September 23rd 2002.
The litany of 'Oh Christ, Oh Fuck. Shit buggery fuck.' kept running through Alex's brain. Mark was dead. What the hell was Alex meant to do? Some fucking insane gang war had broken out. Alex had been in the toilet when the shooting started. He had squeezed out of a broken window and legged it. Cops and State Security were now everywhere. Alex milled about in the crowd and had seen the line of thirty bodies. Mark and his grey suit and cowboy boots was easily recognizable even as a corpse, so was the slime-ball Zelinski by his girth. Donovan was the lead agent. Alex was there as a trade, a blond english virgin for Zelinski to enjoy. That sicko liked kids to play with. John Crawley thought trading Alex was acceptable to get an operative deep cover in with Zelinski's mob.
Alex had nothing. No money, no passport or any form of identity papers and he was dressed like a rent boy. He did not know Moscow at all. No one had given him any relevant intel. He did not know any safe houses, contacts or even if there was any back up team. Thank god he'd studied russian language tapes before he came here. He was on his own. In three hours he's bought a more respectable outfit after pickpocketing several tourists. He had enough dollars for a hotel but without a passport he could not risk it. He wandered round to the apartment where he'd stayed with Mark. The place had been turned over. With nothing familiar, Alex had to beg or steal enough money to buy papers, and then get the fuck out of Dodge.
The first night he slept under a bridge in Gorky Park. Hours spent going over events as he replayed the past week over and over in his head. He had the dreadful feeling he had just been burned. He was as good as dead. He posted three letters, just a note to his friends, quick goodbyes to his past life. Did he really have anything to go back to? He had to get into a gang. Earn money, but with a credible legend. He could not read russian. He had just enough knowledge of Cuba to pull off being half russian, half cuban; in Moscow to look for family. The only russians he knew were a billionaire nutcase, a general and an assassin, all dead. Maybe he could play it that he was looking for a friends of his father's. He wandered into town and traded dollars for rubles. Now he needed a knife and a gun.
He kept moving so not to encroach on anyone's turf. To be homeless was to be the equivalent of invisible. He had to wait until everything blew over or he'd get picked up by state security or worse MI6. He became sort of friends to another homeless kid, Vlad. Vlad was not the brightest but he was an excellent decoy for scams and stealing. He also had contacts with the local minor criminals. Alex had became Sasha. No one cared about his background. He just existed. Their lives before the streets were irrelevant. He was here to survive, not get caught. Being without papers was a criminal offence in its self. Most kids on the streets worked to buy fake identities so the authorities could not catch up with them. Being on the streets was better than home, the orphanage or youth detention centre. After two weeks, Alex worked as a runner, he got more interesting jobs as he could speak English and Spanish. He learned of a Cuban doctor and dentist without work permits doing under the counter work. Alex skimmed while stealing, taking a cut. He had to erase all clues to his past. When he disappeared for a day and came back with a 'broken nose', he passed it off as being beaten and patched up. Not the fact he'd had a basic nose job and then he had his fillings replaced with gold. He could now pass for russian, all traces of British dental work erased.
He stood looking a contact who stated he could get Alex out of Russia with a shipment to America. Alex grasped at this lifeline like a fool. The mafia contacts reeled in street kids with the promise of America and they ended up in the clutches of a gang of child smugglers.