forgetting that he is in Tajikistan?’ said Ahmad Ghori. ‘Not all of the police and the military can be bribed. Some of their politicians are even honest and incorruptible.’ Arif Noorzai had not travelled, and he did not believe in the concept of an honest politician.

  There were certainly none in Afghanistan that he knew of apart from Abdul Sarabi, but he had been Hazara and a Shia, and to a Sunni Taliban, a heretic. A car bomb, as he exited his compound in Kabul, had dealt with him. He had been the most prominent politician in Kabul of his people. His heritage stretched back eight hundred years, to when th
e Mongol Emperor, Babur, a descendant of Genghis Khan, had marched through what was their known world.

  Sarabi’s distinctive features, more Chinese than Asian, had long isolated his people in Afghanistan. It was only in a new, enlightened Afghanistan that the fledgeling political process had allowed him to attain a position of importance. It would not have been possible in his childhood. His father, a local magistrate in Hesa Awal Behsood District to the West of Kabul, in Wardak Province, had been a prominent man in his region but derided by the Pashtuns in Kabul.

  Abdul Sarabi’s initial presence in Kabul, after he had been elected to Parliament, had caused consternation ‒ even rioting ‒ due to his being Shia Muslim rather than Sunni, as per the majority of the population. But, over a period of a few years, he had shown himself to be incorruptible and genuine. He had personally overseen the removal of a notorious gangster in Paghman Province, who had been terrorising the local people. He had even arrested some of his fellow parliamentarians and had them thrown in jail, for their easily proven crime of bribe-taking to give lucrative construction contracts to their fellow tribesman. He was a marked man, even before the Taliban dealt with him.

  ‘What has the killing of Baroyev got to do with honest politicians and policemen?’ Noorzai asked.

  ‘They will investigate, set up a commission of inquiry,’ replied Ghori. ‘They’ll feel the need to stop every truck on the road.’

  ‘Then we pay those we bribed some more money to ensure the trucks get by.’

  Ali Mowllah entered the conversation. ‘Those who have been paid off will be aiming to distance themselves from any wrongdoing. All of a sudden, those we know are on the take will be standing and arguing for the restoration of law and order.’

  ‘Okay, if we can’t kill him, then what do we do?’ Noorzai asked.