Battling Brexit
Page 15
“No, No. I assure you. There is no need for worry. This conversation is completely encrypted. There is no way that anyone is listening to us.”
There’s some silence as whoever is on the other end of the line responds. Then Ranko talks again, in English.
“Yes, I agree. In about a month we will have achieved critical mass. Then it will be the perfect time to strike at the heart of the EU. Of course I’ll make the next payment on your behalf.”
There’s a bit more talking, some pleasantries and then the sound of a phone being put down.
I raise my eyebrows at what I just heard. What Emilija said about her father’s computer-coding skills comes to my mind. Whatever he is capable of, it would seem he is plotting something nefarious, related to the EU. I know that it seems crazy to even think it, but, for some bizarre reason, the missing link between Daesh and UKIP might be none other than Emilija’s refugee-tycoon father. I wonder how my friends will react when I tell them of my hunch because not even I can think of a reason he’d want to willingly take part in something like this.
***
I’m waiting in the entrance hall of Emilija’s mansion when Lucija arrives, unannounced.
“I came as fast as I could. Your phone call only said that you might have discovered something and that you might be in danger.”
I nod. “Emilija kind of tried hacking into private bank records to see if we could locate anything connecting Daesh and UKIP. We didn’t find anything direct, but we did run across something really weird. The Trepča factory in Kosovo is making payments to Daesh members. Millions of euros. When Emilija tried to hack Trepča’s accounts, another hacker went after her and fried her servers. Whoever it was might know we’re onto them.”
“Well, what Emilija did isn’t illegal at all,” Lucija says sarcastically, before lowering her voice. “But now that I’m independent I’m all for whatever gets results.”
I put up a hand. “There’s more. I think I might know who went after her. I was about to go into his office to tell Emilija’s father you were coming. I heard him on the phone. He was talking to someone about striking at the heart of the EU and making the next scheduled payment for something. As crazy as it sounds, I think he might be our missing link. I can’t think of why, though.”
I expect Lucija to hit the ceiling and call me crazy, or stupid. Instead, the creases in her brow get deeper.
“Actually, you might be onto something. I looked him up. He might have a motive. The Muslim forces that cut down his wife did so in the presence of European observers. His ethnically reunified factories in Bosnia aside, he might be a closet Serb nationalist out to destroy the EU. Have you told the others yet?”
“No. I was afraid of how they would react to what to them is probably an out-of-the-blue accusation, especially Emilija.”
“I could give a hoot. Come on. The direct approach is always best. Let’s confront him.”
We walk up one of the curving staircases to the first floor and then turn right, where his office is.
Lucija knocks on the door three times.
“Yes?” I hear his deep baritone.
Lucija pushes open the door and walks inside. I follow. Emilija is seated on the side of his desk nearer to us. Behind, through a door, I can see another computer setup similar to Emilija’s, only bigger. Lucija extends her hand over the desk without sitting down. “Lucija Kovačević Bektashi, private investigator. The Maršal claims that she overheard you on the phone plotting an attack against the EU, and planning to send funding to whoever was planning it, possibly from the Trepča mining complex’s finances in Kosovo. I will put it to you directly: ‘Do you, Mr. Stanić, in fact, have ties with Daesh or UKIP?’”
Emilija leaps up from her chair. She starts yelling. “I invite you to my home, treat you as a guest and this is how you repay me? By accusing my father of being a secret terrorist mastermind? It’s ridiculous. He has factories in Bosnia that employ mixed Serb-Bosniak labor forces just to help promote peace and reconciliation. How dare you?”
“Because I overheard him,” I say as evenly as I can.
“Impossible. Even if he was plotting something, my father encrypts all of his calls. How did you even hear him anyway?”
“For the same reason I found the sketchy Kosovo company in the first place. He might encrypt everything, but he forgot to shut the good old-fashioned door.”
Ranko laughs. “Calm down, Emilija.” He turns to me. “I’m sorry to disappoint you, Maršal Marković, but this is all perfectly explainable. I was just having a discussion with my chief of sales. A month or so from now is when we have to file our bid for an EU public tender before the bidding period expires. We’re optimistic about winning it for a pretty penny and discussed it accordingly. As for the Kosovo part, I don’t have any factories there. I know the bombing at the ULB was shocking, not least because my own daughter was there, but this is all in your head, I assure you.”
“What about the payments you said you would make?” I ask.
“I was simply planning to transfer more of my profits to the Research and Development department. In the IT business, you know, you’ve got to stay ahead of the market.”
“You’ll forgive me if I take your assurances with a grain of salt,” Lucija replies. “Will you allow me to search your facilities and banking information to put our suspicions to rest?”
Emilija’s father spreads his arms wide. “Of course, search wherever you like.”
Emilija glares at me. “I think you should leave. Now.”
Ranko bats a hand through the air. “Nonsense, Emilija. Maršal Marković is just doing what she thinks is right.” He looks over at me. “The two of you are welcome here for as long as Ms. Kovačević’s investigation takes.”
“Thank you, Mr. Stanić,” Lucija says, matter-of-factly. She walks out of the room.
Emilija sits there and glowers at me. I follow my cousin.
Drago
I shoot to my feet as soon as I hear Emilija tell me what happened. She paces in one of the living rooms in her house like she’s a caged animal.
“She accused your father of what?” I say, scarcely able to believe it.
“She accused him of having secret ties with UKIP and Daesh.”
“That’s ridiculous. She can’t have a shred of evidence.”
“She doesn’t. Except for one snippet of a conversation that she says she overheard. The worst part is that her cousin, the now self-described ‘Private Detective,’ has decided to take her seriously. She is demanding to search our entire company. Humiliating doesn’t begin to cover it.”
“I’ll go talk to her.” I walk out of the room, back into the main foyer, and then up two flights of stairs and to the right. I stride down the hall to the corner room where Emilija put up Elena. Without bothering to knock, I barge in. She’s sitting on her bed staring at her computer.
I snap at her. “I can’t believe that you would accuse one of the most prominent members of the Bosnian diaspora—and our host—of colluding with UKIP, let alone Daesh.”
“Believe it. It’s like seeing Farage at that rally. It sounds crazy, but I know what I heard.”
“Emilija is furious with you, Elena.”
“I’m not surprised. She’s not going to change my mind. I know I’m right about this.”
“Oh really? Has Lucija’s investigation turned up anything?”
She hunches her shoulders, as if all of this is perfectly normal. “Well, no, not yet. But it just got started.”
“There can’t be anything to this. It’s ridiculous, you’re just trumping up charges against Emilija’s father because you don’t like the fact that we’re a couple.”
Her face turns red. “You’re just insisting that it can’t be true because his daughter is your girlfriend.”
“No I’m not. I genuinely admire Ranko. You’ve got to retract your claim now.”
“No chance in hell. I know what I heard him say and I’m sticking to my guns.”
She turns away from me, back to the computer. “I’m sorry you feel that way.”
Sighing, I leave her room. I have to break the news to Emilija that Tito’s legacy is not exactly in a reasonable mood.
Elena
I sigh and get up from my desk as Lucija walks into my room.
“Well? Anything?” I ask, though I think that from the look on her face I can guess the answer.
“No. I finished going through the records thirty minutes ago and I can’t find a shred of evidence to connect Mr. Stanić with UKIP or Daesh.”
“Neither can I.”
“What about the warehouses?”
“Nothing out of the ordinary. My friends from the Zagreb police academy say the same about the ones in Bosnia. Whatever that phone conversation was about, I don’t think that Stanić is our man.”
I blow out a breath. “Great. Where does that leave us?”
She hunches her shoulders. “Back firmly to square one. At least it felt good to do something, rather than sit around stuck in that stupid counterterrorism job.”
Afrim walks into the room. “Hey guys, what’s going on?”
“No luck on Stanić,” I tell him. “It’s back to square one.”
Afrim hunches his shoulders. “You know Drago and Emilija are going to be pissed, right?”
I frown and think of what Drago told me. “Believe me, Afrim, I know.”
Fourteen:
The Tip-Off
Elena
I’m walking down the main street of the ULB’s Solbosch campus, past the old building next to the library. I am on my way to my exam about the European Central Bank’s monetary governance.
Something is shoved into my hand. I look over to the bushes next to the library. A kid, maybe about Erika’s age, dives back behind them. I recognize him. He’s the same kid that Drago paid a few coins to, to get information about the Proclamation, in front of the monument to the messenger pigeons when Afrim went missing. I try to recall his name.
“Um, Ayoub?”
He keeps backing away as if terrified, shaking his head.
“Ayoub, what is it?”
He keeps backing away. He puts a finger up in front of his lips. Then he reaches the end of the bushes and runs across the light dusting of snow, past the semi-circular driveway in front of the old building with the clock tower. I look down at the note in my hand.
Meet me at 22:00 under the Viaduct of the Avenue de la Couronne.
I’ve got some information you’ll want to hear.
I consider skipping my exam, but I know that will just piss off Hristijan, though not as much as when Lucija quit the job he got for her. Besides it’s still mid-morning. I have all day. I keep heading for the Institute of European Studies, on the other side of Avenue Franklin Roosevelt. I make it there and walk across the red gravel parking lot, up a couple of worn steps to the heavy wrought-iron and glass door that serves as the main entrance. My exam is in the Kant Room, where Afrim and I like to study when it’s free.
As I enter, I see Drago, headed into the Spaak Room next to it. I start toward him, wanting to tell him about the mysterious note that I just got from a source that he and Afrim know. Drago looks away from me. I sigh and head through a doorway and then to the right, into the Kant Room.
I sit down next to the room’s reddish marble fireplace. The exam booklets are passed out. The short French woman who taught the class calls out in her high-pitched voice that the exam is about to begin. We have to pick two out of four questions and write an essay about them. I pick the one about the difference between fast- and slow-burning crisis management and another one on the role of structural reforms in resolving the Eurozone’s debt crisis in Greece, Italy and Spain. I write about them on autopilot, wondering what one Belgian-Moroccan kid could really have to tell me.
***
“Hey, Lucija?” I open the door to her room. It’s dark inside except for the light coming from her computer screen.
“I told you to knock first,” she grumbles at me, not taking her eyes from the screen. She’s silent for another few seconds. Then she asks, “All right, what is it?”
“I don’t know if I ever told you, but there was this kid that Drago was using to get information about what was going on with the terror cells in Molenbeek, when Afrim went missing a few months ago. I think his dad might be some kind of radical.”
She looks over at me. By the light of her laptop’s monitor, I can see her raise an eyebrow. “As a matter of fact, no, you didn’t tell me. Why tell me now?”
“Because right before my exam today, he showed up, hiding in the bushes at the ULB. He passed me this note.” I take it out of my pants’ pocket and show it to her. She reads it by the light of her computer monitor, still not turning on the desk lamp.
“Did he say what kind of information?”
“No, it was like he was too scared to talk about it in public. And he didn’t demand money like the last time. This must be something big enough to really disturb him.”
Lucija frowns down at the note. “There’s no way in hell you’re going alone. We’ll meet him there together.”
***
It’s almost ten o’clock at night and there’s not much activity, other than the traffic on the road, as we walk down the steps that lead down the side of the viaduct from the Avenue de la Couronne to the almost deserted Rue Gray.
There are some buildings where the street forks to our left. To the right are the supports for the viaduct and an overpass for the train tracks farther on.
Lucija looks around as if she is expecting something to leap from the shadows at us. Nothing does. Then we hear someone softly shout from the far side of the viaduct.
“Hey, pssst, over here!”
We look over. Ayoub leans out past the open gate of an empty parking lot. I can barely see him in the dark. Lucija and I crouch under the viaduct, past some dumpsters meant for recycling. The gates to the parking lot are open. A partially abandoned high-rise sits on its far side.
Another loud whisper. “I’m back here.” We look over. Ayoub is hiding to our right behind the parking lot’s fence and the dumpsters.
We crouch over to him and sit down on the asphalt. He’s dressed in a black puffy jacket with the faux-fur-trimmed hood put up.
“I thought you would come alone,” he whispers to me, “or with Drago or Afrim, someone I know I can trust.”
“This is my cousin. You can trust her, too.”
Lucija cocks her head at him and then says “All right, kid. Tell us what you know.”
“I heard my dad talking the other day, about how you investigated all of Mr. Stanić’s money and factories.”
Lucija raises an eyebrow. “How does he even know we did that?”
“Like I just said, I heard him talking with Abd al-Qadir, the guy who’s leading our group here. According to him you didn’t get to see them all.”
“What do you mean I didn’t get them all? My search was quite thorough, I assure you,” Lucija growls at him.
“Seriously, you guys were onto something. You rattled them. Stanić has a secret factory down in Kosovo, somewhere near a place called Mitrovica.” He struggles with the pronunciation. “From the sound of it, he’s not making computers down there.”
Lucija’s eyes narrow on him. “Why do this? Why take this risk? You’re literally ten.”
“I know. But this organization my dad became a part of, Daesh? It’s making him all weird. He took me out of school a few weeks ago, saying I didn’t need it. From the conversations I overheard him having at home with some of the other members, Brexit, Daesh and the Kosovo migration wave are all connected somehow. They think I’m not listening but I am. Now I’ve got to get back before my mom realizes I sneaked down the
fire escape and just left a pile of blankets in my bed.”
He starts to run off. Lucija grabs him by the shoulder. He starts and his eyes go wide with terror.
Lucija sighs and lets go. “Relax. I just wanted to say thanks, kid.”
He bolts for the stairway. We wait a few minutes and then stand, walking back up to the Avenue de la Couronne. We stay silent, not wanting to talk on the open street, or on bus ninety-five on the way back to the residence.
When we’re finally there, Lucija leads me into her room and shuts the door. She actually turns on the light this time. “All right, on the list of things that I thought I’d never do, getting key evidence from a ten-year-old who’s annoyed that he can’t go to school is one of them. He said the factory was somewhere near Mitrovica. That fits with the established facts. He’s got to mean Trepča.”
“Agreed.” I nod.
Lucija picks up her phone and dials a number. The conversation doesn’t take long. She puts it back on the table.
“I just tried calling Stanić’s office. I got his personal assistant. According to her he is currently out of touch as he is touring his factories in Bosnia. He could try coming up with a more opaque cover story. As if cell towers don’t exist there.” She rolls her eyes and opens the door. We walk out into the hallway. “Come on.”
“Where are we going?”
“To Emilija’s apartment. If her father is out of reach, it’s time we had a little chat with his daughter. For all we know, she could be in on it and those burnt-up servers of hers, crashing into Drago, everything, was all just for show.”
Erika sticks her head out of her room, with Rada right under her. We must have woken her up.
“Where are you going? It’s Emilija’s apartment, isn’t it? Aren’t Drago and Afrim staying there now? Can I go too?”
I lean down and put a hand on her shoulder, reflecting that the kid who just passed us this intel is about the same age as her and in a much worse situation. “Not this time, Erika. Maybe once we have a better idea of what’s going on.”