Grand Theft Auto: The Soviet Connection
Part I: Monsters and Men
Chapter VI: Honour Among Thieves
Tony Prince washed down another anxiety pill with a mouthful of vodka and lemonade, although its ration was mixed highly in the vodka's favour, making Tony's head swim.
The limousine took another sharp turn as it raced through Star Junction, running the occasional red light and earning shouts of abuse from taxi drivers that shared the road. One particularly aggressive taxi driver shouted after Tony's limo, claiming that his Russian boss had a cousin that would kick his ass. But Tony was used to these kind of threats. They were the kind that kept him alive. If not for them, Tony Prince would have forgotten how dangerous this city was a long time ago. And it was the forgetting that got men killed.
The sound of R&B blasting from stereo systems out of windows and alleyways was the first sing that they were now in North Holland. The sound was pain to Tony's tasteful ears.
"We're here," Tony told his driver as he tapped on the thin glass that separated them. "Drive slowly," he instructed him before rolling down his window and sticking his head out and searching up and down the streets with his eyes. "I know he lives around here somewhere."
The limo rolled through the streets at a snail's pace, allowing Tony a front seat look at the filth-ridden sewer that the neighbourhood North Holland has become in its many years.
Tony became distracted by the kids in the street. He watched as they rolled joints, exchanged bags of illegal substances and fought each other in the streets. Between the drug dealing, the gun crime and just the crime in general, North Holland may have been one of the city's most dangerous districts, but in Liberty City, there was always somewhere worse.
Tony pulled his head back inside the safety of the limo upon noticing some of the kids staring back suspiciously. Most of them, however, were too wrapped up in whatever trouble they were mixed up in to notice the man in the limousine watching them as he rolled past.
"Jesus, Merle," Tony droned to his driver, "what happened to this great city?" He wondered aloud, the only sign that Merle the driver was listening being a slight nod gave in response. "These kids, they have no idea how this world works," he complained quite hypocritically. "They're too busy snorting coke off of each other's dicks to realise that the world has so much more to offer them than this." He sighed. "I wish someone could have told me something like that when I was growing up," he confided in Merle as he rubbed his aching forehead. "Maybe then I'd have at least made it into BM magazine's top ten entrepreneurs of the year instead of being all the way down at number thirty-one," he continued to whine.
That was when Tony felt the limo come to a sudden halt as Merle slammed his foot on the brakes, causing the car to screech back at him viciously. "Merle! What the fuck!?" Tony cried as he rubbed his sore neck, fearing a bad case of whiplash has been caused.
Merle turned to face his boss, the glass that separated them having disappeared. Tony noticed he irritated look on Merle's face, and began to regret saying what he had said.
"Look, Mr Prince," Merle began, his eyes wide with fury, "I've been driving all kinds of people around this damned city for almost thirty years now," he explained. "I know these streets like the back of my hand, and there ain't nothing you could show me that would ever surprise me. It's what I have to listen people like you say that does surprise me," he explained, pointing his finger at Tony almost degradingly. "Every day I hear pieced of shit like you talk about how bad this city has become, how it's worse than ever, and how you wish you could do something to change it. Well, it's about time you people pulled your heads out of your asses and actually took around you, because it's people like you that are the reason these streets are the way they are!" Merle told him angrily as he stared at Tony with hateful eyes.
Tony had nothing to say. Perhaps it was because he knew what Merle had said to be true, but it was more likely due to the fact that he'd never been insulted by his own driver before. No one so much as dared insult Tony Prince, even if he was only BM magazine's thirty-first top entrepreneur of the year. "You're fired," he informed Merle pathetically.
"Don't worry," Merle reassured him as he took of his driver's hat. "I quit." He was about to step out of the limo when he turned back to Tony one last time. "You asked me what had happened to your great city." Merle reminded him. "The answer is, you did."
Slamming his door behind him, Merle left Tony Prince alone in the back of his limousine.
For longer than Tony had expected, he sat there, reflecting on what Merle had said. Perhaps he had been right. Maybe he was responsible for what had happened to this city. If that were true, then had had to fix it. That was, if it wasn't too late to do so.
An idea occurred to Tony seconds before the sound of someone tapping on his window pulled him out of his trance, meditation or whatever he would call that moment of silence.
When Tony saw the figure that stood at the limousine window, he managed to crack a smile.
"You look like you could use a driver," Luis Lopez pointed out from outside the limo.
"Dammit, Luis," Tony cursed with irritation, but Luis could see the smile on his face. "How do you always manage to catch me at my lowest point?" He wondered as Luis climbed inside.
Niko felt his teeth chatter every time they hit a speed bump.
Two armed men surrounded him. A third was driving the SUV, refusing to slow down for the bumps in the road. From what he could see, they were driving somewhere in Alderney City.
Petrovic's men attempted to have their own private conversation in Russian, which likely allowed to keep any other prisoners they took out of their conversations, leaving them scared, confused and alone. Lucky for Niko, they were speaking his native tongue.
But it appeared these three idiot had forgotten that.
"So, Petrovic wants him kept alive?" Boris asked confusedly to Sergey.
"For now," Sergey replied coldly from the driver's seat, his eyes fixed on the road.
"Kenny wants as many men as he can gather for job in Alderney," Ivan elaborated for Boris, who required the obvious to be pointed out for him regularly. "Which is why we go where we go now, to pick up fifth man," he explained, causing Niko to wonder who this fifth man was.
"Keep voices down!" Sergey ordered from the driver's seat. "Don't forget the yokel back there with you speaks our language!" He reminded Boris and Ivan.
"I speak your language because we were born in the same country," Niko explained to them.
Ivan threw the rifle in his hands to Niko's face, whipping him across the jaw and cracking his nose. He sat back and watched proudly as Niko held his bloody nose, refusing to cry in pain.
"IVAN!" Sergey barked. "Why the fuck did you do that?" He demanded to know.
"Because, this piece of shit dared to say that he shared our love for Mother Russia. This piece of shit, who slaughtered our friends, widowed their wives and orphaned their children," Ivan explained mournfully. "This piece of shit is no brother of ours." He spat at Niko's feet.
"We're here," Sergey announced as he pulled the SUV to a halt at the side of the road.
Niko pulled his hands from his bloody face to see a figure standing outside the SUV, his silhouette large and strong. He heard Ivan pull the door open, and the figure step inside.
"Niko Bellic," the man said smugly as he stood over him, looking down at the bloody mess.
Niko, who could see only red, wiped the blood from his eyes to see Gordon Sargent stood over him, a rifle over one shoulder and a cigarette in his mouth.
"It's been a while," Gordon said before taking a seat opposite Niko as Sergey began the drive back, speeding up for every bump in the road that he saw.
"So, Petrovic wants to meet," Luis recapped, "you don't know when, where, or even why?"
"I know how it sounds," Tony insisted from beside Luis as they sat together in the backseats of the abandoned limousine. "But how can I refuse? This is Kenny Petrovic we're talking about!" Tony reminded him in a panic. "If we were a no show, he have both our heads!"
Luis stroked his chin thoughtfully. "Well, I guess we'll have to… Wait," he said, a thought suddenly occurring to him. "What do you mean "we"?" He asked Tony all of a sudden.
But Tony knew what a paranoid Luis Lopez meant. "He wants you there too, Luis," Tony explained. "Petrovic specifically mentioned my "pretty boy bodyguard" when his message was delivered," he went on. "Surely he could have only meant you," he remarked.
"Fuck you," Luis replied to Tony's criticism. Who was he to call "pretty boy", after all?
"The truth is, Luis, I'm scared," Tony admitted, his head bowed in shame. "I've nowhere else to turn to. I've got no contacts," he explained. "But you do," he told Luis, whose expression suddenly changed from intrigued to disappointed. So that was what this was all about.
Luis sighed. "What do you want me to do?" He asked Tony begrudgingly.
"Listen, Luis, whether I like it or not, this thing is happening," he explained, leaning closer to Luis and invading his personal space, although that wasn't exactly unlike Tony. "I'm gonna need some security. And, frankly, if this all goes to hell, you're not gonna be enough."
Tony pulled out his wallet. "I want you to gather as many able bodies as you can. I don't care if they're hitmen, friends of yours or just some gangbangers you pull from the street, so long as they can use a gun, they're of use to me," he explained as he rifled through his wallet.
"What about Armando and Henrique?" He asked. "They can handle themselves."
"Then that's good enough for me," Tony declared before pulling a stack of dollar bills from his wallet. "Here," he said, handing the stack to Luis, as if he had no use for it. "For you trouble."
But Luis shook his head. "No, man," he declined, "I'm not taking your money." He noticed the confused look on Tony's face. "This is one final favour, from me to you. After this, I'm done."
"I've heard that one before," Tony told Luis with a smile before picking up his phone and dialling the number of Kenny Petrovic, with whom he would settle on the meeting place of Tony's penthouse in Westdyke at the hour of 16:00 that day.
"No guns," Petrovic would demand. Tony agreed, but Petrovic would not see the wide smile on Tony's face that suggested otherwise.
"Hey, what the fuck is this?" Packie questioned from the backseat of Detective Hollis Tenpenny's mud-brown sedan. This wasn't the first time Packie had found himself in the back of a police car, and it most certainly wouldn't be his last. "Would you fucking talk to me?"
"This is the closest thing I have to a plan," the otherwise silent detective muttered.
"Where are you taking me?" Packie demanded to knock, kicking furiously at Hollis' chair.
"Trust me, you're gonna like this," Hollis assured him sinisterly. "You're friend, Niko Bellic? I assume he's the one you were about to put out a hit on?" Hollis asked. He checked his rear-view mirror, and the look on Packie's face was enough to tell him he had been right. "Yes, well, there's a much better way to go about that," he explained. "You want to see this guy brought down, I can help you," Hollis told Packie surely. "Niko Bellic is currently a prisoner of Kenny Petrovic, meaning he won't be seeing daylight for a while. But my man on the inside knows exactly where he is, or claims to, at least," he explained. "That's where you come in."
"How's that?" Packie asked.
"I'm not sure how much I can rely on my inside man, he could have flipped a long time ago. There's no honour among thieves, after all," Hollis explained bluntly. "You're my Plan B."
"And why would I help you?" Packie wondered curiously.
"You really wanna burn this guys down?" Hollis asked, and he saw Packie nod. "Then let's do it together," he said coldly. "And stop kicking my fucking chair."
CONTINUES IN CHAPTER VII.
Hey, guys! Thanks for reading this chapter and I really hope you enjoyed this chapter's focus on Luis and Tony. Next time, we see Tony's meet with Petrovic finally go down. Just a heads up, things are about to get really crazy in the next couple of chapters. So, thanks everyone who has stuck with the story this long. If you could leave a REVIEW for this chapter, that would be extra great!
Thanks again and I'll see you guys again soon for another update!
-George
