The Pawns

By Aesop

One man, consumed by grief and obsessed with vengeance, has to do something . . . something crazy. His obsession is bound to destroy him. And he doesnt care anymore.

His lucky break is a woman. Her desperation becomes his opportunity. A score to settle becomes a huge scoremuch too good for their own good. Was it just luck they met?

It was just a simple crime, but why is it suddenly getting a lot of attention from the White House and the Kremlin?

Success is sour, but its not really success unless they get away.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Dec 14, 2017
• ISBN: 9781546204282

Aesop

Aesop was a Greek fabulist and storyteller credited with a number of fables now collectively known as Aesop's Fables.

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© 2017 Aesop. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 02/15/2018

ISBN: 978-1-5462-0427-5 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5462-0429-9 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-5462-0428-2 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017912558

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Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Prologue

5:30 A.M. December 7th, 2012

Berryville Virginia

Duncan Rose

There is a glimmer in the darkness, so very faint in the depths, then suddenly brightening. Sharply glints come swiftly to coalesce into the gold sequined dress Joyce wore, and now she is here. The liquid honey gold of her hair outshines the dress, her face beatific yet bittersweet smiles upon me.

My heart aches, yearns for her and yet some tiny voice deep in a tiny corner deep in my psyche wails: no! not again! She smiles upon me and for the briefest instant I feel the whole depth of the love we shared like a stab in my heart. It is gone in an instant, her face contorts in fear and she fades away even as I reach to clutch her close to me. Gone again.

Instantly I am in the morgue. John Murk on one side and Captain Klubis of the Moscow Police on the other hold me up. They shove me through the steel doors and Joyce is there, naked upon the table. Her body is covered with bruises and blood, slashes and burns. Her legs are open wide and the brutality of the rape sickens me, enrages me. No, she was clean, there was a sheet. I try to protest but the dream spins on. My mind punishes me, taunts me, making it so much worse than it really was.

A blink and I am in Gregor’s club. The crowd writhes and dances in eerie silence and lights strobe slowly. I can see Gregor across the club at a long table, laden with a feast and flanked by his thugs and assassins, six to each side. Gregor has a dark halo about his head as he pours wine from a silver chalice down his throat. It splashes over him as he spies me and he orders them forward.

The crowd melts away magically as I am beset by muscular jerky puppets. Each wooden faced soldier I defeat disappears into a cloud of inky smoke and broken string. They drop away until the one they call the Golem towers over me and swing’s a fist the size of an anvil that rings my skull with an iron clang. I find myself on the floor and he reaches down for me with his impossibly long arm and catches me up by my shirt. I lash out in desperation and the toe of my boot connects with his throat. He releases me and straightens up, a puzzled expression on his deeply scarred face as he gasps for a breath that will never come.

I try to scrabble away and he crumples down on top of me like the collapse of the tower of Babel. He grabs my leg in his death throes. Pain blossoms in my knee as I wrench free. I am instantly set upon by the others and now I flinch with every blow they land as I succumb to the onslaught and my vision fills with the maniacally grinning faces of Miki and Niki. Then Gregor is there. I am beaten now. Broken I lay supine and defenseless as he looms over me face alight with a demonic glow. His mouth opens to reveal hundreds of needle sharp teeth as he descends on my ear and rips into it.

I’ll kill you Gregor! I find myself standing naked in the frigid air of my cabin, chest heaving and sweating heavily and shivering at the same time even as my threat dies in the stillness. One hand clamped to my mutilated ear as if it still poured blood.

Cold, so cold, is that what sparked the dream? It is evolving and not for the better. My subconscious twists a cruel knife into the most vulnerable spot: my guilt. I finger the scar tissue before I release my ear. I step to the woodstove and stir the embers before they die, add some tinder and blow until it lights and I add larger fuel.

Fire restarted I get dressed. As I pull on my shirt a low rumble out in the gloom of dawn alerts me. I peek out the window. The road to my cabin is a deeply rutted dirt track travelled by more tractors than cars. The big gray sedan that gingerly creeps along is unfamiliar to me. I have only two friends left in the world, John Murk and Eddie Knox and this car belongs to neither of them.

The Glock 21 is in my hand before I know it. Its heft comforts me as I fade back from the window. At the loading bench my left hand finds two extra magazines, loaded with thirteen rounds each of hollow point .45 caliber ammunition. I have not yet lit the kerosene lamp and the cabin is dim with the faint glow of the woodstove. I slip out the back door onto the porch that overlooks the Shenandoah River down the steep hillside. I slip into the trees and take up position behind the trunk of an old thick oak and slip off the safety as the sedan rolls to a stop near the weight bench sitting under an ancient sycamore that dwarfs all the trees around. The ground is hard with frost and my breath fogs.

John Murk emerges from the car with a bag of food in his hand. Duncan! Wake up, I brought breakfast! He stoops and reaches into the car again and retrieves a cardboard tray with large coffee cups. By the time he has straightened up I have glided up to him noiselessly in a few steps. He turns around and nearly drops the coffee when he sees me. Damn Duncan! He shakes his head irritable when he spies the gun. It’s just me Dunk, you don’t need the cannon. He catches his breath and shoves the bag of food into my hand.

I don’t have a lot of friends John, and it is a little early. Whose car?

Murk looks over the car perplexed. I got it from the motor pool at Andrews, red eye flight from the Ukraine. My cars at… Ahh, that’s what spooked you! He laughs to himself, probably thought I was FBI coming out here to crucify you some more. That reminds me. He put the coffee tray on the roof and reaches back into the car and pulls out a brown paper grocery bag, crumpled and worn it is rolled up tightly around the contents. Payment for the Kurd/ Syrian analysis you did.

We go inside and I light the lamp. Murk shivers and regards the bare plank walls. Last monastery I was in had central air and cable. Do you wear a hair shirt too? Asshole, like he’d ever set foot in a monastery. I peel open the bag and peek inside. It is filled with cash. I dump it out onto the bed. Fifties and hundreds in bundles, seven no eight of them, almost thirty thousand it’s only about twenty eight grand more than I am owed. What the CIA doesn’t write checks anymore? I ask.

I bumped it up a little because of the fucking over the FBI did to you on your pension and shit. Bean counting overseas is still a little fuzzy. They’ll never miss it Dunk. Hey lemme tell you about this pain in the asset I’m running in Belgrade. He launches into a story I know is designed to distract me, but I find I don’t care. He’s the first visitor I’ve had in weeks and John has always had a knack for getting me to relax. By the time the sun is up enough to cast a long shadow over the corn stubble in the fields I am relaxed and laughing and feel almost human again. I start to make more coffee on the wood stove when he blows my world apart.

Hey no more for me I gotta get back to Langley and debrief. Dunk there’s something I gotta tell you. He stands and stretches then gathers up the debris from breakfast. I stand and wait on him with the coffeepot dangling in one hand, waiting for the other shoe to drop. Uh, so I um… I ran into the guy who’s on the Moscow heroin cartel thing now for the Agency, told me Gregor came over Stateside to take over distribution here. The Cartel is muscling out all the gangster types that got it started and making a real business out of it. He’s in Brooklyn now.

The world slews sideways somehow. The sun shone down, still illuminating this tiny haven, yet something has changed, gravity wobbled and somehow East was not quite East anymore.

John talked on oblivious, did he not feel it? He seemed so far away. …I can get you a gig doing security in L.A. It’s right up your alley. Guy is a Turk, very wealthy… I tuned out and concentrated on standing still and finding my balance while the world tilted and yawed about. I felt my teeth clench tighter and tighter as my stomach knotted up. The heat blossomed in my neck and flowed upward. There it is. What I have been trying so hard to hide from all these months as I had healed my body. Rage. Blistering hot rage that cannot be appeased, it cannot be bargained with or hidden away or pent up in any way for long. It can only be placated with blood and with pain: Gregor’s blood, Gregor’s pain.

Murk was staring at me hard now, Are you listening to me Duncan? You just can’t hide out here in the boonies pumping iron and shooting guns. You’ve got to get past the Moscow thing and get on with your life. Take the job in L.A…. I nodded and agreed to think about it, made all the right noises. But there was only one thing I was thinking about. I still had the false identity the CIA had given me for the job in Columbia. I’d need a clean car also and a low key spot in Brooklyn as close as I could get.….

Chapter One

Friday March 15th 2013, Brooklyn, New York

8:43 P.M.

Duncan

I sit in the dark watching, listening, hating. A cool spring breeze eases in the window to spar futilely with the stale stagnant air of this tiny, awful room. The voices in my head are suddenly confused and alarmed. Alerted I sit up and wait a long slow breath. The club’s back door across the alley cracks ajar for a moment only, and a woman, dressed all in black with a knapsack slung over her shoulder, appears in the pool of light cast there. Not down the alley, one way or the other. No, she heads straight across, toward me, into this buildings ugly service courtyard, cramped with ripe dumpsters and loading dock.

Curious, I lean forward and enough of the dim light comes through to ghost my face just as she gets close to my window. She gasps, and a face, a familiar face already tense, goes wide with fear. We lock eyes for only a second before she becomes an inkblot dropping into the black hole of the stairwell leading to the laundry room door. A door I know to be locked.

I lean back out of sight and commune with voices hysterical. A head pops out of the back door after a few minutes and swivels around searching then disappears back inside. More long slow breaths that last forever. The door bursts open and four large men, brandishing guns boil out. Curt orders in Russian. Quickly they pair off and go separate directions down the alley. Gregor appears in the door. He holds a towel or maybe an icepack to his head and yells in Russian Bring the bitch back alive! She will pay with her hide for every penny she stole! He disappears back inside leaving his animosity and a sliver of light that says the door is ajar behind him. I pull out the earpiece that connects me to the laptop.

I leaned out the window and called softly down to the girl, That door gets locked at seven. If you’re trying to get away from those guys, I suggest you let me pull you in. It won’t be long before someone comes back to check the courtyard. I dangle down my right hand. Seconds seep by slowly and nothing happens. A rush of steps and she was there, reaching, grasping, a face and a hand bursting from the absolute black. I levered her up with my left hand against the sill and when she had her head in the window threw my body backwards. She shot through the window, as light as a ragdoll, and landed on top of me. For a moment I am smothered in breasts, but not complaining. She rolls off of me and hisses into the dark in a thick Russian accent, as friendly as a leopard, Why do you help me?

I got up, closed the window, shut the curtain. Anybody that makes life miserable for Gregor is a friend of mine I reply quietly as I turn on the floor lamp beside the window. The knapsack had spilled open and packets of hundred dollar bills were scattered across the dingy floor. She scrambled to shove them back in.

Jesus Christ. Weeks I’m trying to figure out how to rip him off and you just go in and bash him over the head and take his money I laugh and shake my head. I walk into the kitchen end of the little one bedroom’s living space and got out a bottle of vodka. Congratulation’s let me buy you a drink. I tried to put a neutral tone into my voice, not too friendly. Turned my back to her, tried to put to use all those little psychological tricks they had taught me to build trust. Now all you have to do is figure out how to get away.

She got her feet under her and glared at me with exotically tilted and suspicious blue eyes. You want to get this money for yourself! Out pops a small silver automatic, pointed right at me. Standing up in the light I got my first good look at her. She was tiny, even in heels she barely topped five feet tall. No wonder she had been so easy to pull through the window. A cheap black plastic raincoat hung half off of her. She was dressed in a black spandex catsuit with a black corset. She had a tiny waist and improbably large breasts. Any doubt as to her profession had disappeared with the shadows. Any doubt about her identity vanished also; Gregor’s girlfriend Irina.

I’m sure Gregor will get plenty more where that came from. Besides I knew you had his cash before you got in here, he was hollering about it loudly enough. If I was going to take it, you’d already be dead I smiled and poured out two shots. Besides, you can’t go shooting that thing off without telling all your playmates outside where you are. But, you know, maybe I misunderstood. Maybe ‘pay with her hide’ is a fun game you and Gregor play, and you can’t wait to get back out there.

Her eyes shift doubtfully toward the window for a second, gears turn in her pretty little head, but the gun never wavers. When she looks back to me her face is unsure. I drain my shot and lean back against the stove and cross my arms. Please. Relax have a drink stay a while and we’ll have a nice talk while you wait. I’m hoping to hurt him way worse than the little bit you’ve got in that bag. You might even say I have a grudge to settle. For me it isn’t about the money.

You speak Russian? she asked looking at me doubtfully and lowers the gun slightly, but she is clearly still on edge. I nod, "It’s the reason I got into the FBI. Gregor is the reason I’m not in the FBI anymore" I answer her back in her native tongue. She dithers, unsure. She knows I am right. She can’t shoot her useless gun. Still she does not trust me. She shrugs out of the raincoat, changing hands with the gun as she did so, and half turned to toss the coat onto the couch behind her. I moved quickly as soon as she had her eye off of me and had the gun out of her hand before she knew it.

Her face was a mix of surprise and fear. I move much faster than my size would imply is possible, and now I loomed over her. I looked at the gun. The cheap .380 autos are notoriously unreliable. I was going to put the safety on, but you never took it off I pointed it out, flicked it back and forth to show her and handed the gun back to her then resume my position leaning against the stove. Have that drink why don’t you. I said. I really don’t want your money. I want to hurt Gregor. I repeated it again in Russian for her to emphasize it.

She gazed at me uncertainly then looked down at the gun in her hand. She approaches gingerly, hesitates, and puts the gun down on the counter, drinks the shot which does little for her jitters. Why? Why do you want to hurt Gregor so badly? She looks up into my eyes carefully, searching, judging, as she waits for an answer, but her hand never strays far from the little silver automatic.

This close I could see her beauty was not just makeup and costume. Her skin is as fine as marble, her bones classically molded, a rosebud of a mouth and a tiny nose. I nodded, more to myself than to her. If you’re going to help me you need an answer. He hurt me very badly, not just professionally as an FBI agent, but as a man. He destroyed someone I loved just because he could. It was in Moscow.

Her eyes grow wide, He brags of this. How he made American FBI run like mice from a cat. Reaching up, she brushes aside my hair and gently caresses the ruined ear and her eyes widen. It is you. You frighten him. Despite his boasting he has nightmares of you.

Nice to know we have something in common Gregor and I.

She stares at the counter for a long moment, as if the answer would appear etched in the worn Formica. That is his way, to destroy beautiful people and things. I think that deep down he knows he is lesser. So when he can get away with it he destroys the real people, the ones that have what he is missing. This girl could teach Freud a thing or two. Her analysis is dead on. She knows him very well.

Desperation and fear torment her face and make her decision. She pushes the gun toward me. Can you keep me safe from him? He has lost control of me. I am danger to him now, a humiliation, he must make lesson of me. She peers up at me and we lock eyes. We are forming a bond of necessity the old training is telling me. But somehow I know it is more than that. We share a common pain, a common goal.

No guarantees. I tell her. She nods and I go on. "I think you’ll be safe right here. Stay out of sight for a day or so. They are already probably thinking you got into a car and are long gone. They’re going to check everywhere you could go. All your friends, but this place, this is a wild card. No reason to suspect this apartment. Even if they figure out you got into this building they can’t search every apartment.

Give me a little while and I can figure a way to get you out unseen. I stick out my hand. My name is Duncan. She looks up at me with a searching gaze, she stares hard at my open hand. She takes it gently, Irina" she replies.

She takes a deep breath and smiles brightly suddenly. Okay, I am doing the American ‘in for dollar.’ I say that right? She pauses and looks at me quizzically but goes on without an answer. He gets his heroin in all the time from the freighters at sea. They take boats out and scoop up bundles they throw off the ship. She says The money they only ship out every three months. They take a chartered plane to the Cayman Island. This way he tells me they don’t do laundry to the money.

Launder the money. I corrected automatically, thinking hard while trying to catch up to her mood shift. Does Customs check the plane? I ask. She nods, pouring herself another drink. Yes in Miami, but they pay someone off. They only fly down when he works. She drains off the shot and moves over to the rickety table and sits down on one of the two chairs, taking the bottle and glass with her. She leaves the gun behind.

He goes to the Island next week. He has suitcases full of money in the safe. I could not even lift them so I took my small bag and put money in from the little suitcase. She looked curiously down at the building plans for the club I had just managed to get yesterday that were spread out on the table and weighted down at the corners.

She has to hold her jet black hair back from her face. It gleams in the brighter light of the kitchen. The style started with the punk rock crowd but now seems favored by younger women, clipped short in the back on one side it steeply slants to the front and tapers to a long point in the front. Irina’s hair hangs nearly to her breast, most women wear this style much shorter with less shaved off in the back. The ear that shows on the right side of her head has five little silver rings piercing the outer edge. A style I have never thought attractive.

My mind starts to whirl. How do you know all this? How big is that god damn safe? Show it to me. I sit down next to her and show her the plans, pointing out the back door. With my finger I point out the office. Where’s the safe? I asked. Her finger comes down on the small room that was the storeroom just inside the backdoor. Here, this is his office. That big room is the dressing room for us girls. The boys play cards in there too. They watch us too, the pigs

I laughed to myself and she gives me a hard look so I let her in on the joke. The Feds, the police, they have a task force watching Gregor’s place. They bugged the wrong room. No wonder they never get shit.

She frowns and picks up the pencil and begins to make marks on the plans. There is something wrong. This is the office, this is his desk and safe is a big room they make from cement and steel with steel door, like bank, but smaller. But is not in office, is in apartment next door where Miki, Niki, Sergei and Alexi stay. She draws lines crudely on the plans of a boxy room set at an angle and a long diagonal line off of the back wall of Gregor’s office. The wall here is built so that it will swing back and then you get to door of safe. See? She peers up at me to check my understanding. She has slipped into Russian to articulate the more difficult concepts.

What is the wall made of and how does it work? I ask puzzled, those walls were supposed to be brick and block.

The outside is brick on big steel frame. When it is closed you do not even tell it is not like regular wall. It is very heavy Gregor tells me. He has a ah.. I can’t say. She uses the Russian phrase for remote control. Gregor, he calls it his magic key that opens the wall. Then there is the safe door. He always has it with him. No one else can get in. She pauses and looks at her drawing again. Oh, I forget the safe has door you can open from inside only. It goes into the apartment where the guys are. They live there to make sure no one gets into safe by breaking it. Lots of shelves in it, but money is packed up in bags ready to go in the middle of the floor. I sit back stunned for a second and simply stared at this gorgeous little goldmine of information. How do you know all of this? I demanded again.

Her face takes on a sour look. Gregor, he makes me his girlfriend, or my mother and sister in Moscow are hurt. He has me under the thumb so long he forgets I am not real girlfriend and talks too much. But, I get word they are now safe in Ukraine. So I break the big glass ashtray over his head and take money. I wish I had killed him. Her face is fierce and I can easily believe her regret is sincere.

I sat back and stared at her in wonder. Suddenly it all coalesces in my brain cleanly like the last pieces of a jigsaw puzzle fitting together. I stood up and moved over to the laptop, opened it back up and pulled the earpiece cord out. The screensaver ends its restless roaming and the audio program pops up. Voices from the bug issue forth. The DEA guy is cursing to himself and I can hear Gregor saying ‘Anatoly, they are looking. Wait…Yes…’ which means he must be on the phone. I go straight to the tiny coat closet, my de facto armory. I’m going to go over there and get that money right now I said. He was alone. He never spoke with Anatoly when anyone else was in the room.

All the muscle is out looking for you and the bastard is in there alone. Was the safe still open when you left? I asked strapping on the shoulder holster that held a .45 and a combat knife.

Yes, he always has open when he is in office. He likes to look at the money and his guns. He especially loves his guns. Irina replies looking curiously at the laptop. I pulled on my black leather jacket, black latex gloves and slipped a ski mask on top of my head. I paused. Do you have a cell phone Irina?

She nods and is about to knock back another shot. I put my hand over the glass. No more. This is important. Get the phone. She stares at me a moment and goes over to her coat and fishes it out. I give her my number and have her save it into the phone and call me. My phone buzzes in my hand as I pull it out and capture her number. What are you to doing? She asks watching me with a puzzled expression.

I turn out the light, pull the curtain and open the window. Exactly what I just said I’m going to do. I’m going to go get the money. Call me on the phone right now. Stay on with me the whole time I’m in there. Any of his boys get anywhere close to the backdoor you tell me right away. I won’t answer so don’t freak out.

I slid out of the window, tugged the mask into place carefully over the earpiece I had connected to the phone, and strolled casually across the courtyard. My phone at my belt vibrated and I connected and whispered to her. Don’t say anything. I looked each way down the alley and saw in each direction a man methodically searching all the dark corners.

Only a few steps and I walk through the door to the club and into an empty hallway, lined with liquor cases along the left side. Music thumps from the front of the club. The first door on the right, I could hear Gregor talking loudly. The door was open wide and Gregor had his back to me pacing toward the big desk, cell phone at his ear.

The office was narrow about ten feet wide and maybe twenty feet deep lavishly decorated. The brick is painted red with gold framed pictures on the walls. There is a deep cushy dark blue carpet underfoot. I lifted the mask off my face. I drew the big combat knife with the heavy brass knuckle hilt guard out and took four long fast steps into the room. Gregor I spoke his name loud enough to get him to turn. His eyes grew wide with stunned recognition.

I hit him hard, putting my weight into the blow. Bone crunched and the cell phone flew out of his hand. He fell onto the desk, half on his side. He scrabbled at a gun that lay on the desk and started to rise, but I was already over him. I hit the other side of his face as hard as I could, his cheekbone crushed. The blade of the knife cut about a half inch off the bottom of his nose. His head banged on the desk and he lay still. I hit him one last time in the jaw to make sure he was unconscious.

The cell phone was on the floor nearby squawking with a tiny voice. Blood oozed slowly at first, then, started to flow rapidly all over his face from his nose. My heart began to pound and I felt hot all over.

I had dreamed of this moment a thousand times. I would cut off his cock. I would cut out his black heart and saw open his head to squish his tiny lizard brain. I longed to slay him over and over again, slowly, each death more dreadful than the last.

I used the blade of the knife to slice open the crotch of his pants. Ripped apart the boxers with fists, my right hand, clumsy with knife, drew a bloody scrape across his belly flab down to the fat. This was the bastard that had kidnapped, raped, and killed my Joyce in Moscow. She had been more than just my lover, my partner. She had been everything to me, the only woman I had ever truly loved. I had dreamt and prayed for this moment when I could visit upon him all the horrors that had been perpetrated upon my love. A cold empty body I had forced myself to memorize.

His penis lay limp before me, a tiny little thing not much bigger than a button. I laughed gruffly, I had not expected that. I raised the knife above my head and held it, ready to strike down upon it and I found that I could not.

I gasped in a breath. I had forgotten about inhaling and exhaling in the culmination of this moment, in this unexpected struggle of conscience. I straightened and looked down at Gregor and became filled with a new rage, a rage at myself, powerless to act and powerless not to act. My jaw clenched painfully in frustration for a moment, then without thought or sense, just fury. I slammed the knife down into the thick oak desktop, as hard as I could, all the way to the hilt right between his legs, missing his manhood by only a fraction. The heavy brass spiked pommel pinned his balls to the wood, even unconscious, his body jerked spasmodically from the impact.

Relieved I took a long slow breath and surveyed my work. I realized with a wry smile that this was probably the most humiliating thing I could have possibly done to him. I became aware of Irina’s voice pitched in panic in my ear. What was that? What happened? What was that noise?

Shh!! Quiet. Everything’s fine. Keep watch and be quiet. I unclipped my phone, took two quick pictures, and clipped it back. Irina would enjoy them. I bent down and picked Gregor’s phone off the floor. I recognized the voice as Anatoly Kobolev, Gregor’s boss and former FSB/KGB, from back when I had a badge. He too wanted to know what was going on. I hung up and tucked it into Gregor’s shirt pocket, where the cops would eventually find it. I looked down on him, his ruined face, his humiliated manhood, his soon to be ruined career, and smiled to myself. I felt like I had made a very good start at avenging Joyce.

I looked into the safe. The brick wall swung away from the corner against the back wall of the club on an unseen pivot. The steel door was open and I could see that the clearance between wall and door was so tight that the wall would be unable to close if the door was open.

Metal shelves ran around the room all the way to the ceiling and two hanging lamps with large metal shades lit the room which was about ten by twelve. There was a door at the far end of the room with a combination lock exactly like the one on the other door.

Two large sets of suitcases sat in the middle of the floor with four large olive green duffel bags next to them. Cheap sets, canvas and cardboard with wheels and telescoping handles on the largest bags. One set in black and the other olive green. They were all strapped together, ready to go. The black set of bags was missing the carryon. On one shelf closest to the door sat a lot of large bags of heroin, at least a dozen kilos. Most of the rest of the shelves were filled with guns and ammo.

There were enough assault rifles and pistols of all kinds to start a war. I looked into an open box next to the heroin, grenades. Next to that was the missing black carryon half filled with money. Cash straps of 100’s were scattered about messily and I guessed this was where Irina had gotten her running money I dumped some of the grenades into the carryon, zipped it up and strapped it to its mates. I opened a duffel bag, it was full of fives and ones, the one next to it seemed to be all tens.

I wheeled the cases to the door of the office and paused to look back. It occurred to me that Gregor’s thugs could simply lock the safe and all that evidence would be out of sight of the cops. I walked back around the desk and reached around the open safe door and spun the handle, engaging the lock so that the door couldn’t be closed. I doubted seriously that anybody but Gregor knew the combination. I looked down at Gregor and had a thought.

I reached into his shirt pocket and fished out his cell phone and dialed 911. As soon as it connected I started speaking, "The owner of the Tsars Palace strip club has been beaten and stabbed. He’s in his office in the back of the club with a safe full of heroin and guns. Tell the ambulance and the cops to use the alley. The back door of the club is open and the office is just inside the door on the right." The operator started with questions and I responded with the address and dropped the phone, still connected to 911, onto the desk and walked away.

The hallway was clear. The sounds of the club boomed on undisturbed up front. I turned out the hall light and walked out the door towing two sets of suitcases strapped together a