In the morning they breakfasted and discussed the plans for the day, working out what order to do everything in. First of all, Marius placed a call to his talislegger Georgi Kolarov, asking if he knew anyone local that might be interested in some dire wolf parts. They chatted for a few minutes, and Georgi promised to call him back shortly, once he'd checked with some people. Sure enough, he rang back quickly, advising Marius to go to the Borgein restaurant, on a road that ran parallel to the Silk Road. When he ordered, he was to make sure that the number 3092323 was visible on the table in some form, and he'd then be contacted.
The team saddled up and headed for the restaurant, not that far away from the motel. It was set on a largish plot, a squat flat-roof building that fronted onto a broad and straight road – by the looks of things what used to be the main road through this part of the city. With the coming of the Silk Road and its displacement of traffic a hundred yards away, it made for a great impromptu truck stop with plenty of parking and easy access. The team entered cautiously, but found the inside to be entirely as they expected – a low class restaurant with fading décor, cheap seats, but the smell of "honest" food, that would be favoured by truckers and manual workers.
A bored-looking waitress got them seated and showed them the menu – which was all written in the local script. She saw them struggling, and started to translate into rough and ready English, and Aswon followed carefully, studying the words and concentrating on what she was saying as he followed the printed word, increasing his understanding of the language as he did so. They ordered food, and when the waitress looked to Marius, he gave his order in English, and as he did so uncovered the data-slate, which displayed the number given to them in large clear text. The waitress paused for a moment, then nodded in understanding, took the rest of their orders and then headed to the kitchens. A minute later the chef appeared, wearing a set of stained and dirty whites, his huge belly peering out from under the tight top. He looked over at the team, and gave a somewhat obvious wink, then returned to the kitchens.
When the food arrived, the waitress handed them out across the table, muttering as she did so.
"And here is yours, and yours, and this is the special, and the side door in twenty minutes, and yours, and here is some complimentary wine for the table." The team nodded and thanked her, tucking into the food. It was hot, and appeared fresh, lightly spiced and entirely unidentifiable. The 'wine' was nothing more than red paint stripper though, setting off multiple alarms in Hunter's chemical analyser when he sniffed it. It was rough, but it wasn't adulterated – mostly they tried a sip, pulled a face and then pushed it to one side.
They ate rapidly, paid and then moved back to the truck, pulling to the side of the restaurant. As they approached, a set of double doors opened showing them a courtyard and the back door leading into the kitchens. The chef was there with two assistants, both of whom were smoking tight rollups. Marius and Tadibya took the lead, guiding them to the rear of the truck, and showing the trio the collection of chilled parts they had. The chef examined them closely, and after a nod from Marius, pulled one of the bags of body parts out of the fridge, turning it over in his hands and checking them out. He stared intently for a moment at the bag, then leaned out of the truck and glanced at the back wheel, then gave a snort of amusement.
"Hmm, not bad. Fresh enough to use, just. For these I give you five thousand, cash."
Marius glanced at Tadibya from the corner of his eye, but she just shrugged a little. Prices were volatile, and rare goods also had rare customers. She took a deep breath, and then spoke, describing how expertly they had been prepared, killed with a single blow in hand to hand combat, and other than a little cosmetic damage, were in excellent condition. Surely they were worth more than five? They haggled a little, with Tadibya supplying expert details that seemed to influence him.
"Ok, six, I give you six for them now." The deal was done, and the parts transferred over in exchange for credit onto their stick. With a handshake, they mounted up and headed north into the Vory controlled portion of the city.
Once their business was complete, they mounted up again, and placed a call to Odemoyd. He answered in a few rings, and sounded reasonably happy to hear from them. They arranged to meet in thirty minutes, in the same bar as last time. The roads were reasonably quiet as they headed through town – no drunk driver tried to kill them this morning, at least. On the way, they placed another call, this time to Kiril in the scrapyard. They advised him that they were back from their job, and just had to meet someone to get paid, and were wondering if they could bring in the truck to get started on the work? Kiril agreed, and told them to come over when they were ready.
They arrived in plenty of time, and parked the truck up in the street. Only one bouncer was present, the human male. Kai, Tadibya and Hunter got out of the truck, with Hunter heading in first to check the place out again. Once more, he insisted on checking out Tadibya's stick, and again she made a show of leaning on someone to support herself when her walking stick was checked. Otherwise, entry to the club was uneventful. This morning though, only three people were inside – the barman, busy moving dirt around in the glasses behind the bar, Odemoyd at his table, and one of the middle-aged prostitutes, who was sitting behind him and idly stroking his arm whilst she talked with him.
When they entered, Odemoyd said something to her, and she finished the shot in her glass, and headed over to the bar. Odemoyd looked over to Kai and beckoned him over to the table, and bade them to sit. The prostitute came back, carrying a bunch of shot glasses and a half bottle of Vodka. They exchanged glances as he poured for them, but accepted the drinks with thanks, and had at least a sip with him, recognising the protocol for doing business here.
Kai slid over the data chips, describing that they had continued surveillance on the target, as discussed, for seven days. That was a complete record of all observed data on the other team, their equipment, events in the valley, interested third parties, and the random events that had taken place. Odemoyd had pulled out a small pocket computer and was randomly scrolling through the data, and seemed to be impressed with the quality, quantity and presentation, nodding appreciatively.
"This is good. Strong data. Very good. Ok, I pay now. Six watchers, seven days… hmmm… I pay you seventy-four."
Kai froze, commanding his face to remain still and not show any emotion. Tadibya was less ready, and her expression was one of shock. She thought they were being paid about two thousand each for the week… this was closer to two thousand a day! Fortunately, Odemoyd was studying Kai intently, and not paying much attention to her.
Kai nodded in agreement, and passed over their credstick to Odemoyd, who transferred the credit over to them, gave a nod of thanks and finished his shot. Kai had another sip of vodka, barely a millilitre getting past his lips, but smacking his lips appreciatively as he put down the glass. They left the bar, keeping their eyes and ears open, and ready for trouble. Nothing stirred through, and nothing triggered an alarm, and their return to the truck was without incident.
They drove back round the outer ring road of the city, heading back towards the Silk Road and Kiril's place. Along the way they decided to head back to the motel they had stayed in the night before, and extend their rooms. If they stopped there, and Hunter and Tadibya transferred to the motorbikes, they could follow Kai and Marius as they drove to the yard – leaving Aswon and Shimazu to look after the room and their gear. They could get the truck sorted, and then give Marius and Kai a pillion ride back to the motel, until the truck was repaired. Simple.
The motel clerk seemed happy to have some people back again, charging them the same pittance as the previous night for the room, and then piling extras on top for things like hot water and electricity after 9pm… but it was still very little compared to a hotel in a more civilised place.
Kiril met them at the yard, and told them to just park up the truck by a large shed – the ramp was not clear of the last customer yet, but would be soon. He walked around with Marius to examine the fresh damage to the truck, whistling as he saw the state of the old wheel, and then tutting under his breath as he crouched under the truck and examined the axle and prop shaft. He frowned a little, and said that he would check things out, then pulled out his notebook, consulting some scrawled text there.
"Right, we fit Nitrous system, inline to main plant, plus expansion vessel and convertor kit. We add 30mm Krupp armour, on top of existing. Repair damage to axle and replace wheel. Fit rack to rear of truck for motorbikes."
"How about fitting a drone rack as well, maybe somewhere on the roof, if you have one", asked Marius. "Oh, and you mentioned that you had vehicles a little similar to this? Can you get a trailer to go with it?"
Kiril pulled out a pencil, and made some notes, conferring with Marius as to the size of the drones and the number to fit in the rack. He squinted a little, staring off into the distance at nothing particular as he ran through his mental inventory of gear, then nodded.
"Add to the bill, yes, just go ahead and install?"
Kai sighed a little, and nodded, then winked at Kiril, out of sight of Marius.
"Ok, will start this afternoon. Take three days. No, wait…. Four days, of course."
Marius, Kai, Tadibya and Hunter exchanged a glance, and looked confused.
"Well, no one work tomorrow, of course. No one would want them to work tomorrow either… no good for doing good work." Kiril looked at them, seeing their confusion grow. "Tonight is drinking party, see in new year. Tomorrow is promising never to drink again. Not for working."
A quick check of their phone confirmed the date – yes, it was New Year's Eve.
"You not celebrating? No party to go to?" asked Kiril. On seeing the shake of their head, he thought for a moment. "For customers paying cash, I like. You come to party tonight. There is cooked food, and much drink."
They exchanged glances, and nodded… it wasn't like they had any better plans really. Kai then asked Kiril if he had any cheap cars to rent, explaining that they didn't want them to do any "work" in, it was just for commuting around town whilst the truck was repaired and upgraded. They were shown a battered Traban, similar to many of the vehicles found in town, and told it was two hundred and fifty for a week, or the cost to replace if it was damaged for some reason. They agreed and took the keys, then headed back to the motel with the car, to wait until later on.
Once back at the motel, Tads said she wanted to go out into the countryside to do some rituals, and look for materials. It was agreed that Shimazu would go with her to keep an eye out, and provide protection – not because she was weak, but as a general matter of principle – anyone going out alone was not a good idea, particularly if they were going to go and concentrate on something intently.
As they headed off, the remaining four chatted about the data they had found on the laptop. A translation program was found on the matrix and downloaded, then transferred to the laptop which was being kept isolated from any external network – just in case. They read through the pages as they were translated, realising they had real pay-data here. Along with that came real risk though – if they tried to fence this to the wrong person, they could end up being hunted down by some very angry people. There was hundreds of pages of data, in a variety of formats, and it quickly became clear that it was a ledger of some kind, showing the proceeds from drug deals, protection rackets, smuggling runs, prostitution… an entire crime network for a city.
Just as they were about to head out, Tadibya looked over and said "We can probably work out what crime network it was, right? I mean, we have the ID for the courier. If we find his address, we can see what sector of the city he lived in, and whose control it comes under."
Marius started to tap away on the computer as Tadibya and Shimazu left the motel room, and started his search. Soon enough they had located the street address, which placed the courier in the south east part of town – an area controlled by the Kabul Maffiya. The question still remained though – who to try and sell the data to? They'd had dealings with Odemoyd, and that could mark them as being Vory in the eyes of many in Tashkent, it seemed. They could sell to him, but that would put them further in his corner, and mean that the Triads and Maffiya would definitely not want to do business with them. If they handed it over to the Maffiya, they would want to know what happened to their courier – and may not see why they should pay for the data at all. The Triads would no doubt be interested too, and could use the data to expand their influence – but if they team were known to have done this, it would poison their relationship with Odemoyd and might prevent further work from him. They could hand over to the authorities – if they could find any that were not bribed or in the pocket of a crime syndicate, that was. Or they could cast their net further afield. Whatever they chose, they were going to have to tread carefully, as they were going to make some powerful enemies one way or another.
Marius mentioned that he had a contact with someone who worked for Mossad… might they be far enough removed from their present situation to keep them relatively safe, but also powerful enough to make use of the information – and as important, had pockets deep enough to make it worthwhile – or at least worth the risk.
They agreed it was worth a try, and Marius pulled out his sat-phone, ensuring the encryption was operational. He placed the call, and was connected after a few rings. His contact was an officer in the hygiene standards department of the Turkish government, which allowed him to take all manner of strange phone calls and make visits to a variety of restaurants and cafes.
Marius started by talking about Kabul, and was advised that he had dialled the wrong number, indeed, the wrong country, and that they couldn't help him. He persisted for a few minutes, then realised that his contact either didn't recognise his voice – or didn't believe it was him and was refusing to be drawn in.
"Let me try this again. I'm calling about Kabul Kebabs. I had an awful meal. I think some of it was "Sauer Kraut". I paid a lot for the meal, thinking it was worth it."
There was silence from the other end of the line for a moment, then the voice asked if it could call him back in a moment. Marius passed over his number, and then hung up. Less than two minutes later, the phone rang, and his contact spoke tentatively.
"Marius?"
The background noise had changed significantly – it sounded like he was now in a café or a public place somewhere. Marius confirmed that no, he wasn't dead, just in hiding form his former employer, and yes, he'd prefer to keep it like that. Michael agreed, and then asked about the information that Marius had.
Marius sketched in the detail, providing some context and background to the information, and agreeing to send over a one page extract of the file for confirmation of quality and content. He waited whilst Michael read it through, and confirmed that yes – they had lots more of the same. His contact said that he would take a few hours, but he would do his best to get this handled straight away – but it was going to be tough, on the run up to New Year's Eve, as so many people were just not working…
Marius assured Michael that he understood, and thanked him for trying, confirming that they wanted a hundred thousand for the information in its entirety. After clearing the line, he briefed the others, and they waited for the others to return, just chilling in the motel room for a few hours.
Tadibya and Shimazu rode out of the city on the main highway, turning onto a small trail a few miles out. The bumpy trail was ill-maintained, but easy going for the scrambler, and it didn't take more than fifteen minutes to get to a natural outcropping of rock, overgrown with vegetation. Shimazu cleared a path through to the summit, and watched as Tadibya sat cross-legged, facing the setting sun and closed her eyes. Her breathing slowed and her body stilled as she meditated, seeking a state of peaceful stillness with her body and mind calm and at rest. Behind her Shimazu stood watch, facing out into the wilderness. Every few seconds, he practiced drawing his sword, the blade striking out like a flash, before it was returned to a guard position, then neatly re-sheathed. They stayed for a few hours, then mounted their bikes and returned to the motel, meeting up with the other four and getting ready to go to the party to see in the New Year.
