Page 113 of Kingmakers, Year Two

“My helicopter is waiting,” he says, briskly. “I only intend to stay an hour. So please explain to me why I shouldn’t gut you here and now for trying to steal my son’s bride.”

“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.”

“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. 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. In real time. People ordering your product as we sithere.”

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.”

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