Pechev had resigned himself to the idea of surviving alone. Even if Taloquan had been lying and his parents were still alive, he had no means of finding them. Besides, he had just killed two men and for all he knew, he was a fugitive from the law. His plan was to make his way to Moscow and go to ground.
He spent his first night of freedom sleeping in Taloquan"s stolen Mercedes, which he had managed to b.u.mp along the thirty miles between the estate and the suburbs of Moscow, peering over the steering wheel the whole way. In the morning, Pechev wiped off all the surfaces he had touched: the door handle, the steering wheel, the stereo, before handing the keys to a tramp begging on the corner of a street.
Pechev caught his first ever subway train into the city centre of the Russian capital.
For a week, he lived the life of a tourist, sleeping in the shared dormitory of a youth hostel near the Kremlin, where he managed to blend in with a touring college choir. In the daytime, there was business to attend to and many obstacles for a boy of his age to overcome in the process, but Pechev found that whenever his pre-p.u.b.escent body and reedy voice failed him, money talked loud. With a fifty rouble note, he managed to open a young-saver"s current account in the Zenit Bank using his faked birth certificate and a false address as identification. He was given a small ceramic piggy bank as a welcome gift, which he carried with him to the nearest internet cafe.
He handed a single rouble to the pretty purple-haired a.s.sistant with a nose-ring, who in turn gave him a five minute lesson in logging on, navigating the web and even showed him how to open his own email account. In over six years, he had never once been allowed near Taloquan"s computer, but he found he understood in seconds. Pechev thanked the girl, and began surfing. He found the website he was looking for a Montserrat Financial Offsh.o.r.e Accounting. In 1995, Herat Taloquan had seen the potential of online banking when it was still in its infancy and actively sought out a bank which enabled him to launder his money across a number of dotcom companies from the comfort of his office. When the governments of the world finally scrambled to police this new wave of criminal activity, Herat was way ahead of the curve. So much the better, thought Pechev, as he pulled up the personal internet banking page on the screen. He closed his eyes and searched through all the information he had stored in his brain regarding Taloquan"s finances. His fingers flew across the keys like he was playing the Minute Waltz, as he called to mind every account number, sort code and pa.s.sword which he had ever consigned to memory while sitting at the piano in Taloquan"s office.
Before his allotted hour was up, Lyubomir Pechev had managed to transfer forty-eight million dollars of Herat Taloquan"s offsh.o.r.e holdings into his own young saver"s account. He picked up his piggy bank and walked back to the youth hostel, treating himself to a Big Mac on the way.
Four days later, when the funds had cleared, he paid cash for a small flat in Basmannyy, a depressed but not unsafe area of the city. The estate agent who had initially thought she was being secretly filmed for a television show, had played along until Pechev innocently opened his backpack, pulled out a stack of crisp bills and asked her if she handled the money.
Pechev was free: to all intents and purposes, an eleven year old orphan, trying to make his way in the world. He had no need for education, at least not in the academic sense. He was financially secure and apart from his bank account and utility bills, he lived off the net. Within a week, he had arranged for a telephone line to be fitted, and bought an American personal computer for "good price". It was the age of the internet, and even in the backstreets of late 90"s Moscow, it was possible to pay for virtually anything online. He found the website of a top-end security company and had his cheap plywood door replaced with one made of reinforced steel, had closed-circuit cameras mounted around the flat and finally had bulletproof windows fitted. He knew full well he had paid over the odds for this state of the art security but this was to be more than his home. It was base camp and from here, he intended to climb to the top of the criminal world, and take back from it everything he felt was rightfully his.
And so it was, that with a fortune in the bank and a Naudia voice distorter attached to his telephone handset, Lyubomir Pechev rebuilt Taloquan"s lost empire. Out of some kind of respect for those girls who had shared the bas.e.m.e.nt cells in the mansion house, he moved his business away from s.e.x-trafficking, preferring to plough his money into drugs. He had an inherent interest in science and medicine and it seemed like the logical move. He forged new contacts in Colombia and rekindled Taloquan"s old partnerships in Afghanistan, importing huge quant.i.ties of pure cocaine and heroin at St Petersburg and distributing it domestically and throughout Europe. He had enough sense to stay behind the scenes, choosing instead to permanently employ those people who over time had proved themselves to be loyal.
At the tender age of 13, Pechev rang in the new millennium alone in his apartment, watching hour by hour images from around the world of people celebrating in the streets. Two hours after Moscow erupted into song, Pechev was struck by a real sense of confidence and optimism as he saw the fireworks exploding on the Thames in London. Never before had he considered leaving Mother Russia, but there was something about London that caught his attention. "Maybe in a few years" time," he whispered to himself.
Forty years later, looking out over the same dirty old river, Lyubomir Pechev remembered that moment as though it were only yesterday. Since that time his drugs cartel had prospered and his nameless, faceless company had evolved into areas of protection, illegal gambling, and with a certain amount of chagrin on Pechev"s part, prost.i.tution. He told himself it had to be done a business was business. Scionised medicines had taken the company in a whole new direction in the twenties and despite his appearance: the shabby suit, the receding hairline and greying beard, he felt like a boy again. He had become one of the richest men on the planet, with more legitimate fronts spread across Europa than even he knew about. Pechev preferred to leave all that to the accountants and solicitors. Above all, he liked to consider himself a man of the people, for the people. He still liked to get his hands dirty, so this business with Gorski wasn"t entirely unpleasant. Of the employees that he had taken on over the years, some had died of natural causes, some had been killed, but no one had ever simply left the company of his own volition. Pechev understood that there was a natural ebb and flow in all things, and that Gorski"s time must eventually come to an end, but he wasn"t ready to let him go just yet.
He took a moment to knock the white king over with the black bishop before turning off the lights.
Chapter 26.
"Vidmar dead. Body in Proto boot, Long Rd Cnr of Clap Comm. Go well bro. Ces."
Domino Tyrell was staring at his textabeep and trying to work out the significance of the message on the display, when Roma Bruce and her gang of thugs appeared out of nowhere.
"Domino! We"ve got unfinished business, you and me," growled Roma.
"Is that so?" he asked, with new-found confidence. "Well listen wolf, I don"t want no trouble, so here," and grabbing the evening"s takings from the bag, he handed the rest over to her. "There"s enough Bad Moon in there to kill you and your crew. Go howl at the moon, you pack of freaks."
Domino made to walk off, but Zevon placed a heavy hand against his chest.
"What the f.u.c.k is this all about, blud?"
"I"m out." Domino smiled, pushing away Zevon"s hand, "I"m so out."
Crystal frantically waved the tiny bottle under Lek"s nose, and slapped him again, trying not to open the deep cut on the bridge of his nose. "Lek! Lek! Wake up Lek! We"ve got to move! They"re coming!"
Lek"s new blue eyes snapped open and he sat up as though nothing had happened. "Who"s coming?"
"The gangs, for Lennon"s sake! We"re stuck in the middle of gangland and it"s a full moon."
"It"s the full moon rumble!" cried Lek, "How could we have been so stupid?"
They scrambled from the wrecked Proto and ran for cover behind a set of bottle banks. Lek crouched down and drew a deep breath. His eyes were already bruised and his nose was swollen and black. He tried to wipe the blood from his face, but it had pooled in his white goatee and in the lines around his mouth and chin. He looked like a madman. His head throbbed, and he took a moment to search through his pockets for anything that might pa.s.s as a pain-killer. "Scion vials and gel-caps. Bases and extracts. Enough drugs to turn a grown man into a menagerie, but not a single aspirin. Typical. How"s your head?"
Crystal"s left eye was virtually swollen shut. "Better than yours, I reckon, but still painful. Never mind now. What"s the plan?"
"Well, we can"t just sit it out. We"ve missed the last overground, and I don"t think we"ll make the metro either. So it looks as if we"re walking. We"ve got a little over an hour and a half to make it to Victoria, the money, and the train... and we"re what? Only three miles away. Easy."
"Any other night, I"d agree with you," said Crystal as she peered around the side of the bottle bank at the gangs of wolfish youths who were striding over the Common, some on all fours, some carrying nunchakus and kendo staffs, some with metal chains wrapped around their wrists, holding back fierce German Shepherds. But the majority were bare-chested and empty handed, content to rely on the skills and strength that the Lupinex had given them.
Lek stared at them and the reality of the situation hit him like a fresh punch in the face. Just then, the sound of sirens filled the air and for a beautiful moment, Crystal thought the police in this part of town still cared about the citizens and had come to break up the madness.
"It"s curfew," whispered Lek, and all the streetlamps went out.
Roma led the pack down an alley around the corner. Domino had been true to his word a the bag was stuffed with gel-caps: mainly Lupinex, but there was also plenty of "Laughing Bag" for the jackals, "Empire State" and "Matador" for the gym junkies, plus a few odds and ends of Snake-blood and Tiburon.
"First that score on the Common and now this! Doesn"t Roma always get the goods for you?" she said, waving the bag above her head. "Still, this is all I want." She pulled out the stash of "Bad Moon" and ditched the rest on the cobble stones. While the others marvelled at their good luck, Dahlia reached out and stuffed the bag inside her vest, certain it would be worth something at some fork in the road.
"What was with Domino?" asked Zevon as he counted out his share of the loot.
"Who gives a f.u.c.k?" Roma replied. "Our soldiers are waiting for us, lieutenant. Shoot me up, big boy," and she handed her second in command eight gel-caps of scion.
"All of this?" Are you sure Roma?"
"Do it."
"That"s a lot of s.h.i.t in one hit..."
"You wouldn"t be challenging me, would you? I said "do it". Now do it."
She lay down in the filth of the alley, among the dog-s.h.i.t and broken gla.s.s of old hypos and empty vials, and her pack filled their chambers and pumped the drugs into her veins. Roma Bruce"s howls split the night.
Lek Gorski tried to clear his aching head, but teeming thoughts of the nightmarish possibilities of his next ninety minutes on the planet were clouding his judgement. His mind kept coming back to the opportunities he had wasted throughout the day, chances he had missed to make it out of the capital in one piece.
He thought about Cesar a Lek had never intended to involve him so deeply in his escape plan and when Crystal explained what he had done, how he disappeared into the night having saved them both from Vidmar, Lek could barely speak for the lump in his throat. He promised himself that if he did make it out alive, he would find some way of repaying the debt: perhaps dedicating his work at the Rubicon Inst.i.tute to finding a cure for the monster Cesar had become.
And Crystal. He had never meant to put her in harm"s way, but then again, he knew he could not have left her behind, knowing that Calabas would eventually have worn her spirit down, until there was nothing left but an empty sh.e.l.l of a woman, just another has-been lap-dancer sitting at the bar in The Shangri-La hoping for pity-tips and drinks to dull the pain of loss. He wished she was safe in her bed, but felt blessed to have her by his side.
As for himself, he could not have imagined a more bizarre day. Being a scientist had its share of surprises, if one considered explosions in test tubes and the unexpected properties of unstable compounds surprising, but the last twelve hours of Lek"s life were something else, terrifying mostly, but strangely exhilarating at the same time. Never before had he stared down the barrel of a gun, conned a hitman, defied a drug-lord, bought a woman"s safety, or sat under the heat lamps in a beautox parlour. If fate let him live through the night, the scientist in him would enjoy turning over the events, revisiting those missed opportunities to escape and calculating the probabilities of his survival. It was sickening to think that he had managed, with a little help, to outsmart them all a Delia, Vidmar, Calabas, even Pechev - only to find himself now hiding in the shadows, surrounded by savages, on the wrong side of the Thames. The night before he had looked down at that river and, if only for a moment, considered jumping in. Now, his immediate goal was to get across it, with Crystal.
Delia c.o.c.ked an ear as the tannoy in the IKEA Victoria International Station announced the first call for all pa.s.sengers departing on the 21:05 Europatrans train to Paris, Gard du Nord. Across the concourse, one of the tramps had somehow managed to catch a pigeon, luring it closer with cake-crumbs, before tossing an old coat over it. Delia watched in disgust as he bit into it. Focus, he told himself and turned his attention back to the lockers. He looked about a the pre-curfew crowd had dispersed, safe and sound on their trains to the home counties, but people had begun to congregate in the shelter of the station, one of the few buildings which had been spared the ignominy of lights-out across the Capital. Delia decided to take a chance, and pulled the severed thumb out of his pocket and stepped over to the lockers. It felt good to stretch his aching legs, if nothing else. He pressed the thumb against a few readers in a row, leaving b.l.o.o.d.y smears here and there, but he soon grew tired of working systematically and began to press them at random. It was a waste of time, even Delia could see that, after he had walked the length of the wall of lockers, and he turned around to find his prime location seat had been taken by the pigeon-eater. Never mind, keep your eyes wide open now, he told himself, the door to one of these lockers has to burst open in just over sixty minutes and your future is inside it, written in a recipe book.
"It breaks down like this," Yakuba was explaining to Arid and Osaze, who hung on his every word as though he were imparting great philosophical wisdom. "The hyenas and dingoes run the south west of the city, from Wandsworth down to Tooting, and our brothers in arms - the jackals - cover Dulwich. That"s all ours. You feel me? The wolves run the east: Brixton, through Camberwell, Peckham and out to Deptford. Clapham and Battersea are no man"s land. That"s where we clash. True. North of the river"s got its own rules."
Yakuba was a ma.s.s of nervous energy, high on life and the thrill of ensuing violence, snapping his fingers and nodding to music playing only in his mind. The boys struggled to keep pace with him as he nimbly skipped over a wall and dropped down onto the train tracks. There were small groups of thick-necked youths everywhere, telling jokes and anecdotes, laughing wildly, and dealing in the recesses of the railway tunnels. A couple were having rough s.e.x against the wall. The groups consisted mostly of older teenage boys, but there were some girls too, a few of whom caught Arid"s eye, and for the first time that evening he began to feel that same sense of solidarity which had first drawn him into his addiction. Yakuba must have sensed this change in him and without breaking step, fished two wraps of Joker from the knee pocket of his combats and handed them to the boys. "It"s OK brothers, have some of mine." They were small wads of Hyenarc wrapped tightly inside unused lotto slips. Osaze beamed as though he had been handed a roll of hundred cred notes and split his open to share with the equally elated Arid. They stopped momentarily to tap out the yellow powder and snort it off the backs of their hands and Arid immediately felt at one with his hyena brothers and sisters. His inhibitions were stripped away instantaneously; he felt ultra-confident and ready for the fight. Osaze was nodding at his side: it seemed he too had discovered the meaning of life. They marched onwards down the tracks like they were heading to a carnival, until they reached the cutting on Plough Road and climbed up to street level. "We"ll have a little prelim bust-up in Falcon Park. Just a chance for us to test the waters, feel how the night is going to go. Then we head into Battersea for the real deal."
Chapter 27.
"The way I see it," said Crystal, "we"ve got two options. Either we front it out and pretend like we don"t give a toss what"s going on around us, or we run."
"We could always pretend that we"re just drunk, or lost?" suggested Lek.
"No. No way. These kids are looking for easy meat, and if they think they can get anything out of us, then we"re dead. Pure and simple. We were lucky to get away with it last time."
"OK fine. Then I say we front it out. We look pretty demented anyway."
It was true, Lek and Crystal looked like an advert for domestic abuse, her with her black eye swollen shut, and him with his broken nose and blood-stained goatee.
"Alright then, are we ready?"
"Let"s go."
They stepped out from behind the bottle bank as though they had been sharing a moment in the shadows. Lek puffed out his chest and tried to seem manly. Crystal caught the eye of a girl probably half her age, and though her stomach flipped at the sight of the uneven canines protruding from her mouth, Crystal"s face didn"t show the slightest emotion.
"Which way are we going?" she asked Lek, and he heard the tremble in her voice.
"The same way as everybody else by the looks of things. Which is both good and bad. We"re headed straight up North Street till we hit Queenstown Road, then up past the edge of the park and over the bridge, but Lennon only knows what"s waiting for us. Hold my hand."
Together they moved through the throng of kids, keeping their distance where possible, and always staying on the edge of the crowd: should things turn ugly, they wouldn"t find themselves in the centre of the pack. Lek noticed a man in biker chapajeros and a string vest checking out his own outfit a he was still wearing the oversized sports suit, but he had rolled up his sleeves and tucked his trouser legs into his boks to stop them dragging on the ground. At best, Lek knew he looked like an outsider trying to fit in. He winked at the biker, who returned the gesture. So far, so good: everything was going to plan.
Even Ronnie and Reggie looked worried. Dahlia had walked to the end of the alley on the pretext that she was keeping watch for police and stray jackals. Zevon couldn"t meet Roma"s eye.
"Look at me!" she barked, her voice was thick and gruff, no longer her own.
"I am looking. Maybe we should get you to the walk-in, Roma. You"re getting worse."
"No Zevon, I"m.... getting.... better," and she rolled from the position she had lain in for ten minutes when the back spasms and stomach cramps had left her howling in pain. She looked neither wolf nor human. Her skin was deathly pale and she was sweating profusely; her eyes were blood-red and watering, and the veins in her neck and forehead were standing out as though they might split apart at any moment.
"Stay with me tonight," she whispered to Zevon, and although he couldn"t tell whether she meant for him to keep pace with her during the pack clash, or hold her in his arms afterwards, he nodded his a.s.sent. He had no choice: she was still the alpha of the pack. He stole a glance at Dahlia at the end of the alley, and even at that distance, he knew her bright eyes were staring back at him.
Roma called them together and without a word the five-strong pack moved as one down Dolman Street, leapt the razor wire and shards of anti-vandal gla.s.s cemented on the top of the wall, and rolled down the embankment to the train tracks. It was the fastest way to get to the heart of the rumble.
From the side-streets and the high-rise underpa.s.ses, from the tenement courtyards, public shelters and recyclotruck-pa.s.sageways, gangs of youths continued to appear, sliding around the corners of buildings, crawling out from under shop-front metal-shutters, shifty-eyed and grinning. As they neared Falcon Park, their numbers swelled, and the trickling streams of threes and fours gathering from every direction became tens, twenties, hundreds. They pouted their lips and nodded at one another. The high steel fences of Falcon Park Cage Fighting Forum and Basketball Courts had been ripped apart, and in the light of the full moon, Arid could see the wolves a.s.sembling on the other side of the park. He felt a shiver of excitement. It came out as a sn.i.g.g.e.r at first, then a giggle, then rose to a wild laugh. Osaze was right: if nothing else, it was an amazing sight. Yakuba stepped through a hole in the fencing and held it apart so that Osake and Arid could follow. Ulan and Fogo were already inside, stretching out their muscles and play-fighting. Yakuba walked around the crowd, paying his respects to those who outranked him in the hyenarchy, and in turn being shown respect by those below him. He touched fists with many, and gave a lazy salute to others. The atmosphere was one of warm geniality and the reservations which Arid had felt earlier that evening melted away. "It is going to be a good evening," said Osaze, speaking as if he was a seasoned professional of the pack-clash, when in fact he was as much a rumble-virgin as Arid.
On the far side of the cages, the wolves began to pour through the gaps in the fencing and form a line. The hyenas jeered and shouted insults, but their opponents only glowered back. There was menace in their silence. They seemed to be a more organised crowd, more militaristic than the hyenas, filing dispa.s.sionately into orderly martial ranks behind one another, like a body of Ancient Roman centurions. Suddenly, a single howl split the atmosphere in two, and the hyenas fell silent. It was a short stocky male, his long hair tied back in a pony-tail. When he turned to his troops, Arid saw the huge perma-tatt on his broad back: a wolf, standing on top of a mountain, silhouetted against the moon. The mood had changed in an instant, and Arid saw that those around him were steeling themselves for the bloodshed. The solitary howling of the lone wolf was drowned out by the rest of the full pack as they raised their voices in unison. The hyenas and jackals roared back, gnashing their teeth and snarling, pushing each other forward towards the fight, but as yet unwilling to break away from the invisible bounds which tied them to the fencing on one side of the cages. The noise was deafening and when it seemed like it had reached fever-pitch and could only dissipate, something snapped instead and the gangs of hyena and wolves rushed across the moss-covered clay court and smashed together on the centre-line.
Above the war-cries, Arid could still hear the painful crack of bones as fists met faces. The lines of force spontaneously broke apart into smaller pockets of violence, as pairs of fighters from both sides struggled to draw first blood. From his standpoint at the back of the crowd, he saw a she-wolf ruthlessly swing a baseball bat into the knees of a jackal, who screamed in pain and rolled into a ball on the ground. He watched in horror as she raised her bat high above her head to strike him again, and then recoiled as a hyena pushed a smashed bottle into her unguarded chest. He turned to run, but there was a solid wall of hyena behind him, steadily moving forward into battle, and nowhere for him to go. Flares and bottles sailed though the air above him and he saw another jackal fall to the ground as three wolves set upon him, kicking him in the head and stomach. Something about the action lit a spark in him and his anger flared. Arid ran from the cover of the boys in front to even the score. But in a flash, the skirmishes dissolved, melted away and the battle lines reformed, howling and cheering at one another from across the court. The hyena danced and whirled, jumped on the tips of their toes and laughed raucously. Of the three-hundred young men and women gathered together, only twenty or so lay beaten on the ground, dazed and bleeding, but none were dead. They limped or were pulled back to the safety of their respective gangs and proudly displayed their fresh wounds to those around them, raising their own voices in defiance of the opposition"s best efforts. Yakuba appeared at Arid"s side: he was breathing heavily and rubbing the bruised knuckles of his fists, but he was smiling nonetheless. "It will be a good night, brother. There will be no killing here. Just a lot of huffing and puffing from the big bad sc.u.m, as usual. And we will teach them a lesson!" Osaze joined them, pushing through the throng to clap his arm around Arid"s shoulders. He too was panting from effort and excitement. "Did you see me? Did you see, Arid? I knocked one to the ground! He came at me and I took him down! Like that!" and he mimed a stinging jab at an imaginary foe, "Bam!"
Arid felt fire in his heart, laid his arm around his friend, and together they added their voices to the hooting and hollering as the crowds dispersed, back to the safety of their own kind, each claiming the prelim victory.
Chapter 28.
"What was that?" Crystal croaked. They had heard the fighting at Falcon Park from a mile away, and around them the wolves had cheered and howled, as if energised by the echoes of violence resounding in the air.
"There was a testimony in the paper recently a some gang member who had found religion and wanted to repent a from what I read, the full moon rumble isn"t just a single isolated event. There are rules about exactly how, where and when they"re fought; unspoken agreements, rumours that are pa.s.sed down through the troops. n.o.body wants to get killed, sure as most of these lunatics don"t really want to kill anybody. Look at this lot: most of them are just kids, wearing fancy dress and playing war games. They don"t want to end up in the juvenile clink. It"s a school night, after all."
In spite of herself, Crystal sn.i.g.g.e.red and immediately she found herself staring into the stern faces of two overgrown teenage boys.
"Something funny, b.i.t.c.h?" snarled the first, c.o.c.king his head to one side. Only one of his irises glowed yellow in the moonlight.
"There"s no trouble here lads", said Lek, trying to keep his tone light.
"What if we wanted to make some trouble?" said the second, his grimace revealing the neon braces holding his canines in place.
"What the f.u.c.k you doing here anyway, square?"
"Just taking in the... atmosphere, you know?"
"Well f.u.c.king take it someplace else, d.i.c.khead," snapped the first before turning away with a shrug of his shoulders.
Lek mouthed "Sorry," when Crystal glared at him, but he was right. Although the threat was there beneath the surface, these were just schoolkids, puffing out their chests and posturing for one another. He tried not to think about the part he had played in ruining so many young lives and the impact on his current circ.u.mstances.
They sank back into the crowd, allowing the steady stream of bodies to flow around them as they made their way up North Street and on to Silverthorne Road.