Robert Browne - The Paradise Prophecy

It didn’t help that the meeting place was a brothel. He found it with little trouble, near the middle of the block, and took a flight of bright red stairs up to an equally bright red door.

He knocked. Waited. And a moment later it opened a crack and a tall, bored-looking brunette peeked out, a Black Devil cigarette dangling between her lips.

She blew smoke out of the side of her mouth and said something in Dutch that he didn’t understand.

“I’m here to see Vogler,” he said in Russian, gesturing for her to open up.

Nodding, the woman swung the door wide to reveal that she wore only a tiny pair of pink panties, and Dimitri couldn’t keep himself from staring. She gestured him past her, and he stepped into a darkened room that could only be described as a bar or, more accurately, a social club. It was the same as any social club in Balta, men huddled at tables, nursing vodka or scotch. But in this place, each of those men had a half-naked woman hanging on to him.

Kovalenko forced himself to think of Yalena, which may or may not have been a wise thing to do. Slinging his backpack over his shoulder, he followed his hostess to another set of steps at the back of the room, where she gestured him upstairs.

“ Bedankt ,” he said, the only Dutch word he knew, thinking he’d like very much to thank her more properly.

She blew smoke at him, as bored as ever, then turned and walked away.

Dimitri moved up the steps and found himself in a long hallway full of doors. These, he knew, were the courtesy rooms, and because none of them had been soundproofed, it was readily apparent what those courtesies were. He remembered a place very similar to this one, when he himself had occupied one of these rooms. To his amazement, he had discovered that the moans and groans around him had only heightened his pleasure.

But Dimitri drove such thoughts from his mind. He had business to attend to. At the end of the hall, there was yet another small set of steps leading to yet another door, and he made his way to it and knocked.

A moment later, the door was opened by a large, blond mercenary type wearing a shoulder harness, the grip of a nine millimeter protruding from its holster. Dimitri recognized him as one of the German’s men.

The mercenary gave him the once-over, then gestured him inside. And the moment Dimitri crossed the threshold, a sense of unease washed over him and he wondered if he had been foolish in coming here.

Wouldn’t it have been wiser to pick a more public meeting place?

The room was dimly lit, dominated by a large wooden desk. Behind that desk sat a dark silhouette that, for a brief moment, did not seem quite human to Dimitri. He felt his gut tighten at the sight of it and had the sudden urge to flee.

Then a lamp went on and he breathed a sigh of relief as Meinhard Vogler looked up at him and smiled. “Please, Mr. Kovalenko, have a seat.”

Dimitri did as he was told, pulling his backpack into his lap. He had met Vogler only once before and could not help being intimidated by him.

A former member of East Germany’s Office for National Security, Vogler had left service just months before the wall came down, only to reemerge several years later as the head of L4, a massive, worldwide private security firm that had its fingerprints on nearly every military skirmish within recent memory.

Only a few years ago, L4 had been one of the big three private firms working for the U.S. government to help quell unrest in central Asia. But bad publicity and a new president now limited their involvement to the periphery, and Dimitri-through his contacts in the Russian mafia-knew that they were looking for ways to recoup their losses. And because they no longer had any allegiance to a particular nation, they didn’t seem to care how they accomplished this. Assuming they ever had.

It had occurred to Dimitri that what he was offering them might one day fall into the hands of someone quite dangerous (as if these people weren’t dangerous enough), but he banished such thoughts to the part of his brain where the naked woman and the chorus of moans and groans now resided.

The less he thought about such things, the better off he’d be, and he had no desire to jeopardize this transaction with a sudden attack of conscience.

“So,” Vogler said to him in Russian, “you’ve brought us the sample?”

It was only then that Dimitri realized that someone was standing in the shadows behind the German. A tall man in an impeccably pressed suit whose face was obscured by darkness.

A shudder ran through Dimitri. Why hadn’t he noticed him before?

His surprise must have shown in his eyes, because Vogler smiled. “I must apologize. I neglected to inform you that there would be someone joining us tonight.”

“Why do I think that wasn’t a mistake?”

Vogler’s smile faded. “Believe what you must. In any case, I’d like you to meet my associate, Mr. Radek. He’ll be attending to the financial end of our arrangement.”

The man in the shadows stepped forward then, and Dimitri’s surprise deepened.

He had seen Radek before. Not in the flesh, but on CNN International, which he and Yalena watched with some regularity.

Raymond Radek was an American investment banker and former chairman of NASDAQ, who had only recently been cleared of all charges of investor fraud that had been leveled against him by the U.S. Department of Justice. A relatively young man, he was nevertheless a Wall Street icon who rose to power quickly and, some said, ruthlessly. The U.S. Attorney’s failure to bring him to trial-thanks to the recanting of testimony by several witnesses-had been a triumph for Radek. One that was trumpeted worldwide. And though his stature in the halls of finance had been diminished by these accusations and the severe downturn in the world economy of late, he was still a force to be reckoned with.

But nothing Dimitri had seen or heard had ever connected Radek with Vogler and L4, and his presence here seemed odd, to say the least. Dimitri wondered if he should be asking for more money.

Radek said nothing to him. Merely nodded.

Dimitri returned the nod and Vogler said, “Now that we all know one another, shall we take a look at that sample?”

Kovalenko stared at the two men, wondering again if he’d made a mistake in coming here.

But then it didn’t much matter at this point, did it?

Unzipping a pocket of his backpack, he reached inside and handed a small metal cylinder across to Vogler, who then gestured to the blond mercenary and passed it off to him.

They all sat in silence as the mercenary went to a corner of the room and fiddled with the cylinder. He came back a few minutes later and nodded to Vogler.

Vogler looked across at Dimitri, and it could have been a trick of the light, but Dimitri was again struck by the notion that there was something not quite human about the man. Something in his eyes.

“I have to say I’m impressed, Mr. Kovalenko. How much of the merchandise did you bring with you tonight?”

“Fifty pounds. Just as promised.”

Vogler’s eyebrows raised. “A man of your word. Even more impressive.”

He gestured to Radek and the businessman bent down, hefting a small suitcase onto the desk. Laying it flat, he spun it in Dimitri’s direction and opened it, showing him the two million euros in various denominations stacked neatly inside.

Dimitri felt something shake loose in his brain, as if a flood of opiates had suddenly been released and were slowly spreading throughout his body.

What an extraordinary sight.

And just as he was thinking what he and Yalena could to with so much money, Radek closed the suitcase, hiding the bills from view.

“I assume you have something for us?” Vogler said.