Among Thieves

by John Clarkson

  Milstein sat at his desk on the twenty-eighth floor of Summit Investing, wearing his phone headset, staring out at a view north and east that made up for his otherwise modest office. Milstein could see across Manhattan over into Queens. He enjoyed watching planes depart and arrive at LaGuardia Airport. The distance made them look as if they were moving so slowly that they appeared to be suspended in the air. The sight usually relaxed him. But the more he listened to Pearce, the less calm he felt.

  “I’ve gone through five databases. I have his arrest record, court proceedings, but after his case was settled three years ago there’s nothing. It’s like he disappeared. No car registration. No voter registration. No property records. Nothing. He’s out of the system. He’s not on parole. He has no record of any arrests. No liens. No court cases. Not even a traffic ticket.”

  “Goddammit, Walter, listen to me carefully.” Milstein made a concerted effort to lower his voice and speak calmly. “I know you have your procedures. Your methods. But this situation is quite different. Every hour that man is out there—look, I’m not going to explain. I’ll explain some other time. This Beck fellow is causing us real trouble. If you can’t find him in your usual way, try another way. He’s connected to that Baldassare guy, right? Take that angle. Find him and maybe you’ll find Beck. Or maybe you can find him through his lawyer. You must have that name in his files.”

  “All due respect, Mr. Milstein, I doubt his lawyer is going to be handing out any information on him. As for Ciro Baldassare, I’ve already checked on him. The only connection to Beck that I can see is that they were in Dannemora at the same time. His last known address is on Staten Island. But if I find him, he’s not going to tell me anything about Beck. All that would do is warn Beck, and he’ll go even deeper into hiding. If you want to try the Baldassare angle, the best way is to put men on him, tail him, and hope he will lead us to Beck. But that will take a lot of time and will cost significant money.”

  Milstein hated hearing reasons why something couldn’t be done.

  “All right, all right, Walter, I’m just making suggestions. You’re the detective, not me. Just fucking do whatever you can to find him. As fast as possible. Stay in touch.”

  Milstein hung up before Walter could tell him any more reasons why he couldn’t find James Beck.

  * * *

  Beck walked into the downstairs bar kitchen, holding the insurance form Willie Reese had given him.

  “Olivia.”

  She had her coat and hat on, ready to leave with Manny.

  “Do me a favor. Sign this form for me, will you. It’s to get my window fixed. It’ll be better if it looks like someone from the property manager’s office signed it instead of me.”

  She made a confused face. It didn’t make much sense to her. She stared at the form, a set of three pages in three different colors. She scanned it. Decided it made no difference if she accommodated Beck’s request.

  “My name?”

  “Yeah. Why not? Yours is as good as any.”

  “That’ll work?”

  “Sure.”

  She signed the form.

  “Thanks.” Beck quickly picked up the form and said to Manny, “You guys are getting food first, right?”

  Manny said, “Yeah. Then we’ll take care of what Olivia needs. Then I’ll do that other thing and be back.”

  “Okay.”

  Beck limped up the back stairs with the form, came out on the second floor, and handed the signed form to Alex Liebowitz.

  “Alex, scan that signature, clean it up, and send it to Brandon Wright. Please.”

  Liebowitz took the form, turned to the scanner on Beck’s desk, and started doing what Beck had asked. Beck waited until Alex completed the scan. Then he pulled the form out of the scanner and under Olivia’s signature printed “for J. Beck.” He hurried back down to the bar, handed the form to Reese.

  “That should do it. Don’t let glass man leave until there’s a new window in here. If it gets late, don’t let him tell you some bullshit about it being too dark. He has work lights.”

  “He ain’t going anywhere.”

  Beck looked at Willie Reese. He had no doubt that the plate glass repairman would not be leaving until the job was done.

  * * *

  Markov had reserved a room with his usual online shopping routine, using another stolen credit card number. The room was at the Waldorf Astoria. He arrived at 3:30 p.m., the earliest check-in time.

  Markov wasn’t surprised that it was a small room with no view. He didn’t care. It had a bed, a desk, and outlets for his phone chargers and laptop. He could work and sleep and plan.

  Markov was very good at planning. It made him feel in control. He could spend uninterrupted hours at it. The mess with Crane and Summit had put him behind schedule. Time to catch up. He already had a checklist in his head.

  First, contact his sources in Albania. His masters at U.S. Military Intelligence had ordered up a roster of small arms for militant factions trying to overthrow the Assad government. Markov could not have cared less who the arms were for. He only cared about the amount and the logistics. And the price.

  The order was somewhat flexible. Markov already knew how he would configure it.

  He would make a deal with his Albanian suppliers for five to ten thousand AK-47 rifles, at least two million rounds of ammunition, and as many rockets and launchers as they would sell him. Markov estimated he’d probably get about a hundred of the launchers.

  The weapons were part of the stockpiles assembled for sale by a company created by the Albanian government called MEICO. The sale was perfectly legal in Albania. However, the stamps and end-user certificates he needed would not be. He would have to assemble a mix of genuine and forged documents. His sources in Albania would provide both.

  He had started the process three weeks ago. Now he would finalize everything.

  He worked for two hours, nailing down loose ends, and then placed a series of calls to numbers connected to U.S. Army Intelligence. Within forty minutes, Markov received a callback through the hotel phone lines from his contact, a Colonel Mark Redmond, who told Markov to log on to a secure Web site where they could conduct a live video chat.

  Markov used the first part of the chat to report the progress of the arms shipment, outlining how it would be flown first into Beirut and from there to Al Thaurah Airport in Syria.

  Redmond told him that from Al Thaurah U.S. Army contractors would truck the weapons to their final destination. Markov had no concerns about what happened to the weapons after he completed his part of the delivery, but he knew Redmond gave him that information so it would be clear that the shipment would have to be packed in a way to hold up under transit by truck.

  The video chat was mostly one way, with Redmond responding in short sentences.

  Once their business was concluded, Markov asked Redmond for a favor, explaining that he was having trouble with a criminal group in New York that was using extortion to impede his operations.

  For the first time during the live video chat, Redmond looked directly into the computer webcam.

  Redmond was central casting for an Army operative. All-American Big Ten football boy, aging into a hardened man, close-cropped hair going gray at the temples.

  “What kind of favor?”

  “I may need your help finding some people.”

  Redmond paused. Calculating his answer. There was always the possibility of blowback if he agreed. But he was under enormous pressure to deliver the arms shipment. Anything that took Markov off track couldn’t be tolerated. Markov had been known to disappear for weeks or months at the first hint of trouble.

  “Why?”

  “They are causing me trouble.”

  “Is it jeopardizing our contract?”

  Markov thought carefully before he answered. If Redmond had any doubts about his ability to deliver on his commitment it could be very costly to him.

  “Not yet. And rest assured, this is a problem caused
by someone else. Not me. But if I need your help, I want you to know in advance. And I won’t ask unless it’s necessary.”

  Redmond pursed his lips, nodded, and limited his response to, “Duly noted.”

  “Thank you.”

  Markov ended the connection. He would have to use Redmond very carefully. He had Milstein, for whatever that idiot was worth. He had Gregor and his men. And he had another resource he could use, Ivan Kolenka, but only if it became absolutely necessary. Right now, he would put pressure on Milstein and Gregor.

  24

  Beck had been hunkered down next to Alex Liebowitz feeding him information, providing descriptions, looking at pictures Alex brought up for identification, in between making phone calls to the Bolo brothers, getting up to check with Ciro, and looking outside to see how Willie Reese was doing with the window repair.

  Liebowitz listened, typed in data, manipulated the mouse, shifted his gaze back and forth between two monitors. Ran through databases. Pulled up information.

  After about an hour, Alex leaned back and announced, “Okay, so here we go. We’ve got the arms dealer. And we’ve got the fighter.”

  “How’d you find out?”

  “Started with Elizabeth Stern’s ID and password to get into the NCIC database. And then from there to other sources, some of which I have my own ways into. I mean, sometimes it’s like the NYPD antiterrorist group is doing it, sometimes not. Some of it was just public sites. It’s really just a matter of…”

  Beck gently interrupted Alex before he began with a long lecture. “Great. Great. I’m glad the thing with Elizabeth is still good.”

  “You like her, don’t you?”

  “Very much.”

  “I have to remember to set up a wormhole in case she moves on. But that might be very tough. They use automatically regenerated six-digit randomized numbers every sixty seconds, so I’d have to get hold of at least one functioning sequence that I could…”

  “Alex.”

  “Yeah?”

  “What have you got?”

  “Right, right. So…”

  Liebowitz sat back and linked his hands behind his head, propped a foot on the handle of Beck’s bottom desk drawer, folding into himself. His face went blank. The only movement was from his slowly blinking eyes.

  Beck had seen this before. Sitting while Alex zoned out was like waiting for a massive file to download. The only difference was that no computer could match the processing being done by Alex Liebowitz’s brain: sorting, comparing, pulling together a lifetime of information and coming to conclusions in seconds that might take others days or weeks, if they were lucky.

  Alex took his foot off the desk drawer, tipped forward and began pulling up information on his monitors.

  “Okay, the fat guy as you call him is Leonid Markov. Also known as Leonard Markov. Also known as Leonyti Sergeyevich Markov. Also known as Sergey Markovich. He’s Russian. But where he was born is a little vague. Best guess he came out of Perm. There’s a lot of old mob based there. Before Perestroika.”

  “Vory-v-Zakone?”

  “I’d imagine he has connections, but he’s not one of them. He comes on the scene as an arms dealer pretty far back. Looks like Leonyti goes where the fighting is. Africa, mostly Liberia. Then he pops up in Yugoslavia during the Bosnian-Serb mess in the late nineties. There are records of him being in Bulgaria, Ukraine, Albania, Syria, lately Israel and Brighton Beach, New York. And a lot of time in Moscow.”

  “Any arrests or anything?”

  “The Belgians put out a red alert for him with Interpol in 2008, but apparently nothing came of it.”

  “Why?”

  “Who knows? If he’s based here now, my guess is he’s working with U.S. intelligence. Maybe the Israelis, too. If he’s running weapons where they want weapons to go, he’s most likely got a lot of protection. These guys are part of a system, and ultimately the big boys run the system. Who do you think makes most of the weapons in the world?”

  “We do,” said Beck.

  “And the Russians, China, Israel, Great Britain, France. But you’re right. Nobody comes close to us.”

  “Where’d you find this stuff?”

  “A lot of it in DEA files. They have more foreign bureaus than the CIA. Plus in a bunch of other unknown fucked-up subagencies inside Homeland Security. Anybody supplying arms to anybody gets on their radar.”

  “What about the other guy?”

  More screens and mouse clicks.

  “He’s a Bosnian Serb. Gregor Stepanovich. Ex-military, but not from any standard army. Nasty fucker. Twenty counts of crimes against humanity, violations of laws or customs of war, and grave breaches of the Geneva Convention, including leadership responsibility for crimes against Muslims in three locations in Bosnia-Herzegovina, specifically expelling Muslims to various camps, killing, raping, and torture.”

  Alex turned away from the computer monitors and looked at Beck.

  “Guys like that who come out of places like that, the shit they’ve done, you realize how bent they are.”

  Beck didn’t answer.

  Alex turned back to his keyboard and brought up a photo. “As for the others, you picked this one out. The one with the knife?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Krylo Bartosh. Charged with participating in the beating and mass killing of two hundred sixty-one non-Serb men removed by force from Vukovar Hospital. I don’t know what his connection to Stepanovich is exactly. Their paths must have crossed somewhere. Your description of the other guy was pretty vague, but I can pull up a bunch of mug shots the United Nations commission pulled together.”

  “No. I didn’t get a good enough look at him to ID him.”

  Alex leaned back. “Okay.”

  Beck thought for a moment.

  “So you figure Markov and Stepanovich are now based here?”

  “Seems that way. But here covers a lot of territory. Is it New York? The East Coast? I mean, there’s no way these Bosnians got into the United States under their real names. All of ’em are on U.N. lists of war criminals. Plus other lists.”

  “So how did they? Can’t be that easy.”

  Liebowitz shrugged. “If Markov is running weapons for the U.S., maybe we let them in.”

  Beck thought for a moment. “Great.”

  “It’s just a guess.”

  “You think the Vory would have anything to do with these guys?”

  “Maybe not directly, but if Markov is Russian and he’s based here, and he’s into this kind of shit, they will definitely know about him.”

  Beck nodded. “Okay. Thanks. Good.”

  Alex asked, “What’s next?”

  Beck checked his watch. Nearly four o’clock.

  “I think we probably want to start with the money.”

  Alex leaned back. “And how do we go about that?”

  “Couple ways. If I were you, though, I’d take a nap. You might not be getting too much sleep later.”

  * * *

  Beck headed back to the ground-floor bar.

  Demarco and Willie Reese sat at one of the tables in the front, waiting for the plate glass repair to be finished. The temperature in the bar had plunged while the glass frame was empty, but neither Demarco nor Willie seemed to mind.

  Beck said to Demarco, “Time to head out.”

  He walked behind the bar and took out his gun lockbox. He removed the Browning and pulled out an extra clip. Beck didn’t have to ask if Demarco was armed.

  Willie Reese watched them leave. Nobody said a word.

  Demarco waited until they were in the Mercury before he asked where they were going.

  “Brighton Beach,” said Beck.

  25

  Beck had been out to Brighton Beach twice before. Once on an all-night tear with a Russian woman he had become involved with. And prior to that to meet with an old Vory gangster named Ivan Kolenka. He had been summoned to meet with the gangster to receive his personal thanks for protecting an associate while he served tim
e in Sing Sing. There was a long and complicated story behind all that, but the Vory treated the episode with such formality that Beck would have preferred to skip the meeting entirely.

  Apparently, Kolenka was one of the few genuine adherents to the “Thieves Code.” A set of rules developed in the Russian gulags. It amounted to rejecting everything that had anything to do with normal society: family, all authority other than the internal authority of the crime group, and all income except that which came through criminal activity.

  The life of a true Voy-v-Zakone seemed a bit mythic to Beck, until he met Ivan Kolenka in the private back room of a large restaurant. Kolenka appeared to be a man entirely self-contained. A withered, hunched over, almost emaciated man, dressed in a black suit and white shirt that were both too large for him, chain-smoking nonfiltered cigarettes, surrounded by minions. Big, thick-necked stereotypical Russian wise guys, other men who were either relatives or worked the restaurant, women who seemed to run the gamut from waitresses and fat wives to overdressed mistresses and pampered whores.

  Food and drink and people swirled around Kolenka like the cigarette smoke that filled the back room of the private restaurant, but nothing seemed to affect him. He didn’t seem to care about, recognize, or interact with anybody. When the emissary who had persuaded Beck to come to Brighton Beach to see Mr. Kolenka escorted Beck into the back room, Kolenka stood to greet him. The moment the old man stood, everyone in the room stopped moving. Apparently, Kolenka stood for very few and certainly bowed to no one.

  Beck felt the charisma of the man, but also felt acutely ill at ease. Certainly, there was the assumed power and ruthlessness. But something more sinister or perhaps frightening lurked underneath. Beck sensed it might have been Kolenka’s ability to endure pain and loneliness.

  Beck instinctively wanted little to do with Kolenka. They sat in a velour-covered booth, an iced bottle of Russian vodka in front of them. They shook hands. He felt the wiry strength of the man’s bony grip.

  Beck had to lean toward Kolenka to hear his heavily accented English. Beck listened to Kolenka’s thanks for taking care of Mister Cherevin, but responded very little. Kolenka said something about if Beck ever needed help, Beck should come to him. But the way he said it felt like an enunciation of policy. It didn’t feel personal.