by Ryan, Chris
The front door of the villa opened and a man came out and shook Bald’s hand. His eyes scanned the street and, at one point, seemed to bore holes right through Gardner.
He had pockmarked cheeks like weathered marble. Pierced eyebrows and mangled ears that looked as if a Rottweiler had chewed on them. He was decked out in a tattered leather jacket with a Ferrari logo on the breast, turtleneck sweater and scuffed white sneakers.
‘Klint Valon,’ Gardner said.
‘You know him?’ Aimée asked. ‘He’s one of the most feared criminals in Belgrade.’
‘Fucking right I do. Albanian. He played both sides in the war, Albanian and Serbian. Eventually NATO got wise to him and he turned snitch. Actually helped the Regiment bust an arms-trafficking movement involving the Russian mafya and NATO soldiers.’
‘I had no idea he helped NATO.’
‘He gave Grade A int to hunt down the traffickers and put a stop to the ethnic cleansing. Trouble is, soon as the war was over Valon did a vanishing act. Probably shit-scared that the mates he’d dobbed in would be hungry for revenge.’
‘Never famous for his loyalty.’
‘The only loyalty Valon knows is to his wallet.’
Bald paced back to the Shogun, clutching a brown paper bag. Gardner figured it wasn’t a can of Special Brew in the bag – more likely a pistol for his personal protection.
Gardner revved up the Toyota once the Shogun had pulled off again.
‘Why would your friend be dealing with Valon?’
‘Maybe he’s looking for a little backup before he goes ahead with the exchange,’ said Gardner, waiting for a goat to cross the road.
‘Valon would perform such a service?’
Gardner nodded. ‘For a slice of the profits he’d whore out his gran and post the video on YouTube.’
Their conversation was interrupted by his squawking phone. He answered.
‘So you’ve met our local contact then?’ Land said. ‘Quite the siren, isn’t she?’
‘Helping me get the lowdown,’ Gardner said. He filled Land in on the presence of Klint Valon.
‘I suppose it makes sense. I’ve just got off the phone to Massimo. His undercover man in Calabria says that Petruzzi is going to arrive in Belgrade at nine o’clock tomorrow morning.’
‘Figure the deal’s not going to happen without Petruzzi present.’
‘Just to be on the safe side, we’ll have Bald’s hotel under surveillance. I’ll alert you the moment he leaves his room. But first we need to sort you out with some goodies ahead of the meeting. Aimée should come in handy, I think you’ll find.’
5
2007 hours.
The drive north to downtown Belgrade was a quiet one. Gardner thought about Valon. He recalled a story that did the rounds during the war. Rumours that Valon once drove a school bus through a village and offered to take the ethnic Albanians living there to a safehouse. The villagers were crammed on the bus. Men, women, children. Then Valon drove them straight into a Serbian militia camp. The militiamen paid him a handsome reward. Valon counted his money while the soldiers ordered the Albanians on to their knees and shot them in turn in the back of the head.
The Toyota crawled up Topcider Hill, south-east of the city centre. On the northern slope of the hill Gardner noted Hajd Park, named after Hyde Park. Down the other side of Topcider Hill, from where Aimée directed him towards a low-rise block of flats with a red-brick front, French windows and ornamental railings. The cars parked outside were all BMWs and Mercedes.
‘Bloody hell,’ said Gardner as Aimée searched for her keys. ‘The Firm obviously pay you good money.’
‘I do this work for my country. Not to buy myself a luxury sofa.’
They climbed wooden stairs, treads groaning like an old woman on her deathbed. On the third floor Aimée approached the door to flat 7 and twisted her keys in a series of locks. Inside, she had an alarm. This woman takes her security seriously, Gardner thought.
Aimée punched in a code number. The alarm cut short. She led him down a narrow hallway. Lino floors, framed newspaper articles that he noticed carried her name on the byline. He couldn’t read them, but he knew they were in French.
‘You used to be a journalist?’
The back of her head nodded. Gardner found himself staring at the smooth nape of her neck. ‘I worked as a crime reporter for Le Figaro for five years. It was fun, but crime in France is petty compared to what happens in Serbia.’
Past a kitchen on their left, a bathroom on their right, and at the end of the hallway she opened a door to the left, flicked a switch.
The room was bare. No furniture, no decorations. Just a single lightbulb hanging from the ceiling like a burning fuse. Gardner wondered for a split second what he was supposed to be looking at. Then he ran his eyes across the walls and wondered no more.
Weapons were racked on the walls. Gardner recognized a bewildering variety of guns. Some he’d used many times before: Heckler & Koch Mark 23 semi-automatics, Benelli M4 Super 90 shotguns and Glock 9mms. Then there were the obscure guns procured from Russia and the Far East. A GM-94 grenade launcher and a PP-19 Bison 2 machine-gun. Weapons so rare that even the Regiment had a tough time getting hold of them.
‘Leo said for you to take what you need.’
‘Jesus,’ Gardner said, approaching one wall and understanding why Aimée needed so much security. He turned to her. ‘You’re an arms dealer?’
‘Nothing quite so grand. I’m just helping people fight the criminals who are trying to ruin Serbia. You’re welcome to whatever you want.’
Gardner selected a long, sleek black piece.
‘This is—’
‘The Sako TRG-22.’
‘You know your guns.’
‘In my family it was impossible to grow up and not know them.’
Gardner ran a hand over the sniper rifle. He’d used the TRG-22 on combat missions in the Regiment. While the rest of the Armed Forces swore by the Accuracy International L96, SAS operators had a degree of freedom when it came to selecting weapons and gear. Gardner favoured the TRG because it came with a muzzle break that reduced recoil and kickback, and the .308 Winchester rounds were lethally effective up to eight hundred metres. You couldn’t ask for more from a sniper rifle.
I’ll be targeting John from long range, Gardner reasoned. I need a gun that’s going to be surgical from distance. The TRG-22 fitted the bill perfectly.
‘I’ll take it,’ Gardner said.
‘What’s the business between you and the target?’ Aimée asked.
‘He used to be a good friend. Not any more.’
‘Are you going to kill him?’
‘What kind of a question is that?’ He kept a tight face. Her eyes hung on him. Gardner felt air freeze in his throat. They stood in silence for several seconds.
‘Would you like a drink?’ Aimée said.
‘That sounds good.’
She led him out to the hallway and into the bedroom opposite. There he sat on the edge of the bed while she popped into the kitchen. The knots in his leg muscles slackened. He heard the clinking of glass and the sticky shuffle of feet on lino.
Aimée returned clutching a bottle of wine in one hand and two glasses in the other. As she put the glasses on her bedside table and poured, Gardner studied her. Her eyes were soft and sharp at the same time, like teardrops on their sides. There were no hard lines on her face and she radiated a kind of inner strength.
‘Been a while since I had a glass of Serbian red,’ Gardner said. The wine tasted good. It uncorked the pressure building between his ears.
‘You’ve been here before?’ she asked him.
‘A long time ago.’ Images like talons dug deep in the sides of his skull. Burning houses, streets littered with shrapnel.
‘Many people have suffered,’ she said. ‘I have to help take the fight to the enemy. People think a war ends when the soldiers leave. They’re wrong.’
‘You’re preaching to the converted,
Aimée.’
She sat on the bed, resting her back against the pillows, her long, smooth legs almost touching Gardner. He noticed the white strap of her bra low on her shoulder. As she adjusted herself the flame top tightened into a knot at her back, pulling the fabric over the curves of her chest.
Gardner drank more wine. Two gulps and he’d almost finished the glass. A pleasant mist settled behind his eyes.
‘So, how did you go from being a journalist to helping MI6?’
‘It’s complicated,’ she said, curling a rogue strand of hair around her index finger. ‘My father was part of the underground resistance to Milosevic’s rule. To begin with he fought with words: pamphlets, newspapers, that kind of thing. After Milosevic killed our mother he decided to carry on the struggle with guns.’
‘I always thought shoot first, ask later was the best policy.’
Aimée smiled.
‘My father had one rule for himself, another for everyone else. He was like you.’
She topped up Gardner’s glass. The logical part of his mind told him to refuse. He needed to stay alert. He was behind enemy lines. But Land had said the deal would be happening tomorrow noon, and he was grateful for a moment’s respite from the stress of his mission. He necked more wine. The alcohol burned cobwebs inside him.
‘My father killed many of Milosevic’s biggest, baddest thugs,’ Aimée went on. ‘He even tried to assassinate Milosevic himself. But they caught him, tore off his fingernails and toenails, cut off his nose and threw him over a cliff, leaving him for dead. I was seven years old.’ Her breath escaped in spurts. ‘My father’s friends made me see his body. So I could never forget, they told me.’ The smile took on worried curves. ‘It worked.’
‘I’m very sorry to hear that.’
‘It was many years ago now. But thank you.’
‘And you decided to follow in your father’s footsteps?’
‘Not exactly. I mean, I respected his work, and his devotion to the cause of a free and liberal Serbia. But, you know, times have changed. In this country there is a big divide between the older people and the young. Those who remember the war don’t want to forget or forgive, and their first choice is the gun. The rest of us, the young, all have an iPod. We live in a different world. Today wars are waged on TV screens and newspapers.’
‘But the weapons racks—?’
‘Yes, Joe?’
‘I’m not here to cause a riot, Aimée. I want to stop an old friend from doing bad things.’
Her smile evened out and her eyes sighed at him. ‘I think Leo was wrong. You’re a good man.’
‘I don’t really know.’
‘You are. I see it in your eyes.’
‘Sometimes I don’t think there are good people any more,’ Gardner said. ‘Just some people who do something and other people who do nothing.’
‘And what does that make you?’
He shrugged. ‘Guess I’ve never really been the type to sit back and let things happen.’
‘You’re always in control?’
‘I try to be.’
An awkward silence passed between them. Gardner fixed his eyes on his wine glass. Rain rapped on the windows.
‘And what about if you lost control?’
He raised his eyes and saw Aimée was sitting up straight. She let her gaze trace around the edges of Gardner’s face. She placed her glass on the floor next to the sofa. Licked her lips and pushed herself across the coffee table, wrapping her arms tight around his neck. He leaned in and let her kiss him across the divide. She kissed him hard. Gardner pulled her close and saw that her eyes were clamped shut, as if she was fighting not to wake up from a powerful dream.
6
2144 hours.
Sotov was carving a dollar sign into the whore’s face when the call came.
Bad fucking timing.
He paused, the knife point suspended above her left eyebrow. Blood trickled into a carmine river above her brow and streamed down her nose. Droplets fell from the tip and on to her trembling lips. Each drop made her shiver.
Sotov was torn between taking the call and telling the assistant to say he was busy. It had become increasingly hard for him to source good women. Russian girls were out of the question. They aroused too much suspicion. So he had resorted to flying them in from the old satellite states, and some from further afield. China, Venezuela, Vietnam. They were cheaper, and so was their silence.
You have to take the call, he was thinking. The girl can wait.
The Lithuanian prostitute gave a muted cry. Her eyes rested on the knife grip wrapped around his pale fingers. The two other prostitutes, a couple of black-haired Chinese, were being paid to watch. The Lithuanian was a redhead with such a perfectly symmetrical face that it almost felt scandalous to mark her in such a way. Almost.
His assistant handed him his mobile.
‘Someone’s watching Bald,’ the voice said.
‘Shit,’ Sotov growled. ‘Who? No one knows about this. I’ve paid the FSB off, for fuck’s sake.’
There was a pause at the other end of the line. Sotov knew the man used an iridium-powered satellite phone for security purposes. He found the time delay maddening.
‘Forgive me,’ the man said. ‘I’m not sure how he learned of Bald’s intentions.’ Another pause. ‘I think he might be an old friend.’
‘When I want your opinion,’ Sotov replied, ‘I’ll fucking well ask you for it.’ His rage shot down the line. ‘Do we even have a name for this cunt?’
‘Joe Gardner,’ the man’s voice quietening. ‘I understand he’s a former soldier.’
Sotov’s right hand twitched. The blade sank a quarter of an inch into the girl’s forehead and a scream pierced the walls.
He motioned for the two Chinese girls to suck each other’s tits. They climbed on to the ornamental four-poster bed once owned by the Romanovs, now enjoying pride of place in the private bedroom of Sotov’s twenty-room mansion in Moscow. He always came to the capital for this sort of thing. You couldn’t very well ask girls to fly to Siberia. And somehow it seemed more appropriate amid the decadence of Moscow, where the bankers paid to watch their wives fuck other men and the noble politicians of the Duma buried truths and people in equal abundance.
Sotov watched the Chinese girls as one nibbled at the other. The girls moaned, like they were genuinely having a good time.
‘What would you like me to do, Aleks?’
‘Kill him,’ Sotov said.
‘He’s with a girl. Kill her too?’
Sotov sipped from a glass of finest-grain Scotch malt whisky. ‘No. I want the girl.’
Call over, Sotov went back to work. Anger boiled in his veins. He wanted to make the redhead cry. She whimpered as he cleaned the blade on a napkin and pressed the serrated tip against the warm, doughy flesh of her breast. Her breathing was fitful. Forget this soldier: he’s a fucking small fish in a very big pond, he told himself.
7
0425 hours.
Gardner woke early. He watched the light from the streetlamp, crisp and bright as sulphur, decanting through the inch-wide gap between the curtains. The light coloured in the faces on the holiday and family snaps lining the wall. Every square millimetre of space was devoted to pictures and press cuttings, old birthday cards and poems. Gardner lived without a past and not much of a present. He didn’t have a Facebook profile or Twitter page and, as far as he knew, no photos of him existed since he was a teenager. It wasn’t a lifestyle choice. It was the only way he knew. But, looking at Aimée’s wall of friends and fond memories, he felt a little hollow at his core.
He sensed the bracelet on his wrist. Hated the feel of the plastic against the hairs on his skin. Tagged like a fucking paedophile, he thought. Suddenly he hungered for freedom. Manoeuvring his body so he didn’t wake Aimée, he brought his wrist to his mouth. Snagged the lock between his teeth and yanked at the bracelet. Something snapped. It came loose. He tossed the bracelet to the floor. It landed somewhere amid the sea
of clothes.
Aimée stirred. Her head rested on his chest, the flat of her nose using the curved ridge of his pectoral muscles as a pillow. When he peered down at her he saw only a head of ruffled hair. But Gardner felt her breath rise up his chest and stream on to his chin. She kissed his chest, then the side of his neck, working her way up muscle by muscle. Finally she kissed him on the lips and rubbed her nose against his stubbled cheek. Her face – fifty per cent sleepy and fifty per cent smiley – pronounced her happiness.
‘It’s early,’ she said.
‘You can go back to sleep.’
‘Are you kidding? I’m not sleepy at all.’
‘Me neither,’ said Gardner. He swung his legs over the side of the bed, rubbed sleep from his eyes. In the Regiment he got by on two or three hours’ sleep a night. These days it was more like five or six. He was getting slack.
‘I have to go,’ he said.
‘Already?’ Aimée made a noise in the base of her throat, like a poorly dog. ‘Damn it, and there I was thinking you could wait just a few more hours before killing evil drug dealers.’
‘I might be persuaded to leave a few minutes late.’
‘Persuaded – how?’
‘Surprise me.’
The noise in her throat came again, now a note higher. She squeezed his right bicep. Her fingers traced the route of his bluish veins, visible on the surface like steel cables. ‘They’re so soft and smooth,’ she said. ‘I thought they’d be harder.’
Her left hand slid under the thin white sheet that covered them from the waist down. He felt her fingers against the inside of his leg. Her fingertips were warm and he felt a pang of electricity course through his body when she touched him.
