Ganglands, Russia

by Ross Kemp

  ‘What is this place?’ asked Alexei.

  ‘Couple of hundred years ago, it was a monastery,’ replied the Englishman. ‘Right now, it’s Trojan Industries’ HQ.’

  With a loud bleep, he set the vehicle’s alarm, then led Alexei and Valerie through the front porch and inside the building. The monastery was cold and dark, and it took Alexei’s eyes several seconds to accustom themselves to the gloom. He was standing in a narrow passageway with a ceiling so low it brushed his head.

  ‘Mind your footing,’ the Englishman warned. ‘Don’t want you injuring yourself before you’ve even started.’

  Alexei followed him along the corridor, careful to avoid the potholes and loose flagstones that lay in wait for unwary footsteps. At the end of the passageway, the Englishman pushed open a heavy wooden door.

  Alexei blinked.

  The vast hall beyond was in a ruinous state, cluttered with piles of rubble and rotten planks. The religious paintings on the walls had been chipped away until only glimpses of wide-eyed saints’ faces remained. Holes gaped in the roof like missing teeth, and as Alexei entered the hall he had to weave a path through a series of buckets laid out on the floor to catch rainwater. Up in the rafters, there came the sound of beating birds’ wings, and wind whistled viciously through the gaps in the boarded-up windows.

  Despite the musty atmosphere, the contents of the hall were decidedly twenty-first century. A bank of slim laptops was ranged along a workbench, with a row of young operatives tapping away on the keys. Large flat-screen televisions cut from live news feeds to CCTV footage and satellite images of Moscow. Portable spotlights on stands hummed as they lit up the room. At the centre of it all stood Darius Jordan, stroking his chin thoughtfully as he studied a large electronic map of the Russian capital. At the sight of Alexei, he smiled and strode over to give him a bone-crushing handshake.

  ‘Good to see you, son,’ he said, his baritone voice echoing around the hall. ‘I hear you’ve decided to work with us.’

  Alexei glanced at Valerie. ‘Word gets around fast.’

  ‘We’re used to working against the clock,’ replied Jordan. ‘Let’s meet in the briefing room. Ten minutes.’

  He turned back to the map, and Alexei realized that their conversation was over. The briefing room turned out to be a dilapidated antechamber leading off from the hall, kitted out with a conference table, a projector and a screen, which was hanging down from the far wall. As he waited alone for Darius Jordan, Alexei nervously poured himself a glass of water. Up until now, a part of him had been convinced that all this was some kind of elaborate hoax, but the scale of the operation in the monastery left him in no doubt: this was for real, all right.

  It wasn’t long before Jordan returned, carrying a laptop, which he connected up to the projector. Valerie and the Englishman followed him into the room, the driver closing the door behind him. Jordan nodded towards them.

  ‘Alexei, you’ve already met Valerie Singer, head of Human Resources, and Richard Madison, head of Technical Support. They’ll be your main contacts here at Trojan. Valerie is ex-Mossad – Israeli secret service – and Richard worked for the Secret Intelligence Service in Britain, so rest assured you’re in safe hands.’

  ‘What about you?’ Alexei asked Jordan. ‘Where do you come from?’

  The American gave him a gleaming smile. ‘Let’s just say I’m a man of the world.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ Alexei said. ‘If these guys are such hotshots, why don’t they take out this gang? Why do you need me?’

  ‘That’s the first sensible thing the boy’s said all day,’ Valerie said darkly.

  Jordan shot her a warning glance. ‘You’ve made your feelings on that point very clear, Miss Singer. But the objective of this mission is to discover the full extent of the Eagles’ organization, so we can make sure that every diseased root of the gang is ripped out from the ground. That will not be achieved by simply killing skinheads. And in any case, Trojan is not a team of vigilante assassins – no matter how much you’d like it to be on certain occasions.’

  Valerie muttered something in Russian under her breath, and lit another cigarette.

  ‘Now,’ said Jordan, ‘if we can proceed to the matter at hand.’ He pressed a key on his laptop, and a photograph of a closed shop-front appeared on the projector screen. Two figure eights had been daubed on to the metal shutters in red paint, separated by a swastika symbol. Jordan sat on the edge of the table and pointed at the screen.

  ‘This is the tag of our main target: the Moscow Eagle 88s.’

  Alexei frowned. ‘What does the 88 mean?’

  ‘It’s a kind of code – corresponds to two letter Hs.’

  ‘Short for Heil Hitler,’ Richard Madison chipped in. ‘Just in case the swastika isn’t enough of a clue.’

  ‘Quite,’ said Jordan. ‘Now, experts estimate that there are at least fifty neo-Nazi gangs in Russia – but these guys are the toughest, no question. Their main enforcer is the man whose picture I showed you in the newspaper – Nikolai Borovsky. He was convicted of murder this afternoon, but even with him behind bars the Moscow Eagles still pose a very real threat.’

  He pressed the key again. The graffiti was replaced by a photograph of a crowd of skinheads pressed menacingly up against a wire fence, their fists clenched and raised in the air as they shouted.

  ‘And here are the 88s in full flow. This was taken during a demonstration at a building site run by Construktko – a construction company owned by a Muscovite tycoon called Boris Lebedev. The Eagles were protesting about the fact that Lebedev hires too many immigrants for their liking, meaning there are fewer jobs for native Russians like themselves. Soon after this photograph, the demonstration descended into a riot – the Eagles pulled down the fence and smashed up the site. Three Construktko workers ended up in hospital. You can see Nikolai Borovsky leading the protests. But he’s not the man I want you to focus on.’

  Jordan pointed to a figure standing apart from the Eagles, only half in shot. Alexei guessed the man must have been in his mid-forties, lean-faced and smartly dressed. A pair of horn-rimmed spectacles perched on the bridge of his nose, beneath sandy-coloured hair combed into a neat side-parting.

  ‘This charmer is Viktor Orlov,’ said Jordan. ‘It’s a rare public shot of him. Viktor’s clever enough never to get his hands dirty, but he’s the brains of the outfit – the de facto leader. If you’re going to succeed in your assignment, and find out the extent of the Eagles’ organization, earning Viktor’s trust is going to be absolutely crucial.’

  ‘Easier for you to say,’ said Alexei. ‘How am I supposed to make friends with a bunch of Nazis?’

  ‘With Borovsky out of the picture, the Eagles will be in a state of reorganization. It’s the perfect time to introduce yourself. Technical Support will fill you in on the details. We can’t be sure yet how long we’ve got until your mission is initiated, but we’ll make use of every available second.’

  There was a knock at the door, and a man looked into the room.

  ‘Sorry to interrupt, Mr Jordan, but there’s something you need to look at.’

  The American turned to Alexei. ‘Seems I’m going to have to leave you in Richard’s capable hands,’ he said. ‘Good luck, son.’

  He strode out of the room with Valerie, leaving Alexei alone with the Englishman. Madison looked up at the photograph of Viktor Orlov.

  ‘Don’t know what you look so worried about,’ he said drily. ‘Sounds like a piece of piss to me.’

  Alexei laughed humourlessly.

  ‘It’s not all bad news, you know,’ Madison continued. ‘With your kickboxing background, if there’s any trouble at least you can take care of yourself until the cavalry arrives.’

  ‘You obviously didn’t see my last fight,’ Alexei said gloomily.

  Madison grinned. ‘You sound just like our Brazilian agent,’ he said. ‘He took some convincing at first, too.’

  ‘Oh yeah? And how did things work out for hi
m?’

  The Englishman nodded. ‘Not bloody bad. He made it out the other side. Busted the nastiest gang in Rio to boot.’ He patted Alexei on the back. ‘And I’ve every confidence you’ll be just as successful. Trojan only selects the best, Alexei. We don’t make mistakes.’

  Despite Madison’s encouragement, as he stared at the photograph of the skinhead gang, Alexei felt anything but confident.

  ‘I hate to interrupt this touching scene, but …’

  They turned round to see Valerie Singer standing in the doorway. ‘Looks like events have overtaken us,’ she said. ‘You’d better come and see this.’

  Back in the main hall, Darius Jordan was standing in front of a television screen, watching a local news programme. A glamorous blonde woman with a serious expression was addressing the camera.

  ‘Only hours after today’s conviction of the neo-Nazi Nikolai Borovsky for murder, this station was sent a videotape claiming to show Rozalina Petrova, a human rights lawyer and key figure behind Borovsky’s guilty verdict. Experts have analysed the recording, and confirmed its authenticity.’

  The picture changed to grainy, hand-held video footage of a middle-aged woman sitting in a chair in front of a giant Nazi flag, her head slumped forward on to her chest. Three men in balaclavas were standing guard around her. One of them lifted her head to show her face to the camera.

  ‘She doesn’t look like she knows what day it is,’ said Alexei.

  ‘They’ve drugged her,’ Jordan replied grimly.

  The screen cut back to the news studio. ‘In the video,’ the newsreader continued, ‘the men state that the Russian authorities have ten days to free the convicted Borovsky from prison, or Ms Petrova will be executed. So far the Russian Justice Ministry has been unavailable for comment.’

  Alexei glanced at Jordan.

  ‘Do you think this is the Eagles?’

  ‘I don’t think,’ the American replied. ‘I know.’

  He turned to Richard Madison. ‘Whatever training programmes you were planning to run through with Alexei, we need to get to operational mode as soon as possible.’ Darius Jordan looked back again at the screen, which was displaying a close-up of Rozalina Petrova’s woozy face. ‘There’s no time to waste.’

  7. Clock Watching

  Forty-two hours. Alexei stared at the large LED timer on the monastery wall as it counted down, willing it to stop. There were only forty-two hours until mission commencement – which Darius Jordan had scheduled for 1100 hours the day after next. It felt like both a lifetime and a heartbeat away.

  Alexei was sitting gloomily in a chair while a pretty young make-up artist called Yelena bustled around him. Ordinarily he would have enjoyed chatting to her, but as she carefully shaved the hair from his head he could feel himself trembling.

  Yelena turned off the razor and inspected Alexei’s skinhead, finally nodding with approval. ‘You’re starting to look the part,’ she said.

  ‘Do you do this a lot?’ he asked.

  Yelena laughed. ‘Not in these conditions. Usually I work on movies. Trojan hired me as an “outside consultant” – whatever that means. They pay me too well to ask any questions.’ She smiled. ‘Right, time for stage two. You need to take your top off.’

  Alexei did as he was told, feeling both cold in the draughty hall and acutely self-conscious. Yelena picked up a metal object shaped like a small pistol, a power cord snaking away from its base. She inspected the tip carefully.

  ‘What’s that?’ Alexei asked.

  ‘A tattoo gun,’ replied the make-up artist. ‘I was told to give you a swastika tattoo.’

  ‘What?’ yelled Alexei, half-leaping out of his chair.

  ‘It’ll be OK,’ Yelena said reassuringly. ‘We can laser it off afterwards. You’ll barely have a mark on you.’

  ‘I don’t care!’ Alexei shouted. ‘No way you’re putting that on me!’ As Richard Madison hurried over towards him, he yelled ‘This is bullshit!’ at the Englishman.’

  ‘This is the exact opposite of bullshit,’ Madison replied sharply. ‘This is exactly what you need. You’re a Moscow Eagle now. You need to talk like them, act like them, and you need to bloody look like them too. If we stick some kind of temporary tattoo on you, they’ll spot it in seconds, and you’ll be done for.’

  The Englishman crouched down beside him, and carried on in a softer voice. ‘It’s all right to be nervous, Alexei. God knows, I’ve seen agents with a damn sight more field experience than you freak out before a mission. Understand that I wouldn’t put you through this if I didn’t think it was crucial. I promise you we’ll remove the tattoo when your mission’s over. Yelena’s expertise doesn’t end with hairclippers and make-up. You have to trust us, Alexei. Can you do that?’

  Alexei turned his head away, then nodded, He closed his eyes as Yelena turned on the tattoo gun, which immediately began buzzing like a hornet. As the needle bit into his chest, Alexei gritted his teeth to stop himself crying out. The tattoo seemed to take forever, every line of ink demanding another insistent scratch of the needle against his skin. In an attempt to block out the pain, Alexei flooded his mind with happy memories of him and Lena back in Volgograd, when no dream had seemed impossible and the future offered only bright possibilities.

  Afterwards, as he inspected the black symbol on his pink, raw skin in a mirror, Alexei had to blink back the tears. Yelena touched his arm sympathetically.

  ‘I know it looks like it’ll be there forever,’ she said quietly. ‘But it’ll gone before you know it.’

  It was all Alexei could do to nod mutely.

  After dinner, Darius Jordan ordered Alexei to phone his uncle and reassure him that he was settling in. Stepan bombarded him with so many questions about the university and his fictitious course that Alexei quickly began to falter. In the middle of a stammering lie about his accommodation, Valerie Singer appeared at his shoulder and beckoned at him to pass her the phone. She was soon charming Stepan, and in under a minute she had snapped the phone shut and tossed it back to Alexei.

  ‘You’re never that nice to me,’ he said.

  ‘Work on your lying,’ Valerie replied icily. ‘That was just your uncle. Stutter like that in front of the Eagles and you’re a dead man.’

  That night Alexei snatched three hours of sleep dozing in a cot in the corner of the hall. He was awoken by Darius Jordan dropping a file on to his bed.

  ‘What’s this?’ Alexei asked sleepily.

  ‘Your backstory,’ the American replied. ‘The Eagles are going to want to know about you before they trust you, so I’d advise you learn this thoroughly. You can keep your first name – it’s common enough, and the fewer lies you have to tell the better. Breakfast in five minutes.’

  Looking up at the LED clock with a heavy heart, Alexei saw that there were only twenty-eight hours left. Rozalina Petrova’s kidnap had shortened what little time there had been for his training – it felt like every time he turned around, Alexei was being fed new information by one Trojan operative or another. He was dizzy with the speed at which people moved, their clipped efficiency betraying their military backgrounds. Only Richard Madison maintained an easy-going facade. Later that morning, Alexei was summoned to one of the monastery’s antechambers to find the Englishman reading a history book on Josef Stalin, his feet propped up on the table by a laptop.

  ‘Have a seat,’ he said breezily, snapping the book shut. ‘I was just doing some background reading.’

  ‘You interested in communism?’ Alexei asked.

  ‘A little,’ Madison replied. ‘How about you? Ever find yourself hankering for the good old days of the Cold War?’

  Alexei shrugged. ‘Before my time,’ he said. ‘Politicians are all the same, anyway. Whoever’s in charge, they only care about lining their own pockets.’

  ‘You may have a point there,’ Madison said wryly. ‘I can’t help but wonder whether you’d have such a problem with neo-Nazi gangs in the old days, though. When your country was still the Soviet Un
ion, internal travel restrictions meant that immigration could be kept under tighter control. These days, it’s a lot easier for a poor man in the former Soviet republics – in Chechnya, say, or Tajikistan, or Azerbaijan – to come to Moscow in hope of getting a better-paid job in the big city. Problem is, that spawns the kind of discontent that the Moscow Eagles thrive on.’ He blew out his cheeks. ‘You know, Alexei, we’ve studied gangs all around the world. Ninety per cent of the time, gangs get new members for the same reasons: people want respect or protection, or think it’s the only way they can make money. In some of the hellholes I’ve visited, you can almost understand them. The 88s aren’t like that. The only thing they’ve got in common, the only glue that binds them, is racial hatred. Every foreigner is a “black” to them, every “black” is inferior. Street riots and punishment beatings are their stock in trade. In conclusion: the quicker we can shut them down the better.’

  Calling up a virtual map of Moscow on a laptop, the Englishman zoomed in on a building off Komsomolskaya Square – a rundown area in the north-east of the capital.

  ‘Now, this is the dragon’s lair,’ Madison explained. ‘It’s a gym run by the Eagles. We’ll take you there tomorrow morning. Remember: first impressions count for a lot around these guys. It’s not just about skinheads and tattoos; it’s about attitude. Don’t think – don’t doubt. I know we’re asking a lot of you. But if you complete this mission, it’ll be worth it. Never forget that.’