by Love, John
But he knew he hadn’t done himself any credit in the last exchange with Gaetano, whereas Gaetano had; he’d shown control and restraint. And the next time they met, the following day, Gaetano showed exactly the same qualities and behaved as though nothing had happened between them. Anwar remarked on it, saying he was glad they could put other differences aside.
“We have to,” Gaetano said. “The summit’s getting closer. The preparations are mounting and I can’t afford to have baggage between us. But that isn’t why I asked to see you.” He handed Anwar the book. “She wanted me to give you this.”
Anwar looked at it, saw the title and the spine and the cover and the binding, and went cold. She could have left it on my pillow, or given it to me personally, but that would give away what she intended. I know what she intended.
She’d have had to trawl through innumerable dealers to find this. He knew, because he’d had to, to find his copy. And here she was, taking time to think of something that mattered to him, taking time—her own time—to get it. To get a toe in the door. To establish something they’d share. She’d thought to start a relationship, and he thought he’d laughed the idea out of existence, but she wasn’t afraid of his laughter. She wasn’t afraid of anything, and she’d never back down and never give up.
She’d just come back, again and again, each time more oblique and sinuous than the last. He should have remembered that about her.
Relationship. He spoke the word to himself, stressing the second syllable, and it tasted like copper in his mouth. His life was turning inside out. There was a rushing in his ears, which he remembered reading somewhere was what you heard when you started to die.
Relationship. He knew she was working on him. Sucking him into her. It would overturn his life, but his life was half overturned already. He half wanted it to continue, but sensed that she’d be worse, for him, than whatever they’d send for her.
Then he saw her inscription, and smiled without humour.
Several large corporations had a presence on the Cathedral Complex of the New West Pier—usually a boardroom and adjoining CEO suite. It was prestigious to have Board meetings, or to do entertaining or lobbying, at one of Europe’s premier business addresses. As a matter of course, Gaetano had had the companies on the New West Pier checked—maybe some of them were part of, or had links to, the founders or The Cell. He’d found nothing, but he got Anwar to ask Arden to do a deeper check. She called back with there sults, but first he briefed her on the events of the last few days.
From the wall of his suite, her projected image registered not only surprise, but genuine shock. “You tore a page out of a book for her?”
“Yes. And what about the results of your checks?”
Arden had found that years earlier Proskar did some freelance security work for a subsidiary of one of the Pier companies; neither that company nor its associates showed any traceable links to the Cell or the founders, and the security work was low-grade and short-lived. He’d been dismissed. His life really was chaotic then.
“And,” she said, “he’s now entered Croatia.”
“You know where to reach him?”
“No. He entered Croatia, then completely disappeared.”
“Just like...”
“Yes. Just like Marek used to do. If I was to find, despite all our checking and all the evidence, that you were right about him all along...” She made a face. “I need that like I need a third nostril.”
Anwar looked sharply at her image. She was half-joking, probably three-quarters joking, but it was not her usual kind of phrase.
Then she said, “We both have a lot to do,” and ended the call.
2
Arban Proskar was travelling legally on a genuine passport. He entered Croatia on October 8, and disappeared on October 9.
Also on October 9, late at night, Kiril Horvath turned his flatbed Land Rover onto the road that led out of Opatija, past the Villa Angiolina and up into the foothills of the Mount Ucka national park. Horvath was an illegal hunter; he hunted brown bears. They weren’t as big as grizzlies, but they were still very big: the biggest wild predators in the Croatian highlands, or anywhere in Europe. Conservation measures had rescued them from near-extinction, but they were still very rare.
Horvath hunted not with bullets but with tranquiliser darts, fired by special low-recoil, low-impact guns with night sights and laser target designation. He’d always hated the idea of killing wild animals for sport; he hunted brown bears to capture them and sell them. He sold only to zoos and wildlife parks, or sometimes to conservation foundations who were prepared to bend the rules, and he made a reasonable (but still strictly illegal) profit. He could have made a lot more if he sold them to circuses for entertainment or to Asian dealers who milked their glands for medicines and aphrodisiacs, but he had no time for either; he thought they were scarcely better than those who killed for sport.
He liked brown bears, and he knew a lot about them: where to find them at night, especially at this time of the year when they were getting sluggish and fat in the leadup to hibernation. He only targeted males, preferably younger males because the fully-grown ones would be impossible to manhandle onto his vehicle’s flatbed, even with lifting gear. He wouldn’t take females in case they had dependent cubs.
He was average build and thirtyish, with a reticent but not unfriendly manner. He was a farmer, and like most farmers in Croatia he hadn’t been doing well for some time. Farming was like no other business. Each year you had to invest everything—all your capital, everything you had—in the next year. He had a young family, and the strain was beginning to tell on him. His bear-catching hadn’t made him a fortune, but it provided enough to top up his farm income.
What he did was illegal, but other people supplemented their earnings in more unpleasant ways. He worked on his farm during the week but every Saturday he used his old Land Rover to go up into the Mount Ucka hills, past the villa where he’d heard some strange things had happened, and higher up into the mountains. It had been a regular, and moderately successful, routine: every Saturday from September through to mid-November. He’d been doing it for the last two years. This late on a Saturday night there was no traffic. Those who weren’t at home were in town, not up here in the forested hills.
But tonight was different. Nobody had followed him out of Opatija on this road, but now something was behind him, closing rapidly: a big lumbering black truck, unlit and unmarked. It couldn’t be the police, they’d have lit up the night and had sirens blaring, and they didn’t travel in vehicles like that. It must have been parked off road and pulled out to follow him as he drove past, which at first seemed frightening, though on reflection he had little to feel frightened about. They could be drug dealers or gangsters, but he had no involvements with either and wasn’t so rich that anyone would try robbery. Not a gambling creditor or a jealous husband, either; his life wasn’t that interesting.
By now it had caught him up and was tailgating him.
He shrugged. He’d been an army driver during his military service—quite a good one—and his Land Rover, though aging, was in good condition and was more agile than any truck. And he didn’t like being tailgated. He was approaching a series of uphill bends he knew well, where he’d be able to out-accelerate and outcorner the truck. He dropped a gear and floored the accelerator, and left it wallowing far behind and downhill.
Except that he didn’t. It was still there.
It negotiated the uphill bends expertly, even more expertly than he’d done, and kept coming. They came to a straighter, more level stretch of road and it still kept coming. Who’s driving that? And what do they want with me? Nothing, apparently, because to his amazement the truck moved out to overtake, cut in front of him like a sports car, and ran him neatly off the road. Then it hurtled past, still unlit, and away up into the hills.
He should have been angry but instead he was puzzled. This wasn’t a road-rage incident, it was too precise for that. The truck had done ju
st enough to force him off the road without making him crash or overturn. As it sped past, he saw it had no license plates. The cab was too dark and too high to see who was driving, but whoever it was, was very good.
He gunned his engine and followed it. The road wound further up into the dark forested hills, and the truck slowed. He saw it turn into the driveway of the villa, and he drove past and drew to a halt a little way further on. He turned in his seat and looked back down the road at the villa.
He could hear the rustlings and drippings of the night forest, which was unusual because those noises should have been drowned by the noises made by the people who’d jumped down from the truck and were manhandling something out of the back; but they worked very quietly, and very quickly. There were four of them. It was too dark for him to make out their faces, and in any case they seemed to be wearing something like balaclavas or ski masks, but they were all larger than average and moved with a rehearsed athleticism. In just a few minutes they’d taken a large rectangular container out of the back of the truck and set it down on its end in the middle of the villa’s driveway, about halfway between the road and the front door. Then, apparently without speaking, they climbed back into the truck. It backed out of the driveway and headed down the road towards Opatija, quickly but not as quickly as when he’d first encountered it. It was still unlit.
He reversed back to the opening of the driveway, stopped, and lowered a window. Now he was on his own the forest noises should have sounded louder, but they didn’t; that was how quiet those four had been.
It was as if they’d chosen him as a witness. As if it was all an act, and they were waiting for him so they could perform it. They hadn’t threatened him—even when they’d forced him off the road it was done with a strange precision and lack of emotion. As if they just wanted him to see them, then they’d leave him to call it in. Which meant they might know things about him. Like the fact that he made this journey regularly, and what the journey was about. And that he’d still call in what he’d seen, even though it would mean having to explain what he was doing up here.
The villa was familiar to him from newscasts and previous journeys: low, white, with the dark verticals of cypresses looming in the shadows behind it. And, in the middle of the driveway, the container. Standing on its end. It was large, dark, rectangular, and featureless. It reminded him of the monolith in that old movie whose name he could never remember. He stared at it, and felt that it stared back at him.
The authorities were smarter than Horvath gave them credit for. They knew about his Saturday night drives into the mountains, but they knew also about his farm and his family and his financial difficulties. Some time ago they’d decided that as long as he dealt only with zoos and wildlife parks they’d turn a blind eye. All of which meant that Horvath, when he decided to call it in, would be an ideal witness.
He flicked open his wristcom.
3
Arden was told less than an hour after Horvath had called the local police. It was five in the morning of October 10 in Kuala Lumpur, about midnight on October 9 in Croatia.
She called Rafiq. He listened as carefully to her as she had listened to the UN Embassy attache who’d called her. Once Horvath had told the local police they’d acted quickly, notifying the UN because it concerned the villa, and deploying their own military to surround the villa—but not, she asked them, to attempt to open the container until she arrived.
Rafiq made a hasty call—not enough time, he told her drily, to write a letter—and arranged for a Consultant to go with her. Eve Monash arrived just as the VSTOL on the lawn in front of Fallingwater was ready to lift off.
Monash was about Arden’s age, but with a tall rangy build and a habit of not wasting words. She would have had the normal dislike of bodyguard duties, though she said nothing about that, or indeed about anything much, during the flight. She’d probably decided to stretch the point this time; Arden was, after all, the staff member responsible to Rafiq for the Consultancy, which made it almost like guarding Rafiq himself.
Eve Monash was one of the higher-rated Consultants, Arden knew, probably among the top four or five. Top two or three now.
The villa was owned by a Croatian banker who was sufficiently rich and well-connected to sidestep local planning regulations and get his house built on national park land. Then he’d fallen on hard times and rented it to a property company, from where it was sublet and assigned and disappeared into corporate networks which—so far—the Croatian authorities hadn’t unravelled. Once the flurry of activity following the discovery of Asika’s remains had died down, the villa was no longer guarded. Not even the police Do Not Cross tapes remained. It stayed empty and dark, until now.
For the second time she saw it from above, lit with arclights and surrounded by police and military and their vehicles. The VSTOL landed on the main drive. A door rippled open and she stepped out, followed by Eve Monash.
“Wait,” Arden told the VSTOL, “but don’t hover. I may be some time.”
The flight from Fallingwater to the villa had taken just under an hour. It was approaching one in the morning of October 10, local time. Horvath had seen the truck unloading here about 10:30 p.m. on October 9. A few hours after Arban Proskar had entered Croatia and disappeared.
She looked at the container. It stood there insolently and looked back at her. It was about twelve feet tall, standing on its end.
The villa itself was dark and empty. It sported fresh sets of Do Not Cross tapes over its door and windows. As far as anyone could tell it hadn’t been entered, and Horvath’s own account tallied with this. But if the villa was dark and empty, the driveway and grounds were anything but. The whole area shivered in the cold arc-light blaze and boiled with people: local police, forensics, and military. Especially military.
Horvath had readily agreed to wait for Arden and give her his account personally, although it had already been relayed to her. She liked him. He was about average height and weight, early or maybe middle thirties. His face was open and pleasant, but there was an air of competence about him and his account was precise and unadorned. She asked a few questions and thanked him, and he got in his old Land Rover and drove away through the cordon of miltary vehicles and back to his family.
During the flight out, Arden had called Anwar in Brighton and briefed him. He in turn briefed Gaetano. They would be waiting for her call.
Most of the Croatian military were Special Forces. They had an assortment of weapons trained on the container, but stayed in a semicircle well clear of it. She’d learnt, during the flight, that it had proved impervious to all attempts to scan its interior. It was inert; no electronic or other emissions. Nothing had been heard moving inside it. Its surface was dark rough wood, but there would be an inner lining of something, probably lead and altered carbon, to prevent scanning.
It had no visible locks, but a series of simple clamps along its top edge and a series of hinges along its bottom edge. When the clamps were released they would (unless they were booby-trapped) enable the entire front section to fall open and the contents to tumble out. As though it was intended for someone to open it without knowing what was inside.
It was twelve feet tall and five feet wide, easily big enough to contain a human, living or dead; or something much bigger than a human. She thought of Arban Proskar’s abrupt disappearance, and thought also of Chulo Asika’s remains and of whatever had killed him.
Container and contents. I’m turning into Anwar.
She called Rafiq. After a short pause, he said, “Open it.”
“Stand back with the others,” Eve Monash told her. “I’ll do this.” It amounted to more words than she’d addressed to Arden during the whole of the flight.
Eve Monash spoke briefly to the Special Forces commander. A ladder was brought for her. She approached the container and leant the ladder against its side. She glanced back at Arden, then climbed the ladder and reached the container’s top edge. She leaned sideways out from the ladder and
ran her hands across the clamps. She released the first one.
Arden’s wristcom buzzed. It was UN Intelligence. She signalled Eve Monash to pause, and flipped it open.
“It’s about Proskar,” a voice said. “Bad news. We know what happened to him.”
“Tell me,” she said, and the voice told her. “I’ll call you back,” she said, and signalled Eve Monash to continue.
The first clamp slid back easily. The container did nothing. One by one, Eve Monash released the others. They too slid back easily. She held on to the top edge.
“All done,” she called back to Arden.
“Whatever comes out of there...” Arden began.
“I know. I’ll let it fall open, jump down and cover you.”
“No. Refasten one of the top clamps, then jump down and shoot off the clamp.”
She did, very quickly, landing in a crouch in front of Arden with her gun already levelled. She fired, once.
The top clamp shattered. The front section of the container fell open, hitting the driveway with a crash. Cold vapour erupted out of the dark interior, and something else erupted out in its wake.
Anwar and Gaetano were in Gaetano’s office. They’d been there for an hour, and there was an uncomfortable silence between them. It was 1:00 a.m. on October 10 in Brighton, 2:00 a.m. in Croatia. Noises from the Brighton foreshore floated over the two miles of sea. There were still plenty of lights there, and the i-360 Tower was still in operation.
Anwar’s wristcom buzzed, and Arden announced herself. There was something strange about her voice, and she’d blanked her screen.
