Exile

by James Swallow

  *

  Marc slipped into a public restroom down the hall and cleaned himself up as best he could. Changing into the fresh clothes, he carefully put a heavy shirt on over his dressings, as others came and went around him.

  He was in the process of zipping up the backpack when a man stepped up to a nearby sink to wash his hands. Glancing over, Marc found himself looking at a face he had seen before, reflected in the neighbouring mirror.

  A guy a few years younger than him, with a distracted expression on a gaunt aspect, he wore black jeans and a dark brown leather jacket over a baggy hoodie. The jacket was cut large, in the way that a lot of bratva types liked, all the better to conceal the shape of a holster hidden beneath.

  Marc looked away as the man left the room, placing him a moment later. I have his picture. He was at the apartment block.

  Going through the stills over and over again, Marc had committed the faces to memory, searching them for something, for any detail that might be useful. And now one of them was here.

  But he hadn’t recognised Dane. Which could only mean one other thing.

  *

  Luka Pavic was a sketch of himself, drawn out and pallid against the starched sheets of the hospital bed in the corner of the recovery room. An IV drip reached down to his uninjured arm. Part of his face was concealed behind a half-mask of bandages, and more dressings covered his right shoulder and arm. The trauma team had done their best to dig out every piece of shot that had lodged in his flesh, and to close up the myriad of wounds which clawed across him. The damage had gone through to bone and muscle, some random fragments even scoring the edges of his lungs – but Pavic was strong and fit, and if he could pull himself through the first few days, he would survive this. The soft pulse of a heart monitor chimed steadily to itself, watching over him.

  The man in the leather jacket stood at the foot of Pavic’s bed, studying him silently. Outside in the corridor, there were few people to notice the intruder and he had crept into the room easily, without alerting anyone. Now the question was whether he could manage what he had come here to do without being discovered. There were policemen in the building; he had seen them as he had entered, being careful to avoid their glances. If they got him, if he was arrested . . . It would all be over.

  He moved until the bed was between him and the door, and looked around, finding a locker that contained Pavic’s clothes and personal effects, sealed in a plastic packet.

  He was reaching for it when he heard the door behind him click shut.

  *

  ‘Get away from him.’ Marc dropped the backpack onto the floor and spoke in low, clear tones. He kept his hands at his sides, shifting his feet so he could move fast to block the other man if he tried something. Other than deciding to take a dive through the third-storey window behind him, there was no way out of the recovery room except via the door that Marc was now blocking.

  The guy in the leather jacket glanced at Pavic, who lay there unconscious and unaware, his breathing shallow beneath the oxygen mask over his mouth and nose. The bag of fire-damaged clothes in the man’s hand didn’t move. Marc could see him weighing his options, and knew that he could understand his words.

  ‘I’m not going to tell you again.’

  That got him a wary nod, and the man moved around the bed, still holding the bag, slowly raising one hand in a conciliatory gesture.

  There has to be an alarm button in here, Marc thought, and for a second he broke eye contact, searching for it.

  The man in the leather jacket took the opportunity and threw the bundle of clothes at Marc’s chest in a sudden flurry of motion.

  Marc instinctively put up his hands to deflect it, and in the same moment the other man was drawing a gun.

  The first move caught him off guard, but now he was reacting with the intruder, and as the pistol came around he dashed forward and closed the distance between them. His arms came up in a motion that caught the other man’s forearm between them in a crossing blow. Done right and with enough force behind it, the move could snap bone, but Marc was still inexpert with the tactic and the block was only good enough to disarm the other man.

  The intruder grunted in pain and lost the grip on his pistol. Marc immediately kicked it away, under the bed where neither of them could reach it, and then put his shoulders into forcing the intruder away from Pavic’s sleeping form.

  They pivoted, trading short jabbing punches and dragging against one another. Marc fought to keep the other man close in and off balance, while the intruder desperately tried to disengage and get some distance. When that didn’t work, the man in the leather jacket tried a different tack, aiming hard, sharp kicks at Marc’s lower legs.

  One blow landed and Marc swallowed a snarl of pain. A second and third kick in the same spot came straight after and Marc felt his knee suddenly bend. The intruder was trying to put him on the ground.

  Marc relented and staggered back before he lost his footing, and there was a split second when the man’s eyes flicked away from him to the bag of clothing lying on the floor. This time, Marc turned on the intruder’s moment of inattention and lashed out in a wide swing that caught a ceramic vase full of decorative origami flowers sitting on the top of a nearby dresser. With an artless half-throw, half-shove, Marc sent the vase through the air and the man in the jacket hit back by reflex, striking out with his hand. The cheap vase shattered as he connected with it, and Marc was already coming back at him.

  Snatching at a fistful of a loose blanket at the end of the bed, Marc dragged it up with him. Clumsy but fast, he swiped it toward the intruder, forcing him back.

  The man cursed and flailed, throwing a blind punch. Marc hissed in return as a falling blow clipped his forearm where the old bullet graze was, and a surge of agony shuddered along his nerves, deadening the flesh where the blow landed.

  Marc punched at the shrouded, thrashing figure and the pair of them overbalanced, tumbling against a threadbare armchair beside the bed. His opponent shrugged out of the confines of the blanket and his face emerged, eyes wide and cheeks flushing a furious crimson. Another vicious blow landed in Marc’s gut and all the air gushed out of his chest in a strangled wheeze. Fighting past the moment, he grabbed for his opponent’s throat.

  ‘What are you two doing?’ The strained voice from the bed made both combatants stop dead. Pavic tried to raise his head, pulling the oxygen mask down from his mouth. ‘Stop . . . stop that.’ The effort of talking was hard for him. ‘Vanja,’ he said to the intruder. ‘You should . . . not be here.’

  ‘You’re Vanja?’ Marc let go of him. ‘The informant?’

  The other man managed a nod.

  ‘Marc,’ said Pavic thickly, his eyes fluttering as he started to fade back into unconsciousness. ‘Stop hitting my cousin.’

  *

  They sat down opposite one another, Vanja in the old armchair and Marc on a stool he found in the corner of the room. Two plastic cups of bad machine-brewed coffee were between them on a moveable table, a kind of mutual peace offering that both men sipped once and then left untouched.

  Together, they had silently cleaned up the debris from the broken vase and Marc had recovered the Czech-made CZ 75 semi-automatic from beneath the bed. Unloaded now, it sat out of reach of both of them on the dresser, on top of the bag of clothing.

  ‘Cousin,’ said Marc, turning this new piece of information over in his thoughts. ‘Huh. That explains a lot.’ Something Pavic had said before came back to him. He and I have known each other since we were boys. He’s wayward, but I trust him not to lie to me.

  ‘I was afraid you were here to kill Luka,’ said Vanja.

  ‘Ditto,’ said Marc. Vanja didn’t get what he meant, so he pressed on. ‘You work for the Kurjaks. I saw you at the Dolphin Apartments tonight.’

  Vanja nodded. ‘They don’t usually bring me along. But Neven wanted more men there . . .’ He trailed off.

  Another memory snapped into place for Marc. Pavic had reacted to
something when they were up on the roof across from the apartment block. He had seen his cousin there among the Kurjak gun-thugs, and said nothing.

  ‘You know they’re scumbags, right?’ Marc told him.

  ‘Don’t judge me,’ Vanja snapped back, keeping his voice down. ‘You’re not from this place. You don’t know how it is for us. You take any chance to make money that comes to you.’

  ‘Fair enough,’ Marc said. On the South London council estate where he had grown up, a few of his contemporaries had been sucked into gangs and the lower ranks of organised crime. Marc had broken away from all that by joining the Royal Navy, and he wondered if similar paths had been put before Pavic and his cousin – the good road or the bad.

  ‘Luka’s family always treated me well,’ Vanja offered, without prompting. ‘I owe him.’ He left it at that.

  ‘So why are you here?’

  Vanja looked away. ‘I heard he was hurt. I wanted to make sure he was still . . . that he was okay.’ He shook his head. ‘If the Kurjaks know Luka and I have been talking, we are both dead men.’

  ‘You’re afraid someone in the police force will find out you were giving information to Pavic, if something happened to him?’

  ‘The cops have rats in their house,’ Vanja replied.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Marc. ‘I’ve met Franko Horvat.’

  The other man looked as though he wanted to spit. ‘He does their dirty work for them, and no one can touch him.’ He leaned in. ‘I have to make sure Horvat can’t connect anything to me, you get it?’

  All at once, Marc knew the reason why Vanja was sneaking around in Pavic’s recovery room, why he was so interested in the injured man’s personal effects. Marc snatched up the bag of clothes and stepped away. He reached inside, feeling around. Shoes, wallet, keys, cell phone . . . Two cell phones.

  He pulled out the cheap burner phone that Pavic had shown him in the locker room of the gym. ‘Looking for this?’

  ‘Give it to me!’ Vanja went to stand up but Marc waved him away.

  ‘All the messages you sent him are in the memory of this thing, yeah? If the Kurjaks had it, they’d be able to figure out who was talking out of school.’

  Vanja’s face fell. ‘Please, just let me have it. I’m sorry about what happened to you and Luka, but I have to be thinking about myself now. Give me the phone!’

  Annoyance flared in Marc’s chest. ‘What, so you can walk away and pretend this didn’t happen?’ But even as he said the words, he could see it from Vanja’s perspective. Europol’s files on the Kurjaks had plenty of grisly data proving their reputation for coming up with creative punishments for the disloyal.

  Marc’s instinct was that Vanja was on the level, and backed up by Pavic’s faith in the man, he guessed he was hearing the truth from him. Pavic was eager, but he wasn’t a fool, and if the policeman trusted Vanja, then Marc reckoned he could too. But that didn’t go both ways. Marc didn’t have twenty-plus years of familial relationship to secure Vanja’s trust.

  What he did have was leverage, and he was holding it in the palm of his hand. ‘You want this?’ Marc heard himself saying. ‘It’s yours . . .’

  ‘If I help you?’ Vanja said bitterly, seeing it coming.

  Marc hesitated. During his basic training at British Intelligence, he and his fellow inductees had been briefed on the complexities of acting as a handler for a confidential source – an ‘asset’ as they were typically known. And while he understood that manipulation and coercion were a part of that process, vital to intelligence gathering, it wasn’t something that sat right with him. Finding someone’s psychological weakness, locating their pressure points and squeezing, did not come easily to him. At least, it didn’t before today. Marc recalled his earlier conversation with Goss and frowned.

  He took the direct approach instead. ‘You were there when the Kurjaks had the meeting. Do you know who they were dealing with?’

  Vanja shook his head again. ‘A Russian. But they kept us away. Never heard anything. The Kurjaks don’t like anyone listening in on their deals.’

  ‘The case,’ Marc said, pushing hard. ‘There’s radioactive material inside it. And not just some glow-in-the-dark paint. Weapons-grade. You understand how serious that is, yeah?’

  The other man paled, and Marc knew this was news to him. ‘O moj Bože . . .’

  ‘Listen, you tell me where the Kurjaks took that case, the phone is yours. Deal?’

  Vanja leaned forward in his chair, breathing hard. ‘I . . . I can’t. I don’t know. The brothers are paranoid about their security. Always moving around.’

  Marc pocketed the burner. ‘So how do you get your orders?’

  ‘I am told. The men who tell me get texts. Neven has phones for them, with software that makes the words all slučajan . . .’ He waved at the air. ‘Random.’

  ‘Encrypted messaging.’

  ‘I can’t go against them . . .’ Vanja nodded, got up and went to his cousin’s side. ‘I didn’t mean for Luka to get hurt. But he’s impulsive. Always has been.’

  ‘If it’s immunity you want, I can talk to Europol. You help us bring in the Kurjaks, that can happen.’ Marc made the promise even though he had no guarantee that he could fulfil it. Vanja was the only lead he had right now, and he couldn’t afford to let him slip away. ‘Tell me what you know.’

  ‘Something is going on,’ Vanja admitted, after a long silence. ‘I heard a couple of the other men talking about a meeting. Not with the Russian. Another foreigner. Today. That’s all I have.’

  ‘Another big deal? Where?’ Marc demanded. ‘Think, man. There’s a dozen places in Split and out of town where the Kurjaks have their boltholes. I only need to know which one.’

  ‘I told you, I don’t know!’ Vanja snapped, his voice rising. On the hospital bed, Pavic stirred and groaned. ‘I do not see the messages,’ he added. ‘I am just muscle. Not important enough.’

  ‘Maybe so,’ said Marc, as the spark of an idea formed. ‘But I reckon I know a guy who thinks he is.’

  SIX

  The commuter jet from Zagreb was the first arrival at Split’s airport that morning, touching down on the runway just after dawn. Ramaas appeared to be asleep for the entire flight, but it was a mask he wore to avoid having to converse with any of the aircraft’s crew or passengers. His eyes closed behind a pair of large Oakley sunglasses, the warlord allowed himself to drift with the passing of the journey, but he could not rest.

  He did not like to fly. Being confined inside a pressurised metal tube thousands of feet up, breathing in processed air, all while someone else was deciding where they would go . . . That made him tense and irritable. Ramaas was unwilling to give up control of life to any living being. He granted that trust to Waaq, and he was willing to give it briefly to the oceans when he sailed upon them, but those were both forces of nature that all men had to respect. Putting his life in the hands of a mere pilot was anathema to him. Still, he took some small comfort in the knowledge that, if he were to perish because of some error made by the captain of the airliner, the man’s entire family would be murdered in forfeit by Ramaas’s clan. Perhaps it is best for the man’s concentration, he reflected, that he does not know this.

  The flight was the last leg of an endless parade of identical passenger cabins and airport departure lounges, from Mogadishu out to Istanbul and then to Croatia. Ramaas imagined that the men who feared him back in Somalia were aware by now that he had left the country. They had spies at the airport, the docks, and every border crossing. But they would not know the reasons why, and that would worry them.

  He smiled slightly as the jet rolled to a stop by the gate and the passengers began to disembark. After the killing of Welldone Amadayo, the warlord’s enemies and allies alike were caught in a cycle of indecision, afraid to make an overt move in any direction for fear it would be the wrong one. In this moment, Ramaas would take the next step, advancing his cause while theirs stagnated.

  The men
at immigration control waved him through without comment. He carried little in the way of baggage, and nothing on him that was illegal. The Republic of Kenya passport he travelled under was a very expensive forgery sourced for him out of Hong Kong, one that had never been challenged. Ramaas strode across the black-and-white grid of the airport terminal’s tiled floor, finding a spiral staircase to take him to the upper terrace.

  The airport was relatively small and there was no multi-faith prayer room here, which irritated him. It had been far too long since he had spoken with God, and wanted the clarity that gave him. It was not something he could do out in the open, among foreigners. It was a private act, for Ramaas and his deity alone to share.

  Finding a quiet corner, he switched on his smartphone and the device awoke with two messages waiting for him. An ordinary iPhone he had taken from a plundered cargo, it sat inside a form-fitting case that doubled its thickness and transformed it into a satellite-capable device. Ramaas entered his user code to activate the phone’s encryption software and a moment later he heard Zayd’s voice on the other end of the line as an Internet connection was made.

  ‘Boss. I’m here.’ Ramaas smiled at the man’s terse report and listened to him name a time a few hours hence. ‘Meet is set. What do you want me to do?’

  Here meant Western Italy. Meet meant a face-to-face audience with the gaal, Brett. What would happen there, what orders the warlord would give to Zayd, would very much depend on the conversation Ramaas was going to have with the Serbians. ‘Be ready, brother,’ he said, at length. ‘In the days to come, we will free ourselves from the last of the shackles.’