Budapest. 1981-ish. The ruins of an old church.

Disco had just died, and yet in the fringes they were still trying to peddle its lifeless flair-clad corpse to make a quick buck. Time moved slower in eastern Europe, of course eastern Europe was communist at this time. Western music was taboo, dangerous even, but that made it deliciously sweeter.

Kennedy had everything a man would need in the 70s. Guns, booze, Disco, and a roster of gorgeous eastern block lovers with the kind of accent only owned by a villain in a James Bond movie. His personal favourite disco viper was of course Tanya, but she was different back then. Her accent was still Hungarian, her eye was in-tact, and she was kinder then. He quietly knew she wasn’t who she said she was, but for a certain level of glamour he could turn a blind eye. She’d sell weapons to whoever was buying, it was none of his business which side of history purchased, so long as they ended up with enough money for a tipple and a new record player.

“Can I get a shot?” she grunted out in fractured English. “Not the kind of shots you’re selling babe” he told her, flicking the shotgun shell she was trying to barter with off the table. “I only accept cash, denim, and rock n roll” he half joked.

She pulled out a pen knife from her boot.

“All this for alcohol?” he said surrendering a bottle of jack, she lowered her knife.

“I like you, you don’t mess around” she said, manoeuvring herself toward the bottle and attacking the lid with her razor.

“Any sign of stroganoff?” she asked, filing her nails with her blade and using its reflective surface to fix her makeup.

“Victor? He’s one of the 3 Ds, Dead, Defected, or in Danger” Klein said, tippling liquor onto his fur coat as he gesticulated.

Tanya sighed reluctantly, kicking a flared white trouser leg up as she squirmed onto the bar. The table was an old church alter, clearly a finer wood than what was meant for this rag tag mismatched bar.

She carved the knife into the antique desk and glanced up at him, her drink dangling in her other hand almost passively. “You realise if Victor’s missing, that probably means we’re in trouble, right?” she posited, calculating over her liquor.

“I mean, we can’t be certain until we find his head in a shoebox somewhere” Klein chuckled.

Tanya leaned in, tying her hair into a ponytail and skewering it in place with the knife as a hairpin.

“So, I heard a secret from dear Britannia. Trouble in paradise and a 400 kilo drug smuggling operation left to some English tart with no field training” Tanya taunted.

“They always send some daft English rose, easier to frame if it goes wrong” Klein huffed reluctantly.

“It’d buy an awful lot of denim and record disks” She pointed out, “and we both know this place is has ten years at most before the political kettle boils over” she added, wincing at the fiery liquid in her glass.

“Boat or plane?” Ken considered.

“Both. Any. All.” she informed him, “wouldn’t be hard to intercept.”

He stared at her for a second. He would have to admit profits were dwindling, even in a city where the supply for parties infamously didn’t scratch the surface of demand. Politics were getting in the way.

Victor was supposed to be the canary in the coal mine, some athlete boy they said was supposed to demonstrate the successes of communism, as if a 19 year old running off steroids and cheap booze was going to best the Olympics. He was a child, he was an idiot, and on a bad day, a rent boy for any out of town tourist willing to fiddle the ration supply with a few more bits of meat, bread, and sugar.

More importantly, he’d been double dipping. Telling the Americans all the little red secrets and vice versa. A lad without values is an easy puppet.

Berlin 1986

The next half decade was used practising, Between Tanya and Ken they’d started quite a racket, just intercepting drug deals and money laundering trades in different countries. They looked the part, they dressed the part, and before the great almighty internet was popular, there was no formal way to double check when someone had been played.

They did Peru, Tokyo, Texas, Vegas, Portugal, London, Liverpool and a few international waters ships that didn’t see it coming. Their tiny empire had racked up a small fortune, enough for a little passenger plane and a set of cars.

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They both had their favourites, of course they did. Needless to say Klein favoured anything with an engine that would get him into tight leather. Tanya on the other hand favoured modesty, no one double checked the middle aged mum cars, and when the cops came searching She’d pretend to be a cool aunt or fun cousin from out of town.

This grift was perfect, the sexy bad boy from the dirty magazines here to help you get into the glamourous side of organised crime. His overgrown rough-around-the-edges charm naturally helped, and if things got rough or the jig was up, he’d send in Tanya as a jealous out-of-town girlfriend, or a furious ex to sort out any tensions. Everything was flawless up until Berlin, where the English Rose tourist had a thorn.

He had to admit, she had the nerve, and her little party trick cost them considerably. He was arrested at the airport and was detained twice, until 3 weeks later when Tanya posted bail. It was written on a foreign post card in typewriter letters.

Consider that my side of the bargain. I sold the sports car and took the helicopter. If your English rose ends up in my garden I’ll pluck her at the root.

T xx

In all honesty, Ken couldn’t blame her.

***

The interview was interrupted by a gunshot. The smell of gunpowder was recognisable at 30 paces. “Is there another way in?” a voice shouted from the other room. The metallic military walls warping the sound like a fun-house mirror. Ken toddled down the halls, his muscles atrophied and his weapon half cocked.

Ted perched there, the industrial safe open and bloodied money leaking out the hatch. Irene recoiling in concern as a stranger whimpering in the corner. He was shocked, starved and weedy. Not the body you’d expect a killer to have. His revolver shook in his hand but thankfully his warning shot hadn’t hit anyone.

“DROP IT” Ted ordered, not fully sure how he was meant to proceed with this surprise assailant. He didn’t seem to have the heart of a killer but you could never be sure what a desperate man would do. The man cried meekly and raised the gun upwards at his new companions.

Irene gave Ted a look, half concern half mockery. “I thought you said the bunker’s owner was in jail” she scoffed.

The interviewer joined them a few paces late, “he is. You don’t get charged with what he was charged with and don’t go to prison” She blustered, her eyes bulging at the man among the money.

“You’re Theodore Zhang, son of the Ya-” before the terrified servant could finish the sentence, he found himself getting well acquainted with a scolding hot jug of freshly brewed coffee and the underside of a military grade workman’s boot. Safely disarmed, Ted slammed the bank vault again.

Irene picked through the staff documents, “The previous owner talked in his notes about taking one of his staff hostage, a whistleblower undercover as a manservant, Joshua Timber?” she uttered, tossing a file about him in the air reluctantly. “Made sure to lock him away with the bunker ration supplies and the blood money – easier to frame him that way”

Ted looked at the notes uncomfortably. “I thought blood money was an expression in America, Back at home it’d be really rude to give this kind of money away. You’d get more respect filling a vault with live cobras” he frosted.

“When he’s out of prison, I’ll pitch it to him” Ken deadpanned.

Did Ted expect them to literally launder the blood off the cash? Ken knew idioms didn’t typically translate as cleanly as expected, but seriously? The lad could speak 3 languages, kill a man with a credit card, but god forbid he show bad manners.

“We were just looking through the paranoid scribbles left across the wall. New world orders, secret conspiracies, moon landing nonsense, but alongside the crazy is some incredibly accurate military secrets and organised crime tip-offs” Ted said sceptically. “I guess it pays to be crazy” Irene sighed.

She shook apart a concerningly sticky data file filled with dubiously obtained information on at least half a dozen sex workers in his area, varying from screenshots of their intimate websites to conspicuously detailed government data. Who in their right mind needed to know the height, shoe size, and national insurance number of a hooker? The nature of the screenshots made her really hope that it was blood binding the cardboard file together and nothing else.

The idea of him sitting there alone with these documents on a random Thursday night made her skin crawl. She had half a mind to “accidentally” spill hot coffee over the file, saving these women a lifetime of control and manipulation.

“So, what do we do? We have a nerd in the safe, two corpses on the roof, and according to the GPS tracker two police or military vehicles heading our way” Ted asked, a tad too earnestly.

“We trust the 3 inch galvanised steel, you finish your confession tapes, and when the reality blows over and the heat is off I send you back out to the desert, I’ll say you overpowered me and I was a brave journalist risking life and limb in a terrible place” the investigator rationalised, perhaps a tad too rehearsed.

“Speaking of which, you’re the only one who hasn’t been under the knife yet” she gesticulated, pointing a ballpoint pen at Ted.

“I’m an open book, but my story is a tad later than the lovebirds.” he admitted.

She arched an eyebrow at him. He had to be 30 at most. Easily young enough to be the son of the crime duo.

He watched the interviewer do the maths, looking at him like he was a playboy bunny next to a fossilised Hugh Hefner. She had to admit, they chose well, even when he dressed down his muscles seemed to burgeon out of his turtle-neck jumper, and he spoke with a precise, educated voice. Easily the voice of a man who’d studied internationally, Cambridge, or an Ivy league, maybe one of Asia's wealthier universities.

Yet behind the eyes was a smile that didn’t belong on his face, a look of careless ego. He’d get sloppy in a year or two, or piss off the wrong joker. As a true crime journalist she’d seen it all before in triplicate, she could almost predict the articles she wrote before they even happened.

He sat at the desk, trying to adjust his hair gel. He seemed oblivious to the work his employers had to put in to keep his head off the chopping block. She was already counting the years until his detailed tattoos would end up as some rich collector’s brand new novelty leather notebook, like a stuffed tiger on display.

Her pen ticked across the page mechanically as she noted his appearance and anything else that caught her eye. His tiny details, his miniscule glances and the biting of his lips. A nervous tick perhaps?

He poured himself a water, fed up with the jumpiness and the bitter taste of gone-off coffee, and began his story to the click of the recorder. “It began in Vegas. I’d just escaped some previous employers that’d gone badly, and wanted to get a fresh start, so I went into self employment” he said clearing his throat.