I could see immediately where Luka got his build from. Vasiliy was almost as tall as his son, almost as wide and, despite being in his fifties, he seemed to have retained most of his muscle. He was almost like a prototype for Luka—not quite as big, not quite as handsome (Luka must have inherited his gorgeous eyes and cheekbones from his mother) but still a man that made you stop and look, even at his age.
He embraced Luka and kissed him on both cheeks. Then he turned to me. “And you are?” he asked me in Russian.
I had to remember to blink and look uncomprehending.
“She doesn’t speak Russian,” said Luka quickly, in Russian. “She’s American.”
I got the sense the Vasiliy had seen enough in his lifetime that very little would surprise him, but that did the trick. He turned and stared at his son as if he’d said I was radioactive. “You brought an American here?! To a meeting?!”
“She’s okay,” said Luka stiffly. “She’s fine.”
His dad shook his head. “You couldn’t keep your dick dry for one night?”
“It’s not like that! She’s not just—” Luka took a breath to calm himself. “I like her.”
His dad sighed and laid his face in his palm. “Luka, Luka...an American?! She is not suitable for you.” He glanced at me. “She’s pretty enough, I grant you. I’d want to jump between her legs if I was a little younger.”
“Father!” snapped Luka.
I willed myself not to blush. I didn’t want them to know I understood Russian.
Vasiliy sighed again. “You shouldn’t have brought her here. What have you told her?”
“Only that it’s guns. She can keep quiet.”
They’d been talking in Russian for a long time. I tried to look uncomfortable, as if I was wondering what was going on. Luka caught my look. “My father is asking all about you,” he told me in English, forcing a smile onto his face. “He says you’re exactly what I need.”
I smiled at the lie and then smiled at his father.
“Why did you tell her that?” asked Vasiliy in Russian. “Sometimes, I worry there’s too much of your mother in you. Soft like butter.” He shook his head. “You’ll have to dump her, when you get back to Moscow. I can’t have an American sniffing around.”
I felt myself tense and tried to hide it.
“She’s not sniffing—” Luka began.
But his father interrupted him. He put a big, fake grin on his face and grabbed hold of me, kissing each cheek in turn. “Welcome!” he said in English. “So rude of us to talk in Russian. I apologize. Luka has been telling me all about you. You must call me Vasiliy.” Then, still grinning at me, he said in Russian to Luka, “I’m serious, Luka. Get rid of her as soon as you get home.”
I had to keep the stupid, dumb smile on my face even as I felt the hurt inside me swell. He hated me. Somehow, the fact he disliked me as a father, that I wasn’t good enough for his son, bothered me even more than the sniffing around comment. Stupid! As if this is any sort of normal relationship! As if you’re really his girlfriend!
But Vasiliy’s distrust was a problem, too. I was going to have to be super-careful around him. Luka would give me the benefit of the doubt but Vasiliy wanted to think badly of me. The slightest hint that something was off about me and I’d be screwed.
One the guards held his finger to his ear, listening to his earpiece, then nodded to Vasiliy.
“They’re here,” said Vasiliy. “Let’s go.”
***
The building we were in was an old factory of some kind—big, hulking machines and stacks of old cardboard cartons. We’d been waiting in what used to be the front offices. Now we moved through a door and onto the cavernous factory floor.
A group of men approached. Wait...not a group, exactly. They kept their distance from one another, as if there was no trust between them. And they didn’t seem to have anything in common. Some of them were dressed like bikers, some of them like blue-collar workers and some of them in suits. And something was off. There was something familiar about their clothes, their attitude.
“Okay,” said one of the bikers. “Let’s get this started.”
Only he didn’t say it in Russian. He said it in English, with a broad Jersey accent.
Vasiliy stepped forward and introduced himself, clasping hands and kissing cheeks. I listened to the men, memorizing their names. Every one of them was American and I heard accents from New York to California. I felt sick. The weapons I’d seen in the yacht’s hold were heading straight for my home country.
“I want to thank you for making the trip,” said Vasiliy in English. “Some things are better discussed in person.”
I remembered what Adam had said: that Vasiliy was the figurehead now and Luka ran the business. Vasiliy would have brokered this deal and persuaded all these men to fly out here and then drive God knows how many miles to wherever the hell we were, somewhere isolated and totally private. Vasiliy was the showman and the face they’d come to trust. But, now that the pleasantries were over, it was time for Luka.
I’d grabbed Luka’s hand again as we stood there listening to his dad. Now he dropped it, looking at me almost apologetically. Then he walked forward and, suddenly, he was all business, the mask coming down. I felt my heart slowly icing over again as he reminded me, word by word, what he really was.
The way things were done now, with big shipments of guns coming to America in cargo containers, was dangerous and costly, he explained. “One shipment is lost, and it’s hundreds of thousands of dollars. And when the weapons do get into the country...what then? You still have to get them across several states to reach your customers. Every state border means another chance of getting caught.” He glanced at some of the bikers. “Paying off rival motorcycle clubs, bribing the police. It’s a mess.” He shook his head. “No more.”
“We are going to do for guns what McDonalds did for hamburgers and what Starbucks did for coffee,” he said. He described a complex network of distribution, with legitimate, Russian-owned businesses trucking the guns across America to exactly where they were needed. “No more big deals,” he said. “A million small ones. Too small to track, too small to trace. If one shipment gets caught…”—he shrugged theatrically—”so what?”
As I listened, my blood ran steadily colder. It wasn’t just the audacity of the plan he was outlining. It was the way he sounded just like his dad. Not quite as slick or polished as Vasiliy’s showmanship, but he was getting there. In a year, maybe two, he’ll be just like him.
This was why I needed to be his salvation. But how? How could I save him when my whole purpose here was to take him down?
When Luka had finished, the Americans looked at each other. Eventually, one of them spoke up. “It sounds good,” he said. “But what about Ralavich? Most of us buy our guns from him. You’re taking a big slice of his business. What about repercussions?”
Vasiliy stepped forward. “I’m not scared of Olaf fucking Ralavich. His operations in the US are a mess. I’m surprised he’s lasted this long. It’s time for a change.”
Luka called for the guards and they trooped in, carrying the crates I’d seen on the yacht. “A sample,” said Luka. “To show we mean business. Yours to keep—a crate each.” He picked up a crowbar and cracked the top off one of the crates. It was filled with gleaming assault rifles.
The Americans exchanged glances, impressed. Meanwhile, I was reeling. A sample?! This huge pile of crates was just a sample?! There must have been hundreds of guns there.
I understood, now. Luka wasn’t setting up a gun deal; he was setting up a business. A steady, poisonous flow of guns into my country.
Luka handed out loaded magazines and the men slotted them into the rifles. The guards placed some of the old cardboard cartons that littered the place on top of the machines to serve as targets.
A second later, the air erupted into a deafening roar as the men test-fired the guns. The huge room was lit up with flickering white fire and the windows shook from the noise.
Luka looked at me, worried. Then he put his big hands over my ears, blocking out the sound. It helped but, as I looked up into his eyes, I couldn’t find the man I knew there. You always knew he was an arms dealer, you idiot, I told myself. But, somehow, I’d been imagining him selling a few handguns to some far-off country or maybe a tank to a Middle-Eastern regime. Not this. Not crime on a corporate scale.
I stared at him in the near silence, the thump of the guns just a vibration through his hands. My eyes pleaded with him and, just for a second, I saw the conflict start again in his face. The wish that things could be different.
I was starting to realize, with horrible certainty, that things could never be different. He was trapped in a role and so was I. He had to do what his father expected of him, just as I had to follow orders from Adam.
The guns finally ran out of ammunition and Luka gently lifted his hands from my ears. I turned to look. The men were laughing and grinning, high on adrenaline. All of them were nodding that they’d take Luka’s deal.
I looked at the cartons they’d been shooting. The cardboard had been shredded by the bullets and inside—
It had been a doll factory. Naked plastic carcasses were piled in the cartons, their heads and arms and legs ripped off by bullets, holes punched clear through their bellies and chests. A thousand tiny murders, a warzone in miniature.
I turned around and threw up all over the floor.
“Who the hell is that?” asked one of the Americans
I could feel Vasiliy’s eyes burning into me with disgust. “No one,” he muttered.