Leonid got up from the dining room table where he and Valentin were playing poker with Bykov’s people. He was already up forty grand, but for now it was nothing more than play money; in the end the six of them would settle up. There was certainly enough money between them.
He was bored, but then he and his people out at the Beach had only been doing the few odd jobs here and there. Mostly hijacking trucks of sides of beef from the farms and selling them for twenty cents on the dollar to a local supplier, who processed the meat and distributed it to grocery stores across the river in Manhattan. Sometimes they got lucky with cartons of cigarettes, and once with fur coats that went to places upstate where the anti-fur liberals weren’t so visible.
Often some of the eleven guys would chip in and buy a couple of whores for the night, but for the past three months it had been same-old-same-old, and this half mil had seemed almost heaven-sent.
His two biggest problems lately were keeping the crew reasonably sober in case something did come up, and paying the increased hush money the local cops were demanding. He wanted to kill a couple of the bastards, but that would lead nowhere except jail.
In the kitchen he got a bottle of Evian from the fridge and brought it to the kitchen table, where he had a drink, then took out his 9mm Steyr GB, unloaded it, and began checking for any signs he’d left lint behind after the last cleaning. The Austrian double-action automatic pistol, with its eighteen-round detachable magazine, was an old friend. He’d taken it from the body of an American Special Forces guy he’d killed behind a bar in Kabul about ten years ago.
After he was posted back to Moscow when his eighteen months of undercover work were done, he’d bought a suppressor from a dealer of weapons used by American soldiers.
Bykov came in, grabbed a carton of milk from the fridge, and sat down across from Leonid. “I haven’t seen one of those guns in a long time,” he said.
Leonid handed him the pistol butt-first, and Bykov held it in his right hand, getting a feel for the weight and the grip. “Supposed to be a good weapon.”
“It tolerates bad ammunition and even a bit of mud and sand now and then.”
“As long as it hits what you point it at,” Bykov said, handing it back.
“Hasn’t failed me yet, though it hasn’t got much use lately.”
The two men were silent for a bit, until Bykov leaned back. “How’s it going over here for you?”
“Tolerable,” Leonid said. “But I think it’s getting to be time to bail out somewhere.”
“Any place in mind?”
“My French isn’t bad.”
“Marseille?”
“It’s an idea,” Leonid said. “How about you? What brings you to this side of the pond? Something interesting?”
Bykov shrugged. “Not really. But our employers have deep pockets.”
“I’d say. Five hundred large for a simple street grab is good. What about afterward?”
“This one’s going to be short and sweet, and we’ll be home before the dust settles. Could be something else in the works in Saudi Arabia I might be able to use a little help with.”
“What about this crew?”
“There’ll be plenty of work for all of us.”
“Can you give me a clue?”
“It’s an op in the desert outside Medina. A cousin of MBS is evidently about ready to try a power grab with the help of an American crew. We’d be there as backup.”
“For the cousin or the prince?”
“The prince, naturally. And this one could have the backing of a player in Moscow. The president would love to get a foot in the door over there, maybe steal a few jet deals from the Americans.”
“Power politics,” Leonid said. “Dangerous.”
“Lucrative,” Bykov replied.
Leonid worked the Steyr’s slide a couple of times, then seated the magazine and jacked a round into the firing chamber before laying the pistol on the table. “My guys like it here.”
“It’d just be you.”
“I’ll think about it.”