by Ellis Shuman
The Hunter was speeding away from Sunny Beach but Boyko was more resolved than ever to capture the criminal, one way or another.
31
August 2006
A convoy of three police cars made its way south along the coastal road to Tsarevo, where it turned inland to the highlands of the nature reserve. Boyko’s car was in the lead; he had previously undertaken this journey into the Strandzha by himself. This time would be different. He was low on gas but Boyko refused to be distracted as he steered his way toward the objective that had been his sole focus for months. The failed sting in Sunny Beach still bothered him, but it was finally payback time. When he left the wilderness, there would be a handcuffed man in his backseat.
The road ran over rolling hills and alongside meadows of deep brown earth, recently plowed and ready for planting. In the forest, not far from the turnoff to the village of Gramatikovo and just past the abandoned Lada wreck Boyko recognized from his prior visit to these woods, the vehicles veered off the main road. They traveled a short distance on the dirt path, coming to a stop in front of the iron gates surrounding the estate.
One of the officers got out of his vehicle and approached the intercom. He pressed the button, announcing their arrival. The only answer he received was static.
“He’s here. I know he’s here,” Boyko said to himself as he stared out his window. Another police unit, positioned in an overnight stakeout farther up the road, had confirmed that Damian was at the lodge. Two SUVs parked in a clearing suggested Damian was not alone.
Without warning, the iron gates swung open. The officer strode back to his car, signaling for Boyko to take the lead.
One by one, the police cars passed through the gate. Moments later, the hunting lodge came into view. They parked parallel to one another, next to the SUVs. Motors were switched off and the cops climbed out of their vehicles, slamming their doors loudly behind them.
“What do you want?” challenged a thickset guard, standing on the steps at the entrance to the lodge. The growling Dobermans, which Boyko remembered vividly from his previous visit, pulled at their metal chains, nearly choking in attempts to rush forward and attack the uninvited policemen.
“We’re here to see the Hunter,” Boyko announced boldly, ignoring the dogs and the pistol clearly visible at the guard’s side. “Possibly you know this person by his real name, Damian.”
“Damian is busy and cannot be disturbed.” The guard prepared to enter the lodge.
“We have papers,” one of the junior officers said, but Boyko shushed him.
“It is very important that we talk to Damian,” Boyko continued. “This is official business, not like my earlier visit.”
“You have no business with Damian.”
“Oh, yes, we do. Let us in to meet your boss. We do not want this to get messy.”
The guard leaned forward, suggesting he was about to unleash one of the barking canines, but all he did was straighten the dog’s collar and pet the animal on the head. The dog’s ears pricked up. The guard raised one hand to his earpiece, his smile disappearing after he heard a relayed command. He reluctantly opened the door and moved aside, allowing the police to enter.
Boyko led the way down the corridor into the salon. His colleagues followed quickly, barely registering their shock at seeing the wide-eyed hunting trophies on the walls. Everything was exactly as he remembered, from the stuffed boar’s head to the bear skin rug on the wooden floor in front of the unlit fireplace.
Damian was sitting in a bulky armchair, smoking a cigar and drinking a glass of whiskey. He didn’t get up when Boyko and his men entered the room.
“I’ve been expecting you, Detective Stanchev. But, what brings you to my hunting lodge so early in the morning?”
Damian hadn’t changed a bit since Boyko’s last visit. He still sported his signature gray ponytail, as well as a sense of self-importance that Boyko found quite disturbing. Refusing to patronize this master criminal, Boyko mustered his resolve and clearly stated a response.
“I think you know why we’re here.”
“I don’t have a clue,” Damian said, sipping his whiskey. “If you’re planning to join me on a hunt, I’m afraid you’ve shown up on the wrong day. I have no expeditions planned until the fall, when it’s a bit cooler. You have come a long way for nothing. I suggest you leave right away.”
“Oh, we will be leaving very soon,” Boyko replied. “And we will take you with us.”
“And why would that be?”
“I have a search warrant,” Boyko said, pulling out the official papers. “We are here to search for the contraband you have been importing into Bulgaria.”
“I think my attorneys should be here for this,” Damian said, making no effort to reach for the documents Boyko was holding.
“You will have plenty of time to consult with your lawyers later.”
Additional banter with Damian proved useless. Not only did the man snub the seriousness in Boyko’s charges, he also refused to relinquish his enjoyment of the morning’s cigar and whiskey. After several moments of stalemate in their confrontation, Boyko signaled his team to begin.
The officers fanned out and began searching the lodge. Kitchen cupboards were jerked open, spilling packages of sugar, spices, and condiments onto the counter. Plush sofa pillows were thrown to the floor; an antique cabinet was pushed to the side with little regard for the valuable items within. In the other rooms, the contents of bathroom cabinets were revealed; high-quality cotton sheets were stripped off the beds; fashionable clothing was ripped from closet hangers and shelves and jammed back in disarray.
“What do you expect to find?” Damian asked patiently, motioning for his irritated guards to remain in place and allow the police to do their work.
“Oh, we’ll find what we are looking for,” Boyko said confidently as he moved to stand near the fireplace.
After a few minutes, Boyko left the room to check on his team. When he came back, Damian was still smoking but his cigar appeared to be burning unevenly. The two men glared at each other until Damian broke eye contact and took another sip of whiskey.
“Boyko, take a look at this!”
One of the officers returned to the salon, breathing heavily and carrying a small package wrapped in white paper. Handling the item carefully, as if its contents were radioactive, the policeman handed it to Boyko.
“What do we have here?” Boyko said, sniffing at the package. “This smells fishy, like something plainly illegal. It wouldn’t happen to be narcotics, would it?”
“What the fuck is that?” Damian demanded, his eyes wide with a combination of shock and anger. He stood up and approached Boyko.
“Hmm, this could be a package of drugs, fresh from Turkey. We recently intercepted one of your nighttime shipments. It appears one of the packages made its way to your hunting lodge in the wilderness.”
“That isn’t mine,” Damian said. He reached for the wrapped package, but Boyko moved away. “I’ve never seen this before!”
“I highly doubt that. Where did you find it?” Boyko asked the policeman.
“It was in the bathroom, hidden behind the toilet. We saw similar packages under the master bed as well.”
“This is impossible!” Damian shouted. “There are no drugs or stolen goods here. You’re making this up!”
“Stolen goods? How would you know about stolen goods?”
“You planted this!” Damian continued, ready to strike at Boyko. “This is a setup!”
Two of Boyko’s colleagues rushed forward to restrain Damian, while the criminal’s guards remained motionless, and confused, at the side of the fireplace.
“Are you calling my team liars?” Boyko asked defiantly.
“Fuck you!”
“Hand over your weapons,” one of the policemen commanded. The brawny guards looked sheepishly at their employer.
“I think you better give us your guns,” Boyko said. “I’ll be confiscating your hunting rifles as well. W
e wouldn’t want anyone to get hurt, would we?”
“My attorneys will make this go away,” Damian said. “This is such a stupid setup, totally infantile. This will not stick.”
“Oh, this will stick,” Boyko replied, a wide smile appearing on his face. “And you will be stuck as well, stuck in a jail cell for many years.”
* * *
“Ah, that is how you finally arrested this criminal you call the Hunter!” Ayala walked around the car to stand at Boyko’s side as he stared toward the Turkish frontier.
“Yes, that is the story of his arrest,” Boyko said. “He was convicted of orchestrating the drug shipments but we couldn’t produce enough evidence to convict him on charges of human trafficking.”
Boyko seemed edgy. It was clear to Ayala she hadn’t heard everything about the incident. She wondered what details Boyko could possibly have omitted from his tale.
“What’s wrong?” she asked. “You should be proud of yourself, having finally arrested the Hunter after so much time and effort.”
“It wasn’t right.”
“What do you mean?”
“The evidence, it wasn’t really there.”
“I don’t understand.”
“The drugs we discovered—I brought them to the lodge so that my team could find them.”
“How did you manage to do that? According to what you’ve told me, there were armed guards everywhere and Doberman dogs ready to attack.” When he remained quiet she said, “You can tell me, Boyko.”
“While my men were searching the place, I left Damian in the salon and planted the evidence. In the bathroom, behind the toilet. In the bedroom as well.”
“You arrested him, claiming the drugs were his?”
“Yes. Finding the drugs in the lodge led to his conviction.”
“That’s hard to believe! Didn’t the Hunter challenge the evidence in court?”
“We coerced a number of Damian’s stooges to become state’s witnesses and they testified against him,” Boyko explained. “Even though he is guilty like hell, it was still a miscarriage of justice, and I was responsible. We had no real, indisputable evidence to implicate him in the crimes. Only the drugs I planted in his lodge.”
“Is this why the Hunter continues to pursue you, even now?”
“He knows the truth. He knows I planted the drugs. While the judge refused to accept his testimony, the Hunter knows. And he is looking for the way to take his revenge.”
“I don’t know what to say,” Ayala said.
“You cannot solve one crime by committing another. I know that now.” Boyko’s voice was barely audible; his body seemed deflated by the confession he had shared. “I took a shortcut, did something I shouldn’t have done,” he continued. “No matter what you think, what I did was wrong. It does not matter if I achieved my objective, I acted badly. One day soon, I will pay for my crime. I accept that; it is inevitable. The Hunter continues to send out warnings, but eventually he will lose his patience.”
“What does he want from you?”
“It’s obvious what he wants. He wants me to recant my testimony, to withdraw the fake evidence. He wants me to get him released from jail as only I can undo his sentence. That is why he orders his men to lash out at me. The shooting at the border—it was not an attempt to kill us. If he wanted to kill me, I would be dead in a minute. That attack was a warning, a demonstration of the Hunter’s impatience. The tire slashing in the village was also a warning. The Hunter knows where I am at all times. He knows my every move. His men are following me. They want to teach me a lesson. They will strike at me at their discretion.”
“Why can’t you just go to the court and say you made a mistake?”
“I would lose everything,” he said. “It would be the end of my career. But that would be the least of my worries. If I were to tell the truth behind that arrest, I would lose not only my job, I would also lose my life. As long as the Hunter remains in prison, he needs me alive. He is waiting for me to set him free.”
“You did something wrong,” Ayala said, searching for the words. “There must be some way to make this right.”
“During my years serving with the Burgas police, I did many things right. I was successful in many ways,” he said, clearing his throat. “I helped solve many cases and this contributed to a drastic drop in the crime rate in the Burgas precinct. Robberies went down by 40 percent; murders dropped by 25 percent; even sexual assaults and petty thefts were significantly lower than in previous years. We did good work on the force; the community respected us. And my successes with the police led to my eventually getting a job with the State Agency for National Security. Yet, I cannot hide it any longer. I made a mistake; one serious mistake. Now, years later, when I can barely recall the details of my accomplishments, this huge failure sticks in my memory like a sharp bone caught in my throat. This failure, this serious lapse in my judgment, is a constant burden. One day, it will cost me my life.
“Believe me, I have sought a way out of this for years,” Boyko continued. He flicked his half-smoked cigarette to the ground and snuffed it out with his shoe. This time, though, he did not immediately light up another one.
“But, why now? Why is this Hunter gangster lashing out at you only now?”
“Apparently my joining the bus bombing investigation put me in his sights again, made me a target. The warnings have escalated to a new level as of late, one that could prove very deadly if I don’t give in to Damian’s demands. But, there is something more, some connection between the bombing and the Hunter’s criminal operations. I can’t figure it out yet, but I’m working on it.”
Ayala looked around at the wild frontier between Bulgaria and Turkey. They were on the border—a manmade line that had once served a critical role in separating the totalitarian east from the democratic west. This no-man’s-land was now abandoned. She thought about Boyko’s story, of his raid on the smugglers and the operation at the Hunter’s lodge. Boyko had revealed to her a serious flaw in his career. Boyko was a good man, but he had crossed the border between right and wrong.
There was nothing she could say to ease his concerns. She sensed a vulnerability that was not previously there, a sign of weakness in his macho character. She reached out and gently touched his arm.
“Let’s get out of here,” Boyko said, as he jolted forward to open the front door of his car. “We’ve been in the Strandzha far too long.”
32
“How’s your pileshka pirzhola?”
Ayala smiled, pleased Boyko had tested her with the Bulgarian name of the grilled chicken steak dish. She saw he had regained his composure after disclosing what he had done to orchestrate the Hunter’s arrest. At the border, when telling about his past actions, she felt he was nearly on the brink of a breakdown. The strain of having planted false evidence, and keeping that fact a secret for so long, was clearly visible. Boyko seemed resigned to accept inevitable payback for his actions; he lacked the resolve to resist his grim fate. But now, at dinner at the end of a long day, he was again confident and lively.
“It’s fine,” she replied. “I didn’t realize how hungry I was.”
They were in Kardzhali, a small town in the eastern Rhodope Mountains, seated at an outdoor café not far from the hotel where they had booked two rooms for the night. After leaving the Strandzha, the rest of the day had been a continuation of their wild goose chase. They had questioned people who may have come into contact with the Hezbollah bombers during their travels around Bulgaria, but in all likelihood, had never actually seen the suspects.
The suggestion that the bombers had passed through southern Bulgaria was one of the most outlandish, and least likely, possibilities of all. The problem was not that these leads, like the others previously investigated, led nowhere. The problem was that they had nothing further to investigate. They had concluded the last assignment of their field work. They were to report back to Burgas in the morning.
“Let me tell you one other thing about the
Strandzha,” Boyko said, speaking excitedly about the region they had visited. “I’ve spoken about the fire-walking and about the trigger-happy border guards, but I never told you about Lyudmila Zhikova.”
“Who was that?”
“Lyudmila Zhikova was the daughter of Todor Zhikov, our Communist leader for over three decades. A very strange woman. She served as a Politburo member and the minister in charge of Bulgaria’s culture and arts. She was quite controversial in her day, especially due to her involvement in Eastern cultures, mysticism, and the occult. She made friends with clairvoyants and was a proponent of yoga, and all this in stunning contrast to the strict orthodoxy of the Bulgarian state.”
Boyko took a sip of his beer, scanned Ayala’s face to see if she was following him, and continued his tale with enthusiasm. “Let me tell you about Zhikova’s connection to the Strandzha. According to the stories I’ve heard, the British MI6 intelligence service informed her that they had detected a strange formation underneath the Strandzha mountain. This formation was like a chamber, possibly a tomb. There are legends stating that the ancient Egyptian goddess Bastet was transported to the Strandzha and buried there. Zhikova became fascinated by this possibility, which seemed to be confirmed by the British report. She secured the mountain with military forces. That was one of the reasons the area was off-limits during the Communist era.
“Anyway, a team of Bulgaria’s most famous archaeologists began digging in the region, trying to find this hidden tomb. The results of their excavations were never made public. However, it is said that everyone who participated in the expedition was cursed. Soon afterward, they all died mysterious deaths. Zhikova herself died at the age of 38 and there are many rumors surrounding her death. She may have died from a brain tumor, or from drowning in her bathtub, or she may have committed suicide. Or, possibly, the curse of Strandzha—if such a curse existed—may have killed her.
