Czar of England (SOKOLOV Book 6)

by Ian Kharitonov

  The café, usually a hive of activity, was empty, save for another table where a couple of Strakosha’s lads sat drinking strong raki. Everyone was lying low after Freddie had decided to hole up somewhere. All the boys could smell that something was going on. Strakosha sensed that his chance to shine could turn up soon. He could prove his worth to his uncle and rise up the Mafia ranks.

  There had to be a good reason for Uncle Freddie to simply vanish.

  Freddie Berisha was no coward, he was a lion. An aging lion, but still capable of crushing anyone who might think he was getting weak. Yet he needed fresh blood at his side as their operations kept growing. There was only so much a man like Berisha could handle on his own. If anything, young Armando knew how to deal with problems.

  A thug dressed in an Adidas tracksuit came rushing into the café with a harried expression on his face. It was Enis, a junior gang member.

  “What’s going on?” Strakosha asked as he twisted a rubber band around the last wad of fifty-pound notes. “You look like all of your girlfriends told you at once that they’re pregnant.”

  “Armando, there’s a fire at the brothel!” said Enis. “The tower. It’s burning!”

  “What? How bad?”

  “I don’t know. I just got word from Lorik. He said it looks pretty bad. I thought we might let you know so you’d get in touch with the boss.”

  “Right. You go there and take a look at what’s going on there and come back here to report. And bring the cash and the dope from there. Don’t let the police find any of it, and don’t let that rat Lorik hide it away and say it’s gone. Bring it all here.”

  Enis nodded, “Will do.”

  “Don’t just stand there! Move!”

  Enis ran off.

  Strakosha cursed under his breath. A fire? Freddie wouldn’t like any of it at all. The brothel provided major cash flow and now it was out of service. Damn! How could it have happened? A freak accident? Strakosha wouldn’t believe that for a second.

  His suspicions were proven right in the very next moment with all hell breaking loose.

  Coming from the street, a storm of bullets blew out the glass from the window frames. Instinctively, Strakosha dived for cover.

  Before he knew it, a hand grenade flew in and hit the floor, bouncing, going off in a booming blast of fire and smoke that shook the café, red-hot fragments ripping into the bodies of his lads as they went down toppling from the chairs, more gunfire spraying, zinging slugs ricocheting off the walls. Other projectiles—flaming Molotov cocktail bottles—landed everywhere, bursting to spew fire all around him and suddenly the whole place was ablaze. His table was burning, and so was the money. Strakosha reached out to grab the kalash but the surrounding heat singed his hand and he screamed.

  The blaze was closing in, devouring every surface, and he was gaging from the acrid black smoke. He had to get out before the fire killed him!

  He crawled across the floor and scrambled to his feet, staggering to the exit.

  Out on the street, he gasped for air. His body shook from a coughing fit and his eyes watered. He felt dazed, his ears ringing from the grenade blast.

  He lurched toward his car parked on the curb, only discover that the Bentley, too, had been set on fire. Bright orange flames danced on the sleek metal body of the Continental GT.

  “No!” Strakosha snarled in disbelief.

  He spun around to face someone approaching him.

  It was the attacker.

  The tall, athletic man with dark blond hair and sapphire-blue eyes was pointing a submachine gun at him. The man’s free hand swung in a fist that walloped the side of his head and he saw blurry spots.

  The next thing he knew, he was being shoved inside an SUV at gunpoint, and then a blow to the back of his head knocked him out.

  49

  Freddie Berisha did not enjoy being forced to go into hiding. Neither did he like taking orders from a rich, spoiled, pampered brat like that Russian bastard, Phil Korolev. But Berisha had a nose for trouble. He’d survived long enough by sensing danger. He knew when to sit it out.

  The heat was on and the police were on his tail. All because of Korolev and his damned project. It was a nuisance, but as compensation, the Russians had promised him a cut from their heroin traffic, bringing Azizi to use Berisha’s smuggling channels. The new source of drug shipments could potentially yield great rewards and keep Berisha happy despite the difficulties of dealing with Korolev.

  And just because he was staying at an undisclosed location didn’t mean he’d relinquished control over his gang’s day-to-day activities. If anything, the penthouse in Soho provided the usual level of comfort. The only difference was that almost nobody except his most trusted men knew about it and the paperwork couldn’t be traced to him. He’d acquired the backup property through Trevor Kendrick for exactly such an eventuality.

  There was at least one downside to his self-isolation, however.

  Observing the city skyline from a panoramic window, he saw plumes of smoke rising from an area around where his main brothel was located, at the edge of Chelsea. He’d just got off the phone, having received confirmation from his men on site, but nobody seemed to know exactly what had happened, and it was driving him mad.

  “Lorik, find out who did this and bring me the bastard’s head!” he yelled into the loudspeaker.

  Terminating the call, he tapped at the screen furiously and squeezed the phone in frustration until his calloused knuckles turned white, when suddenly it rang again.

  It was the Strakosha kid. He was young and arrogant, too much perhaps, but Armando was a son of one of his cousins and, no matter how distant the relation, he was family all the same.

  Berisha swiped to answer.

  “Yes?”

  “Is that you, Freddie?”

  He failed to recognize the speaker. But the cold, hard voice didn’t belong to Armando, that much was certain.

  “Who is this?” Berisha demanded.

  “I’m someone whom you shouldn’t have crossed. My name is Eugene Sokolov. You have my brother. You made a huge mistake when you had your thugs kidnap him. You see, Freddie, I’m not with any law enforcement or intelligence agency. I don’t play by the rules. I will torch down every whorehouse and drug joint of yours all the way to Leeds, if that’s what it takes to get my brother back. You don’t know anything about me yet. I’ll make you regret that you ever decided to mess with me and my brother. You will see your rotten criminal empire crumble around you. I have enough resources to do that, and I will throw everything behind it. And when you’ve got nothing left to lose apart from your life, I will come for you.”

  “Hmph. I must admit that you got guts. Sokol is an Albanian name which means falcon. I believe it’s the same in Russian. You’re living up to it. But you’re still no match for a lion.”

  “That’s correct, except for one thing. I’m not Russian. I’m a Cossack. What that means for you is that if you hurt my family, I will hit back at you a thousand times harder. It’s the only kind of law to live by. The law of the mountains. In the Caucasus, it goes back centuries. I guess you have something like that in Albania, no?”

  “Yes. It is called gjakmarrja. Blood-letting. Vengeance.”

  Revenge was administered under the Kanun, the ancestral code that governed the traditional Albanian way of life. A man was obliged to restore his honor if it had been violated. An attack against a family member demanded retaliation of equal force. A blood feud could span generations before the debt of gjakmarrja was paid. Indeed, maybe in certain ways he and Sokolov were alike, Berisha thought to his own surprise, with something akin to respect.

  Those who refused to sacrifice their own lives and the lives of their kin to settle the feud fell into disgrace, suffering shame and seclusion in their homes. Berisha found the idea of voluntary imprisonment in the penthouse amusing.

  “Good,” Sokolov said. “We can see eye to eye, then. But remember, it won’t be an eye for an eye. I won’t stop until C
onstantine is released safe and sound. I’ll start with this guy right here. He must be some kind of relative of yours, right? You all belong to the same clan, after all. And then I will go to your native village in Albania, find your elderly parents, and kill them. Ask yourself, is your partnership with Phil really worth it?”

  Berisha’s eyes flared. He was enraged. That whorebastard, how dare he talk to him like this? Taking a few short breaths, he managed to quell his fury.

  “Deal,” he told Sokolov. “The old warehouse in Barking.”

  “Is my brother there? Is that where you’re keeping him?”

  “It’s where I’ll be waiting to meet you. You’ve got half an hour to get there. If you ever want to see Constantine again, then hurry up.”

  50

  The wipers were working frantically as raindrops drummed against the Tiguan’s windshield.

  The rendezvous location put Sokolov at a disadvantage. East London was Albanian gang territory, and as he cruised through Barking, he anticipated to get assaulted by thugs on mopeds at every turn. He kept his gun handy. And although no attack came, he knew he had been watched on his way to the warehouse.

  He felt a tingling sensation in his fingertips. Nerves started kicking in. Soon enough, he’d secure Constantine’s release. Or they would both die. He had no idea what Berisha was up to, but he did know that the Albanian gang boss couldn’t be trusted.

  As an ardent student of military history, Sokolov was well aware that Albanian stratioti mercenaries had earned a brutal reputation for their false-retreat ambushes. Not a lot would have changed since the fifteenth century. He expected Berisha to lure him using similar tactics, so he had come prepared.

  He pulled up the Tiguan at the loading bay next to the industrial building, leaving it next to two other cars already parked there, a Bentley and a Ferrari. The Albanians had arrived early.

  As he got out of the SUV, a couple of Skorpion-toting Albanian gangsters approached him in the lashing rain. They motioned for him to raise his arms. He put his hands behind his head as they frisked him, finding his handgun tucked behind his belt, under his loose shirt, and tossing it aside. The weapon clattered on the ground, leaving him defenseless. Then they escorted him into the warehouse. Two other armed Albanians guarded the entrance.

  Inside, the large area was lined with pallet racking, five-meter tall rows of shelves filled with cardboard boxes. Sokolov wondered what was in them. Contraband, counterfeit goods? Some other illicit cargo? Drugs? Weapons? It could be anything.

  Ammonium nitrate?

  Sokolov doubted that Berisha would bring him here and risk exposing the shipment—provided, of course, that there was one.

  They led him down an aisle where Freddie Berisha stood waiting, and then forced him down to his knees.

  Berisha stepped forward, silhouetted by the overhead lights, a crooked smile on his lips.

  “Well, well,” he said. “You were equally brave and stupid to come here.”

  “Where’s my brother? We had a deal.”

  “Deal or no deal, that’s my call. I’m the boss. I decide who lives and who dies.”

  “You’re not the only one,” Sokolov replied.

  He unclasped his hands. In his clenched fist, he held a Chinese-made Type 82-2 grenade. Its small size made it easy to conceal in one’s palm. Sokolov’s thumb flicked away the safety pin, which clinked as it dropped to the floor.

  Holding down the safety lever, he stretched out his arm at Berisha.

  At the sight of the grenade, Berisha’s expression became stunned.

  “Shoot me and you’ll die,” Sokolov said. “Let my brother go—or else you’ll die. There are no two ways about it.”

  The pair of Albanian thugs flanking him backed off, inching away from him slowly. The prospect of getting blown up scared them, but even at a distance there was no predicting where the fragments would hit. The pallet racking on either side made for a confined space.

  The steel in his voice suggested that Sokolov wasn’t bluffing.

  The tables had turned suddenly and Sokolov was the one holding them hostage, they all acknowledged.

  “So, you’re not as dumb as I thought,” Berisha said.

  “Where’s Constantine?”

  “Calm down, Sokolov. Your brother is not here.”

  “Stop bullshitting me.”

  He eased his grip on the grenade, depressing the safety lever with a single finger.

  “Easy! Easy!” Berisha pleaded. A bead of perspiration formed on his forehead. “I swear to you with my family’s honor. Phil Korolev is the one who’s got him. After my men snatched your brother, they brought him to Phil and that was the end of it as far as I was concerned. I don’t know where Constantine was taken from there or where he’s being kept.”

  “How do I find Korolev?”

  “I haven’t got a clue, I’ve not been in touch with him since. He might be outside the U.K.”

  “Why should I believe you? You’re lying. Say your prayers, Freddie.”

  “I’m telling you the truth! Your anger is misplaced. If you really want to locate Constantine, you should be directing it at whoever betrayed him. I’m supposed to kill you, Sokolov, but I’m a man of my word. I will let you go in exchange for Armando. Your life for his.”

  “He’s in the back of the Tiguan, tied up and covered by tarpaulin.”

  “Cheeky bastard,” Berisha smirked.

  The grimace on his face quickly changed to that of concern as he heard a commotion outside.

  Shouts of alarm sounded near the warehouse entrance and a sudden flurry of activity erupted. Automatic fire broke out, followed by screams as the guards were attacked.

  Masked gunmen stormed in. Three of them loomed at the far end of the aisle, moving in, weapons trained. The unidentified operators wore balaclavas and their tactical gear bore no insignia, but they were a team of trained pros, maneuvering in a precise formation.

  Who were they? Hired E3 goons? Had they tracked down the car and followed Sokolov to get their hands on Berisha? Most likely. He had no time to deliberate on that.

  The Albanian thugs shot at them, Skorpions sputtering, before getting cut down by cracking assault rifle fire, and hitting the floor next to Sokolov.

  Berisha whipped out a handgun, popping off shots as he attempted to flee, but got hit by bullets ripping into his back, blood spewing as he fell with a groan.

  Sokolov bowled the grenade toward the attackers. Rolling along the floor, it came to a stop at the base of a pallet rack upright. Going off in a thunderclap, it blew out the steel beam, and the whole structure lost support. The shelving collapsed, spilling the huge boxes in an avalanche that crashed down, hitting the gunmen as they jumped away for cover, blocking their path and obstructing the line of sight as they fired at Sokolov.

  Having won a few precious seconds, Sokolov scooped up a Skorpion from a fallen Albanian and patted the dead man’s pockets to find a Ferrari fob. Then he lunged to Berisha. The mob boss was still alive, wheezing coarsely, but unable to move. Carrying him would be too much of a burden. Faced with a choice, Sokolov had to save his own life.

  Sokolov dashed down the aisle, clear of the racking, and out into the open. Then he saw a forklift left in the middle of the warehouse. He rushed to it and leaped into the seat, turning the ignition key and accelerating as he spun the steering wheel. The forklift was surprisingly zippy, and it zoomed as Sokolov steered it toward the exit.

  Bullets zinged, ricocheting off the forklift’s massive mast and carriage shielding him from the front, a shower of sparks flying in all directions as Sokolov raced at another E3 shooter standing in the doorway. Working the hydraulic controls, Sokolov raised the forks, charging at the enemy like a raging bull, and the gunman had to jump out of his way to avoid getting impaled.

  Outside, as the rain tapped against the overhead guard, Sokolov directed the forklift toward the cars parked in the loading dock. It could only get him so far: he didn’t hope to make it all the way across
London riding it.

  Seeing him, another E3 gunman who stood watch opened fire, but the slugs pinged off the raised forks. Sokolov squeezed off a silenced volley in return. The Skorpion spat out a burst of death which jerked the man’s body, downing him in a pirouette, and rivulets of blood mixed with the puddled rainwater.

  Sokolov hopped out of the forklift and approached the iron-gray-bodypainted Ferrari. It was a GTC4 Lusso, the closest thing to a family racing car. Sokolov climbed inside the luxurious cockpit of the grand tourer, nestling in the chocolate-colored, diamond-patterned seat, and fired up its growling V12 engine. His foot slammed down on the gas pedal to send it screaming, the tachometer spiking almost to 8,000 rpm as the supercar sped away.

  He charged through East London, cursing under his breath.

  Berisha had been his surest bet to find and rescue Constantine—and stop Korolev’s plot. And now he’d lost him.

  Worse, he’d fallen into the hands of the E3.

  They, too, were intent on hunting down the SVR man to protect Project Jutland, and they would have no qualms about eliminating Constantine in the process as collateral damage.

  But Sokolov found consolation in the fact that he had managed to get something out of Berisha, after all.

  He might be clutching at straws, but he couldn’t afford to waste another chance, no matter how slim, to save his brother. Perhaps it was the last lifeline.

  If someone had lured Constantine into a trap, Sokolov managed to think of only one person who could have done it.

  The idea seemed unfathomable at first, but it was impossible to dismiss. Any other explanation defied logic.

  Marina Dubrovskaya had sided with her father’s murderers.

  51

  Marina was back home, having started off the day with a bit of shopping. She dropped her haul of designer-branded bags to the parqueted floor as she closed the front door shut, locked it, and flicked the lights on.

  She was moving gracefully across the apartment when suddenly she saw him sitting on her sofa.