“Worse. Your days of Grey Goose and Ketel One are over. We drink the real stuff here.”
Farrington snorted. “No wonder the average Russian life expectancy is so low.”
On average, Russian males fell just short of sixty-five years, compared to seventy-five years in the United States. Life expectancy had been on the rise in Russia until the fall of communism, when the state-provided healthcare system collapsed in the turmoil immediately following the transition to a quasi-capitalist system. Russian life expectancy figures never rebounded.
“You and I have bigger impediments to our life expectancy than shitty cigarettes and vodka,” Viktor said.
“Very true. How much further to the warehouse?”
“Not long. I’ll need you to wear this hood when we get closer,” Viktor said, raising the black nylon bag from the center console.
“I don’t think that will be necessary. We’re past the point of fucking each other over…I hope,” Farrington said.
“But if you’re captured—”
“If I’m captured, we both have bigger problems than a warehouse full of stolen goods,” Farrington said.
Viktor lowered the hood and laughed with his mouth closed, expelling smoke through his nose. “Hard-fucking-core might be an understatement,” he said.
They rode in silence to a red brick warehouse situated behind a concrete perimeter wall topped with concertina wire. A camera stared at them outside of the gate for a few moments before the reinforced metal gates swung inward, exposing several heavily armed, rough-looking men smoking cigarettes, low-ranking bratva muscle known as “Shestyorka.” Young men jockeying for the coveted title of “Vor.” Most of them would end up dead. Rival gang shootouts or internal cleansing would eliminate all but the most trustworthy and capable, who would be inducted into the brotherhood, leaving a void that would be immediately filled by the next petty thug on the streets. There was never a shortage of Shestyorka.
“You know, Viktor? If you want to keep your warehouses a secret, you might consider something a little more low-key than a guarded fortress smack dab in the middle of a neighborhood,” Farrington suggested.
“Everybody knows about this warehouse. They look the other way because we tell them to…and pay them.”
“Then the hood is just a game? I don’t like games.”
“Not a game. A test. Your team passed the test,” Viktor said.
“I don’t understand.”
“If you had put that over your head without any resistance, I would have had serious reservations about your team’s intentions toward my organization. All of your people resisted, which is a good sign. Welcome to Novosibirsk’s worst-kept, but most secure secret.”
Farrington shook his head imperceptibly. His covert world was one subtle test after another, each organization or entity probing his or her enemies and friends alike. This was the hardest part of the job, where the lethality of a mistake might not materialize until much later, at the most unexpected moment. The actual assault against Vektor Labs would be a cakewalk compared to the snake-filled, cloak-and-dagger world Karl Berg continued to manipulate. The sooner they hit Vektor, the better.
Chapter 33
“Katie Reynolds” (aka Erin Foley) sat impatiently in the back seat of a Renault SUV on a lifeless side street near Diesel nightclub, counting the seconds until she could step out into the brisk, clean Siberian air. The three men accompanying her had chain-smoked furiously since they departed the warehouse compound. She had rolled her window down halfway, hoping to make a dent in the pervasive ashtray and body odor medley, but it didn’t seem to help. The men made no effort to exhale their smoke in the opposite direction, despite her mild protest, and she didn’t bother to address the fact that they all smelled like rotting garbage. The fall of communism apparently hadn’t ushered in an era of personal hygiene.
She did her best to keep her distance from these animals at the warehouse complex, but she still caught words like “whore” and “bitch” tossed around just loud enough for her to hear. Threatening insults combined with murderous stares had left her eager to meet up with the rest of her team. Until the strike team started to trickle in, she spent most of her time wondering if this unholy alliance hadn’t been a serious mistake. She still wasn’t convinced it was a solid idea.
Aside from Viktor, the men she’d seen so far looked and acted like unmannered trash. A few carried themselves with dignity, possibly ex-military, but the rest resembled the kind of people you hoped to never see up close and in person under any circumstances. Degenerates and psychopaths with zero moral compasses, whose appearance at your doorstep usually heralded an era of misery, pain and death. Sitting among them made her more nauseous than the toxic cigarette exhaust that endlessly poured out of them like pollution from a factory smokestack.
She turned her head and stared at the shadowy brick wall past the crooked sidewalk. Soon, she would navigate that uneven pavement in high heels and a miniskirt, on a mission suitable for a prostitute, or so the men sitting with her in the SUV told her. Viktor clearly didn’t agree, likely because he was the only bratva soldier that could process the full scope of their involvement.
Viktor knew that the Federation Security Services would descend upon Novosibirsk in full force after Vektor’s destruction, leaving no stones unturned. A drug-addled prostitute posed a security risk to the bratva down the line. They would have to kill her, raising questions about her disappearance, which would inevitably lead to the Vektor scientist in question. Since all of the prostitutes in Novosibirsk were owned by the Solntsevskaya Bratva, federal authorities couldn’t ignore a possible connection between the mafiya and Vektor. It didn’t take a lot of intelligence or imagination to envision a hardcore crackdown, something she assumed the bratva leadership wished to avoid at all costs in Russia’s third largest commercial center.
She heard one of their radios chirp, followed by a hushed conversation. The front passenger shifted in his seat, turning his head to address her for the first time tonight.
“It’s time. You get in line and pay the fee to get in. Go to the bar on the right side of the club and look for a man wearing sunglasses, drinking a Heineken. Stand directly in front of his bar stool. He’ll finish the beer and leave suddenly, giving you the seat. Your mark is seated directly to the right.”
“Facing the bar?” she asked.
“What the fuck do you mean facing the bar?” the man spat.
“Is he to the right of the seat, from a frame of reference defined by facing the bar?”
“Shut the fuck up and do your job,” he said, which spurred the man next to her into action.
He reached across her chest with his right hand to open the door, purposely rubbing the back of his hand against her breasts. In a blur, she jabbed a pressure point on the offending arm, just behind his elbow, disabling the arm and causing him to lurch forward in pain. She hooked her left arm around his neck pulling him back and toward her in the seat, easing a three-inch serrated blade against his neck.
“Touch me again and I’ll kill you,” she whispered in his ear.
The man attempted to struggle, but she kept him locked in a tight grip, pushing the knife an infinitesimal distance into his neck, bringing him closer to a carotid artery rupture that would end his miserable days. She didn’t flinch when a black semiautomatic pistol appeared between the headrests, aimed at her head.