Indicted
Page 25
“I don’t recall that.”
“You told me that in your office.”
She blinked.
“Well, I have something.” Braun produced the photograph. Nicole studied it. “It shows the three men involved: Tomislav Rukavina, Haris Bogdani, and Senator Bart Vance. I can connect Rukavina and Haris to the murders in Nisko. And now I can connect Vance too.”
“How?”
“A witness to the murders. A witness to Bart Vance working with traffickers.”
“And who would said witness be?”
“Natalia Nemet.”
“The girl who was seven years old at the time?”
Braun nodded.
“My dear Robert. What you have here is a story. Not evidence. A photograph means nothing. A witness who was a child? Do you think that will hold up when we have a confession from the main suspect? And now you’re trying to involve Senator Vance as well? He is an upstanding member of the political community, and you want me to go after him? Because of a photograph?”
Braun grabbed Nicole’s arm, turning her to face him. She squeezed his wrist and removed his arm.
“Delay the trial. Let’s see what we can collect. I just need more time. How do you explain the photo?”
“I think your conclusions are misbegotten. Senator Vance was well known to be the owner of NightHawk, a military contracting company that worked in the former Yugoslavia. He has a wealth of experience in the Balkans. And now he’s helping our office to right the wrongs of the war. The idea that he was somehow knowingly involved in human trafficking is, frankly, slanderous. I suggest you forget it.”
“Nicole, think about it. Walter Flaherty somehow just shows up. Maybe it’s simply to ensure that this case gets tied up neatly. No link back to Vance.”
A deep silence fell between them in the midst of the bustling afternoon rush at the airport. Nicole looked towards the window, where taxis and limousines rolled past the terminal.
“Listen to me, Robert,” she started. “There is no ‘we’ left. You do not work with me. You do not influence me. I make—as I have always made—my own decisions. Whatever information you have and whatever narrative you wish to weave, enjoy yourself, because it will only lead you further astray. But I will not follow you.” She turned around. “The sentencing is in five days.”
She walked towards the exit. The glass doors slid open. The public had their witch. Was there anyone left to appeal to? Braun watched as Nicole got into a cab and was whisked away.
44
Robert Braun realized there was one man who knew everything. From the criminal deals made in the Balkans during the 1990s, to the hiring of Gavrić to kill Luka, to the manipulation of The Hague attorneys to make it all go away. One man knew it all.
Braun stood at the reception desk of the Hotel des Andes, hands resting on the marble counter below a shimmering crystal chandelier. The desk clerk already had her hands on the keyboard as he asked for a room near his “colleague’s.” He managed to turn his anger into a gracious smile as he said the name.
“Flaherty. Walter Flaherty.”
She typed into the keyboard and looked up, tucking her hair behind her ears.
“You’re looking for a room near his?”
“Well, not for me,” Braun said. “His employer, Bart Vance, is coming for meetings at the Tribunal. Last-minute. They requested that I book a room next to Mr. Flaherty.” Braun placed his Hague identification card on the desk. He leaned in and whispered, “Mr. Vance is a United States Senator. He wants to be discreet.”
She sighed. “I’m not able to do that. We need to keep guests’ room numbers confidential. It’s the hotel’s policy. But I can call Mr. Flaherty.”
She picked up the phone and dialed, smiling apologetically to Braun as the seconds ticked past. No answer, which meant Flaherty was out of the room. She put the phone down.
“I’ll tell you what. I can put you on the same floor.”
“Thank you,” Braun said. “Mr. Vance will be pleased. But please put it under my name. As you can imagine, for security reasons the senator doesn’t want his name in the guest registry.”
“Of course, I understand.”
The clerk took down Braun’s information, handed him an activated key card, and directed him towards the elevator.
On the third floor, he turned and walked towards Room 313. Up ahead, a laundry cart stood next to an open door.
Braun picked up his phone and dialed reception. A male voice answered.
“Could I please be connected to Walter Flaherty’s room?”
“Just a moment.”
The phone began ringing. Braun dropped his hand, holding his breath and listening as he moved swiftly through the hallway. Three doors down he picked up the sound of a room phone ringing. As he moved forward, the subtle ringing became louder and louder. He narrowed the sound down and pressed his ear against the door of Room 345.
He looked both ways down the hallway. A maid emerged from the room at the end of the corridor and tossed a ball of linen into the cart, then returned to the room.
Braun looked at the black dome hanging from the ceiling at the end of the hall. He was on tape now. But someone would have to review the tape to see him. Someone would have to detect that he had entered Room 345.
He pulled his eyeglass case from his pocket, flipped it open, and removed a small circuit board attached to a nine-volt battery by a few wires. Attached to the other end was a small plug. He’d confiscated the device from a Bosnian Muslim refugee he had tracked to a hotel room in Bonn during the Banović investigation. The man had been able to break into over seventy hotel rooms across Europe undetected using this device that he built with hardware that cost less than thirty dollars. Instead of turning the device over for evidence, Braun kept it.
He steadied his hand and visualized the motion he’d used dozens of times before. If it was smooth, he’d look like someone simply entering his room. He stepped across the hallway, and instead of slipping the key card into the slot, he felt underneath the lock on the door for a small port and then inserted the plug. The lock hummed, and the bolt clicked. He pressed the handle. The door opened.
The chill of the air-conditioned room hit his skin. He soundlessly closed the door behind him. The plush carpet absorbed his footsteps. He glanced at the bed. The pillows were fluffed and the sheets crisply folded at the corners and tucked under the mattress.
He walked towards the oval desk beside the bay window. A black laptop rested on it. He slid it open, but the screen immediately asked for a password. A pair of slacks was slung over the velvet chair, the lizard-skin belt still looped through it. Braun patted the pockets, but they were empty.
He paused. A carry-on suitcase was tucked beside the bed. As Braun crouched down beside it, he heard a knock. His eyes swung to the door. Another three knocks, but muffled, too faint. He held his breath and stared, until he heard “Housekeeping?” and a door opening. It was the room next door.
He exhaled, grabbed the suitcase, and unzipped it. He poked through Flaherty’s socks, briefs, a few shirts, and a pair of jeans. He unzipped each of the pockets. Empty.
He walked past the beds and opened the dresser drawers—all empty. Past the television, he opened the closet. The light inside flicked on. A few jackets hung from the rack. Behind them, he spotted a flash of metal. He pushed the jackets to the side. On the back wall, he saw a safe with a digital keypad and a stainless-steel nameplate.
Braun smiled. Hotel safes were notoriously insecure. The staff had ready access to the master keys, people usually picked simple combinations, and the entire safe could typically be released from the wall with a screwdriver. All of those methods, however, could be traced.
But this type of safe—the most affordable on the market, which meant it found its way into most major hotels—had a fatal security flaw below the nameplate that allowed almost anyone to open it. That flaw was little known to anyone except the manufacturer and hotel thieves. And as someone who’d
tracked criminals for decades, Braun had picked up some knowledge of his own.
He pulled the handle for good measure, but it was locked. He took his keychain out of his pocket and flipped to his universal screwdriver. He unscrewed the two hex bolts that attached the nameplate to the safe. Underneath was the master key lock. He inserted the screwdriver, along with a thin piece of metal, and twisted until the lock clicked open.
He reached inside, pulled out a passport, and flicked through the pages. It was Flaherty’s—well-stamped but nothing out of the ordinary. Underneath, he found a small stack of papers. Braun pulled them out and leafed through them—Flaherty’s flight itineraries for KLM, Lufthansa, and AirFrance, flying between The Hague, Brussels, London, and New York. He stopped leafing through them when he saw a smaller stack secured with a paperclip. He ran his finger down the itinerary and stopped at the name VANCE, BARTHOLOMEW.
He looked through the itineraries—five of them for Bart Vance.
KLM Flight: NEW YORK to LONDON, arrive 12:05 PM
KLM Flight: LONDON to VIENNA, arrive 3:23 PM
Croatia Airlines Flight: VIENNA to ZAGREB, arrive 7:24 PM
Croatia Airlines Flight: ZAGREB to VIENNA, arrive 6:10 AM
KLM Flight: VIENNA to ROTTERDAM, arrive 9:25 AM
In six days, which also happened to be the day after Luka’s sentencing hearing, Vance was stopping in Zagreb for less than twelve hours on his way to The Hague. He was switching airlines for his flight to Zagreb. He glanced at the credit cards used to book the flights—all were the same except for the trip to Zagreb. Vance was flying in for a meeting and needed to be discreet. Braun thought of the picture.
He thought of Tomislav Rukavina.
45
In the back room of a print shop, surrounded by stacks of paper and crates full of different colors of ink, Braun held the passport underneath the desktop magnifying glass.
Slowly he followed the edges of the photo page, then turned his gaze inwards, examining the edge of the photo itself. The lettering was black, with no evidence of bleed. The embossed gold lettering on the cover glistened under the light.
Behind him, a Kurd named Gulo sat at his desktop computer forging yet another passport, cigarette in hand, completely uninterested in Braun’s examination of his work. “They are perfect,” Gulo had said, “but you want check? Go ahead, man.”
Gulo was right: they were perfect. All eighteen.
Braun squared the passports into two stacks of nine and handed them to Gulo.
“I need you to mail these for me,” he said. Gulo half turned, giving him a skeptical look, but Braun knew that for eighty thousand euros Gulo would do what was asked of him. “Here is the address.”
Gulo looked at it. “Spain?”
“That’s where I want them sent. In pairs, over the course of two weeks.”
Gulo shrugged.
“The other three?” Braun said.
Gulo swiveled around and walked down an aisle between the paper stacks. Braun had first heard of Gulo while investigating Stipe Komšić, a Bosnian Muslim who’d escaped to Morocco via Germany, England, and Italy on a French passport. Only later had they learned that it was forged, and only when Komšić had told them. A team of experts couldn’t detect a single flaw, although a few claimed the black ink was too dark to be authentic, which it wasn’t.
Braun had originally planned on tracking Gulo down, dismantling his whole operation, and indicting him on grounds that he was aiding and abetting war criminals, but he didn’t have the time, and, gradually, finding Gulo became less and less urgent.
Gulo returned, holding three other passports. “Want to check these too?”
Braun flipped quickly through each one. Same quality.
“Those will be forty-five more.”
“You’ve tripled your price, it seems?”
“French,” Gulo said, tapping on the passport covers. “They are difficult. But it will get them through border. Guarantee.”
“Or their money back?”
Gulo didn’t laugh.
“The transfer will be in your account tomorrow.”
As Braun trudged up the stairs to his flat, he felt dazed, and time seemed to tick more slowly. His legs felt heavy, his face drawn.
He wrestled with the idea of stopping his investigation into Vance. He had to focus on freeing Luka.
He tried to give Vance the benefit of the doubt. He’d owned a large corporation, a private security firm. Perhaps he didn’t know what, exactly, was occurring at the grassroots level. And perhaps when he learned, he was rightly horrified but unsure how to proceed. But how to explain the photo? No, there was no reasonable way Vance could have been blind to what was happening.
Braun unlocked the door to his flat, pushed it open, and flicked on the light switch. He expected to hear the buzz of the security alarm, but there was only silence.
Instantly, he became hyperaware. He heard a shoe scratch the floor behind him. As he turned, he saw a flash of a man before a set of arms came up from behind and slammed Braun face first into the door. The man wrapped tape over his mouth and around his head several times, then bound his hands behind his back. Next his ankles were fastened together. Someone else yanked a hood over his head.
The first blow, to his kidneys, surprised him. An ache flooded up his spine. The second sent him onto his side. A barrage of kicks to the abdomen. Then the chest. And the groin.
He began to feel numb, each blow less and less painful. He drifted in and out of consciousness. He didn’t have to ask who they were, or who sent them.
Then the blows stopped.
He felt a head near him and heard the man panting. The tape around his ankles and wrists was cut.
“You stop what you’re doing. Or we come back.”
Braun lay on the marble floor in his hallway, slipping in and out of consciousness. He heard traffic on the street below and occasional footsteps in the hallway. Dim sunlight came through the balcony window, meaning it was either just before dusk or just after dawn.
He wasn’t sure how long he’d been lying on his side, which seemed to be the least painful position. The microwave clock flashed 12:00, suggesting that the power had gone out at some point—likely a maneuver by his assailants to disable his alarm. He glanced at his wristwatch, still ticking, thankfully, and showing 7:15 p.m. He'd been on the floor about ninety minutes.
He didn’t have to think for too long about his attackers’ identities. American accents, a professional job, perfect timing. He had no doubt that Flaherty had sent his goons.
He was also certain that they’d be back.
Summoning all of his strength, he rolled over onto his knees. The muscles around his spine felt like they'd been replaced by steel bandsaw blades. His left hand was shiny and swollen to twice its size. He pulled his shirt up and examined the patchwork of scarlet bruises across his torso.
He clutched his left wrist and rose to his feet. Pain seared through his thighs and groin. Every step felt like he was being kicked again. He made it to the bathroom by sliding against the walls in a crouch.
He slid open the medicine cabinet and shook a handful of ibuprofen tablets into his palm, then downed them with a handful of water. He pissed pink. Then he sank to the floor.
He thought of Luka. In just a few days, he’d be sentenced, thrown into prison, and Braun would never be able to get him out. Even if he managed to implicate Vance, Haris, and Rukavina in the crime, Luka would not be exonerated. He needed a confession, documentation, witnesses. Hope for that was dwindling.
He had to focus on freeing Luka. Vance would come afterwards.
In his armpit, he felt his cell phone vibrate, shooting pain through his aching shoulders. He reached into his pocket, curling his fingers around the phone, and pulled it out, then flopped his hand down on the floor from the pain. He pressed the speaker button.
After a long pause, he heard Juan’s voice. “There’s construction on the bridge, right along the motorcade route.”
“Are you okay?”
Braun gritted his teeth, trying to ignore the pain. “I’ll be fine. Some new friends just paid me a little visit.”
Juan chuckled. “You must be getting somewhere.”
“I must be.”
He heard Juan sigh into the receiver. “Robert, I’m not sure we can pull this off. There are too many unknowns. They’ll be heavily armed. There’s construction. We don’t know the timing.”
Braun felt a burst of anger. “We’ll make it work,” he yelled into the phone. Yelling confirmed he had some broken ribs. “We’ll figure it out,” he said, this time more quietly. Then he pulled himself up, hooking his hand into the sink, and heaved himself to a standing position.
46
Three Days Later
Braun sat in the cab of the rented flatbed truck with the four-way blinkers on. He rolled the window down, wincing from the pain in his hand. As he'd planned, he was on the shoulder of the highway, six feet from the ledge of the overpass. The engine rumbled as it idled. Traffic flew past, the rush of air from each vehicle causing the flatbed’s wooden sides to rattle. He turned the radio up.
The judges had deliberated and were making their way to the courtroom to deliver the sentence, the reporter said. Deliberation took all of one hour and ten minutes. According to the reporter, the only question was whether Luka Pavić would get twenty or thirty years.
He clicked the radio off. He didn’t want to hear it. Sweat dripped from his forehead. In the shadow of the overpass, he couldn’t resist questioning whether he was going too far, taking a leap that couldn’t be reversed.
He’d already lost his job, and now he was risking his freedom. He had always convinced himself that the courts decided on guilt or innocence. That the process was bigger than any individual, and it only worked when you put your full faith in it. But within that system, he now saw, were mere men—men and women with ambitions and flaws. Leave the whole Pavić thing alone, he thought. Drive away. But could he simply let such a glaring injustice float past?