FSB Author Article
Volk's Game
A
Novel
By Brent Ghelfi
Published by Henry Holt and Company
June 2007;$23.00US; 978-0-8050-8254-8
The explosive debut introducing Russian gangster Alexei Volkovoy -- not since Robert Ludlum’s Jason Bourne has a hero shifted so effortlessly between hunter and hunted
A firefight reverberates through Moscow’s dark, rain-soaked streets; shattered glass and screams echo in the air. In the lawless ways of Russia’s capital city, the gunmen melt away into the night. Two men are dead, the targets not what they seem.
A shadowy figure lopes along the riverbank outside the Kremlin walls. Known to all as Volk, a battle-hardened veteran of Russia’s brutal war in Chechnya, he prowls Moscow’s grim alleyways, a knife concealed in his prosthetic foot at all times.
As both a major player in the black market and a covert agent for the Russian military, Volk serves two masters: Maxim, a psychotic Azeri mafia kingpin with hordes of loyal informers; and a man known only as the General, to whom Volk is mysteriously indebted. By his side is Valya, an exotic beauty charged with protecting her lover from his unsavory associates. Valya is the most dangerous weapon in Volk’s arsenal.
Together they are commissioned to steal a long-lost da Vinci painting called Leda and the Swan from St. Petersburg’s Hermitage Museum. Leda’s ethereal radiance is undeniably captivating and incalculably dangerous. Volk must choose which powerful man he will betray in order to escape with the painting -- and with his life.
With the high-octane rush and vivid intensity of a feature film, Volk’s Game delivers at every turn, announcing Alexei Volkovoy as the boldest hero of a new generation.
Author
Brent Ghelfi has served as a clerk on the U.S. Court of
Appeals, been a partner in a Phoenix-headquartered law firm, and now
owns and operates several businesses. He has traveled extensively
throughout Russia, and lives in Phoenix with his wife, a former
prosecutor, and their two sons. He is currently working on the sequel
to
Volk’s Game.
Reviews
"Brent Ghelfi writes like Dostoevsky's hooligan great-grandson on
speed. Volk is hard, fast, and a truly excellent debut. Highly
recommended."
--Lee Child, New York Times bestselling author of The
Hard Way
“Volk’s Game is no ordinary thriller: it’s a 500-horsepower
Mercedes blasting through the Moscow night. Alexei Volkovoy is the most
original thriller character to come down the Russian pike since Arkady
Renko, yet he inhabits a Russia that Renko might have difficulty
surviving. Volk moves through this frenetically paced novel like an
avenging angel in the employ of both God and Satan. Brent Ghelfi’s
insights are rapier-sharp, and his prose seems to illuminate the page.
Be glad, because you’ll be finishing this novel at four a.m. I’m ready
to read the next installment NOW.”
--Greg Iles, New York Times bestselling author of Turning
Angel
"Everything we look for when we read -- freshness of setting,
intriguing characters, vivid prose, new understandings -- is well and
truly here. Brent Ghelfi may not know Vincente Huidobro’s work, but in
his own he does exactly what that poet counseled: Invent new worlds,
and be careful what you say."
--James Sallis, author of Drive
"Hypnotically suspenseful and ballistic paced, Volk’s Game
by Brent Ghelfi is a fascinating journey into the dark world of
international intrigue. From a plot full of surprises to crackling
dialogue and often lyrical prose, this masterful debut novel belongs on
every thriller-lover's bookshelf."
--Gayle Lynds, New York Times bestselling author of The
Last Spymaster
"It's rare to find a thriller this fast paced and breathlessly
dangerous that is also beautifully written. Ghelfi hits as hard as his
hero Volk. Like staring down the barrel of a Sig-Sauer, you can't look
away from
Volk's Game."
--David L. Robbins, author of The Assassin’s Gallery
"Volk’s Game, a debut thriller, introduces Alexei Volkovoy, a Russian gangster, veteran of Russia’s war in Chechnya, and a covert agent for the Russian military. Dark, intense and brutal, Volk is also filled with compassion for veterans and the widows of those who didn’t make it home to Mother Russia. Volk and his partner Valya are commissioned to steal a long-lost Da Vinci painting and both the Mafia kingpin he answers to and the General he is curiously indebted to wish to possess the painting. Who he decides to betray will determine whether he escapes with the painting and his life. Non stop action from start to finish with Volk both the hunter and the hunted.
"The portrait Ghelfi paints of contemporary Moscow is bleak and
dismal, made more so when you compare it to the radiance of the
painting at the center of this story --
Leda and the Swan; this is definitely a book of contrasts from
start to finish and also a commentary on the hidden costs of the war in
Chechnya. Not for the faint of heart but the beauty of Ghelfi’s prose
makes this a must read book. The final paragraph is exquisite and if I
hadn’t already been captivated by this book that alone would have made
the read worthwhile. And how perfect an answer to the question posed in
the first sentence of this extraordinary book -- there is so much to
appreciate inside the circle that is
Volk’s Game."
--Seattle Mystery Bookshop
"Former attorney Ghelfi's impressive debut introduces a compelling
antihero, Alekei "Volk" Volkovoy. A brutal killer maimed in Russia's
war against Chechnya, Volk leads two lives-one as a powerful gangster
with a hand in virtually all underworld rackets, the other as a covert
military operative. When Volk gets the chance to steal a previously
unknown Da Vinci painting,
Leda and the Swan, which has been concealed beneath another
painting in a St. Petersburg museum, Volk enlists the aid of Valya, a
beautiful assassin, in plotting the theft. After an ostensible ally
sabotages the operation, Volk seeks vengeance. The twists and turns
accumulate at an almost dizzying pace, building to a satisfactory
resolution. Frederick Forysth fans will appreciate the crisp writing.
This thriller could mark the start of a successful long-running series."
--Publishers Weekly
Excerpt
The following is an excerpt from the book Volks Game
by Brent Ghelfi
Published by Henry Holt and Company; June
2007;$23.00US; 978-0-8050-8254-8
Copyright © 2007 Brent Ghelfi
Chapter One
“What do you know about art, Volk?”
Maxim Abdullaev hurls the question through the airwaves as if it were an ax, cleaving pretense.
I cram my Nokia cell phone against my ear. Clattering dishes, jostling diners, and raised voices give me an excuse to delay answering his question. “Hold on,” I say, then step downstairs to my table in the basement of Vadim’s Café near Staraya Street, where I make my office.
Maxim could be anywhere. His headquarters are in the Solsnetskaya neighborhood just a few blocks away, but he changes his personal place of business weekly, sometimes daily, so it is impossible to develop a mental picture of where he is or what he is doing.
Once I’ve moved away from the din, I take a moment to gather my thoughts. “Art? I have a master’s in art history from Moscow University.”
I’m sure that Maxim knows enough about my life to catch the sarcasm. Dead mother, disappeared father, late-era Soviet poverty, and five years of killing and worse in Chechnya unsurprisingly failed to harmonize into a world-class education. The things I have learned are not taught in universities. He barks a deep-throated chuckle that offers no comfort. A polar bear probably makes the same sound just before it eats.
“Listen,” he says. “You do something for me. Talk to Gromov. Yes?”
“Yes,” I say, as if I have a choice, and Maxim disconnects.
Two hours later, nearing midnight, Gromov clumps like a plow horse into my basement office. The flesh on his bald head and puffy face droops like a shar-pei’s skin and slits his eyes, which are shifty-nervous, with good cause. Valya lurks hidden among the shelves of café sundries behind him.
“You talked to Maxim?” he says.
I grunt acknowledgment.
He collapses into a padded roller chair that disappears, creaking, beneath his bulk. Even its silvery round feet are covered by the hanging folds of his overcoat, where one hand stays buried in a deep pocket. He likes to show off a chromed Colt .45 Peacemaker, an outdated cannon that rends great holes in bodies, a good weapon for a man whose business is intimidation.
“I got a business opportunity,” he begins. “Maxim says you’re the guy to help me assess it.”
“I don’t do partners.”
He knows this. My rule is one source of the friction between us. “Yeah, yeah.” Scarred leather biker boots twirl the chair as he takes in the surroundings.
There’s not much to see here in the basement level. Black slate floor, rows of shelves, exposed raw-wood beams, plaster walls randomly damaged to show the red brick beneath, and dusty ’60s-era slot machines. Gromov is looking for Valya, I know, but she won’t be seen unless she wants to be. He finishes his survey and grins through crooked yellow teeth ridged black with omnipresent chewing tobacco.
“Maybe you should do partners.”
“Say what you came to say.” I point to the empty tabletop in front of me. “I’ve got work to do.”
“You know diamonds?”
“Maxim says art, you say diamonds. Which is it?”
“Same thing, asshole.”
When he yanks his hand from his overcoat pocket, Valya materializes behind him and aims the short barrel of a pistol-grip, 12-gauge Mossberg at the back of his shaved skull. But instead of drawing the Colt, he tosses a crystal rectangle that tumbles sparkling through the air before smacking into my palm.
Valya withdraws.
Gromov leans back, smugly oblivious to the nearness of death, while I examine his prize. The stone is about one centimeter square by three long. One end is broken, jagging up into a ragged half peak. Unreadable inscriptions are etched into its flat sides. The etchings are names written in Persian, I know. I toss it back, and he catches it deftly.
“You’re an idiot, Gromov.”
His jaw muscles are so big that his face widens into a pyramid when he clenches his teeth. “Fuck you.”
I wave toward his hand. “That’s a bad imitation of the Shah Diamond. The real one’s five blocks up the road in the Kremlin Armory under more security than Putin.”
That’s a lie. The real one’s gone. It was originally a gift to Tsar Nicholas I to atone for a Russian diplomat made dead in 1820s Tehran. Famous, in part, because all the unlucky owners named in the inscriptions died owning it. Damn near ninety carats preserved in uncut form. Three years ago I helped it make a symbolic but unpublicized journey back to Persia, to the rare arts collection of a spoiled Saudi prince, in return for financial considerations benefiting my primary patron, the Russian army. A better fake than this one sits behind glass under twenty-four-hour security in the Kremlin’s Diamond Fund.
“See?” he says. “You know about this kind of shit.”
“Even the tourists know about the Shah Diamond.”
He leans forward as far as his muscle-bound body will allow and settles flying-buttress elbows on my table, which groans but holds. Like much of the older furniture in Moscow, it was sturdily built by cold gulag hands. “What if I told you I could get the real thing, with nobody the wiser?”
“You can’t. Don’t waste my time.”
“Listen.” He scrunches his broad face, concentrating. “We got inside guys. Military, pissed off by Putin capitalism. They’re like pensioners on the dole while guys like us get rich. They take the diamond, replace it with the fake. Think about it. The fucker’s under glass all day, like goddamn Lenin. Who knows if what’s under there is real? Who cares? In five years some Swiss prick looks at it under a microscope and raises hell. By then, shit, there’s no way to trace who did what and when.”
I say it can’t be that easy, although it was.
“You just worry about your end,” he says.
“What’s my end?”
“Work the distribution angle.” Gromov’s running hot, trembling, obviously excited. “You’re tight with that fag, Nigel Bolles.” He mouths Nigel’s name with curled-lip contempt. “He’ll point you to guys in London or New York or wherever and help us find someone with too much money to buy it.”
“I’m not your guy.”
His jaw drops. “Why not?”
“I told you. I don’t do partners. And I think your chances of getting the real thing out of there are zero.”
Pounding veins ripple under the five o’clock shadow that darkens his enormous dome. “Why do you make things so fucking hard, Volk? Three times I say let’s do business. Three times you tell me to fuck off.” He rolls mountainous shoulders, as if to make room under the overcoat. “Business is getting too tight. Every time I turn around you’re there. You’re in my way.”
He’s right about our businesses bumping into each other, at least the parts of mine he knows about -- drugs, identity theft, pictures, and a Russian brides operation that caters to the middle classes of America and industrialized European and Asian countries. Russia has ten million more women than men, one product of her endless fighting and purging, and she always imports more than she exports. I figure the bride business evens out both imbalances.
Gromov’s interests collide with mine in several ways, although he’s big into child prostitution and other things that I won’t touch. But he’s wrong to worry about it, because there’s plenty of business for both of us on this little stretch of road below old Lubyanka prison and because the Internet has made us international.
“Don’t be so parochial, Gromov.”
“What the fuck does that mean?”
“It means we’ll get along fine if you concentrate on business instead of territorial bullshit. Steal your diamond. Hump Lyudmilla. Just stay away from me.”
He doesn’t like my way of rejecting him or the reference to his billowy-breasted girlfriend. He stands so suddenly his chair overturns. Snarls, roars something unintelligible, hauls out his hand cannon, and starts to bear down, slow and amateurish. I don’t think he’s going to fire. He just wants to make a point. But then the racking slide of a shotgun cracks through everything. He stops dead. His eyes click back and forth like the ones in the plastic clocks that look like tail-wagging pets, but he’s careful not to turn around and provoke her.
“It’s Valya,” I offer, and both of his hands go up slowly until the muzzle of the Colt brushes the bottom of a low beam.
She’s behind him, looking amped, ready for anything, almost lost in lace-up boots, cinched parachute pants, and a chrome-colored jacket with its sable-lined hood turned down. The Mossberg rests lightly in her hands. Her white hair sprays backlight like a halo.
“I’m done,” he says without turning around.
I nod at him, and he shucks open the overcoat and slots the Colt into a holster made from more than one cow. “I got no choice,” he says in the same tone you use to tell a cabdriver to turn right. “I gotta put you out of business, gimp.”
The gibe about my foot doesn’t bother me. Impending war does, especially given Maxim’s newly found interest in the world of art. The General and I had three years to operate freely in that arena. I wish our time wasn’t coming to an end.
“Have at it, big man,” I say.
He turns fast, but Valya is nowhere to be seen. One last baleful look at me, and then Gromov lumbers away.
Lunch the next day is sliced smoked pork on the sunny side of an outdoor gazebo in grassy Gorky Park. Halfway through, I’m joined by Yuri, a baton-twirling cop. He goes sixty kilos, maybe. He approaches with his spindly chest puffed out, slides his baton into a steel ring attached to his belt, and plops down across from me. The sun glints through the silver birch trees and gambols off the gold double-headed Russian eagle in his cap as I slide an envelope stuffed with American dollars across the plastic tabletop. He plucks the envelope and tucks it under his leg, fast and furtive.
“Shit, Volk!”
His eyes dart, but I’m busy with the pork. I don’t care who sees. I stop chewing long enough to say, “There’s an extra five hundred for Viktor. And a note.”
Viktor commands Yuri’s area. He’s been on my payroll for two years. The note explains the information I want about Gromov, and the extra money pays for it. Gromov is probably paying for similar reports about me.
Yuri pulls a foil-wrapped sandwich from a brown bag blotched with oil stains, but then he sits and watches me without eating. He sets his cap on the table and licks the down on his upper lip, which has been the same since I met him a year ago, so I suppose it’s a mustache.
“Where’s Valya?” he asks.
The pork is gone. I suck the fat off my fingers and pat his balding head. He’s younger than me, mid-twenties, but the hair gods are fickle. He’s softer than me as well. War and want have hardened my appearance. Military-cut bronze hair, hazel eyes with a feral blaze, stubbled jaw -- I look ferocious even when I’m trying not to. Each pat makes his head bounce.
“Don’t mess with me, Yuri.”
His eyes widen. “God no, Volk.”
I leave him to his sandwich. I’m tromping through the high grass of Gorky Park to my Mercedes S-600 when the Nokia buzzes.
“Go.”
“It’s Nigel.”
Bolles. My largest procurer of foreign business. The British expat fop Gromov asked about the day before. I wait.
“Word’s out you’re in a war, old boy,” he says.
His lilting voice is strained, due, no doubt, to a night of hard drinking and no morning Stolichnaya fix. “Business is always tough.”
“How can I help?”
Just what I need. “The British are coming,” I say, but he apparently misses the negative reference.
“Precisely. I am at your service.”
“Just keep finding customers.”
“Right.” He clears his throat. It sounds like a cold motor coughing to life. “In that regard, you’ll be pleased to learn I have an opportunity for tonight. Swiss conventioneers with a common interest.”
“Just drugs?”
“Boys and girls, too.”
He sounds regretful. He knows my scruple, silly as it is. In the end, what difference who makes the money? The children are pincushions either way.
I stop on a knoll carpeted with flattened grass that shines like wet jade. Even in early May the wind blows chill over the Moscow River and bends the tops of the stately line of birches that march up the embankment toward the towering peaks of the university. Industrial haze blurs the cityscape. The spires of Stalin’s other Seven Sisters pierce the haze like upthrust stilettos. Gromov is manageable. I know I can dispatch him with relative ease. But he’s one of Maxim’s poodles, and as chieftain of the Azeri mafia, Maxim can crush my enterprises on a whim.
“Are you still there, Volk?”
I grit my teeth. “I’ll meet you at the National Club at ten to arrange the details.” My chest tightens, and suddenly I feel as if I can’t take in enough air.
“Well done.” He’s reenergized, doubtless calculating his twenty percent cut.
I end the call, limp to the Mercedes favoring my newly throbbing stump, and crank the shiny black car into heavy traffic, already ruing my decision. The cell buzzes again.
“Go.”
“Volk?”
“Who wants to know?”
“It’s Arkady.”
Several years have passed since I last heard from Arkady Borodenkov -- one of my companions in a foster care facility and, later, at a rehabilitation center for boys situated on the Baltic shore. A childhood friend in places where friends were scarce. And last I heard, an Ecstasy distributor and part-time fence in St. Petersburg. Slightly built, with blond hair worn long, too weak for anything except the fringes.
“What’s up?” I say.
“I got a weird one for you. A score that needs muscle and hustle. But mostly it needs brains. I thought of you.”
I cut through traffic and outraged pedestrians on Kremlevskaya Street, make an illegal U-turn and then a hard right and rattle over unevenly laid bricks on the edge of Red Square. St. Basil’s Cathedral looms on the left, its colorful domes like ice-cream swirls. The bright colors and the crowds lined up around the cathedral seem to be mocking decades of Soviet religious oppression.
“Keep going.”
“I’m not even sure how to describe it.”
I’m in no mood for stalling, not while the scum of the deal I just made with Nigel still coats the inside of my mouth. “Spit it out.”
“What do you know about art, Volk?”
Copyright © 2007 Brent Ghelfi