[b]Gotham City
6:45 AM[/b]

[i]"Šta je za večeru?"

"Borscht sa krompirom." 

"Opet? Je li to sve što znate kako da?"[/i]

The two voices continued to prattle on while I filed the recorded conversation into an organization folder on my computer. On the surface, complaining about Borscht and potatoes for dinner in Serbian doesn't seem related to five men being hacked to death and stuffed into a fifty gallon drum. It's a small piece of a very large puzzle I've spent the better part of four hours assembling. It's a puzzle that will reveal to me Anto Radic's true nature. An alphabet soup's worth of agencies have files on the man and I followed the trail through organization and service to get my picture.

The Serbian intelligence agency BIA starts the thread. Radic was born in Belgrade in 1975 to a prostitute mother and an unknown father. He served as an NCO in the Yugoslav wars, his name and unit linked to several incidents and atrocities related to ethnic cleansing. Sometime in early 1995 he fell off BIA's radar when he deserted his unit. The Russian FSB, the country's successor to the KGB, picked up the thread next in Moscow from mid 1995 to early 1999. FSB and Interpol tied Radic to the [i]Solntsevskaya Bratva[/i] or the Solntsevskaya Brotherhood, Moscow's largest and deadliest ROC gang.

FSB and Interpol's reports on Radic are vague on his activities during that time, but not another file from an agency known as Checkmate. I have no idea what Checkmate is or who they report to, but their report on Radic is extremely detailed. An informant and surveillance linked the man to six execution style murders in the four year period. he was in Moscow. Another field report had him committing two dozen armed highjackings for the ROC. Corrupt Russian police were the only reason Radic didn't end up in jail. In mid 1999 Radic immigrated to America. An old INS file on Radic contained his immigration documentation. The document was filled with holes in his history, neglecting his time in Russia all together. Somehow he was approved for a green card and brought into New York. An FBI field report explained the ease of his immigration when they linked him to the Bronislav Crime Family working out of New York City. The FBI and both Interpol confirmed that the Bronislav family is just an American franchise of the Solntsevskaya Brotherhood, working with other entrenched New York crime figures like the recently incarcerated Tombstone. 

Radic's New York activities read like Moscow redux. Highjacking, armed robbery, assault, murder. All of it alleged to have happened with no strong evidence or proof. After nine years of ROC work in New York, and for apparent reason, Radic left New York for Gotham. The FBI files are stumped by this, so are Radic's fellow mob members. An FBI wiretap inside a Russian safehouse had three men joking that Radic left because he was [i]kiska[i/] whipped by his wife. And just like that, nearly twenty years of paperwork and intelligence on this man dried up. GCPD had nothing on him, he even started paying his taxes. So boring that all his phone conversations with his wife were about dinner. Though I was able to use his tax return like a roadmap to flesh out details of his present life. He claimed a wife and a child as dependents, and his job was listed as a truck driver for Purple Hue Inc, a local restaurant service provider. That's where the thread spun outwards to other areas. Radic is an employee of Purple Hue... just like eight other men with ties to Eastern European organized crime. Radic and another man are former ROC, three men are Albanians, a Serbian mafia man, a Georgian, and an Armenian. A Chechen named Vladimir Zurkov works as the supervisor for all the men. Like the rest, he has a past that's just as dirty. Like Radic and the rest, he's only been in Gotham City for a few years.

Despite the men's violent histories, they've all led quiet lives since coming to Gotham. Gotham, a stronghold for the old Italian mob going on nearly a hundred years, only has ten men in the cities with hardcore ties to ROC or any other affiliated mobs. All ten men work for the same company, all ten men seemingly out of organized crime. The company seemed like an obvious front company, but a routine search from GCPD and FBI turned up nothing. My backdoor into the Gotham County Court House database revealed the company charter and zoning permits for Purple Hue, a Zebediah Killgrave listed as owner. Killgrave is nothing but a blank slate in the database, nothing but a tax return. No further information.

I sighed and rubbed my eyes. Hours staring at a monitor in the dark and spots were forming at the edges of my vision. It's going on 24 hours since I last slept and I don't feel it. Instead I copy down Killgrave's information and pocket it before beginning to leave the basement. Boxes of equipment were stacked everywhere, spare parts for my suit and other gadgets. I bought all of it in bulk to avoid suspicion from any curious people. Who knows, maybe before it's all said and done I'll eventually throw twenty thousand batarangs? The first thing I did when Wayne Tech began to turn a profit was buy the large security door that leads into the basement. A foot thick reinforced steel with electromagnetic locks, only my biometric data and voice recognition password opens it. The door sealed shut behind me with a pneumatic hiss, the locks clacking on with a soft buzz. 

The sun was beginning to come up and peak through the kitchen windows. The early dawn showed the filthy back alley behind my house strewn with garbage and empty vials of cocaine and heroin. The old rowhouse sat right in the middle of Dutch Hill, the east side neighborhood that used to be a working class bulwark against the creeping urban decay. But it collapsed when the middle class did back around 2008, most of the houses in the area either for sale or too dilapidated to be sold. At least half of the vacant homes have been gutted by drug fiends, ripping copper wiring and plumbing out of the homes to sell to scrap metal men for pennies on the pound. Alfred liked to chide me about setting up shop here, but he doesn't understand. He went straight from England to the suburbs with Phillip, he never saw the slow cancer that is rampant unemployment and drug use. 

This neighborhood, this where I used to live with my parents... it's been torn to shreds by the same city and people it used to offer shelter to. It has to be where I start my mission. The battle of Dutch Hill is the first campaign on my War for Gotham. And I'm more encouraged by what I've seen with every passing day. Apathy has faded, community groups organize and work together to clean up the houses and drive the drug dealers off the corners. It's not easy, and many times it's like trying to sweep up leaves in the middle of a windy day. The dealers just move to another corner to set up shop. But the people keep fighting. Their spirits keep up. They keep working to better themselves and their surroundings. I like to think I'm partially to blame for that spirit, but I won't take credit for it.

I fixed myself a cup of coffee and sipped it while figuring out the next move. Purple Hue is next to nothing in paper. I need more data on the company and Killgrave before I can continue looking into this company and its employees. Draining the cup of coffee, I looked at the clock on the wall. Seven in the morning. Over a day awake and I've still got work to go to work..