was an open sewer off to his right and the stench was ripe in his nose.
Bagdasarian looked around.
He was on the opposite side of Brazzaville from the international airport. The dirt street was lined with shanties and what light there was escaped from boarded-up windows or from beneath shut-up doors.
A pair of mongrels fought over some scraps in a refuse pile several dozen yards up the road. Other than those dogs fighting, the stretch of grimy road was strangely deserted.
Faintly, Bagdasarian could hear the sound of a lousy stereo playing and then voices raised in argument. A baby started crying somewhere and farther away more dogs began barking in response.
Bagdasarian looked up at the sky, noting the low cloud cover. The road was thick with muck from the seasonal rains and it clung heavy to the soles of his hiking boots.
He set the attaché case he was holding down and reached around behind his back and pulled his pistol clear. He jacked the slide and chambered a 9 mm round before sliding the pistol into his jeans behind his belt buckle, leaving it in plain sight. He leaned down and picked up the case. He shifted his grip on the attaché handle so that his gun hand remained free.
He took a quick look around before crossing the road and stepping up to the front door of one of the innumerable shacks lining the road. He lifted his big hand and pounded three times on the door. He heard a hushed conversation break out momentarily before the voices fell quiet.
“Kabila?” Bagdasarian asked, speaking French. “Rafik.”
Bagdasarian felt a sudden damp and realized it had started to rain while he was standing there. Despite the wet he was still uncomfortably warm in his short-sleeved, button-down khaki shirt and battered blue jeans.
The short-sleeved shirt left his elbows and forearms exposed, revealing their thick covering of tattoos, his calling card.
The door opened slowly and a bar of soft, nicotine-colored light spilled out and illuminated Bagdasarian.
A silhouette stood in the doorway and the Armenian narrowed his eyes to take in the figure’s features. It was a male, wearing an unbuttoned and disheveled gendarme uniform. His eyes and teeth were sharply yellow against the deep burnished purple-black of his skin.
He held a bottle of grain alcohol in one hand, and the other rested on the pistol grip of a French MAT-49 submachine gun hanging from a strap slung across his neck like a guitar. He leaned forward, crowding Bagdasarian’s space.
Bagdasarian made no move to back up.
“You, Rafik?” the man demanded, also speaking French.
His breath reeked with alcohol fumes, and the light around him reflected wildly off the glaze in his eyes. His words were softly slurred but his gaze was steady as he eyed Bagdasarian up and down.
The finger on the trigger of the MAT-49 submachine gun seemed firm enough.
“Yes,” Bagdasarian answered. “Is Kabila here?”
“Colonel Kabila,” the man corrected.
“Is Colonel Kabila here?”
“You have the money?”
Bagdasarian lifted the attaché case, though he knew the man had already seen it when he’d opened the door.
The gendarme ignored the displayed satchel, his eyes never leaving Bagdasarian’s face. His hair was tightly cropped and Bagdasarian could see bullets of sweat beading on the man’s forehead. The smell of body odor was acrid.
“Give me the pistol.”
“Go to hell.”
The drunken gendarme’s eyes lifted in shock and his face twisted in sudden, instant outrage. He snapped straight and twisted the MAT-49 around on its sling, trying to bring the muzzle up in the cramped quarters.
Bagdasarian’s free hand shot out and grabbed the submachine gun behind its front sight. The big man locked his arm and pushed down, preventing the gendarme from raising the weapon. The gendarme’s eyeballs bulged in anger and the cords of his neck stood out as he strained to bring the submachine gun to bear.
“Leave him!” a deep bass voice barked from somewhere behind the struggling gendarme.
The man cursed and tried to step back and swing his weapon up and away from Bagdasarian’s grip. The Armenian stepped forward as the man stepped back, preventing the smaller man from bringing any leverage to bear.
An ability to call up instant explosive anger and balls like brass fixtures was the way Bagdasarian had risen to the top in the hyperviolent world of Armenian organized crime. He didn’t take shit. Even if it cost him his life.
They moved into the room through the door and Bagdasarian heard chair legs scrape against floorboards as men jumped to their feet. He ignored them, making no move for the butt of the 9 mm PPK plainly sticking out of his jeans.
The man grunted his exertion and tried to step to the outside.
Rafik Bagdasarian danced with him, keeping the gendarme’s body between him and the others in the smoky room. His grip on the front sling swivel remained unbroken. Finally the gendarme dropped his bottle and grabbed the submachine gun with both hands. The bottle thumped loudly as it struck the floor but did not break.
Liquid began to gurgle out and stain the floorboards.
“I said enough!” the voice roared.
The gendarme was already using both his hands to snatch the submachine gun free as the order came.
The Armenian released the front sling swivel and stepped to the side. The gendarme found his center of balance around the struggle abruptly gone and overextended himself. Already drunk, he toppled over backward and struck the floor in the pool of reeking alcohol spilling from his dropped bottle.
Cursing and sputtering, the man tried to rise.
Bagdasarian surveyed the room. He saw four other men in the same soiled and rumpled police uniforms, each one armed either with a pistol or a submachine gun. All of them were gaunt and lanky with short hair except for the bear of a man bearing the gold braid epaulets of an officer.
The man rose from behind a table and hurled a heavy glass tumbler at the gendarme Bagdasarian had spilled onto the floor. The glass struck the man in the face and opened a gash under his eye, high on a prominent cheekbone where Bantu tribal scars had been etched at puberty and rubbed with charcoal.
“I said leave him!”
The shock of being struck snapped the embarrassed man out of his rage. He touched a hand to the cut under his eye and held up his bloody fingers. He looked away from his hand and nodded once toward the man looming up behind the table before rising.
The officer turned toward Bagdasarian. “My apologizes,” he said. “My men worry about my safety.”
“Understandable, Colonel Kabila.” Bagdasarian nodded. “I worry about my own safety.”
“Come now, you are in the company of police officers.”
