“Because you don’t care about the bride,” I reply. “Neither do the Romeros. This is a business deal—Zoe is simply the wax seal. Can we all dispense with the fiction that the marriage is an integral part of the arrangement?”
“You show your inexperience,” Prince says, sternly. “Contracts fall apart. Agreements change. Marriages last. Only a marriage ensures that the future of both families is entwined. It’s the only way to assure that our interests align over time.”
“What is that worth to you?” I say. “Ten million? A hundred?”
“You don’t have that kind of money,” Romero snaps from the bottom of the table.
“No,” I say. “But you could.”
Prince and Romero exchange glances. Romero snorts, stubbornly dismissive. I see a spark of interest in Dieter Prince’s eye. The money matters to him. The number matters, I can see it.
“What are you talking about?” Prince demands.
“You’re building a distribution route,” I say. “From Barcelona to Hamburg. It’s a good route, undoubtedly. Alvaro Romero’s product and your men. But what if it was five times larger? What if it spanned out to Kyiv, and down to Turkey? What if you could take orders from every city in Northern Europe, all at the same time? Untraceable and undetectable.”
Prince’s dark mustache twitches.
“Explain,” he says.
“The choke point in contraband sales is the ordering system. You need a network of low-level dealers to sell the product in person. Have you ever heard of Amazon?”
“Of course,” Romero says, still irritated.
“You’d be the Amazon of drugs.”
“How do you figure that?” Prince inquires.
“Online ordering via the dark web, funneled through a private server. You send the product along your distribution channel. You don’t have to accept the money in person and deal with all the pesky inconveniences of exchange rates and transport and laundering. You take payment in Bitcoin, utterly untraceable. Then we exchange it for American dollars.”
“How?” Prince says. “Who exchanges it?”
I check my watch. “That’s the last piece of the puzzle,” I say. “They should be arriving as we speak.”
“This is fantasy,” Romero spits. “All talk. You can’t do any of this.”
“I already have,” I say. “It’s already done.”
I flip open the lid of the laptop and turn the screen to show him. He leans forward, squinting to see. A stream of numbers pours down the screen like running water, right before his eyes.
“Those are orders,” I say. “In real time. People ordering your product as we sit here.”
Prince and Romero stare, the numbers reflected in their irises. Numbers representing a river of cash running directly into their pockets.
In that poignant silence, the Malina walk through the door.
Marko Moroz is a beast of a man—near seven feet tall, broad, with a mane of reddish-brown hair the color of fox fur. His eyes have a yellowish cast, and his lips are thick and fleshy. His hands are so large and scarred that the fingers permanently curl. He wears a military-style jacket and boots, his four soldiers likewise attired in combat gear.
These soldiers have been chosen for size and brutality. I told Moroz we would be meeting without arms, without bodyguards. Yet he brought his four largest, as a show of strength.
They’re marked with the tattoos of their accomplishments. Ukrainian tattoos are similar to Russian—a burning woman chained to a stake, showing vengeance wreaked on one who has betrayed. A hand holding a tulip, to indicate that the bearer turned 16 years of age inside a prison camp. A snake-wrapped dagger proclaiming the wearer a master-thief.
These men make Dieter Prince and Alvaro Romero look like bankers by comparison. They don’t try to blend in. They wear the evidence of their violence proudly.
Discomfort grips the room. Dieter and Gisela Prince sit poker straight in their chairs, and Romero is wide-eyed as a schoolboy. He licks his lips, his eyes darting toward the open door as if he’s considering fleeing right now.
“I hope we’re not late,” Moroz says, in his deeply-accented voice.
“Right on time,” I say. “Please, make yourself comfortable.”
I gesture to the open side of the table. Moroz sits while his men remain standing, fanning out in the room.
I have to move fast, because the Princes and Alvaro Romero will want to get out of here as quickly as possible. They won’t want to do business with the Malina, nobody does. Not unless their greed is powerful enough to overcome their reservations.
“Marko Moroz has American dollars,” I say. “A large quantity from his operations out of Brighton Beach. He’s looking for an investment opportunity. The Malina can expand our distribution network from Germany all the way through Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, down through Belarus to the Ukraine, then across the Black Sea to Turkey. They can take the Bitcoin and use it to purchase property in Dubai. They’ll provide you with clean American dollars in return. For that service, they ask only a thirty percent cut of the profits, and an additional five percent for the exchange.”
“Ten,” Moroz cuts across at once. He smiles, showing several gold teeth. “Ten percent for the currency exchange, and forty percent of the profit. It seems fair, for all I’ll be providing.”
This is not what we discussed, though I anticipated Moroz trying to strong-arm me at the first opportunity.
I smother my irritation, and the rising sense of panic that Prince and Romero won’t accept that deal. It has to be sweet, or they won’t work with Moroz.
“A ten percent exchange fee is reasonable,” I agree. “The profit should be split evenly three ways—33.3% each. Let’s keep it simple for the accountants, shall we?”
Dieter Prince watches closely to see if Moroz can be reasoned with.
Moroz takes a long time considering, then he gives a slow nod.
“Yes,” he chuckles. “Let’s not confuse the accountants.”
“It’s agreed, then,” I say, glancing around at the Princes and Romero to confirm. “Equal profit share. Ten percent to the Malina for the exchange to American dollars. And an additional one percent fee to the bitcoin wallet. A bargain for clean washed money.”
It’s a beautiful bargain, and everyone at this table knows it.
Prince and Romero exchange glances. I kept the laptop screen turned toward them both, so they could watch the orders piling up even as we spoke. Several million dollars have already accrued in the short time the program has been running.
They don’t want to work with the Malina. They know the money is sitting in an open bear trap that could snap on their hands at any moment. But they also don’t want to refuse Marko Moroz while he sits directly across from them. I was counting on his intimidation factor to work both ways.
“What do you get out of this?” Mrs. Prince says, suddenly, surprising us all. She hadn’t spoken all throughout the meeting, sitting like a pale, silent shadow at her husband’s elbow.
“I get Zoe Romero,” I say, simply. “No money, no drugs, no cut. I only want her. In return, I hand over the platform, the server, the bitcoin wallet—all of it.”