"Mikhail, it's Gorgy."

"This is an unpleasant surprise. To what do I owe this dishonour?"

"Always with the bad jokes eh?" Gorgy replied.

"Your voice is giving me hives. Tell me why you called."

"Relax my friend. Komrad. I have news."

"I'm sure whatever you're going to tell me will only be for your benefit."

"You know me too well." Gorgy laughed. "Lei has the ruby."

"What? The ruby? What are you saying?"

There was no one on the other end of the phone. Gorgy had hung up.

"I pray Svetlana is ok," Mikhail whispered as he texted her.

* * * * *

Peter drove his motorbike closer to the two cars as they swerved into each other. The station-wagon with the intact back window was trying to knock the other car off the road, if what he was driving on could even be called a road.

Looking past the blown-out back window he was able to make out a woman with dark hair driving and another woman with dark hair in the passenger seat. Peter may have been able to ignore the men he'd passed earlier on the side of the road but he couldn't ignore this.

Peter instinctively took the gun out of his pocket, his trusted Glock, the very same gun he had left in his bag when he lost the ruby to Alex. Shooting accurately while sitting on a moving motorbike was nearly impossible, no matter what they showed you in the movies. If the road had been properly paved, maybe he'd have a puncher's chance, he thought. But on this lousy dirt road, absolutely impossible. Even so, Peter tried anyways as he shot two rounds towards the back window of the car.

It seemed that the only effect his bullets had were to anger whoever it was sitting in the back seat. He watched as they knocked out the back window and started firing at him with a machine gun. Talk about an inaccurate weapon. Peter knew that machine guns were far better for spreading bullets in an array than to hit a specific target, still, he had to be very careful.

Peter swerved to the side and then attempted to pass the station wagon. The driver opened the passenger door in an attempt to knock him down. Peter saw it coming so he quickly swerved to left, off the road and around a few large boulders that seemed to be everywhere in this desolate wilderness. Peter looked ahead and realized the road curved in a few hundred meters so he stayed on the rocky field. If he drove quick enough his straight-line path could make it to the curve before the two cars.

They must have figured that Peter had given up chase because it seemed as if their focus was once again solely on the car with the two women. The man with the machine started firing out the side of the car, destroying the other car's front and rear windows. Peter watched as the girl driving the car must have slammed on the brakes forcing the Chinese men to take position in front of her. Now they started to fire the machine gun out the back of the car.

Nobody noticed as Peter drove his motorbike up the side of the road and slid it sideways in front of the Mercedes. Peter jumped off the bike a split second before it lodged itself underneath the car, forcing the vehicle to flip forward and land upside down in a thunderous crash.

Peter flew off his bike a few dozen feet, landed on his side and then rolled until his body smashed against a boulder. The next thing he remembered seeing was Svetlana and Jing standing over him, wiping blood off his head.

* * * * *

Gorgy was two hundred and fifty pounds of solid muscle. The seat in the back of his limousine was already well-worn from the many trips he'd taken. Most of them usually involved something very unpleasant for those he visited. There wasn't a lot of violence involved in these visits, as opposed to the threat of violence. Gorgry was an intimidating presence whose mere shadow was enough to make grown men soil themselves. It's not like the old days, he thought. Back then, when someone like Lei disrespected you, it was expected that you'd kill him, otherwise, you'd look weak. Today's world requires finesse, he decided while pondering the call he'd just had with Lei.

Gorgy was making far too much money to allow things to fall apart.  He started to think about the details of the phone call. Russians in Northern China? And they went after that ruby? How did Sergei allow anyone to leave with that stone? It was one of his most proud possessions. He sent a militia of a dozen men to a desolate part of Pakistan to steal the ruby from a Taliban warlord. Well it's not exactly stealing when what you're doing is reclaiming a part of your heritage, Sergei had once told him.

Gorgy picked up the phone and called Sergei. It rang six before a Chinese voice answered the phone.

"Who's this?" the man asked in Mandarin.

"Where's Sergei?" Gorgy replied in Russian.

"Who is this?" the Chinese man asked again, this time in Russian.

"It's Gorgy, Sergei's partner."

"I know exactly who you are. You're the money man and the muscle."

"Should I be flattered or annoyed? Now, I've given you my name. who the fuck are you?"

"Why were there two Russians here? The arrangement was for only one."

"What arrangement? Why is everyone asking about a fucking god damn arrangement? Can you guys get it through your slanted-eyed heads that I had nothing to do with any Russians here, except for Sergei."

"Those words will be your downfall." The Chinese man said very quietly.

"Are you threatening me?" Gorgy waited for a response. After a few seconds, he realized that the Chinese man was no longer on the line. Gorgy stared at his phone and smiled. Finally, there was someone he felt no remorse for killing. There was no contractual arrangement he had to protect, no political tightropes that needed to be navigated. His world was starting to make sense again.

Gorgy decided that he would go down to China himself....now.

* * * * *

Peter looked up as the two women were cleaning the blood of his head with torn sleeves from Jing's shirt. "Svetlana, is that you?" he asked as he took the cloth away from Svetlana.

"It is," she replied. "I think we have a lot to talk about."

Peter took the other cloth out of Jing's hand as he stood up.

"I can't believe what you did with your bike," Svetlana continued. "I've never seen anything like that in my life. That was insane."

"I don't understand," Peter replied. "What were you doing here?" He pretended he didn't hear Svetlana's compliment. She was absolutely beautiful and seeing how she left him on the train he felt the less she knew about him the better. Beauty had a way of getting men to say things they shouldn't, he learned when he was younger. Never trust a beautiful woman. Never.

"Thank you for saving our lives, but we need to get away from here, fast," Svetlana told him.

Peter looked at the car that had been flipped over on the side of the road.

"They're both dead," Svetlana told him. "But they have lots of nasty friends." She pointed to her bullet-ridden, windowless car. "Eta gavno," (it's shit) but it runs."

Svetlana felt her phone vibrate in her pocket.

It's Mikhail. Are you alright?

I am now, Svetlana texted back.

Someone named Lei has the Ruby. Be careful. I don't trust the man I got this information from.

That's actually good news. I was heading there anyways, she texted back.

She put her phone away.

"Come on, we're leaving...now,"'Svetlana told Peter & Jing.

"Leaving for where?" Peter asked Svetlana.

"To finish off something I started earlier." Svetlana winked at Jing who smiled back.