To start at the beginning of the story go here.
Atwell winced, the pain I was causing him making it difficult to find his lies.
So, slowly, he began with the truth. “I had been following Mitnick. At first. When he got into town on his bought passport and started throwing money around. A lot of money. You could tell he liked it here.” Atwell wiped a bit of drool and blood from his chin, grinning through it. “Can you blame him? The weather here is a hell of a lot better than Moscow or Minsk. And it’s safer. Russia may be a lot better than it was 15 years ago, but it’s still a dangerous place and he’s got a lot of enemies. I read a report that back in the motherland he traveled with a platoon of bodyguards the entire time. Here he’ll walk around in broad daylight with just two.”
“Yeah, I’ve met them.” I said, thinking about Mitnick’s stories of the vory and the gang wars, the peace that had followed, and the Russians he had staying as guests. “Why’d you stop following him?”
Atwell shifted his weight in the trash pile, angling his most sensitive parts away from me. “Organized crime isn’t my job. I’m here because of the War on Terror.” I snorted at this, as I could practically see the trademark logo floating next to the last three words. Atwell shot me as angry a glance as he could muster and went on. “Mitnick was the same as Sartre, moving a lot of things, people, money. Moving them all over – from Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Syria. So I eventually approached him with the same offer – let us know if he sees anything and we won’t interfere with his operation. And that was fine for awhile. Hell, him and Sartre even did a little business.”
“Girls from the Ukraine.”
“Yeah. Mitnick sold them to Sartre for the local brothels.” Those words caused something to rise in me then that I had to chain down immediately. I tightened my grip on the umbrella. Instead of embedding it in his head, I breathed out steam and asked, “So what changed?”
“A contingent of Mitnick’s old Soviet friends showed up. Came in by boat, plane, train. They met at Mitnick’s place – it was like the Malta conference for bad guys.
“They’d come a long ways for a very short stay – they were only here for a few days. After that, things changed. Mitnick started leaning out of his territory – started smuggling Spanish cigarettes, opened up his own brothels instead of just selling girls to Sartre, started moving heroin. Eventually, he even made inquiries into buying the casino. And that was the last straw.”
Like a spring out of an old mattress, my hand flew out and I slapped Atwell again. It happened before I realized it and I had to take a moment to bring it back under my control. I breathed slowly, counted to four, then said, “I told you that was what was happening. If you knew all of this, why did you put me in this mess?” I almost said ‘us,’ but didn’t. Bringing up Sophie could give him leverage.
Atwell shook his head and almost grinned again, making me worry I might be putting him into shock. So I kept my hands to myself as he said, “I figured you might keep them off each others’ throats for awhile – keep this from turning into a war.”
“You’re an idiot, Atwell. Marines don’t prevent wars, they finish them.”
He tilted his head as if he were trying to get water out of his ear. “Well, OK, yeah, lesson learned.”
I leaned forward, the exhalation from my nose audible. “So why are you following Sartre and not Mitnick?”
Atwell narrowed his eyes and I could see his shields raising, but he spoke quickly and without doubt. “I did some digging into the people Mitnick met with. There were gangsters, sure, but not just old school vory. There were ministers, administrators, entrepreneurs, FSB agents, heads of Russian conglomerates.”
He squared his head and looked straight at me.. “Do you understand what I’m saying? These aren’t just criminals. These are men and women in positions of legitimate authority. People who aren’t supposed to be fraternizing with criminals.”
“So?”
“So I did some more digging. This meeting wasn’t some kind of mistake. Hell, one of the Russians that met at Mitnick’s was a member of Putin’s cabinet. A man, by the way, that MI-6 suspected of arranging the assassination of Chechnya’s premier in 2011. They weren’t at Mitnick’s as some kind of social call or peace meeting. They were coordinating. They work together.” Atwell was still afraid, but I realized it wasn’t of me. “They even have a name. They call themselves the Avoritet – the Authority.”
“Sounds like we’re starting to get into terrorism territory.” In case that left any doubt I added, “Your territory. So why does it look like your working for Mitnick?”
Atwell wormed in the trash pile. “It only looks that way.” I raised the umbrella again and he rushed out, “After I had been doing some digging, Mitnick paid me a visit. With some guys. No threats, all sweetness and light.”
I thought about Mitnick’s demeanor and how quickly I could have fallen into its influence, how natural it felt to want his approval. Shame colored my cheeks, but it was still dark, so I just told Atwell, “I’ve seen that routine. And?”
“He let me know he knew I had been digging. He knew that I had been watching him, which of his associates I’d been looking into. Hell, he even knew what I had included in my last report.” Atwell stopped his quick speech for a deep inhale, recapturing whatever fear he had previously expelled. His eyes pooled with dread, enlarging until I thought he might try to make a run for it. Instead he whispered, “They know everything. Whatever this Avoritet is, it’s not just some Russian gangster trying to capture a piece of the Mediterranean sun.”
There was a part of me that always made smart ass remarks in mission briefings when we knew things were going to be dangerous. That part popped up now and I countered with, “He’s from Belarus.”
Atwell blinked again. “What?”
“Mitnick. You said he was Belarus.”
The cemetery dirt of Atwell’s eyes contracted again, his pride so spiteful that even now the contradiction brought him back to the alley. “Whatever he is, Mitnick suggested that my time would be better spent watching Sartre.” He shrugged and sniffed, wiping the blood from his nose. “So that’s what I’ve been doing.”
I felt my loathing for Atwell combine with my own shame at being involved in this. All of that dropped into my gut and swelling feet. “You piece of shit. You didn’t even have to be threatened to betray your country. You just had to sense a threat.”
To read the next chapter, go here.
To read the previous chapter, go here.
To read a polished and published prequel to this story go here.
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