Chapter 6: Russian Roulette
[Moriarty's Flat, Southwark — March 20, 2008, 9:00 AM]
Tommy's briefing was thorough, which meant it was brief. He dealt in facts the way bricklayers dealt in mortar—functional, no flourish.
Viktor Kozlov ran a mid-level Bratva cell operating out of Docklands. Import-export front, real business in protection rackets and drug distribution. Twelve to fifteen men, mostly ex-Soviet military. Kozlov himself was former FSB—Federal Security Service, Russia's successor to the KGB. Forty-five years old. Calm. Professional. The kind of man who discussed violence the way dentists discussed root canals: unpleasant but sometimes necessary.
Three months ago, the original Moriarty had approached Kozlov with a proposition: police intelligence in exchange for twenty thousand upfront and a percentage of operations that benefited from the information. Kozlov paid. Moriarty delivered nothing. Excuses. Delays. Promises that evaporated on contact with deadlines.
"And now Kozlov wants his money or his intel," James said. He stood at the kitchen counter, the third cup of tea of the morning cooling between his hands. The flat's radiator clanked and groaned—it hadn't worked properly since he'd arrived, and the chill seeped through the walls like a living thing. "Or?"
Tommy leaned against the doorframe. "Or he makes a point. He's got the manpower."
"Can we pay him back? The twenty thousand?"
"We've got the cash now, yeah. Harwell's money."
James drummed his fingers on the counter. Twenty thousand would solve the immediate problem but create a worse one. Paying back a debt without delivering on the promise signalled weakness. It said: I couldn't do what I said I'd do, here's your money back, please don't hurt me. In the ecosystem these people inhabited, that was blood in the water.
He needed a different approach. Something that turned a liability into leverage.
"Set up a meeting," James said. "Neutral ground. Somewhere public enough that nobody starts shooting, private enough for a real conversation."
Tommy's eyebrows rose. "You want to meet Kozlov face-to-face."
"Tonight."
"Jim—"
"Tonight, Tommy. And find out everything you can about Albanian drug operations in East London. Specifically the Dushku clan. Routes, shipment schedules, territorial boundaries. Anything."
Tommy pushed off the doorframe. His expression sat halfway between impressed and concerned, which was progress—a week ago, it had been entirely the latter. "Albanians? What's that got to—"
"Just get it. Priya's already started on the digital side. I need the street-level picture."
Tommy left. James poured his tea down the sink—cold and bitter—and pulled the laptop from under the floorboard. His knuckles had finally stopped aching. The plasters came off clean, revealing yellowish bruises that would fade by the weekend. Five days since the Millbrook job. Five days since his first crime. It already belonged to a different era.
He opened the laptop and began researching Viktor Kozlov.
---
[Docklands Warehouse, East London — March 20, 2008, 9:00 PM]
The warehouse was exactly the kind of place where bad things happened to people who made promises they couldn't keep.
Corrugated steel walls. Concrete floor stained with oil and something darker. Fluorescent lights suspended from chains, half of them dead, the survivors casting pools of jaundiced light between wide stretches of shadow. A loading dock at one end, roller door half-raised, letting in the Docklands wind and the distant sound of the Thames.
James walked in with Tommy two steps behind. No weapon. He'd left the Glock in the flat. Bringing a gun he couldn't shoot to a meeting with ex-FSB was worse than bringing nothing—it was bringing a gift for the other side.
Viktor Kozlov sat on a metal folding chair in the centre of the warehouse, legs crossed, hands resting on his knee. He wore a black overcoat over a grey turtleneck, and he was reading a paperback—something in Russian, the cover worn soft from handling. Two men flanked him, standing. Both large. Both very still. The kind of stillness that came from training, not temperament.
Kozlov looked up when James approached. Closed his book. Placed it on his knee.
"Moriarty." His accent was Moscow, softened by years in London but not erased. He didn't stand. The seated position was deliberate—a man so confident in his authority that he didn't need to perform it. "You look different."
"I am different."
"Hmm." Kozlov's eyes moved over James with the practised efficiency of a man who evaluated threats for a living. They lingered on the empty hands, the absence of a weapon, the single bodyguard. "Brave or stupid. I cannot decide."
"Can I sit?"
Kozlov gestured to a second folding chair, positioned precisely three metres away. James sat. Tommy remained standing behind him, hands clasped, face blank.
"You owe me money," Kozlov said. Not angry. Factual. A man discussing an outstanding invoice. "Twenty thousand pounds and three months of my patience. The money I can recover. The patience is gone."
"I'm not here to give you the money back."
Kozlov's expression didn't change. One of his flanking men shifted his weight—a millimetre, barely perceptible, but enough to communicate readiness.
"Then why are you here?"
"To give you something better."
James leaned forward. His heart hammered against his ribs but his voice held steady, his posture stayed open. Behind the calm, his brain ran calculations at a speed that should have frightened him. Risk assessment, outcome modelling, contingency planning—the same cognitive machinery that had devoured case studies at Wharton and restructuring proposals at the consulting firm, redirected toward a conversation that could end with his body in the Thames.
"The Albanians," he said. "The Dushku clan. They're moving into your drug routes in East London. You know this. What you don't know is where, when, and how much."
Something shifted behind Kozlov's eyes. Subtle. Like a lock's tumbler clicking into position.
"I can get you that information. Names, locations, shipment schedules, supplier contacts. Everything you need to shut them down or absorb their operation. Your choice."
"And why would you have this information?"
"Because gathering intelligence is what I do. It's what I should have been doing for you three months ago. I dropped the ball. I'm picking it up."
Kozlov studied him. The warehouse was quiet except for the wind through the loading dock and the distant hum of traffic on the A1020. One of the fluorescent lights buzzed and flickered.
"You have forty-eight hours," Kozlov said.
"I need a week."
"Forty-eight hours." No negotiation in his voice. The same flat certainty James had used on Marcus, reflected back at him with twice the weight. "If what you bring is useful, we discuss new terms. If it is not..."
He let the sentence hang. The unfinished threat was more effective than any specific promise of violence.
James stood. "Forty-eight hours."
Kozlov reached into his coat. James's pulse spiked—a cold fork of adrenaline straight through his chest—but the hand emerged holding a flask. Steel. Engraved with Cyrillic lettering. Kozlov unscrewed the cap, poured two measures into small steel cups that one of his men produced.
"Vodka," Kozlov said. "Before you go."
James took the cup. The vodka was brutal—no smoothness, no subtlety, just heat and grain alcohol and the faint ghost of something that might have been anise. His eyes watered. His throat burned. He didn't cough.
Kozlov watched him drink. A muscle twitched near his mouth—not a smile, but the ghost of one. "You are different than before, Moriarty."
"Better."
"We will see." Kozlov retrieved his paperback. Opened it. Dismissed them.
Tommy waited until they were in the car, two blocks from the warehouse, before speaking. "Forty-eight hours. Can we do it?"
"Call Priya."
Tommy dialled. Handed the phone across. James pressed it to his ear and listened to two rings before Priya picked up.
"I need everything on Albanian drug operations in East London. The Dushku clan specifically. Routes, suppliers, distribution points, personnel. Everything."
Silence on the line. Then Priya's voice, measured but tight: "That's... ambitious. In forty-eight hours?"
"Thirty-six. I need time to package it."
"Jim, I'm good, but I'm not—"
"You're the best I've got, Priya. And I just told a man with ex-FSB credentials and a very short temper that I'd deliver. So get started." He paused. Softened by a degree. "Please."
A breath on the other end. Keys clicking—she was already moving. "I'll need access to Tommy's street contacts for corroboration. And Kevin for vehicle surveillance."
"Done. Whatever you need."
"And more curry. I can't work a thirty-six-hour shift on empty."
Despite everything—the warehouse, the vodka, the forty-eight-hour fuse burning toward detonation—James's mouth twitched. "I'll have Kevin bring supplies."
He hung up. Handed the phone back to Tommy. London streamed past the windows, its lights blurred by the condensation on the glass. Five days ago he'd been a dead management consultant on a Massachusetts highway. Now he was a criminal middleman with a forty-eight-hour window, a four-person crew, and a debt to the Russian mob that could only be paid in intelligence he didn't yet possess.
The car turned south toward Brixton. Toward Priya's flat, her monitors, her talent. Toward the first real test of whether this operation—his operation—could deliver under pressure.
Tommy drove. James pulled a notebook from the glovebox—the one he'd told Kevin to bring that first morning, a lifetime ago—and started writing. Names. Connections. Pressure points. The architecture of a plan that would need to work flawlessly or not at all.
His pen moved fast. The notebook filled.
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