novelsite Chapter 65 The Greedy Hyena
Chapter 65 The Greedy Hyena
The evening clouds hung like a filthy rag over the Neukölln district. In the basement of the apartment building, its walls peeling and reeking of urine, the smoke was thick and oppressive. The stench of cheap marijuana, sweat, expired curry, and some kind of rotting food fermented in the cramped space, seeping into every corner.
Rajesh sat cross-legged in the center of the mattress, stained with some unknown substance. The bare light bulb above his head flickered, casting swaying shadows on his greasy, round face. His stubby fingers were repeatedly tracing several stolen photographs—missing person posters distributed by the Iron Hand Gang. The man in the photos had the high cheekbones and cold, hard eyes typical of Slavs, short blond hair, and a thick neck. Andrei Sokolov. This name and the 50,000 euro reward poster were like red-hot nails driven into Rajesh's mind, making him restless.
"Fifty thousand... Damn it, how much merchandise can fifty thousand buy? How many people can it hire?" he muttered, spitting the chewed betel nut bits mixed with saliva onto the cement floor with a "pui," leaving a sticky, scarlet stain. The red color reminded him of the blood that splattered when he broke the old Fujian man's nose in Chinatown last week.
The smoke in the room grew thicker. Amir was sharpening the blade of his machete with a whetstone in the corner; the scraping sound echoed in the confined space, making one's teeth ache. Sahir squatted by the door, the cold light from his phone screen illuminating his young but prematurely world-weary face.
"Boss," Amir stopped what he was doing, and when he looked up, the scar on his forehead looked even more menacing in the dim light, "Today in Chinatown, we collected 30% less in 'protection money.' Several shops claimed business was bad and they couldn't pay."
Rajish's face instantly darkened, like the sky before a storm. He shifted his short, stocky body, the springs in the mattress groaning under the strain. "Business is bad?" he scoffed, his voice hoarse like sandpaper scraping. "That old coffin-stuffer of Li's Grocery Store dares to say that? Last month his son got married, a lavish banquet with twenty tables and firecrackers for half an hour, do you think I'm blind?"
He remembered it clearly. That day, he "happened" to be passing by with a group of people, and Boss Li's wrinkled face instantly turned deathly pale. He nervously handed over a red envelope. Rajesh opened it in front of everyone—it contained only two hundred euros. Two hundred euros! Was he trying to fob off a beggar? He immediately threw the envelope at the old man's face, scattering the banknotes all over the floor, then overturned two round tables piled high with dishes. Porcelain plates shattered, soup splattered everywhere, and the festive red tablecloths were stained with oil. The entire room fell silent. The old man knelt on the floor, pleading in heavily accented German as he picked up the money. Finally, trembling, he managed to scrape together one thousand euros.
For Rajesh, oppressing the Chinese shops in Chinatown had long transcended the realm of "protection money"; it had become a twisted pleasure. Seeing those faces—usually striving to maintain a respectable facade, speaking fluent German, and trying to integrate into society—distorted with fear; hearing their humble pleas in their accented native tongues; forcing them to obediently hand over the euros they had earned through a day, a week, or even a month of hard work to him, a "Thai thug" they might deep down despise—gave him an almost morbid thrill of power. In white-dominated Berlin, Rajesh was at the bottom, on the margins, a target of arbitrary police checks. But at least in Chinatown, in front of those with yellow skin, he was the "boss," the one who could decide whether they could do business that day, whether they could sleep soundly at night.
"Go again tomorrow." Rajish's tone was icy, each word like it had been pulled from an icebox. "Take steel pipes and pepper spray. If any shop complains about not doing well, make sure they really can't do business."
Amir grinned knowingly, revealing his teeth stained yellow from tobacco. Sahir also looked up, licking his chapped lips, a glint of excitement in his eyes. Only Raju kept his head down, staring at the cracked milk skin on the surface of the boiling milk tea, his fingers nervously twisting together.
Rajish noticed his underling's hesitation and snorted in dissatisfaction, his thick chest rumbling like a bellows: "What, getting soft-hearted? Raju, let me tell you, in this godforsaken place, if you're not ruthless, others will be. Those Chinese, they all look honest and simple, but behind our backs they look down on us so much! You think they really consider us human? They're just like those Germans, they think we crawled out of a cesspool!"
He became increasingly agitated as he spoke, spittle flying from his mouth, veins bulging on his neck: "Mr. Wolf of the Iron Hand Gang once said—this world is a jungle, a food chain! The strong eat meat, the weak can't even get hot shit! We have to prove we are wolves, hyenas, not sheep to be slaughtered!"
When the Iron Hand and Wolff were mentioned, Rajesh's tone unconsciously carried a hint of awe and obsequiousness. Those were true gangs, controlling half of Berlin's underworld, dealing in drugs, arms, underground casinos, and loan sharks; their henchmen were ruthless criminals willing to kill. Three months ago, Rajesh mustered his courage, nearly emptying his savings to scrape together five thousand euros, pulling strings through several layers of connections, just to barely manage to offer a "tribute" to a minor Iron Hand boss, receiving only a lukewarm "Come find me if you need anything." That one sentence solidified his position in the Neukölln district considerably, even making the Turkish thugs who usually bossed him around more subdued.
But Rajesh wanted more. He wanted to be truly "incorporated" into the Iron Hand gang, to have his own territory and a legitimate (relatively) business, to drive around in a Mercedes like those Eastern European gangsters, and to have his own private booth in nightclubs, instead of spending his days holed up in this moldy basement, making a living by extorting small shop owners and stealing.
His phone vibrated, interrupting his thoughts. A short message from an unknown number, concise yet hooking at his eye like a hook:
"Andre will appear at 9 PM the day after tomorrow, at Pier 17 East. This is a one-time opportunity. Also: he will be with a young girl, blonde, around 17 or 18 years old, who is his daughter."
Rajish's eyes lit up instantly, like two will-o'-the-wisps igniting in the darkness. He stared intently at the screen, reading it over and over again three times, especially the last sentence—"It's his daughter."
A blonde Ukrainian girl... Andrei's daughter...
Greed, like the most poisonous vine, instantly coiled around his heart, almost suffocating him. The 50,000 euros was the reward for capturing Andrei, but what if… what if he offered Andrei and his daughter to Wolf? Would Wolf offer more money? Double it? Or even… would he truly accept him and give him a "formal status"?
A scene began to play in his mind: he brought the tightly bound Andrei and the sobbing blonde girl to Wolf, who patted him on the shoulder and said, "Good job, you'll be with me from now on," a stack of euros piled on the table, and the brand-new Mercedes keys tossed over...
"Boss?" Amir noticed the change in his expression, a twisted mixture of ecstasy, greed, and ruthlessness.
Rajish didn't reply immediately. He stared at the text message, his mind racing like a gambler calculating probabilities at a poker table. Pier 17—he knew that was Zhang Yiqiang's territory, not to be trifled with. But the opportunity was too great, so great that he was willing to take the enormous risk.
"The news's here!" He sprang from the mattress, his large frame surprisingly agile. "The day after tomorrow night, Andrei will be showing up at Pier 17 East! And..." He lowered his voice, his eyes gleaming with a wolfish green light, "He's with a 'little goldfish'—his daughter! That Ukrainian girl who's supposedly on Mr. Wolf's radar!"
Sahir put down his phone, frowning. "Whose message is this? Is it reliable? Could it be a trap?"
"A trap?" Rajish sneered. "Who the hell would use Andrei and his daughter to lure in small fry like us? Do we even deserve it?" He waved his phone. "This is a golden opportunity! We know the docks, we know a few hidden gaps! And..." He glanced at his three men, lowering his voice, "Think about it, what if we hand over the father and daughter to Mr. Wolf? Fifty thousand? A hundred thousand, maybe! Then we can buy real guns, not these crappy machetes! We can expand our territory, drive the Turks out of Neukölln! We won't have to put up with those old fogies in Chinatown anymore, we can just take over their shops as our base!"
Raju timidly reminded them, his voice trembling, "But Pier 17... that's Zhang Yiqiang's territory. If we barge in, what if we stumble upon their transaction or..."