Yuri Orlov

Of all the weapons in the vast soviet arsenal, nothing was more profitable than Avtomat Kalashnikova model of 1947. More commonly known as the AK-47, or Kalashnikov. It's the world's most popular assault rifle. A weapon all fighters love. An elegantly simple 9 pound amalgamation of forged steel and plywood. It doesn't break, jam, or overheat. It'll shoot whether it's covered in mud or filled with sand. It's so easy, even a child can use it; and they do. The Soviets put the gun on a coin. Mozambique put it on their flag. Since the end of the Cold War, the Kalashnikov has become the Russian people's greatest export. After that comes vodka, caviar, and suicidal novelists. One thing is for sure, no one was lining up to buy their cars.

The reason I'll be released is the same reason you think I'll be convicted. I do rub shoulders with some of the most vile, sadistic men calling themselves leaders today. But some of these men are the enemies of your enemies. And while the biggest arms dealer in the world is your boss - the President of the United States, who ships more merchandise in a day than I do in a year - sometimes it's embarrassing to have his fingerprints on the guns. Sometimes he needs a freelancer like me to supply forces he can't be seen supplying. So. You call me evil, but unfortunately for you, I'm a necessary evil.

There are two types of tragedies in life. One is not getting what you want, the other is getting it.

There are over 550 million firearms in worldwide circulation. That's one firearm for every twelve people on the planet. The only question is: How do we arm the other 11?

Some of the most successful relationships are based on lies and deceit. Since that's where they usually end up anyway, it's a logical place to start.

You know who's going to inherit the Earth? Arms dealers. Because everyone else is too busy killing each other. That's the secret to survival. Never go to war. Especially with yourself.

They say, "Evil prevails when good men fail to act." What they ought to say is, "Evil prevails."

I don't want people dead, Agent Valentine. I don't put a gun to anybody's head and make them shoot. But shooting is better for business. But, I prefer people to fire my guns and miss. Just as long as they are firing. Can I go now?

I was an equal opportunity merchant of death. I supplied everyone but the Salvation Army. I sold Israeli-model Uzis to Muslims. I sold Communist-made bullets to Fascists... I even shipped cargo to Afghanistan when they were fighting my fellow Soviets. I never sold to Osama bin Laden. Not on any moral grounds: back then, he was always bouncing checks.

I'm not saying I didn't have setbacks. It's not called "gunrunning" for nothing. You've gotta be fast on your feet. Some revolutions blow over before the guns even get there. There's nothing more expensive for an arms dealer than peace.

Truce? What do you mean, truce, the guns are already on their way… Peace talks… All right, forget it. I'll reroute the shipment to the Balkans. When they say they're going to have a war, they keep their word!

The problem with dating dream girls is that they have a tendency to become real.

This. Tell me I'm everything you despise. That I'm the personification of evil. That I'm what- responsible for the breakdown of the fabric of society and world order. I'm a one-man genocide. Say everything you want to say to me now. Because you don't have long.

Soon there's going to be a knock on that door and you will be called outside. In the hall there will be a man who out-ranks you. First he'll compliment you on the fine job you've done - on you making the world a safer place. That you're to receive a commendation or a promotion. And then he's going to tell you that I am to be released. You're going to protest. You'll probably threaten to resign. But in the end, I will be released. The reason I'll be released is the same reason you think I'll be convicted. I do rub shoulders with some of the most vile, sadistic men calling themselves leaders today. But some of those men are the enemies of your enemies. And while the biggest arms dealer in the world is your boss, the President of the United States, who ships more merchandise in a day than I do in a year, sometimes it's embarrassing to have his fingerprints on the guns. Sometimes he needs a freelancer like me to supply forces he can't be seen supplying. So, *you* call me evil, but unfortunately for you, I'm a necessary evil.

Every faction in Africa calls themselves by these noble names - Liberation this, Patriotic that, Democratic Republic of something-or-other… I guess they can't own up to what they usually are: the Federation of Worse Oppressors Than the Last Bunch of Oppressors. Often, the most barbaric atrocities occur when both combatants proclaim themselves Freedom Fighters.

I sell to leftists, and rightists. I sell to pacifists, but they're not the most regular customers. Of course, you're not a * true internationalist until you've supplied weapons to kill your *own* countrymen.

You can't force someone to fall in love with you but, you can definitely improve your odds.

Without operations like mine it would be impossible for certain countries to conduct a respectable war. I was able to navigate around those inconvenient little arms embargoes. There are three basic types of arms deal: white, being legal, black, being illegal, and my personal favorite color, *gray*. Sometimes I made the deal so convoluted, it was hard for *me* to work out if they were on the level.

Thank God there are still legal ways to exploit developing countries. The only problem with an honest buck is they're so hard to make - the margins are too low, too many people are doin' it.

The first and most important rule of gun-running is: Never get shot with your own merchandise.

The ones who know don't care anymore, and the ones who care don't know.

In the most AIDS-infested region of the globe - where 1 in 4 is infected - Andy's idea of a joke was to put a young Iman and a young Naomi in my bed - and no condom within a hundred miles.

Selling a gun for the first time is a lot like having sex for the first time. You're excited but you don't really know what the hell you're doing. And some way, one way or another, it's over too fast.

You can fight a lot of enemies and survive, but not your biology.

After the Cold War, the AK-47 became Russia's biggest export. After that came vodka, caviar, and suicidal novelists.

The primary market was Africa, Eleven major conflicts involving twenty three countries in less than a decade. A gunrunner's wet dream. At the time the West couldn't care less, they had a white war in what was left of Yugoslavia.

I was guilty as sin, but Valentine couldn't prove it. And he was the rarest breed of law enforcement officer. The type who knew I was breaking the law, but wouldn't break it himself to bust me.

My son's birthday unlocked what the government would later describe, as a catalog of carnage.

I now shared even more in common with the leader of that country God seemed to have forsaken. We saw something in each other neither one of us liked, or maybe we were just looking in the mirror.

I am not a fool. I know that just because they needed me that day didn't mean they wouldn't make me a scapegoat the next.

I have been running away from violence my whole life. I should have been running towards it. It's in our nature. Earliest human skeletons had spearheads in their heads and ribcages.

What a cargo crew at Heathrow Airport does in a day, took a bunch of malnourished Sierra Leonean locals ten minutes.

Even when I was up against an overzealous agent, I had a number of methods for discouraging a search. I routinely mislabeled my shipments "farm machinery." And I have yet to meet the lowly-paid customs official who will open a container marked "radioactive waste" to verify its contents. But my personal favorite is the unique combination of week-old potatoes and tropical heat.

I paid a Monrovian doctor twenty dollars to remove the lead from Vitaly's body, write a bogus death certificate. I should've paid more, because I've smuggled millions of rounds of ammunition and the bullet that lands me in prison was found under my dead brother's rib. Jack Valentine finally got what he wanted.

From then on I was a one man operation. I never understood what separated the recreational drug user from the habitual drug user but for the grace of God it could've been me snorting lines as long as the Belt Parkway. However I wasn't entirely free of addiction myself, in my neighborhood the good get out, in our own ways we conquered our own worlds. It cost me twenty grand to book her for a fake photo shoot, another twelve to buy out the hotel. I nearly went broke trying to convince her I was anything but, I knew Ava wasn't the kind of woman that would seduced by a ride in a private jet unless you owned the jet, the plane was a rental, like the car and the suit I was standing in. At the last minute I bribed the crew for the paint job, luckily by the time we landed she wasn't looking anywhere but in my eyes.

I had a flair for languages. But I soon discovered that what talks best is dollars, dinars, drachmas, rubles, rupees and pounds fucking sterling.

The second rule of gun-running is always ensure you have a foolproof way of getting paid.

There's nothing better for an arms dealer than a combination of disgruntled soldiers and warehouses full of weapons.

When I was a boy, my family came to America... but not all the way. Like most Ukrainians, we congregated in Brighton Beach. It reminded us of the Black Sea. I soon realized we just swapped one hell for another.

Despite the other women, I always made love to Ava as if she was the only one.

Valentine knew he didn't have to guard me. There was no where to go. Or maybe he was hoping the locals would tear me apart. But they were too busy with the plane. It's like parking your car in certain neighborhoods in the Bronx. You don't do it.

At 4 1/2 months old, a human fetus has a reptile's tail; a remnant of our evolution. Maybe that's what I couldn't escape. You can fight a lot of enemies and survive. But if you fight your biology, you will always lose.

Most people are happy just to get out of jail. I expect to be paid to leave.

The new Uzi machine pistol, big fire power in s small package this little baby uses nine millimeter Hollow-points twenty twenty-five round extendable magazines, front and rear adjustable sights the silencer comes standard excellent recoil reduction muzzle jump forty percent sixty percent noise proof suppression you could pump in a bullet in me right now you'd never wake up the guy in the next room of course that'd eliminate your opportunity for repeat business.

Of course the U.S. army got a piece of the action army salaries were no better in the eighties than they are today and some of the brass like Lieutenant Colonel Southern needed to raise money for their own "private wars."

I have a feeling it wasn't exactly what Comrade Lenin had in mind when he advocated the redistribution of wealth. But I wasn't the only one offering a crash course in capitalism.

Vitaly broke the cardinal rule of gun running. Never pickup a gun and join the customers.

I was the best "Merchant Of Death" alive, I didn't own my own plane. I owned a fleet, I was running guns into Liberia, Sierra Leone or the Ivory Coast once a week, most trips I had phony paper work, if the deadline was tight and if I had to cut corners, I had no paper work at all. But I wasn't overly concerned because there was hardly any radar over most of Africa and even fewer people to watch it.

Ava looked at me directly in the eyes, in the same way I've looked in the eyes of thousands of customs officials, government bureaucrats, and law enforcement agents and she lied without flinching because she learned from the best. I can always sense when I'm being tailed. I know what to look for but then I've never been tailed by the woman I love.

Growing up in Little Odessa murder was an everyday part of life Russian mobsters had migrated from the Soviet Union and when they came to America their violence came with them, there was always some gangster getting wacked in my neighborhood but I've never seen it with my own eyes I had this knack of showing up five minutes before something went down or five minutes after but not that day, it hit me it couldn't have hit me harder if I was the one who was shot, you go into the restaurant business because people are always going to have to eat that was the day I realized my destiny was laid to fulfill another basic human need.

Most people are happy just get out of jail, I expect to be paid to leave but I was back: doing what I do best

I always wanted to do something big with my life I just didn't know what. Anyhow, if I was going to go in the gun trade, I was going to aim high.

Even in hell, an angel sometimes makes an appearance. I've worshiped Ava Fontaine since I was ten years old, of course she didn't know I existed and I was starting to realize why.

A new breed of gun runner requires a new breed of a cop, he knew he didn't have to guard me, There was nowhere to go or maybe he was hoping the locals would tear me apart but they were too busy with the plane. It's like parking your car in certain neighborhoods in the Bronx, you just don't do it.

I don't know how much Ava really knew or how much she ignored. She never asked why a guy in the transport business could afford to give her eighteen karat diamond ear rings I guess she didn't really want to hear the answer. She seemed content that I was a good provider and as far she was concerned: loyal.

For the first twenty odd years of my life Little Odessa was to me what it was to the Q train: the end of the line, oh I did lie about my name, it's not really "Yuri Orlov" there have been a few occasions in the twentieth century where it's been an advantage to be a Jew but in the seventies to escape the Soviet Union our family pretended to be Jewish, little about my life has been "kosher" since, my younger brother was just as lost as me, he just didn't know it yet, my father took his assumed identity to heart, he was more Jewish than most Jews which drove my Catholic mother crazy.

The next Sabbath I went to temple with my father but it wasn't God I was trying to get close to. My contact at synagogue landed me my first Israeli made Uzi sub machine gun. I did have a natural instinct for smuggling contraband, fortunately back then a video camera was as big as a Bazooka.

The only option for Vitaly and I was "under the counter gun running", I got my first break in Lebanon after the suicide bombing but I wasn't the only local kid making good, when the United States leaves a war zone they generally don't take their munitions because it costs more to bring it back than buy new stock.

It was the eighties and The Cold War was far from thawed, most of the deals were government to government and it was a mostly private club with a lifetime club president.

They say every man has his price but not every man gets it Interpol Agent Jack Valentine couldn't be bought, at least not with money, for jack glory was his 'price, most importantly I kept a number of intelligence people on the payroll to supply their colleagues with "counter intelligence."

Selling guns is like selling vacuum cleaners you make calls "pound the pavement", take orders, by the mid-eighties my weapons were represented in eight of the world's top ten war zones, there's no problem living a double life it's the triple and quadruple lives that get you in the end ,back then I carried a French, British, Israeli and Ukrainian passport and a student visa for the U.S. but that's another story. I also packed six different briefcases depending who I was that day and which region of the world I was visiting.

Try to get paid preferably in advance ideally to an offshore account, that's why I choose my customers so carefully, say what you like about warlords and dictators they tend to have a highly developed sense of order they always pay their bills on time.

That drug lord had his facts right after shipping it stateside the return of that blow netted me a healthy profit it would've been even better but one kilo never made it back to this day I don't know what Vitaly was running away from I found him twelve days later two thousand miles away and one hundred fifty grams later in a Bolivian boarding house.

Vitaly, I need you to get out of the car I promised our parents, you're going to have a great time two Ford models checked in here last week and that cute weather girl has been here since July.

I was still living way beyond my means mortgaged to the hill using one credit card to pay off another, anything to keep Ava in the style to which she had, thanks largely to me, become accustomed to. Then suddenly all my Christmases came at once, whoever said it's better to receive never got a Christmas present like the one I got in 1991 from Mikhail Gorbachev. during the Cold War, the Red Army stationed nearly one million troops in the Ukraine because of its strategic military importance. The day after the wall came down the paychecks stopped coming. I was hoping Major General Dmitri Volkov would open a lot of armory doors and a lot of military bases for me for a start, he was family he was a highly decorated officer of the Red Army and was almost permanently shit faced.

Those forty five years of mutual hatred between the east and west generated the highest weapons buildup in history. The soviets had guns coming out of the "demon hole", high stock piles now no enemy. The end of The Cold War was the beginning of the hottest time in arms dealing, the arms bazaar was open, guided missiles, unguided missiles, Mortars, Mines, armored personnel carriers whole tank divisions I even landed a squadron of helicopter gunships: the most sophisticated fighting machines built for a war that never happened, thanks to me they finally get to fire a shot in anger.

This was the chaos that the old guard had always feared as far as they were concerned I was giving arms dealers a bad name but then they could hardly report me to the Better Business Bureau, Ukraine wasn't the only former state with an unpaid army and stock piles of guns there was Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, Belarus it was all there for the taking.

Valentine wasn't the only one trying to put me out of business my uncle had turned down half a dozen rival arms dealers sometimes with offers better than mine but to Dmitri: you couldn't put a price on loyalty.

President Baptiste was my best customer but I was in no hurry to meet him. He had a reputation for routinely hacking off the limbs of those who opposed him. His seven year civil war has been described as a "sadistic relentless campaign of want and violence." That sums up Andy for me, If I thought I was scared of Andre Sr., I knew I was scared of Andre Jr., Like father like son. The guava doesn't fall too far from the tree. He was also a cannibal, they say Andre Jr. would eat a victim's heart while it was still beating: to give him super human strength, Monrovia itself it was like being on another planet, "planet Monrovia," from the temperature it was obviously a planet close to the sun. I rarely saw another white man and I never left town alone, outside of the town was the edge of hell. I didn't even want to gaze into it.

It's made of a polymer composite, many of my clients feel they can get through airport security without seeing a lot of bells and whistles, personally I do not recommend that. On the other hand if you're looking for a traditional "real gun" there is no substitute of muzzle energy of a 357 magnum and of course it will never jam.

The pillaging didn't die with my uncle. After the wall came down thirty two billion dollars worth of arms were stolen and resold from Ukraine alone: one of the greatest heists of the twentieth century. I did the bulk of my business in Liberia "land of the free," originally established as a homeland for freed American slaves and has been enslaved by one dictator after another, since then, the latest dictator is American educated self-declared president Andre Baptiste Sr.

Conflict diamonds are a common currency in West Africa also referred to as "blood diamonds" because its blood shed is what they usually finance. By the late nighties my wealth had caught up to my lies about my wealth and even surpassed my wealth. I could even afford to be a patron of the arts.

Help yourselves no charge everything goes free, don't forget the bullets you can't shoot a gun without bullets EVERYTHING GOES FOR FREE.

My enemies have finally found a weapon that can hurt me, for the next six months, I stopped running guns. I went legitimate because I made a promise to Ava.

I was so caught up in the deal, I never realized what was going on in Vitaly's head. Come to think about it, maybe I never really understood what was going on inside his head. One thing I do understand for certain is that Vitaly broke the cardinal rule of gun running: never pick up a gun and join the customers. Only half the guns and ammunition was gone so I was still entitled to half the diamonds ,if I took them I was lost, if I left them I was still lost. The massacre played out exactly how Vitaly predicted but then half a dozen massacres happened Sierra Leone that week you can't stop them all, in my experience you can't stop any of them.

Even before that night I started doing a lot of cocaine in West Africa. I never tried Brown-brown before but then I never killed a man either, I started to feel I've been cursed.