Free Requiem For a Glass Heart by David Lindsey Page B

“They’re a bunch of bad guys, street-wise, smart, and getting smarter. Even though the
mafiya’s
been around in one form or another since the beginning of communism, it’s never been organized in the sense we’re used to thinking of. In fact, it’s been notoriously disorganized—and fractious. That’s why Krupatin’s appearance on the scene is a big deal. He’s the type of operator we’re going to be seeing more of, the future face of Russian crime. And the future face of international crime. Even though his games are the traditional stuff—fraud,including gasoline taxes, Medicare payments, counterfeit credit cards; narcotics; counterfeiting; extortion—the difference is that Krupatin
is
organized. A lot of his people are educated. They’re making alliances with certain Sicilian groups and with some of the Asians, just like they did a few years ago in Europe. The important thing is, these different ethnic groups are not warring. They’re cooperating.”
    She paused, took a rubber band out of her lap, and wrapped it a couple of times around a handful of jet hair.
    “And they kill at the drop of a hat,” she went on, leaning over and crossing her arms on her knees. “On each of his three visits to Brighton Beach, Krupatin held a number of meetings with men who had been running the most lucrative rackets there. Krupatin left and within a few weeks these guys turned up dead. New faces took over, things started being done a little differently. All the operations are slicker now, and we’ve found it more difficult to tell what’s going on. In each situation we think the organization is branching out. The details are in the files there,” she concluded, nodding at the paper-cluttered card table.
    “The Russians’ willingness to use violence is pretty damn impressive,” Hain continued. “The Italians and the Asians go through periods of violence when they fight over turf, but they also know the value of keeping peace when it’s to their advantage. Russians see violence as
being
the advantage. We know that they’ve assembled hit teams of ex-KGB agents they’ve hired out to the Sicilians in Europe. Contract killing is a staple service wherever the Russian
mafiya
establishes itself, or wants to establish itself. Probably our best file on these people has come out of Germany, where these hit teams have been operating for a long time.”
    Hain lowered his head toward the BKA agent sitting across from him.
    “Erika, give us a quick picture of the situation in Germany.”
    Jaeger nodded and sat forward on her chair. Though she seemed to be wound up tight, her face showed the strain of jet lag.
    “Well, of course, you must know that after the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, we were overrun with East Europeans,” she said. Her accent was heavy, but she had no trouble expressing herself in English. “Everybody-—Romanians, Czechs, Bulgarians,Hungarians, Yugoslavs, Poles—they all came. We were overwhelmed; it became a nightmare. Already we had a large Russian émigré population that had drifted into Germany over the years. Criminals quickly established protection rackets among their own people. When the new, younger criminals arrived after the wall came down, they moved in on the older gangs, selling their own protection to the émigrés, ‘protecting’ them from the people they were already paying protection money to in the first place.
    “Car thefts exploded.” Jaeger shook her head. “You can drive to Moscow in twenty hours from Berlin. That first year, twenty-four thousand Audis, Mercedes Benzes, and BMWs made the trip out of Germany, going north. Within a few years the car thefts were up to a hundred and thirty thousand annually. It was absurd.”
    Jaeger leaned her forearms on her knees, her feet apart on the floor—a distinctly masculine posture—and clasped her hands. She did not try to hide the fact that the situation she described agitated her. She took it personally.
    “In Germany we have had