They returned to the bar and Grigori took a large table over from a lesser group. Before long, girls started to arrive. Many of the girls crowded around Ned who was not just the youngest guy around, but also clearly not from the area. All of the girls tried their English out on him. One, in particular, named Nina, spoke good English and they struck up a long conversation.
The next morning, Ned woke up in a small but luxurious hotel room to see Nina combing her hair in front of a mirror. She saw him, smiled and told him she’d see him later. She gave him a gentle kiss on his forehead and left.
It all came flooding back to him. After dancing, eating and drinking at the club, his group had jumped into the Hummers and drove back to the airfield. Then they had taken the helicopter to Viktor’s yacht, moored in the Moskva. The hotel room he was in was not a hotel room at all, but a ship’s cabin. Ned could see the helicopter parked at the ship’s stern.
He dressed and went outside. He could see that the ship was moored next to a few others of similar size and many smaller boats. He heard voices behind him, so he turned around and stepped down to a wooden deck. The rest of his group were sitting at a table while various models from the nightclub were sunning themselves on deck. Nina was with them, reading an English edition of Harry Potter.
Semyon called Ned over and offered him a seat. After he was seated, he noticed the waiter. Not sure if the waiter spoke English or not, Semyon ordered for Ned. Everybody seemed to be having a good time, and even Evgeni and Grigori were speaking English. Vasilly even once lowered his book and grinned while Semyon was parodying Evgeni’s attempts to dance the night before.
After a breakfast of cold sausage, blinis, eggs and coffee, Grigori told the group in English that they had one more job to do before they were on their own to do whatever they pleased. They would enjoy the morning on the yacht, but would have to meet at the helicopter at one o’clock.
Ned spent the morning with Nina, and quite enjoyed her company. He was also impressed (and delighted) to find out that she lived in Brooklyn and was only in Russia visiting relatives because of a death in the family. They made plans to see each other back in the States.
When the men assembled at the helicopter, Ned asked Semyon what was going on. He told him that it was nothing. They had just caught a guy stealing from Viktor. According to Semyon, one of Viktor’s varied business interests involved stealing luxury cars, stripping them down and sending the parts to China where they were painstakingly reassembled and resold at a ridiculous profit. One of Viktor’s men had found out that this guy, Ivan, had been sending steering assemblies without the airbags. He had set up his own very lucrative business through which he sold the airbags online.
“It’s bad,” Semyon said. “I actually know the guy. He’s lots of fun. But business is business and he has to be made an example of. I just hope it’s not too bad.”
In the helicopter, Ned couldn’t help feel almost overwhelmed by the bonhomie and good cheer of his fellow passengers. Grigori and Evgeni were speaking English with him, joking about Nina and telling stories about Viktor’s amazing wealth and power. Even Vasilly said, “Viktor is a very successful man” in English, though he didn’t look at Ned.
They flew over a lot of farms and woods and the occasional town. They set down in what appeared to be a large and abandoned parking lot. About fifty yards away, there were two burly men in suits, one armed with an AK-47, and both leaning against a big, red Mitsubishi SUV. The unarmed one, who was smoking, walked over to the helicopter as the rotors slowed down. He was smiling and looked very casual.
When the helicopter doors opened, he greeted Grigori like an old friend and said hello to the others. As they spoke rather animatedly, Semyon gave Ned a condensed translation. “Grigori and Ilya are old friends. Grigori says he is too old for this shit, that’s he’s too senior. Ilya says Viktor said he had to be there, because of the American friend—hey, that’s you. Grigori agrees and tells Ilya that they should just go ahead and get it over with.”
Grigori, who must’ve heard every word Semyon said, turned around and yelled at his group in English. “Let’s go, the sooner we get done, the sooner we can get out of this place.”
Ilya led them over to the Mitsubishi. The guy with the AK-47 nodded and acknowledged Grigori. Then he opened one of the truck’s rear doors. Inside, there was a small man tied up with duct tape over his mouth. His blue-and-yellow face indicated that he had been beaten up quite a while ago and the dried blood on the front of his shirt showed that it had been quite brutal. He seemed unconscious even though the one eye that wasn’t too puffed up to see was wide open. Suddenly, Grigori barked out, “Macnair, Evgeni, take him out.”
Ned, taking Evgeni’s lead, grabbed the small man and helped pull him from the vehicle. They stood him up between them. His head didn’t come to Ned’s chin and he felt light as a child. Following Grigori, they frogmarched the unfortunate man through an iron gate in the high wall beside the parking lot.
Inside, Ned could see that it was a cemetery. But it was unlike any he had ever seen. Instead of simple crosses or inscribed tombstones, all of these graves had fountains and statutes. Some even had huge granite blocks with what appeared to be the life-sized photographs of young men in suits etched into them. They dragged the tied-up man (who was no longer even attempting to walk with them) around a corner to a sumptuous tomb. Not only was there a life-sized granite statue of a young man, but there was also one of a slick Mercedes-Benz convertible.
As they approached, Grigori himself grabbed the small man and threw him down in front of the tomb. Then he started yelling something in Russian. Semyon grabbed Ned and pulled him back a few feet, then started telling him what was going on. “He’s calling him a stupid bastard . . . told him he had it made, and that he fucked it all up . . . And now he’s telling him about Valeri, who’s buried right here, telling him how this man, this honorable man, died for the cause, died an honest man and that he could have been just like him. He says that he wanted the last thing he ever saw in his miserable little life was the beautiful grave of a man who deserved respect . . . And now he’s telling him that he’ll be buried in a cardboard box if anyone even bothers to bury him at all.”
The thief started shaking and crying. He tried to get up, but Grigori threw him roughly back down. Unbidden, Vasilly came out of the group. With his left hand, he grabbed the man by his collar and brought him up to a kneeling position. He then pulled out his knife and sliced the screaming man’s eyeballs.
Ned couldn’t help flinching. He heard one of the Russians—he couldn’t be sure which—laugh as the man tried to stand up and stumbled screaming to the ground.
Semyon took Ned away, and they all started walking back to the Mitsubishi and the helicopter. Most of the Russians were chatting, but Ned couldn’t speak. Finally, he quietly asked Semyon, “That was for me to see, right? To teach me not to steal?”
“It was for all of us,” Semyon answered. “You think you’re the only one who handles money?”
Ned sighed. “If this is what you guys do to a thief,” he said, “I’d hate to see what you do to a rat.”
Semyon looked at Ned with a face that showed both shock and suspicion. “We have no rats here. There is nobody to tell—those police we do not own are scared to death of us,” he said. “This is not America.”
Ned did his best to smile. “Oh, I know that, my friend,” he said, and watched as friendliness rewashed over Semyon’s face. “And you’re right, we Americans are lazy. We just would have killed the guy.”
Semyon shrugged and nodded. “Sure, but then nobody learns anything,” he said. “A body is just a body. This guy, though, he can go tell his friends what happens to people who steal from Viktor.”
Ned looked ahead at the guys he was with. Even though the blinded man’s screams could still be heard behind them, no one was in a hurry to leave the scene. Instead, they looked loose, jocular, even proud. If anything, they looked like a sports team, joking and laughing afte
r an easy victory.
At that moment, Ned realized he was halfway around the world, surrounded by a vicious gang. He took a deep breath to calm his mind. His charade had to be as convincing as the illusions in the oil paintings—without the heroics.
Chapter Twelve
Ned was surprised at how much he liked Moscow. So far, he had come to see it as a huge, ugly and even soulless city. But now that he was exploring the historic parts of the city with Nina, he had come to see Moscow as an entirely different place, full of life and culture. She was staying in a hotel near Red Square, and Ned joined her for a couple of days before her flight back to New York.
She showed him a city of wonder and beauty. She took him to sites of mainly pre-Communist interest—museums, cathedrals and the Iberian Gate. He was stunned to see such magnificence in a culture he had already written off as without taste or depth. As he was getting tired of Russian food, she took him to French, Italian and even Japanese restaurants.
He was sad to see her go, but Ned passed the rest of the week amiably enough with Semyon in his old neighborhood. He paid for his parents to go on vacation at a Black Sea resort and he and Ned had taken over their apartment. It wasn’t as fun or as educational as staying with Nina, but he had a good time nevertheless. Semyon and his friends never seemed to do any work, but they had what seemed like a limitless amount of cash. They also seemed to be liked, or at least respected, by everyone they ran into. Ned realized that the respect they received may have been induced by fear, but it didn’t really seem to matter.
The neighborhood itself was ugly—cramped, dirty, uniformly gray and without much variation in the shape, size or overall look of the buildings. But the people were unfailingly cheerful and Ned had a great time with them. He found the Uzbeks generally a warmer and friendlier people than the Russians, and he liked their food, especially the flavored rice dishes served with meat.
Although he was excited about the potential of seeing Nina again, Ned was more than a little sad about leaving. He had become something of a celebrity in Semyon’s old neighborhood, and didn’t want to go back to the anonymity and unfriendliness of his apartment building at home. Maybe, he thought to himself, with all his money coming in, he could move to a friendlier neighborhood or town even. Maybe something near a beach, or nearer to Brooklyn in case things worked out with Nina.
After the flight to Canada and the drive across the border, the men convened in Grigori’s office. Grigori said something in Russian, and everybody except he, Vasilly and Ned left. After seeing the others leave, Ned started to get up, but stopped when Grigori told him to stay.
Grigori walked up to Ned much as he did when they first met, but this time he had a big smile on his face. Then Vasilly pulled up a chair and sat next to him, facing him.
That made Ned uneasy. Not only was Vasilly very close and facing him in what some might find an intrusive or even threatening manner, but Ned had developed a very visceral fear of Vasilly. It wasn’t just that he had seen Vasilly do terrible things, it was that he had never seen him do anything else. Ned had gotten to the point at which he involuntarily associated the look of Vasilly’s taut but impassive face as a threat to his very existence. Ned tried hard not to let his fear show and merely nodded in Vasilly’s direction while pretending to listen hard to whatever Grigori was saying to him.
Grigori looked at him, smiled broadly and said something in Russian to Vasilly that Ned took to be an admonishment. Vasilly just smiled. “Macnair, I think you have a problem with Vasilly.”
Ned looked over at him. Vasilly nodded without a trace of emotion.
“It seems,” Grigori said in a grave-sounding voice, “that he lost a large sum of cash because of you.”
Vasilly nodded.
“Yeah, he bet me that you wouldn’t last five minutes in Russia,” Grigori said. “But everybody there likes you, you did a wonderful job—and now he owes me money, so he blames you.” He laughed uproariously at his own joke. Even Vasilly let out a small snort of a chuckle. Once the shock wore off, Ned couldn’t help but laugh too.
“You make me very, very happy,” Grigori said, putting his meaty hands on Ned’s shoulders and kissing him on both cheeks. “Not only does import/export plan work, but I look like a genius for thinking of it.” He went back behind his desk and opened the top left drawer. He then pulled out a handful of hundred-dollar bills and started throwing them one by one at Ned, laughing the whole time. Ned instinctively picked them up and collected them in his lap. Ned lost count long before he finished.
“Thank you,” he said.
“No need to thank me,” Grigori said. “You earned it. You do good work. You are okay.”
“Thanks—I mean, it’s great to be working with you,” then Ned paused. “Is there anything else I need to do, like get a tattoo or something?”
Grigori laughed and Vasilly snorted in disgust. “No, no, no, don’t worry,” Grigori said. “You work for us, but you’re not one of us—just like your little Uzbek friend.”
Ned was puzzled.
“But don’t worry,” Grigori said. “It’s still very good. You will get rich, you will have women, you will have our protection.”
“Sounds sweet,” said Ned.
“Go. The Uzbek will take you back to Delaware.”
“But doesn’t he want to go home to his wife and family?”
“No, I have met his wife,” Grigori said. “He would be better off driving you home.”
Ned laughed and got up to leave. “Wait,” Grigori said. “You still owe Vasilly.”
“How much?”
Vasilly looked him in the eye and said. “You decide.”
Ned paused. “Well, I don’t know how much your bet was for,” he said. He counted off fifteen bills and offered them to Vasilly. Vasilly accepted the offering and smiled. “Didn’t I tell you this boy was smart, Vasilly?” said Grigori loudly. “He knows it is much better to have friends than money, but he is smart enough to know that life with some money is much better than life with none.” Vasilly grunted his assent. “Go now, Mr. Macnair,” Grigori added. “Go make me lots of money.”
Ned did as he was told. Back at Hawkridge, he resumed his post as the shipping/receiving manager. He did little work aside from ordering, receiving and rerouting coils from Eastern Europe. It was tedious work even when he did have something to do, and far more so when he had almost nothing to do. Katie and Juan—the people he was supposed to supervise—were very able and experienced at their jobs, and didn’t need much from him. So Ned found himself filling his long days at the office talking to Nina or Semyon on the phone or looking up biker-related news on the Internet.
He would occasionally go out for lunch with Steve, the factory’s floor manager, and from time to time, the Swede would join them. They had nothing but good things to say about Ned’s work and were pleasantly surprised when he told them he’d like more responsibilities because he didn’t have enough to do.
One day the package he received from Detroit hit his desk with a clunk. “Hmm, is he putting change in there now?” Ned asked absent-mindedly.
“How should I know?” answered the delivery kid in a surly way, then left.
Ned opened the envelope, poured out his cash and a pair of car keys. He looked at them. The stylized, embossed “L” on them indicated that they belonged to a Lexus. The simple key ring attached them to a small card. Written on it in black ink was an address: 84 Chaddwyck Blvd, New Castle. For the rest of the day, he wondered about the keys, worried about them, twirled them on his finger. He decided that after work was as good a time as any to deliver the keys.
It was an upscale neighborhood, full of large detached houses. The houses were new; in fact, Ned could tell the entire neighborhood was new because of the sparse-but-not-serene look that a lack of businesses and old-growth trees gave such places. Almost every house had an SUV or a minivan parked out front. A few had basketball nets or hockey goals in the driveways. Foot traffic was nonexistent, and the only movement
he could see at all came from commuters coming home in more SUVs and minivans. He felt very conspicuous on the old Indian.
When he got to 84 Chaddwyck, he was shocked to see it was a vacant lot. He checked again. The card said 84, but in between 82 and 86, was nothing but grass and weeds, a vacant lot. At the curb was a black Lexus SUV with a white parking ticket under one of the windshield wipers.
Ned pulled up behind the Lexus on the Indian. He got off the bike and walked up to the car. He instinctively looked around before sticking the key in the door. It opened. Ned got in, put the key in the ignition, and started it up. As it hummed to life, he heard the stereo spring to life. It was playing that horrible Eurodisco that Semyon favored. Ned put it all together. He called Semyon, after turning the stereo off. “Hey, man, what’s up with this Lexus?” he asked. “Whose is it?”
“Yours man, all yours,” Semyon laughed. “Grigori couldn’t stand to see you riding around on that old piece of shit of yours, so he got you something.”
“And it’s legal?”
“Totally.”
“In my name?”
“Yes, Mr. . . . uh . . . what is it again? Steakman?”
“Steadman, Eric Steadman,” Ned was a touch concerned that Semyon had not done the transfer correctly. “You got it right, didn’t you?”
“Yeah, yeah, Steadman,” he said. “Ludmilla has all your information on file; she takes care of things like that for me . . . she’s a saint, she is . . . but you gotta get your own insurance and plates, it’s got dealer plates on now so you can drive it, but not for too long.”
Jerry Langton Three-Book Biker Bundle Page 36
