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Volks Game

"What do you know about art, Volk?"

Maxim Abdullaev asks the question through the radio waves an ax, cutting claim.

I put my Nokia cell phone against my ear. loud voices dishes, jostling diners, and raised me provides an excuse for delaying the answer to your question. "Hold on, I say, step down at my table in the basement of Vadim's Café near Staraya Street, where I do my office.

Maxim could be anywhere. Its headquarters are located in the district Solsnetskaya a few blocks away, but instead change the weekly staff business, sometimes daily, making it impossible to develop a mental picture of where you are or what you are doing.

Once you have moved away from the noise, I take a moment to collect my thoughts. "Art?" I have a master's degree in art history from Moscow University. "

I'm sure you know Maxim enough about my life to catch the sarcasm. mother dead, missing father, the late Soviet era poverty, and five years of killing and worse in Chechnya was expected not to harmonize in a world class education. The things I've learned not taught in universities. Barks a deep-throated laugh that offers no comfort. A polar bear probably has the same sound just before eating.

"Listen," he says. "You do something for me. Talk to Gromov." Yes? "

"Yes," I say, as if I had a choice, and Maxim is disconnected.

Two hours later, at about midnight, Gromov clumps like a plow horses in my basement office. The meat in his bald head and falls face swollen and the skin of a shar-pei and slits his eyes, which are anxious, nervous, with good cause. Valya lurks hidden among the shelves of café sundries behind him.

"You talked about Maxim?" He says.

I grunt acknowledgment.

He collapses in a padded roller chair that disappears, creaking, beneath his bulk. Even her feet are covered silver round by strings hanging from his coat, where one hand stays buried in a deep pocket. She likes sports a chromed Colt .45 Peacemaker, a large antique cannon that tears holes in the bodies, a good weapon for a man whose business is bullying.

"I have a business opportunity," begins. "Maxim says you're the guy that helps me to evaluate. "

"I do not partners."

He knows. My rule is a source of friction between us. "Yes, yes." Scarred leather biker boots turn the chair while taking in the surroundings.

There is not much to see here in the basement. Black slate floor, rows of shelves, exposed raw wood beams, plaster walls randomly damaged to show the low red brick, and it was the 60-machine powder slot. Gromov you like Valya, I know, but will not unless she wants to be. He ends his study and smile through crooked teeth yellow trim black with the ubiquitous chewing snuff.

"Maybe you should do partners."

"Say what you came to say." I draw the table empty front of me. "I have work to do."

"You know diamonds?"

"Maxim says art, you say diamonds. What is it? "

"The same idiot."

When pulled his hand from his coat pocket, Valya materializes behind him and is aimed at the short barrel of a pistol, Mossberg 12 gauge in the back of his shaved head. But instead of drawing the Colt, which shows a rectangle sparkling glass falls through the air before smacking into the palm of my hand.

Valya withdraws.

Gromov leans back, smugly outside the proximity of death, while examining his prize. The stone is about one centimeter square by three long. One end is broken up into a peak jagging irregular means. illegible entries are recorded in their flat faces. The etchings are names written in Persian, I know. We pull back and catch it with skill.

"You an idiot, Gromov. "

His jaw muscles are so big that his face widens into a pyramid, when you clench your teeth. "Go shit. "

I wave toward his hand. "That's a bad imitation of the Shah Diamond. The actual five blocks down the road from the Kremlin Armory in more Putin security. "

That is a lie. The real is gone. Originally a gift to Tsar Nicholas I to atone for a Russian diplomat was killed in 1820 Tehran. Famous, in part, because all the unlucky owners named in the inscriptions died to possess. Damn near ninety carats preserved in the form of cutting. Three years ago I helped make a symbolic journey, but without advertising back to Persia, to the rare art collection of a spoiled Saudi prince, in return financial considerations for my primary employer, the Russian military. A fake it better than sitting behind a safety glass in twenty-four hours in the diamond Kremlin Fund.

"See?" He says. "You know about this type of shit."

"Even tourists know about Shah Diamond. "

He leans forward in his muscular body will allow and settles flying-buttress elbows on my desk, moaning, but persist. As much of the antique furniture in Moscow, was built solidly with cold hands gulag. "What if I said I could get real, without no wiser? "

"You can not. Do not waste time."

"Listen." Crease his broad face, concentrating. "We within individuals. Military pissed off by Putin capitalism. They're like pensioners on the dole while guys like us get rich. They have the diamond replaced by false. Think about it. The son of a bitch under glass all day, like goddamn Lenin. Who knows if what is under there is real? Who matter? In five years some prick Switzerland looked at under a microscope and raises hell. By then, shit, no way to track who did what and when. "

I say that can not be so easy, even though it was.

"You just worry about your final," he says.

"What is my purpose? "

"The work the angle of distribution." Gromov running hot, trembling, obviously excited. "You're tight with that fag, Nigel Bolles. "The name Nigel mouth contemptuously curled his lips." He'll point to the boys in London or New York or wherever and help us to find someone with a lot of money to buy it. "

"I'm not the man."

His jaw dropped. "Why no? "

"I told you. I do not partners. And I think your chances of getting the real thing out there are zero."

Hitting the veins ripple under the five shadow that darkens his enormous dome. "Why make things so damn hard, Volk? Three times I say that we do business. Three Sometimes I say that shit. "Throw the shoulders of mountains, to accommodate under the coat." Business is getting too tight. Every time I around you are there. You're in my way. "

You're right about our business blows with each other, at least those parts of the mine who knows about – drugs, identity theft, photos, and an operation by Russian brides that caters to the middle class of America and industrialized European and Asian countries. Russia has ten million more women than men, a product of the endless fighting and purging, and she always matter more than it exports. I imagine that the business the bride at both imbalances.

Gromov's interests collide with mine in several ways, but big on child prostitution and other things I'm not going to play. But he is wrong to worry, because there are plenty of business for two in this stretch of road just below an old Lubyanka prison and because Internet has made us international.

"Do not be so parochial, Gromov."

"What the hell does that mean?"

"It means we'll get along fine if you focus on official business instead of territorial shit. Steal your diamond. Lyudmilla hump. Stay away from me. "

He does not like my way of rejecting or reference to his girlfriend undulating chest. He is so suddenly turns his chair. Grunts, roars something unintelligible, hauls his hand cannon, and starts to push, slow and amateurish. I do not think he will shoot. He just wants to make a point. But then the slide of a shotgun racking cracks throughout. He stops dead. His eyes, click back and forth like those of plastic watches that look like the tail wagging pets, but very careful not to turn around and lead it.

"It is Valya," I offer, and both hands up slowly until the muzzle of the Colt brushes bottom of a low beam.

She is behind him, looking amplified, ready for anything to lose with lace boots, parachute pants tight, and a chrome-colored jacket with lined hood rejected his sword. The Mossberg rests gently in your hands. His white hair spray as a halo of backlight.

"I'm done," he said without turning around.

I nod at him, and peel open the coat and slots the Colt into a holster made from more of a cow. "I no choice," he says in the same tone used to tell a taxi driver to turn right. "I have to put out of business, gimp."

The mockery of my foot does not bother me. war is imminent, especially given the Maxim's new-found interest in the art world. The General and I had three years to operate freely in that area. I wish our weather was not coming to an end.

"Have at it, the big man," I say.

He turns quickly, but Valya is nowhere. One last look grim for me, then Gromov timber away.

Lunch the next day cut smoked pork on the sunny side of an outdoor gazebo in grassy Gorky Park. Halfway through, I'm joined by Yuri, a police with batons spinning. Va sixty kilos, maybe. Approaches with his chest puffed out thin slides his baton into a steel ring attached to his belt and dropped through me. The sun shines through the silver birch trees and leaping off the Golden Eagle Russian double-headed in his cap as I slide over a fill of dollars through plastic table. He rips the envelope and gets under your leg, fast and stealthy.

"Shit, Volk!"

His eyes move, but I am busy with pork. I do not care who sees. I stop chewing long enough to say: "There is an extra five hundred for Viktor. And a note."

Yuri Viktor area commands. Has been on my payroll for two years. The paper explains the information you want about Gromov, and the extra money you pay for it. Gromov payment is probably similar reports about me.

Yuri pulls out a sandwich wrapped in aluminum foil paper bag stained with oil stains, but then sits and watches me without eating. He puts his hat on the table and licks the bottom of the upper lip, which has been the same since I met him a year ago, so I guess is a mustache.

"Where is Valya?" He asks.

The pork is gone. I suck your fingers and pat his head bald. He's younger than me, twenty-five years, but the hair gods are fickle. It's softer than me too. War and want have hardened my appearance. bronze hair military cut, hazel eyes with a savage glare, unshaven jaw – I look fierce, even when I'm trying not to do so. Each pat makes his head bounce.

"Do not mess with me, Yuri."

His eyes open. "God, Volk."

I leave it to your sandwich. I'm stomping through the tall grass of Gorky Park to my Mercedes S-600 when the Nokia buzz.

"Go."

"It's Nigel."

Bolles. My biggest buyer international business. British expatriates fop Gromov asked about the previous day. I hope.

"Word's out you are in a war, boy, "he says.

His melodious voice is strained, due, no doubt, a night of hard alcohol and there is no point in the morning Stolichnaya. "The Business is always difficult. "

"How I can help?"

Just what I need. "The British are coming" I say, but apparently lost the negative reference.

"Precisely. I am at your service."

"Follow the search for customers."

"Yes." "He clears his throat. Sounds like a cold cough motor life." In this regard, you will be pleased to know that I have a chance tonight. Swiss convention with a common interest. "

"Only drugs?"

"The children, too."

Sounds unfortunate. He knows my scruple, silly as it is. In the end, what difference does it make money? The children are pincushions in both directions.

I stop on a hill carpeted with flattened grass that shines like wet jade. Even in early May, the cold wind blows across the Moscow River and bends the top stately line of birches that march up the embankment toward the towering peaks of the university. haze blurs the industrial cityscape. Stalin towers seven other sisters pierce the haze like upthrust stilettos. Gromov is manageable. I know I can kill it with relative ease. But he is one of Maxim's poodles, and as Azeri mafia boss, Maxim can crush my business on a whim.

"You still there, Volk?"

I grit my teeth. "I'll meet you at the National Club at ten to arrange the details." My chest tightened, and suddenly I feel like I can not take enough air.

"Well done." Revitalized, without doubt, the calculation of his twenty percent cut.

I end the call, limping to favor my stump Mercedes just pounding, and bend the shiny black car in heavy traffic, already ruing my decision. The cell buzzes again.

"Go."

"Volk?"

"Who wants to know?"

"It Arkady."

Several years have passed since the Last time I heard of Arkadi Borodenkov – one of my classmates in a foster care center and later in a rehabilitation center for children located on the Baltic coast. A childhood friend in places where friends were scarce. And last I heard, an Ecstasy dealer and part-time near St. Petersburg. Slightly built, with blond hair and wore long, too weak to nothing more than the periphery.

"What?" I say.

"I have a stranger to you. A score that needs muscle and hustle. But above all you need brains. I thought of you."

Cut through pedestrian traffic and street Kremlevskaya outraged, make illegal U-turn right and then hard rattle over unevenly laid bricks in the edge of Red Square. St. Basil's Cathedral looms to the left, its colorful domes like ice-cream swirls. The bright colors and crowds lined up around the cathedral seems to be making fun of decades of Soviet religious oppression.

"Keep going."

"I'm not even sure how describe it. "

I'm not in the mood to buy time, but not the scum of the agreement that I have done to Nigel still coats the inside of my mouth. "Spit it out."

"What do you know about art, Volk?"

Copyright © 2007 Brent Ghelfi Volks Game book published by Henry Holt and Company; June 2007, $ 23.00US; 978-0-8050-8254-8

About the Author

Brent Ghelfi has served as a clerk on the U.S. Court of Appeals, been a partner in a Phoenix-headquartered law firm, and now owns and operates several businesses. He has traveled extensively throughout Russia, and lives in Phoenix with his wife, a former prosecutor, and their two sons. He is currently working on the sequel to Volk’s Game.

Visit www.volksgame.com.

“Mongolia” Elizabethf’s photos around Ulan Bator, Mongolia