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“Did he eat the old boss?”
I let out a soft snort. “Don’t let him hear you say that. Elbrus is vindictive as they come—all the Chechens are. Cross them and they’ll burn down your grandma’s house, and every house on her street.”
“What do they do?”
“Illegal oil deals, bank fraud, counterfeiting … They’ve got a massiveobshakwhere they pool their funds, and they’re connected in government, especially the Regional Department of Organized Crime.”
Sabrina laughs at that little piece of irony.
“There’s the Slavs on the other side of the room. They despise the Chechens. They’re mostly arms dealers, and they’ve got as much heavy hardware as the Red Army—half of it stolen from the Red Army, actually. They’re in local drug production and they bring in cocaine from South America.”
Sabrina nods, eyes flicking from table to table as she memorizes each face and each piece of information.
“You probably know her.” I nod toward the table featuring the only other woman in the room not paid to be there. A beautiful brunette with a keen, intelligent face is speaking intently with a young man in an elegantly fitted suit. They look stylish enough that they would have easily breezed inside the Soho Rooms, had they chosen to go there instead of here.
“Neve Markov,” Sabrina says softly.
“See that rock on her finger? She just signed a marriage contract with Simon Severov, youngest son of Sanka Severov.”
“She’s engaged?”
“As of this week.”
Sabrina examines Simon with fresh interest, stirring her straw around in her ice.
“You’re wondering if Ilsa likes him?”
Sabrina smiles, unembarrassed by the mention of her ex. “I don’t think she expected her sister to get married any time soon.”
I shrug. “They say it’s a love match.”
Sabrina is already back to the business at hand. “You’ve been dealing ARs and blow,” she says, remembering what Jasper reported.
“That’s right. We have an agreement with Eban Franko to sell in his strip clubs. But the price of coke has been all over the map, and the molly we get from Amsterdam has been shit. We need a new supplier.”
Sabrina frowns, thinking hard.
Her eyes flick around the room, table to table, understanding that each group represents a center of power with which we will have to contend.
At last she says, “What we need is a resource. They’re fighting over what already exists—we could make something new.”
“Make what?”
“The thing everyone wants …” Sabrina smiles. “A good time.”
“The Slavs already make their own molly. They can buy in higher volume than us and undercut our price.”
“If we can’t compete on price then we have to compete on quality. You said the stuff coming in from Amsterdam is shit?”
“Only one in three shipments tests pure.”
“But you can get the raw materials?”
“I can get anything once I know where to look.”
Sabrina bites the edge of her thumbnail. I see the wheels turning in her head as she sits across from me, scowling in concentration.
“We need something no one else can sell …” she says softly. “Something unique … that we cook ourselves …”
