Whirlwind

15

Moscow, Russia

A world away from the devastation in Texas, Pavel Gromov waited in his black Mercedes on the western side of the megacity.

He was at the edge of Filevsky Park, a glorious stretch of nature along the Moskva River favored by Catherine the Great. Parked across the street from the Palatial Elite Hotel, Gromov held a device with a small screen showing live video of a wedding reception taking place on the top floor. The images flowed from a camera his men had covertly installed in the luxury banquet suite.

He waited with the patience of a predator.

Gromov was in his mid-sixties and had the small, piercing eyes of a king cobra. They never betrayed his sadness at all he’d lost through the disintegration of the Brotherhood, the vory v zakone. They were a special class of Russian criminals who abided by old rules. But over the years the Brotherhood had fractured, the codes were ignored. Gang turned against gang in territorial wars.

Even Gromov, a powerful old vor-or mobster-and respected businessman with enterprises around the world, who’d implored the others to return to the organization’s harmony, had paid an unbearable price.

He opened the image on his cell phone and met the happy faces of three men in their twenties, smiling and shirtless during a holiday at the Black Sea. Two of the three displayed their tattoos with pride.

There was Anton, his firstborn, a rock-hard, smart, calculating warrior, partial to Italian tailored suits. Gromov was eager for Anton to assume his mantle until the night two years ago when his body was found on a meat hook in the cooler of a side street butcher shop in Volkhonka.

Dmitri, the middle son, was tightly wound but fiercely loyal and poised to hurt anyone who failed to show Gromov respect. He sought vengeance on his own. Six months after they’d buried Anton, Dmitri was shot fifty times at a traffic stop in Central Moscow.

Six months later to the day, Gromov received a delivery of a gift cake. When he opened the box in his kitchen he found the head of Fyodor, his youngest. Once more, pain penetrated Gromov to the core of his being.

Why Fyodor?

Fyodor had never been involved in the business. Everyone knew. Fyodor never bore a tattoo, never wanted to be part of the vory life. Fyodor was a librarian, a writer who loved the arts. His “soft son,” who was very secretive and so shy he didn’t even have a girl.

Gromov knew that his enemies murdered his boys, even gentle, innocent Fyodor, to cause him maximum agony, to ensure the end of the Gromov name, to eliminate him completely. Anton and Dmitri had married but had not yet started families. Gromov’s bloodline ended with him. His enemies wanted him to die an anguished old man with no one to assume his throne.

Gromov knew who was responsible. He waited and he planned. Over time he exacted his vengeance, killing his enemies one by one using methods that cast suspicion firmly on other enemies.

Let the jackals devour themselves.

Today, the last and biggest guilty enemy would pay.

Gromov glanced at his wedding surveillance screen. Now they were wheeling out the multitiered wedding cake. Good. There was laughing, drinking. Joy filled the room. Now, his enemy’s daughter and her new husband gripped the knife to cut the cake. All smiles and love everlasting.

Gromov lifted his head casually to peer over his glasses at his cell phone with the care of a veteran surgeon. He pressed numbers on his cell phone, its keypad chiming softly. The photograph of his three dead sons vanished from the screen as the detonation code appeared.

Now.

Gromov pressed Send.

He blinked and glanced up to the hotel’s top floor in time to feel a slight concussion thud wave, hear the full explosion as the fireball streaked from the suite propelling debris and bodies to the street below.

Gromov studied the scene the way a coffin maker studies a fresh cut piece of wood. Satisfied, he tapped his driver’s shoulder.

For a few dying seconds the flames reflected on the car’s gleaming black body as it glided into the night.

Late the next morning, Gromov sipped tea while reading a newspaper at an outdoor café on Gorky Street.

Screaming across the front page was an article on the deaths of thirty-three people in the bombing of a wedding party. The attack killed the target, Igor Zelin, a feared crime boss.

Gromov could not bear looking at the news picture of Zelin’s daughter. She was a beautiful young bride. Her body was found in the street below. Gromov’s vengeance tasted of bile. It sickened him to realize what he had become, and he mourned it all.

Above everything, he grieved for himself, for his loss of a direct bloodline. For Gromov had dreamed that one day his grandson would establish a legitimate business, one in which Russians did not kill other Russians. Something noble that would endure.

But that dream had been taken from him.

He gazed up at the distant spires of the Kremlin.

What was left for him?

Yes, he had money, he had power, but it meant nothing without his sons, without a legacy. Now, old age and death awaited him. And after Gromov died there would be nothing.

A shadow passed over his table and a huge man sat across from Gromov, revealing familiar gold crowns when he smiled at the headline.

“They say it’s obviously the work of the Chechens.”

“It could be,” Gromov said.

“Zelin had made many enemies.” The big man winked.

“Good to see you, Aleksey. It’s been too long.”

“I am sorry. I’ve been out of touch, taking care of things in Istanbul. I’ve been back for two months now, catching up. I heard about the boys. My condolences, Pavel. No man should have to bury his sons.”

“The price we pay for the lives we’ve lived.”

Gromov knew the sympathy in Aleksey Linevich’s eyes was heartfelt. The two men had been friends since boyhood. They talked for half an hour, until Aleksey’s phone vibrated and he checked the message.

“I must go,” Linevich said, suddenly remembering. “Yes. How stupid of me. The failings of old age, I almost forgot. My wife recently heard a wild rumor about Fyodor.”

“What is it?”

“She belongs to a Pushkin literary group and was at a publisher’s party last week, when she overheard a few women gossiping that, before his death, Fyodor Gromov had a girlfriend and she was pregnant with his child. It’s crazy, I know. Had you heard of this, Pavel?”

Gromov was dazed. He had a grandchild?

“Pavel?”

“No, no, I had not heard this.”

“Well, you know how the hens cluck away. It’s a terrible thing to say and likely untrue.”

As Gromov digested the possibility, hope trickled into his heart.

“Could you possibly find out more for me, Aleksey?”

Gromov’s friend nodded seriously.

“I’ll speak with my wife. I’ll get you more information quickly.”

“Yes, please.” Gromov stood, shaking his friend’s hand, watching him leave before he sat down alone, again. Thinking.

Fyodor, a girlfriend-a pregnant girlfriend? Could it be? No. Most likely, as Aleksey says, it’s bad gossip. But how does such gossip get started? What if it’s true?

I have a grandchild.