‘I have delivered a message,’ he offered.
‘Saito!’ said the first guard, addressing someone elsewhere in the building. ‘Get up here! Code Red!’
Zayd shifted and took the next step. Grabbing the metal teapot, he smashed it into the head of the closest guard, a gush of searing sweet liquid splashing across his face and neck. Then, kicking the man away with a hard blow in the back, Zayd snatched up the kunai blades and threw them at the other man. One blade missed and buried itself in the door, but the second cut into the guard’s belly. Crimson bloomed on his white shirt and Zayd leapt at him. Fast and agile, he was on the man with the gun before the guard could get a shot off. Zayd slipped his finger into the metal loop at the end of the kunai’s hilt and pulled it out – then went back at the guard with the blade held like a push-dagger, stabbing him a dozen more times within the span of a few seconds.
Blood spattered over his stolen jacket and Zayd let the man slump back against the door, his weight slamming it shut. He recovered his other throwing knife before returning to the guard he had scalded, who was fumbling for his own firearm. With a blade in either hand, Zayd jammed them both into the sides of the guard’s head with enough force to penetrate the skull. The second one dealt with, he turned his attention back to the white man, who was still clinging to life.
Zayd shrugged off Amadayo’s crimson-stained suit jacket and the shirt beneath, stealing the black jacket from the man he had killed. The replacement was dark, all the better to hide the blood on him. He gathered up his weapons, watching the life fade from Brett’s eyes.
Some of the others – Guhaad and his men – they said that Zayd was squeamish about killing close at hand. But that wasn’t so. What he liked about the act of taking a life with a sniper rifle was the purity of it. The moment of death was untainted – not like now, clouded by fear and panic. When Zayd watched that last moment of life before he pulled the trigger, he was seeing into the world beyond death. It felt holy to him.
Only those who did not see it coming could truly be that gateway. Men like this one, their own flesh corrupted by poison, would hang on and fight to live even when reality told them it was already over. It was pathetic and impure.
He heard voices outside, the rush of feet coming closer. Zayd left Brett to breathe his last and climbed out onto the hotel’s balcony, scrambling up over the exterior toward the roof.
Crossing the tiles, low and fast like a cat, he came to the back of the Vesuvio and jumped down to the top level of the hotel’s metal fire escape. Zayd descended in bounds before scrambling over a service gate to the narrow cobbles of the Via Chiatamone.
A few hundred metres distant, Dahable sat listening to tinny dance music in his cab with the window down, drumming his fingers on the outside of the door. He caught sight of Zayd coming his way and reversed off the taxi rank, swinging the vehicle around in a wide turn. Zayd climbed in and they were off before he closed the door behind him. The cab shot away into the backstreets, taking seemingly random turns at every intersection without slowing down. Dahable appeared to drive with the horn as much as the steering wheel.
‘All done?’ asked the Kenyan, flicking a look into the rear-view mirror. He held out a digital phone. ‘This one is fresh,’ he added.
‘Take me somewhere I can clean up,’ said Zayd, as he set about inputting a lengthy code number from memory.
*
The Mercedes rolled slowly at first, then picked up speed as it bit into the incline and gravity took hold. In moments, it was racing toward the slipway, and then there was a sudden crunch of splintering wood as the vehicle smashed through the safety barrier.
Ramaas watched the car skid and wandered after it, hearing the grinding noises as it flipped over and rolled. The battered bulk of the Mercedes landed in the shallow channel on its roof and sank quickly. When it was fully submerged, he turned and found Neven Kurjak nearby. He was staring fixedly at the steel case by his feet.
‘What now?’ said the Serbian.
Ramaas pointed in the direction of the docks. ‘That way. Start walking.’ He was going to say more, but the trilling of his phone demanded his attention. He pulled out the device and glared at it. ‘Speak to me,’ he demanded.
‘The work is done,’ said Zayd. He sounded out of breath. ‘The message was sent.’
He considered asking if there had been any complications, but the sniper did not volunteer any more information and for Ramaas that was an answer in itself. He paused, thinking of all the things he wanted to tell his comrade, of the incredible bounty that had fallen to them. Watching the surviving Kurjak brother haul the case down the dusty pathway ahead of him, he found himself grinning widely. ‘Good,’ he said. ‘Now listen to me carefully. You are not going to return home. Things have changed. I have another task for you, one more important than any other mission.’
Zayd took a while to reply. ‘Okay.’
‘I will explain it you,’ he went on. ‘We will have a conversation, very soon. But for now, I want you to call upon some captains who owe us favours.’
‘Okay,’ Zayd repeated. ‘Send me the names.’
It was foolish of him to do so, but caught up in the moment and emboldened by his gift from God, Ramaas said something more. ‘We have a blessing, brother,’ he said. ‘I promised you Waaq would provide. And he has, beyond anything I ever hoped for.’
*
Luka Pavic had a visitor sitting across from him when Marc returned to the hospital. Vanja tensed in his chair and there was a moment of odd déjà vu as the two men met each other’s gaze.
‘It’s okay,’ Marc assured him. ‘We don’t have to fight this time, yeah?’
‘I thought I had dreamed that,’ said Pavic, from his bed. ‘They have given me a lot of medication.’
Marc found a stool to sit on and angled himself so he could see the door. ‘Your cousin helped me out,’ he told Pavic. ‘He’s a good lad.’ Marc looked toward Vanja. ‘You need to be careful. The police have your description. Coming here wasn’t the smartest move. If someone spots you, calls it in . . .’ He trailed off.
‘He came here to make sure I was all right,’ said Pavic.
‘He’s family,’ Vanja said simply.
Marc frowned. ‘I wouldn’t blame you if you did a runner.’
‘This is not over.’ Pavic’s voice hardened. ‘Not until that maggot Horvat is rotting in a prison cell. I’m going to take him down. Once I get out of here, he won’t be able to hide from me.’
‘Easier said than done,’ Marc replied. ‘Horvat’s gone dark. Apparently, there’s no sign of him in any of his usual haunts and he’s covering his tracks well.’ He explained about the missing hard drive from the Queen’s High casino’s security system. ‘Without that, it’s only our word and circumstantial evidence linking him to the Kurjaks.’
‘I’ll be a witness,’ said Vanja, but then he looked away. ‘It won’t count for much, though. Not against a cop, even a corrupt one.’
Pavic grimaced. ‘Horvat has been getting away with this shit for years. Protecting those Serbian pricks while they buy and sell weapons in our backyard. And now this . . . . This thing they have . . .’
‘I told him what you told me,’ Vanja explained. ‘About the dirty bomb.’
‘Yeah.’ Marc’s gaze dropped to the floor.
‘It is worse, isn’t it?’ Pavic leaned toward him, seeing the change in his expression before he could mask it. ‘Marc. Don’t bullshit me. I can tell when you are telegraphing and when you are holding back. You don’t get in the ring a dozen times with someone and not know that.’
He let out a long breath. ‘Yeah, it’s worse. Long story short, I think the Kurjaks brokered the sale of an authentic 1980s vintage nuke to a third party, but things went sideways . . .’ Marc described the dark-skinned man who had tried to turn him into a hood ornament. ‘And now that guy has it. He most likely killed Bojan Kurjak and took his brother hostage along with the device. But I’ve been given the sac
k from the NSNS, so there’s sod all I can do about it. Who this big bugger is and what he plans to do with the thing is unknown, so we’re back to square one.’
‘I know,’ said Vanja, licking his lips. ‘His name, I mean.’
‘What?’ Marc turned on him. ‘You never mentioned that!’
‘You never asked me,’ Vanja retorted, becoming defensive. ‘When we were in the car outside the casino, you told me to listen to Horvat talking. I did! He was yelling at the other guy there, kicking off because the Kurjaks were meeting with someone and they had no time for him.’
‘They were meeting the big black guy,’ suggested Pavic.
Vanja went on. ‘You told me to pay attention to what Horvat was saying, not the other –’
Marc stopped him with a wave of the hand. ‘Doesn’t matter. Just tell me the name you heard.’
‘Ram-something.’ Vanja’s eyes narrowed as he thought about it. ‘Sounded like Ram-Az.’
‘Could be Arab or African?’ offered Pavic. ‘The Kurjaks have always been generous with who they will trade cash and guns to.’
‘I really could have used this intel when I was in Schrader’s office, before she fired me . . .’ Marc muttered, turning it over in his mind. But then again, she was going to can me whatever happened. He reached for the backpack at his feet that currently contained all his worldly possessions, and rooted through it for his laptop. ‘Okay, better late than never.’ He booted up the computer and started typing a rough search macro.
‘I’m going to make them discharge me from the hospital,’ said Pavic. ‘Franko Horvat has a lot of enemies in this town, so you can be sure that when I get back to the station, they’ll be very interested in seeing him in handcuffs. If we can get him, he might be able to lead us to this buyer. He will sing like a bird if he thinks it will save him.’
‘No doubt,’ agreed Marc. ‘But while we wait for that to happen, the bomb is still out there.’
‘It couldn’t still work after more than thirty years,’ said Vanja. ‘Right?’
Marc glanced up from the laptop’s screen. ‘You want to roll those dice? It’s not like the world has a shortage of psychos mad enough to try it out.’
‘True.’ Pavic nodded to himself. ‘Can’t you convince Schrader this is a real threat? I mean, this is what NSNS is for!’
‘I’ve already tried. She’s decided that everything coming out of my mouth is wrong,’ Marc snapped, irritated by the fact. ‘She looks at me and sees a burn-out, a liability she’s been saddled with.’ Saying the words twisted a knife in his chest, and a doubt formed at the back of his mind. What if she is right?
He pushed it away before it could take hold. ‘It comes down to one thing; Schrader doesn’t trust me. She never did, and she was never going to let me earn it. So I need to find another way . . . Because I’m not going to sit on my arse until some nutter tries to detonate a suitcase nuke!’
‘You told me you once worked for the British government,’ said Pavic. ‘Isn’t there someone there you could contact?’
Marc let out a bitter laugh. ‘If anything, my rep at MI6 is probably worse than it is with Europol right now. Without any proof? There’s no-one I can call, no-one I could trust.’ But even as he said the words, he knew that wasn’t strictly true. Marc put the laptop aside and started pulling other items out of the backpack – a careworn notebook secured by elastic bands, folded maps, and pieces of a camper’s first aid kit.
Presently, he found what he was looking for. The grey business card was crumpled where it had been sitting in the bottom of the pack for over a year, deliberately ignored but not discarded. It bore a couple of lines of text in a crisp, minimalist font. A name – RUBICON – and an unlisted international telephone number.
‘What is that?’ said Vanja.
‘A question I haven’t answered,’ said Marc.
*
The deck beneath Neven’s feet creaked in a rising and falling rhythm that he found difficult to ignore, and for what felt like the hundredth time in the past hour, he fidgeted and tried to find a place on the threadbare chair that approached being comfortable.
The communal space on the upper deck of the little tramp freighter was a mix of dining room and recreation area, with seats bolted to the floor arranged around similarly fixed tables and an old TV and DVD player in a cabinet. Books and magazines with Greek text were scattered about, and there was a pungent smell of strong, tarry coffee in the air, emanating from an ancient heater flask in the corner of the room.
Neven had expected to be locked in a cabin somewhere, or worse, some damp and rusting compartment on the lower decks. But instead, Ramaas had spoken with the men crewing the ship and one of them had brought him here. Hours had passed since they cast off, and he could see the colours of sunset coming in through the portholes.
Neven wondered how he was going to be able to keep Ramaas from killing him. Now he was alone, without any organisation to call upon and his brother dead, Neven only had what he brought with him.
Accepting that reality was almost enough to make him weep. He had no idea what was going on around him. He could only guess at the ship’s heading – south, into the Mediterranean – and wonder what the pirate warlord had planned for him and Fedorin’s bomb. He had not seen the steel case since they boarded the ship, hours before setting sail.
Panic spiralled around in his mind, feeding off itself and growing stronger with each hour that passed. Neven was not accustomed feeling powerless. Not since he had been a boy, on the nights his father had come home drunk and violent, turning the rage at his own failures on his young sons. He and Bojan had come through it together then, one supporting the other. Now for the first time he was truly alone, and that terrified him.
The padlock on the other side of the common room door rattled abruptly and Neven was startled, gripping the sides of the fixed chair. Ramaas entered and gave his prisoner a sly smile. He had changed his clothes to something better suited to a ship-hand, and he dumped a greasy boiler suit on the table next to Neven.
‘You stink of stale piss,’ he told him. ‘In a moment, you can go below and use the washroom. Put that on when you are done.’
‘All right,’ Neven agreed. ‘Can I ask where we are heading? Or whose ship this is?’
‘Our destination, it is fluid,’ Ramaas replied. ‘And for now, this ship is mine. The captain will follow any commands I give him.’
Neven could not square that with what he knew. Sea traffic in and out of Split and the surrounding ports was watched over by the factions of the bratva, and just as the Kurjaks and their dealings were tolerated by the larger predators in Eastern Europe’s criminal ecosystem, any smuggler ships were forced to pay a tribute to the bigger network in order to operate.
The warlord saw the question in his eyes. ‘You are surprised I can do this? It is simple for me. The company that owns this ship owns many more, and other men own other ships that pass around the Horn of Africa. Many vessels can be so influenced. I can have those ships raided, the crews put to death, all with a snap of my fingers.’ He did so, his smile widening into a grin. ‘So we make a deal. I grant them safe passage and they provide me with services.’ Ramaas took in the boat with a nod of his head. ‘Today, that is transportation and communication. I have had much to say to my men. It has been an eventful day, no?’
‘Why am I still alive?’ The words came out small and quiet.
‘I saw a sign from God,’ said Ramaas. His dark eye glittered as it turned toward Neven, lit with a kind of passion that was frightening. ‘At first I believed it was a trial, do you see? That in this moment, as I reached for greatness, He would drag me down into the dust for my pride. To teach me a lesson.’ He shook his head. ‘I was mistaken, Kurjak. You must understand this. After all, you were the vehicle for Waaq to reach out to me.’
‘I do not want to die,’ Neven managed, but Ramaas seemed to be speaking not to him, but to an invisible audience. His God, perhaps.
‘My life
has been about finding strength,’ he went on. ‘Taking it from the venal. All I ever wanted was to find a way to make my clan and my people proud again. To take our nation back from the weaklings who try to rule us. But now . . . This is more than I could have dreamed of.’ Ramaas spoke like a man who had seen heaven. ‘We have so many enemies. They have held us down for the longest time. But only a few are the most deserving. Now I can pay them back, my friend. They can learn what vengeance costs.’
Neven tried to speak, but he could find no words. His gut was hollow with dread, worse than before at the casino, worse than when the warlord had executed Bojan without a moment’s hesitation.
The reason was in the truth of the moment. Neven felt as though he was seeing beyond the mask that Ramaas had always worn whenever they had met. He had never known it was there until now.
This man, whom he assumed to be a talented but uneducated thug, a vicious killer who was content to be king of his own distant wasteland, was fully revealed to him. And now Neven Kurjak was cursed with clarity, as his own short-sightedness rolled out before him. Far too late to escape, he was understanding exactly what kind of man Ramaas was, and it terrified him to his core.
If God is real, Neven thought, is this His way of paying me back for all the wrongs I have done?
‘I have a plan,’ intoned Ramaas. ‘It will come to be. You will give me the code. You will help me, Kurjak. That is why you are still alive.’
‘I can’t . . .’ Fear flooded through him. Even the inkling of the warlord’s scheme was enough to set Neven’s heart pounding in his chest, and make him desperate to flee. ‘I won’t do it . . . !’
‘No?’ Ramaas cocked his head, as if this were only a minor inconvenience to him. ‘It is your choice. But if you are no use to me –’
‘You are going to kill me no matter what I do!’ Neven blurted out, shouting the words. He shrank back against the chair, as if he could disappear into it.
Exile Page 14
