Bad Blood Empire

by Hale Chamberlain

  Lloyd wasn't convinced at first, but his own analysis of the state of London's property market showed it was an investment worth considering. His Islington flat had served him well, tripling in value since he had acquired it. The neighborhood had gotten trendy. He held no sentimental value to it, but most of the friends he had made since graduating from Oxford were living in an area stretching only a couple streets all around his place. Over the years, he had formed close ties with some of the residents, and they were regularly exchanging favors, leveraging each other’s’ skills like in a genuine community. He loved that he could meet people from all walks of life, religions, and colors. Some of his best friends were Portuguese, Italian, Polish, Turkish and even Icelandic. And even though he had an imperious desire to take his love relationship to the next level, he couldn't help but feel that by leaving this hodgepodge of a family, he was betraying them a little.

  CHAPTER 14

  As years went, the Mantes-la-jolie boys slowly came to the realization that in London maybe more than anywhere else in the world, seasons dictated the pace of life. In the summer, the capital would be filled with sun-drenched energy, swirls of pop-up rooftop bars, food stalls, and spontaneous outdoor artistic shows surfacing in every popular vicinity. It was a time for joy and celebration, an opportunity for a barbecue in the backyard and a suntan in the park. At the turn of fall however, the bustling and ever-so-lively streets progressively emptied themselves, and the winter depression would slowly set in. Ghastly grey clouds would pervade the sky and become a more familiar sight, as the inexorable icy wind diffused through the metropolis' avenues. The occasional heavy snowfalls would send the valiant army of corporate soldiers in high heels into a blunt stupor, while the glorious Christmas decorations, dazzling Chinese New Year celebrations, and mellow evenings in snug pubs would only provide a temporary respite for the overwhelming majority of low-spirited city dwellers.

  For the narcotics trade however, there was no such thing as a winter lull. The cool shortening days preceded a seasonal spike in consumption, and all the major opioid wholesalers of London braced themselves and their distribution networks for an extra busy – and lucrative – few months.

  Earlier that day, all four remaining lieutenants of the Mantes-la-jolie bunch had taken upon themselves to conduct operations on the ground amongst their men, making their presence known and mustering their sales troops. It is crucial to show the lower-level foot soldiers that the entire chain of command is committed to the cause, Zakariya liked to hammer that much in his lieutenants’ heads.

  And on that crisp-cold stormy early-winter night, they were all spelling out their final instructions ahead of the seasonal white candy rush. That is, all lieutenants except Rayyan. The man had spent his day meticulously preparing his two A.M. appointment. The routine was always the same. The chosen lieutenant would devise a clear-cut, straightforward plan, and once he was satisfied with it, he would talk it out with Mustafa, who would tear it to pieces. The ensuing back and forth exchanges, sometimes heated, would serve to plan for contingencies and beef up the chance of success of the operation. What would typically emerge a few hours later was a bare-bones, bulletproof course of action that had only an infinitesimal chance of failing. This time around, surprisingly, Rayyan and Mustafa had agreed upon the modus operandi in a heartbeat. The emotional baggage associated with the operation was too heavy to become bogged down by details. It was about getting a job done, ruthlessly, and not necessarily efficiently.

  On the other side of the Thames, the Aydins were on standby. Years of commercial war of attrition had deprived them of the financing they once relied on to import copious amounts of dope. For that reason, they had decided several years ago to shift to a just-in-time supply paradigm. This had proven shrewd business, as the need to predict consumer behavior accurately, as well as the massive upfront investments in opioid cargos, had become redundant almost overnight. They had successfully decreased costs, and the gang's operations were running much more smoothly.

  The flipside of that new set-up was a heightened frequency of white powder delivery, which meant that more hands were needed. This had proved a major downside. By way of extra manpower, they had entrusted younger – and potentially less trustworthy – members of the family with the reception of opiate cargos.

  Singled out as a future leader from the age of fourteen, Mehmet Aydin had been given increasing responsibilities within the Turkish syndicate over the ensuing years, but he had developed an exuberance that hardly sat well with the family's low profile. He had later fallen out of favor with his uncles running the organization with an iron fist. Instead of making his bones under the benevolent eye of the old guard, the former wonder child proved more interested in trimming his sideburns and browsing local jewelry shops for new earpieces. It had been a bitter disappointment for the elders, who struggled to find reliable workers in the ranks of the young generation.

  Eventually, patriarch Kemal Aydin – who still considered the youngster as his favorite nephew – had decided to give the man a chance, more constrained by the circumstances than by sheer belief. That very winter, Mehmet could finally play with the big boys.

  And tonight, he would be able to repay his uncle’s faith in him. He had been given the critical task of supervising the offload of the four A.M. delivery and ensure the proper transit of the goods to one of their hideouts in the north of Clapham.

  Although Kemal had his respect, Mehmet still held a grudge against his other uncles for freezing his progression through the ranks of the family. A bunch of old wankers born in another era, he thought, as he put his grey jeans back on. Out of disdain for his uncles, he hadn't followed their advice, or rather command, to spend the hours preceding the action at one of the family's properties in South London.

  Instead, he had replied favorably to a frivolous girl’s text message who had invited him over for the night at her tiny studio in Islington. In fact, Mehmet often hung out in the North London neighborhood, whose crowd he found more similar to himself than the traditional brain-washed youngsters of his native area. He suffocated down South under the scrutiny of his clan.

  He did not remember it, but the girl insisted that they had met at one of their common friend's birthday party a couple of weeks ago. Hours earlier, they had exchanged a few words on FaceTime, and he had decided she was a hot enough piece of ass, and worth the time and effort. She was Moroccan, she assured him, and he had a weakness for Arab beauties. The girl’s unexpected message had been a pleasant surprise, but not an unusual one, as he had a gained a solid reputation in the community as the most sought-after bachelor of the Aydin clan.

  As he prepared to leave like a ghost after a brief but rewarding intercourse, he stole a glance at the alarm clock on the bedsit. It flashed two A.M. sharp. Plenty of time to meet up with the boys and head out to the West India Docks down south, Mehmet thought. The girl had been a lousy shag, her hips barely moving as he thrust energetically into her, but he had found his release just like in any other braid, and that was good enough.

  He shook off the recollection from his mind and turned his focus to the matter at hand. Three of the clan's most reliable henchmen were waiting a few miles away to be summoned. He sent them an encrypted WhatsApp message, commanding them to be ready to bounce, and exited the girl’s building without looking back.

  He had parked in a hurry across the street and noticed that a ticket had been tucked under the wipers. Fucking wankers, even after midnight? He walked up to the car briskly and picked up the paper, unconcerned. It read "Payback is a bitch."

  Mehmet was abreast of his clan's affairs, but he stood there confused for a second. All of a sudden, he felt a beefy arm slide around his neck. In a flash, a cloth was covering his face, and he gasped for air as it dawned on him that he had been tricked. Did that whore lure me here on purpose? The unrelenting coil was cutting all access to the ambient oxygen, and the grip kept tightening harder and harder. Right before he passed out, Mehmet recognized the smell o
f chloroform.

  CHAPTER 15

  Seven-hundred and eighty miles away, across the Channel and all the way down to the south of France, the unloading dock of the Port-Saint-Louis-du-Rhone harbor was buzzing. Most of the merchandise entering the port of Marseille was discharged there, and the customs border patrol would randomly inspect up to five of the hundreds of cargo containers each day. It was estimated that each year, over a hundred thousand pounds of cocaine transited via Western Africa to be sold in Europe. As the busiest port on the Mediterranean Sea, Marseille had a pivotal role in the cocaine trade.

  The customs agents were easily recognizable, with their oversized navy-blue jacket conspicuously spelling out their business in bold white letters – "DOUANES." Four of them had their sight set on a monolithic crane that was about to offload a four-thousand-pound yellow container right at their feet. As the massive metallic box hit the ground, the patrol chief growled and stepped forward.

  Local drug dealers from Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur regularly tried to corrupt his men, and he had made sure his current underlings had been vetted thoroughly. There was only one type of men he despised more than slackers, and that was double-dealing snakes. He signaled to one of his associates to move closer with the search dog. Then, he turned to a third man and asked in French, “Origin of the container?”

  “Accra, Ghana,” the man replied, flipping through pages of documentation.

  The tallest of the bunch got closer and popped the lock open with a heavy iron clamp. The door squeaked, and a shovel full of bulky black rugged balls leaked out.

  “Since when does Ghana export coal?” The patrol chief asked rhetorically.

  The dog sniffed around for a minute but did not scratch. Beowulf wouldn’t be able to detect anything hidden in that mess anyway, the tall man thought. For all they knew, bags of cocaine could be hiding at the back of the huge metal crate, or in false floors. They had strict orders to interfere as little as possible with legitimate trade to avoid causing delays in container transit.

  Lunchtime was only an hour away, and they had three other containers to inspect. There was not enough time to usher this one through the x-ray machine. The container was good to go. The port agents would move it to the dispatch zone, where carrier trucks would deliver the merchandise to their destination.

  The patrol chief nodded to his men, tapped three times on the container’s wall and said, “Next!”

  . . .

  At roughly the same time, a convoy of black vehicles raced out of Marseille's northern neighborhoods. Given the size of the package onboard and the distance to be traveled, the smugglers had decided to take out five of their most powerful cars. Two of them opened the way – the lead cars – with two carriers holding the merchandise right behind and another one following from a distance.

  Yassine was conducting the go fast and had to forego his original plans to make use of the gang's Audi Q5 and Mercedes ML350. Those vehicles could carry large cargos but were too bulky for the job ahead. The shiny four-wheeled monsters had drawn unnecessary attention from previous high-risk missions, and it was Yassine was determined to prevent similar fiascos. And he needed cars that were easier to manoeuver.

  So instead, he picked as his lead cars a gray Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution and an imported Chevrolet Camaro – two no-nonsense high-horsepower sport sedans with turbocharged motors capable of evading any treacherous situation arising on the road. The two beasts could easily bear in excess of a thousand pounds of cargo without external signs of the heavy load they contained – they would be fail-safes in case the bags of white had to be scattered. As carrier cars, the two reliable six-cylinder BMW M3 would be primed to transport the bulk of the precious load, while a black Mercedes AMG E63 – stolen only a month earlier – would close the way a few miles behind, ready to pick up everyone if misfortune struck.

  The four drivers had been carefully selected by upper management and were the best in the Castellane ghetto. Yassine had no doubt that they could easily outrun any French police car. Their behemoths could accelerate to a hundred and fifty miles-per-hour when the police’s Peugeot 307 would be hard pressed to even reach seventy.

  “Taking the feeder, off to the A7.” The crackled voice of a man could be heard from the walkie-talkie.

  Yassine’s co-pilot replied, “Roger that, we’re right behind you.”

  The convoy was about to hurtle through France's sleek motorways through Valence, Lyon, and Troyes, all the way up to the Ile-de-France, where the valuable freight would be cut and handed over to dozens of wholesalers. The entire journey would take under five hours.

  The lead vehicles were in charge of checking rest areas and scrutinizing gas stations on the way and to make sure the pigs weren’t setting up an ambuscade. You’re never too careful when it comes to narcotics smuggling, Yassine reminded himself, as he overtook a forty-feet-long transport truck heaving outside of his lane and back. Goddamn Polish, Yassine growled, can’t hold their liquor. It struck him as rather ironic that the cargo he was displacing was probably more valuable than that of the truck he had just passed.

  The assistance car at the back was the only one carrying machine guns and embarked two proven gunmen from the Castellane. They stood ready to intervene if the convoy was being tailed or if things went awry, neither of which were likely.

  Typically, the lead drivers would inform the group that the way was clear, sending group texts from freshly-bought mobile phones and SIM cards. But the litigious climate prevalent in the Castellane ghetto – following a large-scale crackdown on cocaine smuggling earlier that month – had caused Yassine and his associates to call the standard procedure into question.

  Walkie-talkies were the next best alternative, a frequent recourse in the old days when he first got involved in the business during the 1990s. Things were far more dangerous back then, and for a split second, he recalled a few heated-up chases. His old mentor's quick thinking had been invaluable, and Yassine had pondered many times what had become of Zakariya Mansouri in the wake of his sudden departure. As sharp a fellow as he was, history suggested he was probably retired by now, or dead. Yassine had come to know personally many big fishes of the opiate trade over the years, and he had drawn only one certainty from it. No one came out of that business unscathed.

  CHAPTER 16

  None of his brothers was taken aback when Kemal Aydin broke the news of Mehmet's assassination. The kid had been found dead that very morning on the sidewalk next to his car, lying on his back with a peaceful expression on his face. “He died from stabbing”, Kemal explained briefly, remaining vague on purpose. But the perpetrators had shown the decency of putting him to sleep beforehand. His physical body had borne the brunt of the attack and reacted accordingly, initially sending rushes of hormones to his brain to give him the impetus to flee, but the whole ordeal had been over by the time his consciousness had registered the true nature of his assailant's intents. The boy's father, second-born within the Aydin brethren, was in a tempestuous mood, but even he recognized that this was far from an act of war.

  Kemal was contemplative, and he decided that the family would have a better chance of presenting a united front if he omitted to notify them of the message found at the crime scene. "Payback is a bitch." That would only have enraged them further and put their rational minds to sleep, he had reasoned.

  It was clear that the Mantes-la-jolie gang had shown restraint in this act of vengeance, and the mockery was deserved, if undiplomatic. He highly doubted Zakariya and his associates would engage in further retaliation. By murdering Mehmet in that respectful fashion, the Mansouris were sending a message that the vendetta between the two clans was settled.

  Kemal let the news sink in across the room for several minutes, and eventually said, “I cared deeply for Mehmet, and his loss will not be left unpunished, I can tell you this much.” He stared at the boy’s father, and said with a voice filled with empathy, “As is the tradition, all the resources of the family are at your disposal
to avenge the death of your son. We will follow your wish, and will act with full commitment to exert revenge as you deem fit.”

  All brothers stole glances at the affected father, whose impassive facies was only betrayed by red vitreous eyes. He was a sturdy man, rough on the edges, like Kemal. Yet, unlike his brother, he always made a point of looking the part. After all, he was one of the leaders of the Aydins crime syndicate, and as such, he was a wealthy man. He stood proudly in his four-hundred-pound bespoke suit and sported a dense, well-groomed mustache. What he failed to mention to his brothers was that he regularly consulted local Turkish-Cypriot tailors for fashion advice. At sixty-one – only a year younger than the family's patriarch – he had the right blend of wisdom and vigor to be a pillar the family could rest on. He would be a capable leader if his brother inadvertently disappeared.

  When he addressed the audience, it was with a noticeable absence of accent, “Thank you all for sharing my grief. As each one of you, I was prepared for the possibility that death would strike my own offspring. Now, the nature of the murder makes it inconceivable that the rest of the underworld would lend us their support to overthrow those insects.” He paused to collect his thoughts, and added, “Rest assured, I will not jeopardize the safety of our family and ask you to act recklessly. The best course of action right now is to defuse the situation and refrain from fueling further this conflict between our clans. If I were to bet, I would say that the Mansouris will leave it at that, at least for the foreseeable future.