Kingmakers, Year Four

Chapter 8

8

Ivan Petrov

Krasnoyarsk

Thirty-two Years Ago

W hen the big Ukrainian is thrown in amongst the high-security inmates, I know someone will fight him the first day. A man that big always attracts trouble. He has to be taken down, like a hunting trophy. The bosses inside will want to force his fealty.

I’ve only been at Stark for a year, but I know how things work in the prison camp. This is what I’m learning, rather than the pitiful “educational programs” we’re supposed to undergo for re habilitation. I already know my calculus and my essay-writing—unlike most of the men here, I actually finished school.

This is a new sort of education, provided by my fellow inmates. Go in with a bachelor’s in petty drug trafficking, come out with a master’s in organized crime.

My father is Pakhan, but he’s a terrible teacher. Soft-hearted. Too eager for the approval of his own men. His territory has dwindled and dwindled, until even his uncles can no longer keep him in power.

He couldn’t keep his own son out of prison.

I’ll be a different kind of boss. With what I’ve learned here, and my brother Dominik at my side, I’m going to crush St. Petersburg under my heel. Not only will I recover every street, every neighborhood we once controlled, but I’m going to punish those families who thought they could swallow us whole, bite by bite. I will make them give back everything they took, and I’ll put every one of them under my control.

As soon as I get the fuck out of here.

Luckily, there’s only a few more months on my sentence. I was shoved in Stark during one of St. Petersburg’s cyclical crackdowns on drug trafficking. It was a harsh punishment for a first-time offense, but I can’t exactly blame them, knowing how many offenses I’ve committed without being caught.

This time I was betrayed .

Two dozen state police swarmed into my warehouse at the perfect moment to find my most recent shipment of powder—one of the only times I take personal possession of product.

I’m not an idiot. It’s no coincidence.

I suspect my father’s lieutenant.

I caught Rurik Oblast skimming money from his weekly collections. I punished him harshly, against my father’s wishes. I suppose this was Rurik’s revenge.

He took a year of my life. I’ll take all the years remaining from his. One of many action-items on my list as soon as I’m out of here.

For now, I watch the redheaded giant face off against Sobaka, a hulking enforcer who works for one of the incarcerated Moscow bosses.

You don’t end up in prison if you’re a well-connected Bratva. Being sent here means you’re out of favor with the high table, or one of your rivals has succeeded in hamstringing you. It means you’re weak, that even the cops and the judges don’t fear you.

The bosses inside fight for position even more violently than on the outside. They take no chances, and they show no mercy to unaffiliated prisoners like our Ukrainian friend.

He has no Malina brothers in here.

The only warning of the impending fight is a low whistle from one of Yuri Molotok’s men. The older prisoners scatter, and the guards monitoring our “daily exercise” of milling around a cement yard surrounded by chain-link fence suddenly become blind and deaf, turning their backs on us. They receive enough bribes from the bosses to mind their own business.

As long as no one escapes, the guards couldn’t care less what happens between these walls. Violent deaths are written down as “natural causes.”

When the guards get bored, they use fresh inmates as their own personal punching bags. Only last week, they forced the incoming prisoners to run down a corridor with their hands tied behind their back, while the guards kicked, pummeled, and pushed them from all sides, blasting Du Hast at deafening volume, and bellowing with laughter every time one of the guards landed a particularly good hit. One of those prisoners died three hours later of a ruptured spleen.

So I don’t expect any sympathy for the Ukrainian. More likely the guards will take bets on what looks to be a particularly entertaining match-up between the redheaded giant and Molotok’s most vicious enforcer.

Sobaka circles around the Ukrainian, his shaved head a stubbly bowling ball set directly on his bull-like shoulders, with almost no neck in between. Despite Sobaka’s height, he’s still a good four inches shorter than the Ukrainian, who might be the biggest man I’ve ever seen outside of a televised basketball game.

And this Ukrainian is no lanky basketball player. He’s got the build of a Viking—broad shoulders, barrel chest, long, ape-like arms. Though his head was shaved during intake like everyone else, the ruddy stubble on his scalp and cheeks still glints in the gray light.

Most interesting of all, he seems to have expected the whistle and the attack that comes without provocation, without warning. He patiently waits in the center of the yard as Sobaka rushes him.

Sobaka is a champion scrapper, veteran of a hundred prison-yard fights in the decade he’s been inside. He comes at the Ukrainian with shoulders hunched, fists upraised.

The Ukrainian waits with a dull look on his face, as if he intends to simply take the beating.

Then, as Sobaka draws back his fist for the first blow, the Ukrainian stoops with shocking speed, picks up a chunk of broken concrete, and smashes it into Sobaka’s temple.

Sobaka drops to the cement, legs twitching.

Molotok makes a sharp hissing sound to his men. Three more soldiers break free of his pack, running at the Ukrainian.

Fatally, they hesitate. They’re scared of the giant. They don’t act in coordination.

Like a bear harried by dogs, he swats them aside with devastating blows from his massive fists. He knocks several teeth out of Kruzinsky’s mouth, then bodily picks up Yamerin and throws him into Bolski. Both men skid across the yard, the rough cement rubbing their flesh raw .

The Ukrainian opens his arms wide, palms upraised, silently challenging the rest of the prisoners in the yard. When none step forward, he glances from boss to boss, easily picking them out of the crowd without foreknowledge, with only his own observation of where they stand in relation to their men.

His eyes fix on Molotok.

“You don’t send the stable boy to break the stallion,” the Ukrainian says, in perfect Russian. “Is that really your best?”

Molotok’s face congests with blood, his piggy eyes full of rage. I know he’s weighing his desire to see this red giant beaten against the possible humiliation of all his men failing to accomplish the task.

He satisfies himself with drawing his thumb across his fat neck in one jerky swipe, and then he spits on the ground, sealing his promise to see the Ukrainian dead, one way or another.

The Ukrainian looks utterly unconcerned. He clasps his hands behind his back and completes several more leisurely strolls around the yard before the guards call us back inside.

That night, I find myself next to the Ukrainian in the dinner line as we carry our trays forward to receive our portion of bread and stew.

“Is that all they intend to feed us?” he asks me, glowering at the thin soup.

I shrug. “It’s not always stew.”

“What else do we get? ”

“Sometimes there’s hash.”

“God almighty, I should have let those idiots kill me.”

We’re walking toward the tables together.

I should split apart from him. I don’t need the target painted on his back extended to mine.

But I’ll admit, I find this arrogant giant likable in a strange way. He’s a powerful fighter—if he survives the week, he could be a useful ally.

He seems to be thinking the same of me. He looks me over with an appraising eye, saying, “Why aren’t you sitting in place of honor in the yard, instead of those fat despots?”

“They leave me alone because I’ll be a Pakhan in St. Petersburg in short order. But my holdings are weak.”

“Time changes all things,” the giant says.

“Indeed it does.”

He drops down in the seat next to mine without asking permission. Alek and Vassi raise their eyebrows at me, wondering if it’s wise to allow the Ukrainian at our table.

I knew Alek on the outside. Vassi shares my cell.

I’ve built a small crew in prison. Not as big as the gangs amassed by those who have been locked up in here five, ten, twenty years. Still, a half-dozen men answer to me: those I’ve identified as intelligent, loyal, and useful .

The Ukrainian could be all those things.

“What’s your name?” Vassi demands.

“Moroz,” the giant says. “Marko Moroz.”

“I’ve never heard of you,” Alek says.

“Well you won’t forget me now, will you, boy?” Marko grins, pointing his spoon at Alek, its handle completely enveloped by his massive fist and only the battered top protruding.

“How did you end up in Stark?” Vassi inquires.

“Got in a brawl in Tosno. Broke somebody’s arm.”

“They put you in Stark for that?”

“Well.” Marko shrugs. “It was a cop’s arm.”

“How long did they give you?” I ask him.

“Only six months.”

I nod. We’ll be out around the same time.

Molotok waits three days to enact his revenge.

He sends four men, this time armed with shanks made from sharpened scrap smuggled out of the metal processing shop.

They come for Marko in the showers .

The guards retreat first, and as soon as they do, the most observant prisoners likewise melt away, having no interest in being present for the bloodbath.

I see Yamerin, Bolski, Alenin, and Dubov striding into the shower room, fully dressed. Yamerin, Bolski, and Alenin clutch their gunmetal gray, wickedly-edged blades, and Dubov a sock with a padlock in the toe that he can swing like a mace.

I’m naked myself, save for a towel. I have no weapon on me. I ought to leave with the others.

And yet, when I see Marko standing under the shower spray, his vast body thick with muscle, I think to myself it would be a waste for him to bleed out on these filthy tiles, stabbed a hundred times by these scavenging rats who could never hope to best him on their own.

They circle around Marko.

He turns off the water, the steam still thick in the air like a poisonous mist. I notice he hasn’t rinsed the soap from his skin, and I think I know the reason why.

He takes his towel from the hook. Instead of wrapping it around his waist, he twists the rough material in his hands, forming a rope.

As Yamerin slashes at him with his blade, Marko deftly wraps the towel around the shank and twists hard, jerking it out of Yamerin’s grip. Bolski and Dubov lunge at Marko, Bolski slashing him down the arm from shoulder to elbow, Dubov swinging his cosh .

I seize the nearest towel rack and wrench it out of the tile, the metal coming free from the wall with a screeching groan. Before Alenin can even turn, I hit him in the back of the head with the steel bar. He goes down like a felled tree, blood leaking out from under his head onto the wet tiles.

Meanwhile, Marko is wrestling Bolski, his soapy body so slippery that Bolski can’t get purchase. Marko flings Bolski against the wall, skull hitting tile with a sound like a dropped melon.

Dubov swings his cosh at me, howling threats for my interference. Marko dives at him from behind, taking out his knees. I bring the metal bar down on Dubov’s head.

The fight is over in a matter of minutes. The water running down the drain is as bloody as a biblical plague. And yet, Marko’s only injury is the slash on his arm.

He stands, turning the shower head on once more. He has to duck his head to stand beneath the spray, rinsing the last of the soap off his back.

Once he’s clean, I throw him a new towel.

“Thank you, my friend,” he says.

“Are you in a hurry to go back to Kyiv?” I ask him.

He rubs the towel across the short, coppery stubble on his head.

“Not particularly,” he says. “Why?”

“I have plans in St. Petersburg. I could use a man like you,” I say .

Marko wraps the towel around his waist, unable to tuck the end in because it barely goes around him.

“I’m no lieutenant,” he says. “I mean to become a boss myself.” He glances at the men on the floor. “But I do owe you a favor.”

“Work with me, then,” I say. “As partners. We split the profit. When the time comes, we part as friends. You go back home with the seeds to grow any fruit you like.”

There’s no need for me to wait until I’m free to begin amassing my army. I can do it right here, inside this prison.

With the exception of my brother, who is still young and learning, my family is weak and scattered. Marko’s is non-existent. Neither of us has a network of ready-made soldiers.

We’re the two biggest men in this prison. We can protect each other, and I can tighten my hold on the prisoners who already fear and respect me. They’d prefer my leadership to the petty dictatorship of Molotok and his ilk.

I’ll train my soldiers here. Once I’m free, St. Petersburg will be mine for the taking.

Marko holds out a hand to me, his fingers gory from the blood dripping down his arm.

“Brothers, then,” he says.

I already have a brother. But who says I can’t have another?

I take his hand and shake.

“Brothers,” I agree.