THE DRAGON WAS WAITING in Andrei Volovoi’s home.
The loft was a mess. It reeked of marijuana and dirty laundry and burnt fish, and it was filled, as always, with idiots.
Volovoi felt the tension as soon as he walked in the door. A couple of foot soldiers sat on his leather couch, their women beside them. Normally, the soldiers would be playing video games, sharing a joint. The women would be bored as corpses. Today, though, the women sat as rigid as the soldiers. They weren’t speaking to one another. The TV played sports highlights on mute.
One of the soldiers gestured out at the balcony. “He’s out there.”
Shit. Volovoi followed the man’s eyes to the windows. Couldn’t see anyone in the darkness outside. Knew, though, instinctively, who the soldier meant.
The Dragon was here.
> > >
ANDREI VOLOVOI had not meant to go into business with the man his men knew only as the Dragon. He’d never intended to partner with anyone when he’d started importing women from the Old Country. He’d been a petty thug, a lowlife like the idiots on his couch, a new arrival in America tempted by music videos and flashy action movies. He’d struggled and starved for years before he’d hit upon his idea.
His idea was women. America was a country full of men accustomed to buying whatever they pleased, be it land, luxury cars, or political influence. Why should sex be any different? In Romania, Volovoi knew swarms of eager, starry-eyed young women, as desperate as he to make a mark on the New World. In America, he saw opportunity, an ocean of wealth and a dwindling morality.
He’d imagined the scheme would be easy to execute. A shipping container full of fresh product, all of them believing they were destined for happy, glamorous, American lives. They would arrive terrified, disoriented, helpless, and he would sell them to pimps and brothel owners at a terrific markup. Sex was a commodity. Young women were currency. Andrei Volovoi would import them and make himself rich.
It was not, as it turned out, that easy. No matter how dumb and impressionable the young women may have been, they still had eyes and ears. They still saw and heard and remembered, and sometimes they escaped. Sometimes, the police raided brothels. Sometimes, the women told their stories.
Volovoi had not been aware how close he was to disaster until the Dragon found him. Until he saw, in disturbing detail, how near the American authorities were to closing down his operation.
“You cannot simply ship boxes of women, Andrei,” the Dragon had told him, smiling his devil smile. “Sooner or later, somebody will notice. And if you haven’t taken the steps to protect yourself”—the Dragon mimed a knife to his throat—“you will not be in business very long.”
The Dragon brought capital, enough money to expand Volovoi’s operation tenfold. He also brought expertise, culled from years of ruthless, back-alley dealings and criminal enterprise.
The Dragon helped Volovoi hide his operation under layer upon layer of shell corporations and false fronts, behind byzantine trails of corporate ownership, anything to bypass the Americans and their laws. He was as good as his word. Volovoi’s basement operation soon blossomed into a flourishing business; revenue soared, and the authorities lost the trail. Volovoi bought a Cadillac, moved into a swank penthouse loft. And the women kept coming in their boxes.
But the Dragon’s knowledge didn’t come cheap. Even as the boxes multiplied and the customer base grew, Volovoi struggled to make a profit. The Dragon wanted royalties on his investment. Percentages on every dollar. And Volovoi, loath as he was to admit it, could hardly keep up.
Business was booming. Profits were not. Still, the Dragon wanted to be paid. And now that Bogdan Urzica had killed that police officer, Andrei Volovoi had one more worry to add to his list.
> > >
VOLOVOI PAUSED FOR A MOMENT at the balcony door. Then he pushed the door open and stepped out into the night. It was warm again, humid. The day’s heat wafted up, as if from a furnace, from the city streets below, but still the figure at the railing wore an overcoat, long and black and punk rock. Volovoi had rarely seen the Dragon without the coat; it complemented his spiky hair and coarse, wiry black beard, and made the gangster look like some kind of heavy metal rock icon or something—assuming you didn’t notice the long, wicked knife at his belt.
The Dragon grinned as Volovoi approached, that devil smile, wide, all teeth and barely disguised menace. “Andrei,” he said. “Here you are, at last.”
Volovoi hesitated. Then he shook the gangster’s hand. “To what do I owe the honor?” he asked.
“You are behind on your payments.” The Dragon kept his tone conversational, but Volovoi felt the danger in the man’s voice, regardless, like the blade of a knife to his throat. “What’s going on, Andrei?”
Volovoi tried not to betray his fear. His business partner had not earned his mantle through acts of kindness and decency. No, he was named after the balaur, the fearsome dragon of Romanian mythology. He’d earned his nickname peddling weapons and women during the insurgencies in the Baltic states, where his appetite for blood and his relentless greed made a natural pairing.
“I apologize to you sincerely,” Volovoi told the gangster. “Our profits are down, but I have been trying to reduce overhead. Streamline the operation. You will get your late payment as soon as this latest shipment is fully delivered.”
“And the next payment, Andrei?” the Dragon said, his lips pursed. “When will it come?”
“I am ordering more women from our supplier,” Volovoi said. “My buyers are lined up and ready. Business is growing. It is only a matter of time before our profits catch up.”
The Dragon didn’t answer for a moment. Left Volovoi hanging, wondering, his eyes drifting down to the knife on the gangster’s belt.
“Your business isn’t the problem,” the Dragon said, finally. “It’s your buyers, Andrei. They’re too small for our operation.”
“So you have said,” Volovoi replied. “But as our reputation grows, so does our reach. We have nearly thirty clients ready to buy women from us. They are—”
“They are nobodies,” the Dragon said. “They are small-town operators. They are where, Andrei? Duluth, Minnesota. Chicago, Illinois. Pittsburgh. Saint Louis. Reno, Nevada. They are nowhere, Andrei, nowhere that matters.”
Volovoi followed the man’s eyes. “You still think we should expand to New York.”
“I don’t just think it, Andrei,” the Dragon said. “I have clients willing to pay ten times what your buyers pay for a woman now. They’re all stinking fucking rich, and they’re desperate to buy. We could drown ourselves in money if we tapped into the market.”
Volovoi said nothing. He’d had this conversation with the Dragon before, and he knew what the gangster’s wealthy friends expected for their money: not women, but girls, the younger the better. The Dragon’s Manhattan friends were perverts and pedophiles—wealthy, yes, but still the scum of the earth—and every time Volovoi considered expansion, he pictured his young nieces instead.
“I am not ready to expand to this market,” Volovoi said finally. “I will streamline my business. You will be paid.”
The Dragon shrugged. “Someday you’ll see things my way, Andrei,” he said, and smiled that unpleasant smile again. “At least I hope you do. I would hate to have to terminate our partnership over something so stupid.”
Volovoi was careful to keep his face expressionless, but he couldn’t chase the chill that coursed through his body. The Dragon was not known for his patience, or his mercy. If he terminated the partnership, he would terminate Volovoi with it.
Volovoi had resisted the Dragon’s Manhattan overtures thus far. He did not intend to give in.
All the same, he’d recently instructed his thugs to stockpile the youngest-looking girls from each new shipment of women, just in case. Just in case profits continued to suffer, and things became desperate.
Successful businessmen planned ahead. They made sure they had options. Volovoi tried to emulate that mentality. Still, he could see little fun in crawling further into bed with the Dragon. He hoped fervently that things wouldn’t become desperate.
He eyed the Dragon again, thought of Bogdan Urzica and the missing girl. Wondered how in the hell he was going to sleep at night now.