Gemini

by Mark Burnell

  'Are you sure?'

  'He was recognized by one of the staff there. A friend of mine who was also at Omarska. He was doing the room service night-shift and got an order to take up some food to one of the suites. Simic opened the door. At first Hamdu didn't realize exactly who it was – Simic was dead, so why would he? – but he had this feeling, this instinct. Like a cancer, eating away at him. Anyway, he pushed the trolley into the suite. There were two whores on the bed, both laughing. There were empty bottles everywhere, a real party going on. It was while Hamdu was setting up the table that he realized who it was. Simic. Of course he couldn't believe it. Not at first. But there was no doubt about it. He called me straight away because I was in Omarska too. It was about midnight, I remember. I was already in bed because my shift started at six.'

  'Are you sure he was right?'

  Maliqi smiled sourly. 'I didn't take his word for it, if that's what you mean. How could I? I borrowed a car and drove through the night to get to Hamburg. I missed my work shift but I didn't care. Hamdu docked off at nine. We hung around the hotel together. We would have waited for a week, if necessary. Anyway, around eleven Simic came through the lobby with the whores, all of them looking pleased with themselves. It was him, no question. The name on the room service check was Ullman. Hamdu checked his hotel registration for the complete details. Paul Ullman, a German from Bremen. I was completely stunned.'

  Stephanie thought of Savic, another new German: Martin Dassler.

  'Hamdu wanted to confront him. To kill him. In his suite, as soon as possible, and fuck the consequences! But I said no. I felt we should think about our options. The police, maybe. Even though I could have done it myself. Easily …'

  'I'm sure.'

  'But I was wrong. Hamdu was right. We should have done it then.'

  'He ran?'

  'He checked out early.'

  'Was he tipped off?'

  'Who knows? Anyway, that was when we went to the authorities. They contacted the hotel and the whores. They did what they could. But the address in Bremen was a dead end. The credit cards, too. Like a ghost, he vanished in a moment.'

  It was after nine. They were sitting in a cheap restaurant off Granville Road; red paper lanterns, plastic benches, steam and noise. Maliqi spooned fried rice into his bowl. The last dish sat between them; dumplings stuffed with pork and mushrooms. There was cigarette ash and plum sauce on the paper table­cloth.

  At the previous place they'd managed to stretch their coffee over an hour. Not wanting to draw attention to themselves by staying anywhere for too long, Stephanie had decided they should move on.

  Maliqi talked about life before, during and after the war. He talked about being a Bosnian, and the more he did so the more confused Stephanie became. Most of Bosnia's population were southern Slavs. Roughly, those who were Orthodox Christians fell into the Bosnian Serb category, those who subscribed to Catholicism were mainly Bosnian Croat, and the followers of Islam, the majority, were regarded as Bosnian Muslims. Also known as Bosniaks. Or, now that times had changed, simply Bosnians. Which was all Maliqi had ever regarded himself as anyway. But war had changed that. Cohesive communities had been divided whether they liked it or not. The old names resurfaced. The Serbs were Chetniks, living off the memory of Tito's Partisans. The Croats became Ustashas, the Fascist Nazi collaborators. And the Muslims simply became Turks, a term dating back to the rule of the Ottoman Empire.

  'That's the kind of insanity there was. You think it's strange that men were running around the country killing their friends, raping their friends' daughters, when this is their background? Their heritage? Their blood? The trouble with Balkan history is that it's never history.'

  He talked about life as a teacher in rural Bosnia. About his community, his school, his friends since childhood. About his wife. About the fact that he now regarded her death from cancer, at the age of twenty-­nine, as a blessing. He described the seasons of his past, the landscape, the pine forest that opened onto a meadow where he'd played as a child, the waist-high grasses of summer, the drone of insects, the air thick with pollen, the first frosts of autumn and the glinting hardness of winter.

  Eventually he came to the search for Simic. After Hamburg he'd vowed to hunt him down, no matter how long it took. Then he described the process that had brought him to Hong Kong.

  'Savic is the key,' he concluded.

  'Why?'

  'Because he helped all of them. Simic was one of the first – maybe even the very first – and Savic himself was the last.'

  Stephanie played ignorant. 'What was his role?'

  'He was in charge of it. He had the routes, the contacts, the finance.'

  'Does the name Gemini mean anything to you?'

  He took a while to consider it. 'No.'

  'Why do you suppose Savic would go to all that effort? What was in it for him?'

  Maliqi sat back and shrugged. 'I don't know. Money, I guess. If that's the kind of man he is. One thing I can tell you for certain is this: suites at the Atlantic Hotel in Hamburg are not cheap.'

  Stephanie knew that. She'd spent a weekend with Kostya in one of them.

  'Nor are the kind of whores Hamdu saw with Simic,' Maliqi added.

  That, too, she knew. Or imagined she did. She felt Petra's cold presence when she asked him, 'So what are you planning to do? Kill him?'

  Maliqi shook his head vigorously. 'Savic is the only one who knows. If I kill him I'll never find Simic.'

  'You won't find Simic anyway.'

  'I found Savic, didn't I?'

  'True, but have you got close to him?'

  Maliqi's pained silence confirmed what Stephanie had suspected: Maliqi had the desire but not the stomach. He was a passionate amateur, nothing more.

  She said, 'The moment you open your mouth, he'll kill you. Or have you killed.'

  'You don't know that. You don't know him.'

  'Trust me, I know him a lot better than you do.'

  'What does that mean?'

  She ignored the question. 'You had your chance with Simic in Hamburg and you blew it. You won't get another one.'

  Stephanie placed some cash on the table and got up.

  'Where are you going?' Maliqi demanded.

  'Take my advice, Asim. Go back to Berlin. Back to your job. Make a future for yourself and leave Simic in the past.'

  'Wait. Who are you?'

  The following morning she visited Viktor Sabin at Polar Star Holdings in the Thomson Commercial Building. The gun was a 9mm Browning Hi-Power Mark III. Sabin charged her fifteen hundred dollars for it.

  'That must be twice what it costs, Viktor.'

  He shrugged. 'Import duty. End-user tax. Freight. Storage. Not forgetting delivery, of course. It all adds up …'

  'End-user tax? That's a little lame, isn't it?'

  'Could be worse. I once dispatched three hundred AK-47s from Singapore to Mogadishu packed in coffee crates. On the invoice I included a disinfectant charge against African Swine Fever. Nobody complained.'

  'Could they read?'

  'They paid, so who cares?'

  'You're a classy act.'

  'So they say. Was Maliqi useful?'

  'A dead end.'

  'I'm sorry to hear that.'

  His secretary brought them a pot of thick Turkish coffee. Sabin spooned sugar into a miniature porcelain cup so that it was almost half full. Then he poured the coffee, which flowed like treacle.

  'Don't you want any?'

  'I'll just breathe the air.'

  'Please yourself.'

  'What does Savic do when he's here?'

  'Nothing that makes a noise. There is a rumour that when he's here he's not here at all.'

  'What do you mean?'

  'He flies into Hong Kong, goes up to the New Territories, crosses over to the PRC without any record of his exit, then comes back the same way whenever it suits him, before flying out of here.'

  'Giving the impression that he's been here for several weeks, perhaps, whe
n he could have been anywhere else.'

  'Exactly.'

  'Do you know if he's here at the moment?'

  'He is.'

  'How can you be sure?'

  'I have my sources at the Dragon Centre. He's staying in a corporate apartment there.'

  'I need to meet him, Viktor.'

  'I can find out his number. Then you can give him a call.'

  Stephanie smiled humourlessly. 'I had in mind something a little more direct.'

  Sabin winced, even though he'd known it was coming. 'I want your word that it never came from me.'

  'Naturally.'

  He picked up a pen and reached for a pad of paper. 'When he's in Hong Kong he goes here once a week. Same day, same time. Don't ask me why. I don't know and I don't want to know.'

  She took the paper and read what he'd written. 'Tomorrow?'

  'Tomorrow. At that time.'

  Sabin looked anxious.

  'Relax, Viktor. I just want to talk to him.'

  'Like you wanted to talk to Mostovoi in Marrakech?'

  Chungking Mansions, a teeming sub-city on Nathan Road. A high-rise slum of Hong Kong's cheapest guest houses made from monstrous tower blocks perched unsteadily on top of a two-level arcade, it was as famous for its squalor as its prices. The true residents of Chungking Mansions were cockroaches, not people.

  At five past eleven a dark green Jaguar slid to a halt beneath a large billboard advertising Guess jeans. Stephanie was loitering just inside the entrance to the arcade. Savic got out of the car first, followed by two other men. Stephanie recognized the one emerging from the front passenger seat – well over six foot tall, broad-shouldered, blond hair, bland face – but it took a moment to recall his name.

  Vojislav Brankovic, the Spoon. Another dead man from the Balkans.

  Stephanie was wearing black cargo pants, trainers, a sleeveless faded purple cotton shirt, sunglasses. A Lowe knapsack was slung over her right shoulder. As the men passed by her she turned her back to them and busied herself with cheap umbrellas. Then she followed them in.

  Chungking Mansions swamped the senses. Retail units were jammed together, trading cheap electronics, clothes, luggage, haircuts, food, cosmetics. Over the bronchitic gasp of bad air-conditioning she heard garbled Russian, fat frying, African French, Cantonese pop, the percussion of barter, televisions, all of them set against the cacophonous backdrop of spoken Chinese. She smelt curry, body odour, sandalwood and patchouli, rotting rubbish, sulphurous perfumes.

  Until now she didn't think she'd seen a single black face in Hong Kong. Here, bizarrely, she was spoilt for choice: north Africans, sub-Saharans, Jamaicans. There were also Arabs, central Asians, east Europeans, Bangladeshis, Indians, Australasians.

  Most of the bureau de change booths were on the ground floor, two Travelworld outlets among them. Savic visited both, chatting with the men behind the glass. Brankovic looked bored. On the mezzanine floor the three men entered Khalid Trading Co, which shared a unit with Samarkand Travel. There was a faded PIA poster in the window above an IATA sticker that was clearly fake.

  Stephanie dropped back because there was no cover. The mezzanine level had a balcony that allowed a view of the ground floor. The gantries supporting fluorescent tubes sagged beneath the weight of years of accumulated rubbish. A peculiar odour seeped out of the stair­wells leading to the blocks overhead. Pale cockroaches scuttled between the tables and chairs of an Indian café, one of many throughout the arcade. Nobody seemed to care; the place was busy, meals dispensed on paper plates by a woman with burn scars down one side of her face.

  At five to midday Stephanie followed them back to the ground floor and to the two elevators servicing B block. Savic exchanged a few words with Brankovic and his companion before taking the lift alone. The men melted away. Stephanie waited for the other set of lift doors to open before making her move; just another tourist heading up to one of B block's notoriously grim guest houses.

  When the doors rattled open she stepped into a corridor so narrow it seemed to taper. She could touch the loose ceiling panels above her head, piercing white light beating down from one bulb in five, with darkness between. She forked left, past the partially open door of the Taipei guest house, catching a glimpse of a plump middle-aged woman slumped on a chair, her lipstick smudged, an open rose gown revealing too much mottled thigh. A male voice was shouting at her. There was no mistaking the tone. Wang Fai X-Ray Service followed the Taipei, then the Evergreen, a Chinese restaurant crammed into a dimly lit alcove, before, finally, the Lucky Seven Guest House.

  The reception area was brightly lit in orange. There was a TV behind the desk, a game show from the mainland playing at full volume. The woman beside it wore a blazer. Given the surroundings, it could not have looked more incongruous; brass buttons with a gold crest threaded through the breast pocket. Her hair was a solid mass of lacquered black above a face of puffy alabaster. Between chipolata fingers a menthol Marlboro was wedged into a tortoiseshell cigarette holder.

  'You want room?'

  Stephanie nodded.

  'Very special room. One hundred seventy-five Hong Kong dollar. You stay three night, only one hundred fifty dollar a night.'

  'Can I look?'

  'How long you want to stay?'

  'I don't know.'

  'You pay one hundred twenty-five dollar.'

  'Maybe.'

  The woman summoned a man to show her. He was almost bent double; a lump rose off the back of his neck like a second set of shoulders, preventing him from looking up at her. Barefoot, he led the way, unlocking an iron grille that opened onto a creaking passage with accommodation on either side and a communal bathroom at the far end. The room had no windows; it was a box made from flimsy partitions. There was an air-con vent above the door, a narrow bed with maroon sheets, a green ashtray, a TV bolted to the wall, a naked bulb dangling from the ceiling.

  The man hovered in the doorway. Stephanie worked out where she wanted to be. Not down this corridor where the rooms were numbered 7 to 12.

  Back in the reception area she said, 'I want a room with a view.'

  The woman screwed her face into wrinkles. 'What?'

  'A window. The room has no window.'

  'No window, no window.'

  'No windows anywhere?'

  'No windows …'

  Said with less conviction.

  Stephanie looked apologetic. 'Thanks, then …'

  She turned to leave. The woman cleared her throat loudly. 'Got a room. But more expensive. Two hundred dollar …'

  Down the other passage, no more appealing than the first, and into room 4, a clone of the previous room apart from a filthy glass rectangle that looked across the narrow space between two tower blocks. It wasn't much of a view: dripping water-pipes, decaying concrete, damp washing strung on lines, weeds growing out of unlikely surfaces, all of it in perpetual shadow.

  'I'll take it.'

  She paid for one night, took the key and retreated to the room, where she locked the door before dumping the knapsack on the bed and opening it. She took out the Browning and checked the action.

  Twelve twenty. She had forty minutes. She decided to wait ten. Just after half past, with her knapsack over her shoulder, she stepped into the corridor. The 9mm was in her right hand, pressed against her thigh. A quick glance left and right – she saw no one – then diagonally across the corridor to room 1. She knocked on the door and stood to one side.

  Footsteps approached. The lock squeaked. Stephanie eased off the safety-catch and raised the Browning. The door opened. It wasn't Savic.

  A young Chinese woman looked up at her in surprise, then horror. Her face was shiny with perspiration, strands of hair stuck to the skin. Before she could react, Stephanie had a foot in the door and a hand across her mouth. In place of a finger she raised the Browning to her lips for silence.

  They moved inside. It was very hot and close. The air stank of kitchen grease. Flies circled the light bulb, bouncing off the burnt shade. The
TV was on, music playing beneath Spanish dialogue. Room 1 was much larger than room 4. There was a small en-suite toilet and shower immediately to the left, which blocked her view of the bed. She pressed the door shut with the heel of her foot and spun the woman around, clutching the collar of her shirt at the base of the neck, the tip of the gun by her right ear. They inched forward.

  'Who was it?'

  A male voice, English with a European accent.

  Stephanie nudged the woman into the room. Savic was sitting on the far side of the bed, hunched over something she couldn't see, sweat darkening the shirt between his shoulders.

  'Hello, Martin.'

  He sat up and looked round.

  'Or should I say Lars?'

  Stephanie shoved the woman forward. She spilled onto the mattress. For a second Savic looked utterly bewildered. Then he put a name to the face and his expression changed.

  Stephanie's smile was the coldest Petra could muster. 'Or perhaps I should just call you Milan?'

  Chapter 6

  The confusion I see is entirely justified. There's half a world between the Mellah and Tsim Sha Tsui. As Savic struggles to make sense of me I feel the bloody surge that keeps Petra alive. I look at the Chinese girl. Young, petite and very pretty, she's wearing a black mini-skirt and a damson T-shirt that looks like silk. Her skin is creamy and flawless but her make-up has run.

  'Where's Maxim Mostovoi?'

  Savic shakes his head. 'I don't know.'

  I take a step forward, my teeth clenched, and point the gun at his face. I start to squeeze the trigger. Savic blanches, the girl squeaks.

  'That's the last time you use that phrase as an answer. Nod if you understand.'

  He nods.

  'Good boy. Now where is he?'

  'I haven't seen him since Marrakech.'

  'I don't believe you.'

  'I swear it.'

  'You set me up.'

  'No.'

  'He tried to kill me. When we met, you were speaking on his behalf. That makes you guilty by association.'

  'You have to believe me.'

  'You think so?'

  Savic pauses for a few seconds. 'After Marrakech he vanished. He thought you would come after him.'