Марк Грини - One Minute Out

The Greek oversaw the Southern European trafficking channels, from Turkey to the south and Ukraine to the north, all the way to the terminus of his territory on the eastern edge of Western Europe. He’d built an empire over decades: drugs, guns, sex trafficking, labor trafficking, illegal immigration. He had made hundreds of millions of euros in these endeavors. But the pipeline of women trafficked for sex work from Eastern Europe into the West was his most profitable revenue stream, and he was only a regional director of a much larger enterprise, known to those involved as the Consortium.

Kostas wondered how much the person who ran the operation earned from his European network, and he marveled at his best guess. He had no idea who this person was; he himself worked through the Consortium’s Director of operations, a South African.

But whoever the Director of the Consortium was, Kostas was sure he or she was in possession of a spigot that poured pure gold.

As he sipped his coffee, the sliding glass door opened behind him, and a bearded man stepped through in a rush, passing two burly bodyguards. He stopped at the table.

In English Kostopoulos said, “Good morning, Stanislav. Hope you don’t mind if I finish my breakfast. Sit, take a few breaths, calm down, then tell me what’s so important.”

The younger man did as instructed; he even took a sip of pineapple juice, already poured in crystal, when the older man motioned towards it. But he rushed through the act, spilled a little down his chin, then hurriedly put the glass back on the table. He spoke with a Serbian accent, but the Greek talked to Serbs daily, so it wasn’t difficult for him to understand.

“There has been a disruption in the pipeline.”

Kostas Kostopoulos showed his displeasure with slightly sagging shoulders but nothing more. “Where?”

“Mostar.”

The Greek took a bite of yogurt, then said, “General Babic and his Belgrade men.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Details?”

“Attacked last night. Seven men dead, including Babic.”

The Greek sighed now while he buttered his croissant. He displayed a subdued countenance, though this was highly distressing news, to be sure. Still, he wouldn’t let the Serbian see him react with the shock he felt. “So who is interfering with my business interests this time? The Turks again?”

“Belgrade doesn’t know who ordered it, but they think they know who carried out the operation itself, and they believe this was not an attack on the way station, but simply an attack on the general.”

The older man looked up from his croissant and said, “Well? Who is responsible?”

A pause. “An individual known as the Gray Man.”

Kostopoulos cocked his head. “An . . . individual ?”

“We have no information that he was acting in concert with others.”

“One man? One man killed seven, including the general, who has been hunted for a quarter century? That sounds like a tall tale.”

Stanislav was a member of the Serbian mafia, the Branjevo Partizans, and he served as his organization’s link to the Consortium that operated the pipeline. Kostopoulos was the only contact in the Consortium he had ever met, and that was by design.

He said, “Belgrade has interviewed both the surviving security force and the whores, sir. Everything points to it being one very skilled man. Belgrade seems to know him by his moniker, Gray Man. They said no one else could have done this.”

Kostopoulos looked down to the water at the gorgeous summer morning. He didn’t believe the lone-assassin theory and thought the Serbian mob was a bunch of fools for even suggesting it.

“The merchandise was undisturbed?”

“There were twenty-four items on site. One is missing.”

“The missing item. What’s her story?”

“Moldovan. The whores say Babic was fucking her himself in another room when the gunman appeared. Nothing special about her. They don’t know where she is. Security men never saw her leave, but they were fighting it out with this killer at the time.”

After a nod and a bite into his croissant, the Greek said, “Obviously you will close down that way station.”

“Under way now, sir. The product is gone already, moved on to the next stop.”

“They are early for the next stop. We aren’t set to pick them up on the coast for three days. That could pose problems.”

“I’m sorry, sir. But there is nowhere in our area of influence that we can put them.”

“Banja Luka?”

“We are getting it ready now, but it won’t be secure for a few more days. Moving the whores on west was the only thing we could do.”

Kostas let a little frustration show now. “This will be costly. Time-consuming. Obstructive to our work. How, dear Stanislav, do we exact our revenge for this?”

“This Gray Man will be hard to find. He’s probably already far from here.”

Kostopoulos shrugged. “Assassins will come and go. Keep an ear out for him, and I’ll tell the other directors in the pipeline to do the same.

“But he’ll be long gone by now, so I’m not talking about him. I’m talking about revenge for the failures in your ranks.” After a pause he added, “The local constabulary there in Mostar was involved in protecting the operation, is that correct?”

“Yes, sir. Our contact there is a police chief in Mostar. A man named Vukovic.”

“I’d say he did a rather poor job. Do you agree?”

After a brief pause the Serbian replied, “Agreed.”

“We will make an example of him. Something that will show the other pipeline way stations that we do not accept underperforming from those we compensate well to keep our systems functioning safely.”

Stanislav looked uncomfortable for a moment.

The Greek picked up on this. “He’s one of Belgrade’s assets, and you don’t want to kill him. Is that it?”

“He is well positioned. He has helped us with many—”

“I can move the pipeline out of Belgrade’s area of influence. I can move the women via northern routes or south through the Mediterranean.”

Stanislav said nothing.

“I want a pound of flesh for this debacle. You can either find yourself a new chief of police in the little shit town of Mostar, or you can find yourself another endeavor as profitable as what I offer you.”

Stanislav sat up straighter. “I’m sorry, sir, but it’s not you offering us the work. It’s your masters in the Consortium.”

Kostopoulos bristled at this but fought any show of anger or insult. Instead he said, “I rule this area, and my opinion holds weight with the Director of the Consortium.”

Stanislav kept his defiant posture. “Then we ask you to contact him and request that he take no action on Vukovic. We have other needs for him in the area. If you are leaving Mostar anyway, why should you care if he’s still working for us?”

Kostas let it go, but he had no plans to contact the Director, and no idea how to do so, even if he did want to.

The Serbian left the Greek alone on his luxurious balcony and stepped back inside to head to the elevator, pulling a phone from his pocket as he did so.

Kostas Kostopoulos did his best not to let his temper flare in this work. He always tried to retain a dispassionate approach. So many other traffickers were thugs, gangsters, criminals through and through. But the organization Kostopoulos worked for, though they used petty gangsters for their grunt work, was made up of businessmen and businesswomen, not thugs. They acquired, produced, transported, traded, and profited on a product, and the fact that the product they dealt in was human beings had been tamped down by years of incredibly positive balance sheets and a growth line unparalleled in any other legitimate industry since the dot-com boom twenty years earlier.