Malika's Revenge: A Powerful Mix for a Complex Noir Novel. An Organized Crime Thriller - not for the faint-hearted Read online

  Malika’s Revenge

  ALSO BY PHILLIP STRANG

  MURDER IS A TRICKY BUSINESS

  MURDER WITHOUT REASON

  THE HABERMAN VIRUS

  HOSTAGE OF ISLAM

  PRELUDE TO WAR

  Copyright Page

  Copyright © 2015 Phillip Strang

  Cover Design by Phillip Strang

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review to be printed by a newspaper, magazine, or journal.

  All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  All Rights Reserved.

  This work is registered with the UK Copyright Service.

  Author’s Website: http://www.phillipstrang.com

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  Map

  Cast of Characters

  Major Characters.

  Tajikistan.

  Malika Khalova - Drug-addicted whore in the drug smugglers’ village – Tajikistan National.

  Oleg Yezhov – Malika’s lover in the drug smugglers’ village – Gangster – Russian.

  Yusup Baroyev – Drug lord – Tajikistan National.

  Farrukh Bahori – Baroyev’s man in the drug smugglers’ village - Tajikistan National.

  Rena Ilolov – Prostitute friend of Malika in the village – Tajikistan National.

  Gennady Denikin – Bratva, the Russian mafia’s lead representative in Tajikistan - Russian.

  Viktor Gryzlov – Gennady Denikin’s bodyguard – Russian.

  Igor Rothko – Assassin – Russian.

  Pavel Suslov – Friend of Oleg Yezhov – Homosexual – Russian.

  Yuri Drygin – Border Control Customs Officer - Panj-e Payon – Tajikistan National.

  Andre Malenkov – KGB agent - Russian.

  Afghanistan.

  Najibullah – Drug Smuggler – Afghan.

  Arif Noorzai – Taliban commander – Afghan.

  Ali Mowllah – Businessman – Afghan.

  Ahmad Ghori – Politician – Afghan.

  Ashraf Ghilzai – Heroin producer - Former Taliban - Afghan.

  Alam – Reluctant colleague of Oleg Yezhov in Afghanistan – Afghan.

  Farhana - Prostitute – Kunduz, Afghanistan – Afghan.

  Russia.

  Dmitry Gubkin – White-collar criminal – Drug-smuggling syndicate organiser - Russian.

  Grigory Stolypin – Dmitry Gubkin’s primary Russian mafia contact – Russian.

  Boris Sobchak – Russian mafia – Colleague of Grigory Stolypin - Russian.

  Ivan Merestkov – Russian mafia – Colleague of Grigory Stolypin - Russian.

  Feliks Kalinin – Yusup Baroyev’s Russian contact – Russian.

  Minor Characters.

  Anatoly – Dmitry Gubkin’s bodyguard - Russian.

  Georgy – Dmitry Gubkin’s bodyguard - Russian.

  Latif – Heroin production manager - Afghan.

  Nazif Arsala – Minister of Defence, Afghanistan – Afghan.

  Andrei Kholov – Rena Ilolov’s pimp – Tajikistan National.

  Artur Malenkov – Businessman – Brother of Andre Malenkov – Russian.

  Natasha – Oleg Yezhov’s lover in St. Petersburg – Russian.

  Ismail Samani – Provincial Governor, Kunduz, Afghanistan – Afghan.

  Hammasa – Third wife of Ahmad Ghori – Afghan.

  Lui – Prostitute in Kabul – Chinese.

  Katerina Gubkin – Wife of Dmitry Gubkin – Russian.

  Anton Davydov – Lover of Katerina, Dmitry Gubkin’s wife - Russian.

  Babak – Client of Malika’s in the village – Afghan.

  Azad - Bandit – Afghan.

  Aleksei Sidorenko – Gangster – Russian.

  Abdul Sarabi – Politician – Hazara tribe – Afghan.

  Tolib – Over-inquisitive gym attendant – Tajikistan National.

  Nilufar – High-class escort – Tajikistan National.

  Yudik Khujandi – State Committee for National Security, Tajikistan – Tajikistan National.

  Mikhail Kandinsky – Senior agent, KGB – Russian.

  Firuza Baroyev – Yusup Baroyev’s wife – Tajikistan National.

  Iskandar - Friend of Yusup Baroyev – Tajikistan National.

  Rasul Dostiev – Employed by Boris Sobchak - Organiser – Tajikistan National.

  Khasan Boqiev – Employed by Boris Sobchak – Thug – Tajikistan National.

  Yegor Luzhkov – Assassin – Russian.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 1

  Malika Khalova sat dissolutely on the side of the dusty track, the main thoroughfare in the desert village in Tajikistan. A dirty, dishevelled man wearing a shalwar kameez, the traditional dress of the region worn by both men and women alike, hovered over her screaming abuse and waving some heroin, the leftovers of the five kilos he had transported across the border from Afghanistan.

  ‘Come on, you dirty whore. If you want this, you’ll give me a screw,’ he said.

  She remained motionless, not because of what he had in his hands, but because, in a brief interlude, she had reminisced back to the pretty, dark-haired and innocent pre-pubescent child she had been.

  It had been in her fourteenth year when, in a moment of weakness after the first man ‒ a gangly fifteen-year-old ‒ had taken her virginity that she had succumbed to a post-coitus joint of hash. She had no chance; her genetic make-up inclined her towards addiction.

  By the time she was twenty-two, she was addicted to heroin and a promising future was over. Her parents, good people, lived in Dushanbe, the capital city of the impoverished country of Tajikistan, in Central Asia. It had cost them all their savings as well as their assets in an attempt to save her, but it was to no avail. Within two years, they were on the street and begging.

  ‘Please forgive me. I will stop injecting myself and get a job. I will look after you,’ she would say, but it was pointless. There was no way she would regain her life and that of her parents.

  Her father threw himself under a bus one Saturday afternoon, and her mother disappeared. To where Malika never knew, but in her heart, she knew she was dead.

  Over the years, she had attempted to wean herself off the heroin. The last drug rehabilitation centre had strapped
her to a bed, let her scream until the effects of her last fix had worn off and then let her scream again until the withdrawal symptoms had subsided.

  She had left fresh and healthy, ready for a life of decency, full of self-worth, but the memories of her parents returned soon enough. Two days later, she sold herself in a back street of the capital for the price of a fix of low-grade heroin. It nearly killed her, but she was hooked again, and there was no going back.

  ***

  It had taken five years selling herself in the capital of her country before she found herself in a drug smugglers’ village, waiting for the next man to take her and the next fix. Here, the transaction was not for money, it was for the drug. The supply was more plentiful and the quality better, but the clientele decidedly worse.

  The guilt she felt over her parents was even more abhorrent than the vile and despicable Afghan, who intended to take her body and then beat her for his inability to maintain an erection for more than five minutes. The melancholy, her only relief, would return after the next hit of heroin smuggled across the border from Afghanistan. The bruising, the scars, the thought of what she had endured, forgotten until the next illiterate peasant, gangster or corrupt Tajikistan policeman regarded it as his right to treat her as no more than an animal.

  There had been the occasional businessman in the capital to whom she had sold herself, who had seen the beauty underneath the skin and had treated her well, taken care of her, but that was the past. The present consisted of only the dregs of society. She was only twenty-seven, but looked ten years older; the innocent beauty had long gone and, even now, the men were looking for fresher and more nubile meat to satisfy their lusts.

  The drug smugglers’ village, a ramshackle combination of makeshift mud huts, open courtyards and canvas shelters was filled with the cruellest, vilest, most degenerate persons imaginable.

  Those that came for her were invariably perverse in their demands, and she no longer cared what they did to her, or what she did to them. With no medicine, barely any food and an addiction that was destroying her, she was unlikely to see her thirtieth birthday.

  ***

  The next day and still feeling the effects of the abuse from the Afghan, one of the gangsters that frequented the village came for her. A sadistic killer-turned-drug-dealer, Aleksei Sidorenko was a Russian, a fat pig of a man. Daily, he ensured that he downed at least two bottles of vodka and took one of the women. Today, it was Malika’s turn. Killing didn’t pay the money he wanted, but drug smuggling did and, if that included the occasional murder, so much the better. At least, he would be able to afford the beautiful blonde prostitutes in Moscow, instead of some dark-haired, local whore who may have once been beautiful.

  ‘How much do you want, you old slag?’

  ‘I am not old nor a slag. Treat me with respect if you want my time,’ she responded indignantly.

  ‘I’ll treat you as I want, and if you answer me back again I’ll make sure you receive the back of my hand for your insolence,’ Sidorenko responded. He had killed women, maimed them before. One more wouldn’t make any difference and who would care? There were as many as he wanted in the village, but he hadn’t tried this one. He had been told that she was willing for any perversion that would satisfy him.

  The pimps became nasty if the younger, fresh-faced whores were roughed up and they were quick with a knife. He couldn’t keep watching out for them when he was on top of a woman, asleep or drunk, which was most of the time.

  ‘I want a fix. You give me a fix and some money for food and then you can do what you like.’ Her cravings were kicking in, and the man had what she wanted, even if he was ugly, fat and repulsive.

  ‘I’ll give you enough for a fix if you satisfy me, or you get nothing. Do you understand?’

  ‘And some money for food?’

  ‘What do I care if you eat or die? Go scavenge in the rubbish with the other vermin,’ he said as he gave her the promised slap with the back of a heavy hand across her face.

  It took ten minutes, with a man smelling of vodka labouring on top of her and attempting to throttle her at the same time until he was satisfied, or at least until his erection had lessened. No amount of massaging could revive it, and it was her he blamed, not the vodka he had consumed, nor the obese weight he carried.

  ‘You owe me some more drugs. We agreed.’ He had only given her half of what he had shown.

  ‘Agreed? What do I care? Go find a policeman, file a complaint.’

  ‘I will,’ she said, although she knew she wouldn’t. Besides, the police were corrupt and in the pay of those trading the drugs. She knew that screwing the police chief in the town to the west would be the fee for him to swear that he would help, when she knew he would not.

  It had only been nine months previous that the village had come into existence. The Taliban needed money and weapons, but mainly weapons and a kilo of heroin could be sold for close to two thousand American dollars. An AK-47 could be picked up for sixty dollars and then sold back into Afghanistan for twice that price. The Taliban were becoming wealthy and well-armed, and dealing with a Russian was a small price to pay. They hated each other, but the Russian gangsters, especially Sidorenko, and the Taliban traders were of the same ilk. They were equally cruel, amoral and devoid of any semblance of compassion or humility.

  ***

  Najibullah was a small-time smuggler with two frigid and passionless wives back in Afghanistan. The opportunity of a Tajik woman was some compensation, and Malika was good. Compared to his wives, she was beautiful. It was he that had beaten her the day before Sidorenko, and both had treated her as no more than a dog.

  ‘Did you enjoy the whore?’ Najibullah asked.

  ‘There are so many here, it’s getting difficult as to which one to choose,’ the sadistic Russian answered.

  ‘At least, she’ll take a beating.’

  ‘True, but they all need beating.’

  ‘You touch the new ones, and then you’ll have problems with the effeminate pimps that look after them,’ the Afghan commented, but then he knew. The scar across his left cheek had come about as a result of the beating he had given two months previous to a fresh-faced girl, no older than sixteen, from a working class suburb of Dushanbe.

  Her pimp may have been effeminate, but he was fast with a knife. Surrounded by the other pimps in the village, there was no way that the Afghan could respond. Besides, if he had, they would have killed him on the spot. What was a filthy Afghan to them?

  ‘Why should I care about their pimps?’ Sidorenko pretended to be brave and strong, but he was neither. He was a coward and weak, but he was not going to let an Afghan tribesman, let alone a religious lunatic, know. It was the tribesman’s savage people that had killed his father fifteen years previous, when the Soviet Army had liberated the Afghan’s backward country.

  ‘I will bring you more next week, an increased quantity,’ said Najibullah. ‘My master has instructed me to tell you.’

  ‘Then I will be ready. How is the plan progressing?’ asked Sidorenko.

  ‘I am just a humble smuggler. The details of the plan, I do not know.’

  ‘He must have told you something?’

  ‘I was told that the plan progresses satisfactorily, and we will be ready.’

  ‘Will your master come?’

  ‘He does not become involved in such matters. I and others take responsibility for the deliveries. The route is dangerous. The chances of being caught or killed are high.’

  ‘I thought you had it under control. Don’t you bribe every official on the way?’ Sidorenko did not believe the uneducated tribesman.

  ‘Under control? It is in Afghanistan, but here in Tajikistan? Never.’

  ‘What do you mean by never?’

  ‘Not all can be bribed. There are some in the Tajikistan army who are incorruptible. They believe it is their duty to stop us.’

  ‘Yes, there will always be deluded fools.’ The Russian accepted the fact.

  ***
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  Dmitry Gubkin was as remarkable a man as he was a criminal. A tall man, slim, with the body of an athlete and the silver hair of a man in his sixties, he was an aficionado of fine wines, opera and baroque furniture. A patron of the arts, a supporter of all things Russian and exceedingly patriotic; he was as well-known for his wealth as for his generosity.

  Educated in a small town to the west of Moscow, an honours graduate in Business and Computer Studies from the Lomonosov Moscow State, he was an anachronism. He could have been a professor, an academic, a leader of business, but he chose crime. Or, at least, it had chosen him.

  He was descended from a family of leading criminals, mainly white collar, who used intellect rather than brawn. His father had pulled off the great banking swindle in Volgograd when ten per cent of the wealthiest people in the city had lost half their money.

  Those who knew the details, the wealthiest and the most corrupt, never reported it. His father had been a smart man. He knew those he had fleeced would not want their financial dealings looked into. Some of them even paid him extra to keep quiet; others had planned to have him killed. However, he had let them know that he had a secret dossier and where it would end up if anything happened to him.

  ‘Dmitry,’ his father, Aleksandr, would often repeat as a bedtime story, ‘being smarter than the next person is not a crime. It is a crime if you do not take advantage. How will they learn if we do not teach them?’

  As he grew, Dmitry took the opportunity to put his father’s wisdom to good use. In school, it was beating the others at cards. In University, it was seducing as many of the delightful females as he could with his good looks, elegant manners, and clever manipulation of conversations and situations. He ensured any competition was deterred by a couple of heavies he employed.

  With his degrees, the offer of some smart and influential jobs in the city, and a couple of compliant females at the end of a phone line waiting for a call, he plotted his future.