"Mack Bolan - Stony Man - Blood Star" - читать интересную книгу автора (Bolan Mack)

"Where is he, Leonid?"
"I wouldn't be surprised if he was still in bed,"
Gromylko said. "You've seen his little playmate."
"He can do that anytime," Churbanov said. "The
man should keep his mind on business." "What are you, his manager?"
"I'm sick of waiting for him, that's all."
"He'll be coming soon."
The truth was that Gromylko had grown sick and
tired of waiting, too. He worded that they would be
noticed, parked a half block from the safe house in the
standard-issue Zil sedan of the militsiya. It stood out
like a sore thumb in the Goljanovo district of north-
eastern Moscow, where the residents leaned more to-
ward foreign cars, selected with an eye to luxury. The

Goljanovo precinct was entirely ignorant of the im-
pending raid, kept in the dark because Gromylko
feared the level of corruption that had spread like can-
cer through the ranks of the militsiya in recent years.
It had been one thing, when the Communists were
in control, and some degree of bribery was accepted
as a fact of life. But now, with the deregulation and
the leap in crime statistics, violence in the streets and
payoffs to police, Moscow was rapidly emerging as a
clone of Chicago in the 1920s. It was never safe to
trust a stranger these days just because he wore a
matching uniform.
One of the men responsible for that corruption was
the object of their stakeout on that rainy night in Mos-
cow. Gregori Vasiliev was one of the top-ranking
criminals in all of Russia, known as a vor v zakonye--
a godfather----~)f the Vorovskoi Mir, the Thieves' So-
ciety. In fact, some said he was first among equals on
the Bratskaya Semyorka--the fabled Brotherhood of
Seven said to rule the Russian syndicate. Vasiliev
maintained a range of interests in the world of crime,
but his acknowledged specialty was narco-bizness. He
supplied Muscovite addicts with a range of drugs, in-
cluding anasha, or hashish, khimka, or Manchurian
hemp, and mak, which was a weak opium derivative,
typically ingested in liquid form. More recently, it was
reported by informers on the street, Vasiliev was in-
terested in large-scale shipments of cocaine imported
from Colombia. To that end he had fixed a meeting
with the spokesmen from Cali who waited for him
now--and none too patiently, Gromylko thought--
across the street and four doors down.