Five years on, the mother had passed away, and the sister had died in a brutal attack by a rapist. Vasily, mature and tough beyond his years, had spent three months hunting the rapist down and one cold morning had left his insides steaming in the snow. Vasily fled Kodinsk when the rapist’s friends turned the heat on him and, after a tortuous journey by cart, farm tractor and truck, reached Moscow.
The journey expanded Vasily’s mind, and while Moscow was three thousand miles from Kodinsk, it was nowhere far enough for him. He roamed the city for a week and finally stowed away in a freight vessel to New York. The city got a new immigrant that year, a battle-hardened criminal, young in years and hardened by the Russian cold. Ten years later he was a gang leader and, thirty years later, was heading the city’s Russian mafia.
Over the years, Oborski had eschewed the crudity of his peers and adopted a refined patina that smoothed his way to the top. The hand was no less iron just because it was in velvet; in fact, it had more of an impact when it was revealed.
Broker had found him heavily bleeding, lying in a restroom cubicle in Penn Station late one night when Oborski was still a gang leader. Shrugging off his jacket, Broker had stripped down to the waist and, tearing his Egyptian cotton shirt to narrow strips, had tightly bound Oborski’s stomach. Knife wounds, he had dimly noted before rushing off to find help. When he had returned, the cubicle was empty save for bloodied footprints that led outside and disappeared in the walkway. It was months before he realized who he had saved.
The Russian mob had its hand in all criminal activities, including arms dealing, but Oborski steered it clear of one: nuclear arms trading. Russian enriched uranium, technical expertise, and nuclear weapons found their way to the underground market, and were highly sought after by rogue states and terrorist organizations. Oborski wasn’t a patriot, he was a businessman, and he realized early on that such arms trading came with too much unwanted attention and had issued a diktat against such trading.
His rule had been broken once, unknown to him.
A few years back, the FBI had intercepted chatter that the Russian Mob had acquired enriched uranium and was in active discussions with a rogue state the US State Department had blacklisted. Clare had sat in the President’s daily briefing and come away with the terse message, ‘Find it. Finish them,’ and had asked Broker to verify the chatter.
Broker had gone with his gut instinct and had orchestrated a highly unusual and clandestine meeting between Clare, the Director of the FBI, the Director of National Intelligence, and Oborski. He still guffawed loudly when he recalled that day, the most powerful law enforcers in the world and one of the most dangerous criminals in the same room.
Oborski, a master at talking obtusely, had asked for twenty-four hours. It didn’t take him that long. Early in the dawn, Broker went to a warehouse where he found a gangbanger bound and gagged and naked. Broker delivered him to Clare, and he was never seen or heard again. Neither was the uranium.
Broker reined in his wandering mind and said simply, ‘I need your help.’
Oborski raised his eyebrows, urging Broker to continue.
‘5Clubs have taken a significant market share from you, haven’t they?’
Oborski placed his cup back in its saucer carefully, aligning the handle to an angle he was satisfied with, and leaned back. ‘Let’s say we were doing better before they arrived on the scene. But tell me about your problem. You are generally solving other people’s problems.’
‘I need to know where Jose Cruz and Diego are.’
Broker saw the flicker in his eyes. He knows them. You wouldn’t head this outfit if you didn’t know who your competition was.
‘Why?’
Broker grinned widely. ‘Come on, Vasily. We both know how this game is played. Surely you don’t expect me to answer that.’
‘What’s in it for me?’ Oborski asked, ignoring Broker’s disarming grin.
Broker shook his head reprovingly. ‘You’re a businessman, Vasily. What harm does it do you to tell me about your rivals?’
‘Tomorrow, you might ask other gangs about me.’
Broker shrugged. ‘If I have to, I will. If I have to go against you, I will.’ The grin flashed again. ‘I know you’ll be a worthy foe.’
Oborski looked at him long and coolly. ‘You sit in my presence, surrounded by my men, and say that. You’ve some balls, Broker. I’ll grant that.’ He looked over Broker’s shoulder at Bwana, Roger, and Bear, an assessing glance. ‘Those… mishaps 5Clubs are experiencing? That’s your doing?’
‘I just trade information, Vasily, as you know. You give me too much credit.’
Oborski smiled thinly. ‘Maybe they gave you too little.’ He continued regarding him for a long time and then looked at one of the bruisers behind them. The man went across and whispered something in Oborski’s ear, staying bent, awaiting instructions till Oborski nodded once in dismissal.
‘There’s a warehouse in the Meatpacking District. We’ve been watching it for some time, and my men tell me the two you mention have been seen there recently. Seen there a lot. Of course, there’s no saying that they’ll continue to frequent that place.’ He gave them an address, and his face took on the appearance of a lean, hungry wolf. ‘You’ll do damage to them?’
Broker threw up his hands in exasperation. ‘Vasily. Read my lips. I deal in research.’
Vasily brushed his comment away and stood up, the meeting was over.
‘Broker.’
Broker turned as he was just leaving. Vasily was looking at him, something deep and unfathomable in his eyes. ‘You’d make a worthy foe too.’
Chapter 34
‘You have interesting friends, Broker.’ Bear broke the silence on the way down in the elevator. ‘This Oborski… think even we would find it tough to go against him. Yet 5Clubs have encroached their business. Doesn’t figure.’
‘Oborski has rules; this new gang doesn’t. That’s the difference. Eventually their lack of rules will also be their downfall; surviving in a jungle needs rules.’
Broker smiled inwardly while they digested Roger’s take. They were a unique bunch, not just exceptional operatives, but they also brought very high intelligence and reasoning skills to the mix. Roger read philosophy in his spare time while Chloe was a science nut and Bwana and Bear were Mensa members, a fact they guarded more zealously than their weapons.
Bwana looked admiringly at Roger. ‘Always knew it. You’re the complete package, bro. Brawn, beauty and brains.’ He ducked the punch Roger threw at him.
The Meatpacking District was a twenty-square block in Manhattan, with Chelsea Market on the North and Horatio Street in the south. In the early twentieth century, the neighborhood had close to two hundred and fifty slaughterhouses and packing plants, which delivered a third of the country’s dressed meat. With the improvement in transportation and distribution, the building of the interstate system, and the decline of shipping in the Hudson, several of the meat-associated businesses moved out to the Bronx or New Jersey, and the neighborhood declined. Neighborhoods don’t die in New York, they transform, and replacing the meat businesses came nightclubs, restaurants, high-end boutiques, and the district got its makeover to become one of the trendiest hoods in the city.
There were still a few meat businesses remaining in the hood, and it was one of those warehouses that Bear and Chloe watched that night. Chloe had glared at Bwana and Broker when they picked up the key to another Chevy and had snatched it from them. ‘Why do you get to do all the fun stuff?’
Bear smiled as they surrendered meekly without protest. A Chloe glare could melt tungsten.