“Right, right. So…”
Liebowitz sat back and linked his hands behind his head, propped a foot on the handle of Beck’s bottom desk drawer, folding into himself. His face went blank. The only movement was from his slowly blinking eyes.
Beck had seen this before. Sitting while Alex zoned out was like waiting for a massive file to download. The only difference was that no computer could match the processing being done by Alex Liebowitz’s brain: sorting, comparing, pulling together a lifetime of information and coming to conclusions in seconds that might take others days or weeks, if they were lucky.
Alex took his foot off the desk drawer, tipped forward and began pulling up information on his monitors.
“Okay, the fat guy as you call him is Leonid Markov. Also known as Leonard Markov. Also known as Leonyti Sergeyevich Markov. Also known as Sergey Markovich. He’s Russian. But where he was born is a little vague. Best guess he came out of Perm. There’s a lot of old mob based there. Before Perestroika.”
“Vory-v-Zakone?”
“I’d imagine he has connections, but he’s not one of them. He comes on the scene as an arms dealer pretty far back. Looks like Leonyti goes where the fighting is. Africa, mostly Liberia. Then he pops up in Yugoslavia during the Bosnian-Serb mess in the late nineties. There are records of him being in Bulgaria, Ukraine, Albania, Syria, lately Israel and Brighton Beach, New York. And a lot of time in Moscow.”
“Any arrests or anything?”
“The Belgians put out a red alert for him with Interpol in 2008, but apparently nothing came of it.”
“Why?”
“Who knows? If he’s based here now, my guess is he’s working with U.S. intelligence. Maybe the Israelis, too. If he’s running weapons where they want weapons to go, he’s most likely got a lot of protection. These guys are part of a system, and ultimately the big boys run the system. Who do you think makes most of the weapons in the world?”
“We do,” said Beck.
“And the Russians, China, Israel, Great Britain, France. But you’re right. Nobody comes close to us.”
“Where’d you find this stuff?”
“A lot of it in DEA files. They have more foreign bureaus than the CIA. Plus in a bunch of other unknown fucked-up subagencies inside Homeland Security. Anybody supplying arms to anybody gets on their radar.”
“What about the other guy?”
More screens and mouse clicks.
“He’s a Bosnian Serb. Gregor Stepanovich. Ex-military, but not from any standard army. Nasty fucker. Twenty counts of crimes against humanity, violations of laws or customs of war, and grave breaches of the Geneva Convention, including leadership responsibility for crimes against Muslims in three locations in Bosnia-Herzegovina, specifically expelling Muslims to various camps, killing, raping, and torture.”
Alex turned away from the computer monitors and looked at Beck.
“Guys like that who come out of places like that, the shit they’ve done, you realize how bent they are.”
Beck didn’t answer.
Alex turned back to his keyboard and brought up a photo. “As for the others, you picked this one out. The one with the knife?”
“Yeah.”
“Krylo Bartosh. Charged with participating in the beating and mass killing of two hundred sixty-one non-Serb men removed by force from Vukovar Hospital. I don’t know what his connection to Stepanovich is exactly. Their paths must have crossed somewhere. Your description of the other guy was pretty vague, but I can pull up a bunch of mug shots the United Nations commission pulled together.”
“No. I didn’t get a good enough look at him to ID him.”
Alex leaned back. “Okay.”
Beck thought for a moment.
“So you figure Markov and Stepanovich are now based here?”
“Seems that way. But here covers a lot of territory. Is it New York? The East Coast? I mean, there’s no way these Bosnians got into the United States under their real names. All of ’em are on U.N. lists of war criminals. Plus other lists.”
“So how did they? Can’t be that easy.”
Liebowitz shrugged. “If Markov is running weapons for the U.S., maybe we let them in.”
Beck thought for a moment. “Great.”
“It’s just a guess.”
“You think the Vory would have anything to do with these guys?”
“Maybe not directly, but if Markov is Russian and he’s based here, and he’s into this kind of shit, they will definitely know about him.”
Beck nodded. “Okay. Thanks. Good.”
Alex asked, “What’s next?”
Beck checked his watch. Nearly four o’clock.
“I think we probably want to start with the money.”
Alex leaned back. “And how do we go about that?”
“Couple ways. If I were you, though, I’d take a nap. You might not be getting too much sleep later.”
*
Beck headed back to the ground-floor bar.
Demarco and Willie Reese sat at one of the tables in the front, waiting for the plate glass repair to be finished. The temperature in the bar had plunged while the glass frame was empty, but neither Demarco nor Willie seemed to mind.
Beck said to Demarco, “Time to head out.”
He walked behind the bar and took out his gun lockbox. He removed the Browning and pulled out an extra clip. Beck didn’t have to ask if Demarco was armed.
Willie Reese watched them leave. Nobody said a word.
Demarco waited until they were in the Mercury before he asked where they were going.
“Brighton Beach,” said Beck.
25