by A P Bateman
“Why don’t you ask her yourself?”
“I’m asking you.”
“And I’m not telling.”
“Want to bet?”
“I won’t talk,” Nikolai said defiantly. “Tougher men than you have tried before. They are all dead. You will be no different.”
King took out the sheath knife. He unfastened his belt, removed the sheath and buckled back up again. The Russian watched. He stared at the blade, followed it as King placed it on the table.
“I don’t really go in for torture,” said King.
“Then what?”
“Maybe I’ll appeal to your better nature?”
Nikolai smiled. “What is your name?”
“I’m asking the questions.”
“What, I don’t get to know who you are?”
“Always for the best.”
“You’re not hired help,” he commented. “Who are you really working for?”
King walked out to the open-plan kitchen and picked up the kettle. He filled it with water, turned the dial and waited for the gas to ignite. He put the kettle on the gas jet and then turned around and stared at the Russian. “It won’t take long.”
“What? The hot water? What are you going to do with that?” he asked. His brow was perspiring, and his eyes were wide. He stared past King, his eyes transfixed on the kettle.
“I’m making a cup of tea,” he said. “Or would you prefer coffee?”
Nikolai switched his eyes to King. He looked incredulously at him, his eyes flitting between him and the kettle, which was starting to steam from its spout. “Are you kidding?”
King took out two cups. He put a teabag in one and spooned some instant coffee into the other. He’d never met a Russian yet who drank tea, didn’t assume for a moment that Nikolai would be any different. He poured on the water, replaced the kettle and switched off the gas ring. Again, he assumed black. Poured a little milk into his own. He had forgotten to buy sugar. But he had once been forced to make a brew with his own piss, so he’d cope.
He took the two cups into the lounge, placed them on the glass coffee table.
“How am I meant to drink that?”
King sipped his tea. He stared down at the Russian. “Helena Milankovitch.”
Nikolai shrugged. “Trash. Married well.”
“Didn’t she just,” King commented.
“Her husband died. She will be a wealthy woman.”
“She had her husband killed,” King paused. “She’s on the run.”
“And you’re hunting her?”
“Sort of.”
“What the hell does sort of mean?”
“I am hunting her, yes. And I’m going to kill her.”
“Good. She’ll be less trouble that way.”
“To you, maybe.”
“What has she done to you?” Nikolai stared at him, there was a knowing lilt to his chin. A cadence that did not need speaking. “She has done you wrong, hasn’t she?”
King shook his head. “No. This is about you.”
“May I have some coffee?”
King pulled over a chair, placed it around six-feet from the coffee table. The Uzi was resting on the chair. King had earlier checked it over, it held fourteen rounds. He picked up the sheath knife, walked around the table and pulled Nikolai forwards, sliced the man’s bonds, then pushed him back into the chair. When he rounded the other side of the table, he pushed it firmly into the Russian’s legs and sandwiched them to the chair. He pushed the coffee cup closer to the man, then sat back in his own chair. He placed the Uzi on the right arm of the chair and the knife on the other. He sipped his tea, watched the man in front of him drink the coffee. He noticed the man’s hands shake. Nikolai placed the coffee cup back down on the table, rubbed his hands together, rubbed the circulation back into his wrists. He fiddled with his watch strap. King could see it had cut into his wrist. The Russian looked up at King, he was nervous. Understandable. He fiddled again with his watch.
“I will pay you,” he said finally. “Pay for you to release me. Unharmed.”
King sipped his tea, placed the cup back down. “What did you do to Helena?”
The Russian shrugged. “It doesn’t matter.”
“I think it does. You know Pyotr Sergeyev?”
Nikolai stared at King, the fear had left his eyes, replaced by annoyance. “I do.”
“Elaborate.”
“We worked together.”
“And that’s it?” asked King. “I asked you to elaborate.”
Nikolai shrugged.
“That’s not elaborating.” King picked up the Uzi and selected single-fire. He aimed at the man’s shoulder and squeezed the trigger.
The gunshot in the confines of the villa was deafening. Nikolai yelped, and his feet kicked out, pushing the coffee table away and splashing tea and coffee onto the glass. He had turned pale and the fleshy part on the tip of his shoulder was bright red, blood seeping through his shirt and running down his chest.
“What the...?” he grimaced, then cursed in Russian. He held his left hand on the wound, then looked around and picked up a cushion, pressed it hard against the bullet graze.
King understood the profanity, shrugged it off. He’d heard worse directed at him from his own mother. “Just a flesh wound,” he said. “Bloody painful, though, I’d bet.”
“Okay!” he snapped. “I worked with Pyotr Sergeyev. We were inducted into the same brotherhood as teenagers. We were gofers at first, then hard-men. Enforcers. We dealt out beatings, collected money.” He was sweating, great beads running down his brow and into his eyes.
“But you went separate ways,” King said. “Two rival mafia brotherhoods.”
“Later, yes,” Nikolai nodded. He winced, moved the cushion away and inspected the wound. The bleeding had slowed. It was a nick, a graze, nothing more. It might have needed a couple of stitches, but he wouldn’t be getting them tonight. Too many people asked questions when they suspected a gunshot wound. “He’s dead. I heard he’d been hit. Was that you?”
“Helena wanted Sergeyev killed.”
“And?”
“So, he’s dead.”
“Shit, she must have something you really want back.”
King ignored him. “And she wants you dead.”
“I figured that.”
“So, why?” King asked. “Why does she want the two of you dead?”
Nikolai smiled. “She’s a vengeful bitch, that is why.”
“No shit.” King aimed the Uzi again.
“Wait!” The Russian held his hands up. The cushion dropped onto his lap. He was flinching, his hands in front of him like tiny shields. He winced at the pain. “I’ll tell you!”
King lowered the machine pistol. “Go on then.”
“Okay, jeez. I tell you, you ever need a job after this, you come to me, right? You get the Italians to take down my guys, then you take down the Italians? Shit, man, you got balls this big…” He raised his hands and made a gesture, his fingers and thumbs not touching. The motion hurt his shoulder and he winced again. “Look, we were hot shit. We knew we were untouchable. That bitch Helena worked the casinos and she danced in some places, too. Man, what a body! She would hang on a guy’s arm, lucky charm sort of thing, whisper in his ear, ask for drinks. The guys lapped her up. She made the casino money getting guys to dump all their money on wild bets, and they made money on her drinks. Only French champagne, fifty US dollars a glass! Helena and girls like her, they were like gold mines. She was good too. She knew how to work a man for everything he had.”
“And you had a cut of all this,” King stated matter-of-factly.
“Of course,” he said. “We supplied her, and other girls to the casinos.”
“So, I’m guessing she tried to leave that life behind? Left you with a big hole in your income.”
“Yes,” Nikolai paused. “She did so a few times. Or at least, tried to. We took her back, encouraged her to stay.”
“Encouraged?”
“Yes.”
“You beat her?”
“No. Of course not,” he said emphatically. “She was a pretty woman. No point damaging what makes you money, eh?”
“So, what happened?”
“I need a drink.”
King raised the Uzi. “You’ll get another bullet. Who knows, my aim might be a bit off next time. The bullet may go lower. Take a chunk of bone with it, nick an artery…”
“Okay!” Nikolai shifted in the chair. “Helena had done another one of her disappearing tricks. Her sister turned up in town…”
“She has a sister?”
“Yes. A fine-looking girl. She must have been about fifteen or sixteen. A good age. Ripe for the picking, but innocent enough to appeal to men with enough money. Helena went crazy when she turned up…”
“What was her name?”
“Catherine. Once seen, never forgotten. A real peach…”
“Get on with it!” King snapped.
“Helena got her out of town. Gave her a ton of money and sent her away,” he paused, shaking his head. “A ton of the brotherhood’s money. It didn’t go down well. We decided to teach her a lesson. Bring her back to heel. Like a disloyal dog. We had some drinks, too much vodka, a little cocaine, then a lot of the stuff… It all got a bit out of hand.”
King frowned.
“We had ourselves a little party. A sex party…”
“You raped her…”
“It wasn’t like that! Just a gangbang. We all took a go, she didn’t complain. But the drink, the drugs, it kind of went on all night. You know, for some people watching that keeps the mood up, a guy takes a turn, you drink, snort a line of coke, take your turn… The cocaine just keeps you going for hours.”
“You fucking gang raped her!” King raised the machine pistol. “You raped her, and now she wants revenge! You and Sergeyev…”
“Hey, it wasn’t just us! There were others…”
“Who?”
“Other enforcers.”
“Their names!” King snapped.
“It can’t have been so bad. There was another girl there. Sergeyev sort of kept her to himself. He ended up seeing her after that. They married a few years later.”
“Anna?”
“Yes. Hey, what’s it all to you anyway?”
“Because Helena Milankovitch is all out of options! She’s on the run, waging a vendetta that started with you! I figured she wanted you out of the way, so she could make a claim on your business empire. Sergeyev, too. But this is revenge. If you hadn’t done what you did, if you hadn’t raped her, then my fiancé wouldn’t be…”
King couldn’t finish his sentence. The glass doors behind him smashed, sending thousands of shards of glass into the room along with a heavy oak sun-lounger that had been used as a battering ram. King dived to his left as his chair took the brunt of gunfire from something distinctly Kalashnikov. King swung the Uzi wide and fired, but the weapon had been set to single-fire and the effect was less dramatic than the attacker’s. By the time he had realised and fired twice more, he was on the floor and Nikolai was on his feet and had kicked the glass coffee table into him, sending him sprawling into the kitchen. King rolled onto his back to see the muscle-bound bodyguard who had stopped him falling into his charge in the town earlier that day. The man was taking aim. King kicked his own chair into the man’s legs and fired a short burst from the Uzi. The man wobbled as he returned fire, enough for King’s bullets to miss him, but also enough for his own to pepper the floor to King’s right. The AK was clicking as he dry-fired on an empty chamber. King took aim, was about to fire again, but the weapon was kicked out of his hand. He turned to see Nikolai lining up another kick and shunted himself backwards, the Russian’s kick missing his face by inches. He looked back at the bodyguard, who had switched the assault rifle to hold it by the barrel. He raised it behind his head and threw it at him with considerable force. The rifle clattered into King’s face and chest and he fell back down onto his back. He could feel wetness on his face, stinging in his right eye, and knew he was bleeding. He pushed himself up, but was kicked again by Nikolai, who had now given himself more room and was standing to his right. King was tightly confined by the coffee table, and now his own chair, which the bodyguard had kicked his way again. Nikolai went for another kick, but King punched out hard and struck the man’s kneecap. He screamed as it dislodged, and he fell backwards onto the coffee table, falling through the broken glass and found himself caught up in the metal frame. The screaming did not stop, but the cuts and impalement of glass was nothing compared to the damaged joint.
The bodyguard was breathing hard, but he bent down and retrieved the knife which had fallen to the floor, and he smiled back at King. “Transmitter, asshole. In the watch. It’s a Breitling and transmits to a dedicated receiver. That’s how I found you. I guess you gave him the chance to activate it. Amateur.”
“Didn’t see you down at the villa,” King said, as he got unsteadily to his feet. “You may have the knife, but you haven’t got the fight. Run off into the woods, did you?”
“Fuck you!” He twisted the knife in his hand. “Looks sharp. And now I’m going to cut you up before you die.”
King took a step forward. “Done talking?” He had dropped into a fighting stance, much like a boxer, but instead of waiting for the Russian, he lunged forward, like a sprinter off the blocks, and kicked the chair into the man’s legs, but when it crashed into the man, he carried on, stepped onto the base of the chair with his right foot, and stepped up to the back of the chair with his left. At fourteen stone, even with a distinct size disadvantage against the muscle-bound bodyguard, King rode the chair right over the man. The bodyguard swiped with the knife but missed as he was driven downwards. King already had the flick-knife in his hand. He pressed the stud button and the four-inch blade whipped out. The bodyguard fell flat on his back, let out a gasp as he was winded, the chair on top of him, with King standing on the chair, legs apart and balancing like a surfer on a wave. King dropped down, drove the blade deep into the man’s trachea. At the point where the breastbone met the throat. He dropped all his weight onto it, pressed so deeply the hilt went into the wound. The man gargled and gasped, but with each intake of breath, he took more blood into his lungs. King side-stepped the chair, keeping a grip on the knife. The man’s eyes had glazed, his movements minimal. King gave the knife a twist as he pulled it clear and the blood flow more than doubled. The man was gone, his body just going through the motions. He wasn’t breathing now, and as King wiped the blade on the man’s jacket, he could tell that he was circling the drain. He stood up, turned and surveyed the scene. Nikolai was still caught up in the frame of the table, he was whimpering, had been watching intently, no doubt praying his man would win.
King bent down and checked the Uzi. The breach showed a round. He dropped the magazine and saw he only had the one bullet. He turned to Nikolai, kept the weapon trained on him.
“So much for appealing to your better nature,” King said. “Where else gets the signal? The police? Rescue services? That’s what those watches are for.”
“Just my security.”
King smiled. He glanced at his own vintage Rolex. He was merely estimating how long it would take to get clear of the villa. “Now I know you’re lying,” he said. “You’re desperate enough to chance the local police. Well, I’ll tell you now, they’re being paid off by Luca Fortez.”
“We’ll see,” said Nikolai. “Maybe their payments will stop now you’ve killed their meal ticket. Maybe they’ll want to get even with you? Maybe they’ll accept a deal from me?”
“Who else raped Helena Milankovitch?”
The Russian tried to move, but the glass was cutting into him badly, and his knee was beyond grinning and bearing it as he got out of the mess of twisted metal and broken glass. He looked back at King. He was beaten, and King knew it. What’s more, he knew King knew it as well.
“Okay… Just help me out.”
&nbs
p; King put his foot against the frame, held out his hand and when the Russian took it, he heaved him out and spun him over into the deep chair. Nikolai cursed and yelled. He was as pale as a sheet, and he panted deep breaths to get through the pain, like a woman in labour.
“Who else is she wanting revenge on?”
“It’s hazy, you know… There was a guy called Dimitri Romanovitch. He got out of the brotherhood. Started a series of businesses, legitimate ones. But once a Bratva, always a Bratva. He’ll have done things to get where he is now.”
“Who else?”
Nikolai glanced at his watch. King raised the machine pistol and the Russian looked back at him. He shrugged. “It won’t do you any good.” He smirked. “You may have killed Sergeyev, you may well kill me. You can kill Romanovitch if you like. But you won’t get near the other man.”
“Who is it?”
Nikolai smiled. “Oh, what a place the new Russia is. Like the Wild West, no? A man can do as he pleases. He can kill, have blood on his hands. He can take a man’s property, business, empire even. And then what? When he has taken what he wants, what then? When is enough? Enough is a word some people have no understanding of. Enough is not even a word to a man like that.”
King stared at the man. He was no longer the big, powerful mafia boss, leader of one of the most ruthless brotherhoods to emerge from behind the Iron Curtain. He looked broken, desperate. King knew he was biding his time. “I’m getting my fiancé back from Helena. I’ll do it with or without your indulgence. So, another guy on her list is going to be difficult to get to. I get it. But I got to Sergeyev, and I got to you.”
“You have no idea!” Nikolai spat at him. “You don’t know what you’re up against! You think you can fuck about in the shadows? Think again!”
“Who, then?” King snapped. “Who else raped her?”
“The fucking president, that’s who!” Nikolai laughed and wiped a tear from his eye. He looked faint with the pain he was suffering, but the tear could well have been from the laugh. It seemed heart-felt and genuine. “Helena Milankovitch is just warming you up! Have you got a way to the president? Can you take on a million soldiers? Two million reserves?” Nikolai laughed again, he seemed delirious. He had either accepted his fate or was plaintively unaware that he was both crippled without medical attention, or at the very least, losing blood from the lacerations over his back, neck and legs. “Forget it! Forget your lover. Move on, it’s done. You won’t get to the new president of Russia! Just accept that you have lost, and Helena will kill your fiancé. Hopefully swiftly, but I doubt it…”
