Balkan Origami: Queen Ant E-Book

Ishmael Kardryni

• Herausgeber: epubli
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 138

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

Set against the backdrop of Albania's social and political transformation in the aftermath of socialism, this tale follows Nertila and her family - the Bulja clan of Northern Albania. After her clash with her previous boss of a criminal enterprise, Nertila and her clan are drawn into political maneuvers intertwined with the occult and the shadows of competing criminal organizations. Will the Bulja clan survive?

Leseprobe

Queen Ant

Ishmael Kardryni

Copyright  Ishmael K. All rights reserved.

This is a work of fiction inspired by true events. Some characters, incidents, and dialogue are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons or events is partly coincidental. While this story is based on real events, certain events, characters, and timelines have been changed for dramatic effect.

First Part

Queen Ant

The realist in murder writes of a world in which gangsters can rule nations and almost rule cities.

Raymond Chandler

Dorian

I

Nertila eased herself awake, nudging the sheet off without disturbing Dorian. His gentle sawing logs filled the quiet. She let her ears soak in the sound, her thoughts coasting back to the moans and soft murmurs from the night before.

She stashed her gear in her bag with care. Most of her threads were still at the hotel - this was just the bare bones. Stepping out of the crib, she hopped into the elevator. The stench of fresh paint tangling with raw concrete was a bracing nudge about the new mortgage. But it was her turf now - her own slice of the pie.

The taxi idled patiently at the curb. Storefront owners were starting to poke their heads out of their shops, like they’d been hibernating there overnight. The morning hustle was still soft at this hour, its backing track a comforting refrain.

The cab took the Italian-crafted boulevard, slicing through the rural backdrop like a royal promenade. The row of ministry buildings inked an elegant streak across the countryside. As they cruised, Nertila’s mind danced with images of chic dames who’d once trod this path, ditching their muck-caked boots to tap the boulevard with their stilettos.

On the fly to the airport, she caught her own mug on her phone screen. A couple of finger flicks down Instagram, and there was Etleva, all plastic smiles. The post was pulling down a heavy rain of likes. Nertila smirked. Etleva’s second trip to the clinic must’ve been a real joyride.

Genti was on deck at the airport, squeezed between a couple of new faces. His shirt was pushing its limit against his beefy build. Nertila couldn’t help but wonder if he was in on the hustle or just playing babysitter.

The ladies were blonde, leggy, carrying bodies that looked like they stepped right off a runway. Cut from the same cloth as Nertila, save for one detail. To blend into the blonde sorority, she had to make a detour to the beauty shop, have them wave a magic wand over her hair, turn those curls from night into day.

Dishing out their boarding passes, some dough, and a fallback address, Genti barely noticed the other girls’ vacant giggles and dreamy staring. He was savvy enough to know they’d probably never need that address.

Nertila popped the question to one of the girls - ”have you been to Dubai before?" The chick shook her head, pointing out that her pal had done the stint a few times. Fresh meat, Nertila figured. Seemed like every run came with a newbie. It was a trend she’d clocked over the gigs.

Her own first-time round-trip had been a tighter squeeze, going through Belgrade. But now, with the direct line from Tirana, the crew was typically a snug trio or quartet, usually made up of dames from Albania or Moldova.

Nertila soaked up from her vape and tossed it in the garbage. She picked up the pace towards the airline’s security check, snagging a dog-eared Don Winslow novel from an airport kiosk on her way.

II

Gimi blew the horn for an hour before Dorian hauled himself in. Gimi was short of two legs since his return from Berlin. He had racked up a kill when he’d rammed a tree in a cop chase, while ferrying his buddy to his own birthday bash.

Dorian thought about ribbing Gimi about his gear shift and the tricked-out brakes letting him drive sans legs, but he was too steamed. They turned to Boli’s, the local fat man’s joint.

En route, they crossed wires with his Nana. In a blink, Dorian shot out of the ride, landing a kiss on his granny’s forehead and hands. He nabbed an apple from her bag, his grin lighting up before he sprung back into the car.

Dorian lived in Babrru, a cozy, provincial burrow in spitting distance of Tirana. The social quilt was stitched with rustic threads: peasants, old-school military vets, and of late, a wave of newcomers from the northern stretches of Albania. And with every election season, the roads got a makeover. No skimping on the blacktop either. They laid that asphalt down a whole meter thick. Just another promise made and kept - until the next round of ballots.

Someone was waiting for him at the bar. Boli tipped him off with a wink. Curiosity took the wheel. Dorian ambled over, trading a nod for a greeting. The man asked, “Dorian?” Dorian green-lighted with another nod. The beefy, bearded bloke, a near match for Dorian in size, gave him the elevator eyes.

“Your little strumpet rolling in the hay with some other john?“ the brute hissed. “Who the hell are you again?” Dorian retorted, Nertila’s image flitting through his mind. He was intrigued, but not enough to probe too deeply into her affairs.

“Doesn’t matter,” the towering brute responded dismissively. In response, Dorian landed a punch squarely on his chin. In one fluid motion, he wrestled the brute to the ground, relentlessly raining blows upon him.

Shaken and stirred, the man scrabbled to his feet, vowing payback while spitting his bloody souvenir. Boli stepped in, passing him a roll of toilet paper, coaxing him to hit the bricks.

An hour later, the growl of a chopper resonated through the backstreet, building in volume as it closed in on Boli’s bar. Dorian and Gimi were stationed outside, nursing a “Kaçurrel” - a shady concoction of bargain-bin local cognac and liqueur. Out of the blue, a helmeted phantom barged in, waving a gun. Dorian went horizontal, tripping the trigger man with a slick move. Gimi, caught flatfooted, ate pavement.

Dorian’s hands were a blur, dealing stiff shots to the man’s helmet, torso, and pegs. His hand scrambled, blind, hunting for a rock or anything hard in the vicinity. But all he felt was smooth blacktop. A childhood memory flickered across his mind. Back then, a well-placed rock or stick could be the game changer in a brawl. Now, he was wrestling in a world smothered by remorseless asphalt.

He felt a shadow hanging over him. Hoisting his bloody mitt in a hopeless bid for cover, the world smeared into a blur. The last thing he clocked was the second round punching him like a mule kick and Gimi’s voice, high-pitched with dread and panic, “Dori! Dori! Dori!”

III

Nertila was yanked from her slumber by a rank stench. The bear of a man at her side let out a chainsaw snore, rolling over and releasing a thunderous gas cloud.

The arid hotel air, Dubai’s cloying stickiness, and particularly the stench of these men, all twisted her stomach. Seizing her perfume, she let it fly like a spray painter cutting loose on a hot rod.

With the precision of a military drill, she threw her stuff into her suitcase, gathered up her papers, and blew the joint.

At the airport, the same pair of dames she’d run into in Tirana were waiting. The greenhorn looked wound up, discomfort written all over her face. She’ll acclimate, Nertila reckoned.

A heavy silence dogged their journey back, the ugly leftovers of the previous night hanging like a cloud. No chirpy Insta posts this round. Maybe when they touched down in Rome. Ordeals like these often opened the door to jaunts in Western Europe, solo or with their main squeezes, everything on the house.

Touching down, she found a rash of missed calls from Gimi on her phone. Quick on the trigger, she rang him back and they slated a meet.

The news about Dorian was a punch to the gut. Her tears flowed like the Drini river, disbelief chiseling cracks in her veneer. The thought that she might’ve played a part was like swallowing a broken glass. It made her sick, the whole damn thing.

She paced alongside Gimi, her hands on the handles of his roll chair as they navigated the path to his place. They traversed the whole stretch from the train station to Babrru, as if trying to shake off the crushing weight they bore, before they faced their folks again.

Later, she went to meet Ardian. Guy didn’t step a foot outside his Kombinat stomping grounds, a neighborhood absorbed by the edges of Tirana when the Soviets decided to plant its first textile seed in Albania. Not quite a Moscow suburb, no, more like Fergana in Uzbekistan. It was like a lightning rod for the poor, landless peasants - they flocked to it, creating an oddball mix of a shantytown draped in socialist banners.

Ardian once earned his living showing the ropes of gymnastics to kids at a school near the textile mill. The factory was his father’s fiefdom, till the old man got himself a one-way ticket to prison back in the 60s. Ardian’s ma was fetched from Ivanova, Russia – a town with textile mills of its own where his father had studied.

After a stretch in the internment camp that lasted till the late 80s, Ardian drifted back home. The factory, once a hive of activity, was now a breeding ground for squatters. Ardian was one of them, staking his claim on a patch of land in the heart of the once-thriving industrial behemoth.

He had a knack for muscling in on the privacy of others at their own tables, never giving them the invite to his. Maybe it was a remnant from his days as a chess wizard, holding court alone against a sea of his own students, each ensconced behind their own set of pawns and bishops in the epic landscape of a simultaneous display. Even the old tables at the bar, hewn from sturdy wood, bore the stark checks of a chess board.

The joint had the charm of a storage locker, walls blank and bleached out, like they were designed to spotlight any bugs that might be listening in. So she bided her time counting the chairs as he was currently tied up with an old-timer who looked like he was at the end of his rope.

At the outset, she stayed mum. Ardian eyeballed her, his gaze like a headlight in a dark alley. Questions spiraled in her mind - was Ardian involved, or had Dorian been caught up in his own whirlwind?

He plucked a rolled smoke from his ear, handed it to her. In a quick flicker, another replaced it. She didn’t light up. They were in Tirana’s sole smoke-free joint. He truly appreciated a smoke-free view.

He asked her, “What’s up?” Not wanting to reveal her turmoil, she responded with a calm voice, “I knew Dorian.” He prompted rudely “Doesn’t matter. Do your thing. The Laçian will take care of you. Not everyone who fucks you may protect you. So don’t break my balls! To hell with the motherfucker!”

So now she also had some thug from the town of Laç stuck like dogshit on her shoe. But it had been him, all right. Ardian had a peculiar lingo when it came to those who got under his skin. His telltale phrasing had given up the ghost. He’d typically opt for a different slang if he didn’t give a rat’s ass about the person.

She flicked away the cigarette he had furnished from his ear, eyes catching on just two others that had met a similar fate. His deals, they were hard to refuse.

IV

Taulant, or ’Landi’ to those who’d shared a strong Raki or three with him, rolled up on the crime scene, the misty drizzle a right royal pain in his ass. As he was grudgingly accepting the arrival of his late forties, his once compact frame was already beginning to crumble. His long arms hung down like a pair of backhoe buckets. You could picture him going quad if he had the mind. His right arm had a funny cant to it, the result of an incident down Saranda, a couple of years back. At least, that’s how it was written up. He never got a chance to check out that theory though. The poor bastard at the other end of that car accident had his ticket punched by Taulant’s sidekick on the spot.

He got the lowdown, “Dorian K.”, the name of the stiff, echoing in his ears like a bad tune. He combed the area, while his right hand waved the hard plastic of the dead man’s ID, like an address on a street where some joker swiped all the road signs.

The police had already begun to scatter the scene with telltale signs of their presence - cigarette ends, sunflower shells, and whatever else they masticated and discarded. One of them was rummaging through Gimi’s vehicle, perhaps harboring hopes of stumbling upon a valuable find to steal.

The victim had caught two rounds in the chest, likely perforating a lung and the heart, and two more in the cranium. He inquired about the shell casings, but it barely mattered.

The police established a perimeter. Spectators continued to crane their necks for a glimpse of the tableau. An extraordinarily aged woman managed to breach the scene, growling obscenities under her breath.

A cacophony of chatter, the discordant clatter of vehicles stirred his mind, a cop mumbling something about a brawl an hour ago, but his focus remained unbroken. The assailants did not appear to be hardened criminals. And even if this street theater had some ties to it, it was a moot point. The man was either ghosted or he was yesterday’s news. Irrelevant.

The alleyway offered three escape routes, two of which led to the arterial road. The third was a makeshift farmer’s market, beyond which was a secondary route, largely inaccessible to motorized transport due to a smattering of potholes.

Had he been at the wheel, he would have opted for this track, disappearing into a maze of buildings within minutes. But it seemed the assailants had chosen the arterial road for a swift getaway, perhaps intending to flee the city, which suggested they weren’t locals.

Taulant looked around. Market road was the busiest but lacked the eyes of the digital world. No shops, no cameras. The other two paths, though, had a few mom-and-pop shops, cafes. Taulant snapped into action - he wanted any and all footage those places had got.

Soon, he had answers. One place was running old-school - cameras rolling, but no server keeping tabs. The other place was a red-tape hassle, wanting prosecutor approval before anything moved. Taulant knew the drill - by the time the paperwork danced its way through the system, the footage would likely go from ‘unseen’ to ‘unseeable’.

Cell towers were nearby, a duo of them. But Taulant wasn’t counting on those suspects making a social call in the neighborhood. Their path was the main road - start to finish. Traffic cameras were next on his shopping list.

The next day, recordings landed on his desk. Three bikes had done their dance in that hour, but only one twirled down from the crime scene’s road. That road had a twin set of city exits. Taulant penned down the license number.

It had to be hot. In the gas station clips at both crossroads, Taulant spotted the same bike. Backseat rider was on the phone. Taulant had a new to-do - trace back every chat that buzzed around that area and hour.

V

Next day, he bumped into Glauk - a face from Dorian’s book. Spotting Taulant, Glauk piped up, “Komisar Katani!” - a cheesy nod to “La Piovra,” the Italian drama sensation of anti-Mafia charm.

Glauk had set up a sports betting joint at ”Myslim Shyri" boulevard, a street of shops and other lesser-known enterprises. He’d park there himself all day, buzzing with a cluster of small-time crooks, mooching off his stories, getting juiced up on his free-flowing pizza and booze.

He was a relic, a specter from the ’80s when gangsters gnawed away at the socialist sense of legality and security like rodents sinking their teeth into rancid cheese. Most of his old comrades and rivals now adorned the graveyards on the fringes of Tirana with their photos and statues. The unlucky ones? They were still up there on Dajti Mountain, lying low and playing the long game, just waiting for some unsuspecting hiker to stumble across their eternal hiding spots.

He had packed on some kilograms since their last encounter, probably chalked up to his sedentary lifestyle. His beard was picking up the slack for the bald spots in his once proud ponytail, now looking like a shag rug that lost a fight with a feral cat.