Retribution

by Adrian Magson

  He told Rik everything Deane had said, and gave him the names of the personnel he could remember from the close protection team. ‘If the group behind this identified Orti, then they’ve got all our names and it won’t be long before they’re in the public domain. See if you can find out what’s out there. I’ll get full details of the team as soon as I can.’

  Rik nodded and made some notes. ‘Will do. I’ll put out feelers with some people I know.’ He looked at Harry. ‘Are we getting on board with this?’

  ‘I don’t have much choice. If I can identify the guilty party, I might be able to put a stop to it.’

  ‘Not just you.’ Rik looked determined. ‘So forget the “I” bit.’

  Harry smiled gratefully. ‘Thanks. I could do with someone watching my back.’

  ‘Are we carrying?’

  ‘We will be.’ Harry and Rik were ‘carded’ – authorized to carry a weapon. It was a rare permission for civilians, and only ever granted to former military or government security personnel. But it came with a proviso: the holder could be called on at a moment’s notice to jump into the breach and be ready to use the weapon on government business. Those occasions had been rare, and in Harry’s case, often disguised as semi-commercial arrangements. The last one had been through Richard Ballatyne, in the search for a rogue organization using and killing deserters from the military. Since then, Harry and Rik had been working in the private sector, searching for missing persons of dubious repute and providing security-related services to quasi-government individuals.

  Now it looked as if they were going to be working for more personal reasons.

  He took a cab down to an upmarket flower shop near Fulham, and walked into the usual heady aroma of fresh greenery and blossom and the taste of something metallic. The co-owner, Jean Fleming, was snipping stems and arranging a display for the window. She was tall and slim and smiled when she saw him, and he felt his day brighten as always.

  They exchanged kisses and she leaned against him. ‘This is a surprise. Do you want me to arrange some flowers for you, sir? We have a special offer on today, for hunky men only.’

  ‘Damn,’ he breathed, ‘I’m off hunky men this week.’

  ‘That’s a relief.’ She leaned away from him. ‘You’re going somewhere, aren’t you?’ The widow of an army officer, she knew all about sudden absences and goodbyes and not asking where.

  ‘A few days. Week at most. Can you struggle on without me?’

  She shrugged. ‘If I need company I can always hang around the gate at Wellington Barracks. They keep a spot especially for me whenever you’re away.’ She pulled him close and said softly, ‘Stay safe for me, Harry Tate, or I’ll be really cross.’

  He nodded. ‘Always do.’ Their relationship was what she referred to jokingly as ‘occasional’, but they both knew it was a bit more than that, although neither wanted to say it. It worked fine as it was.

  In Brussels, the smell of cooking woke Kassim and set his stomach growling. It was a reminder that he had not eaten for many hours. He knew he could not risk going for much longer without food, since the successful outcome of his mission depended on his strength as well as his skills. To compromise that by not eating would be unforgivable.

  He was tucked into a shop doorway not far from the Midi station. The night had been chill and damp, but nothing he couldn’t cope with; he’d existed for weeks at a time in far worse conditions in the mountains of Afghanistan and elsewhere. He checked the money he’d taken from Orti’s wallet. He already had some, but it had been an opportunity to add to his reserves. He stood up and stretched the kinks out of his limbs, then walked until he found a backstreet café where he ordered a simple meal of lamb, rice and vegetables washed down with plain tea. He was one of several men, each ignoring the others, focussing on their food. Over his meal he checked the pocket binder for his next target. The address was just beyond the city centre and it would probably take no more than half an hour to walk there.

  He put the binder away, retaining a mental image of the next man on his list.

  Arne Broms. Another soldier.

  NINE

  High in the United Nations headquarters building overlooking First Avenue in New York, UN Special Envoy Anton Kleeman rocked back on his heels and bit down on a growing feeling of irritation. He was facing a group of select, influential media reporters and beginning to wish he had listened to his advisors. The briefing had been his idea, timed to set the pace for a series of meetings with key people in the permanent member states of the UN Security Council. He had been biding his time for long enough; in this world, if you didn’t embrace opportunity when it presented itself, you were fated to be just another name on a wall, soon ignored amid the masses. And if there was something Kleeman found distasteful, it was the idea of being ignored.

  It was part of his plan to elevate his own position within the organization at a time when other envoys and special delegates were busy catching the eye of news channels and scoring points in the media and PR battle. His plan had been to brief on reports coming out of Africa about alleged atrocities by UN troops against women, and the older reports about brutalities in Kosovo which were currently making the news and growing day by day. Now he was beginning to wonder if this had been such a good idea. Kosovo’s grim past was still too vivid for many, especially with war crimes tribunals involving Serb and other warlords running their course. With any new allegations threatening to send the UN itself into a scandal-ridden spin, the occasion could have been better timed. And he’d forgotten how much of a squalid rabble these media wretches could be. Yet instinct told him there was no other way to hit the headlines.

  ‘Is it true, Mr Kleeman,’ opened a man from the Washington Post, ‘that not all the Kosovar refugees who have returned to their homeland are satisfied with the peacekeeping force out there – with KFOR? Isn’t this causing the UN some PR problems?’

  Kleeman smiled to disguise his dismay, surprised that it had gone this way so soon. He’d expected to get a few of his own shots in first before things got to this stage. ‘I think you’ll find it’s called UNMIK now – the UN Mission in Kosovo,’ he said dismissively. ‘As you know, under UN mandate twelve forty-four, NATO-led forces entered Kosovo in June 1999 and—’

  ‘But isn’t that the problem?’ the man interrupted Kleeman’s flow. ‘In the minds of the refugees in the region, the two are indivisibly linked. The personnel come from the same countries in most cases.’

  ‘Well, that’s a difficult quest—’

  ‘What about the stories we’re hearing?’ A shrill voice cut across his words, and he felt his blood pressure rising. The voice belonged to Dorrie Henson from The Times, a regular pain in the ass of the UN and a confirmed radical. ‘Stories about alleged brutalities by UN-attached military personnel in Kosovo, going back several years?’

  Kleeman felt a sudden tightness around his eyes as a buzz rose around the room, and glared at the woman. He had not been prepared for this. Henson smiled triumphantly back at him as her words unleashed a volley of questions on the subject, and he wondered if it were possible to get the damned woman banned from the building altogether. See how her editor liked those cookies. With luck she’d be out of a job within days and permanently out of his hair.

  He held up an imperious hand and was about to speak when Karen Walters, a long-time aide, standing in his line of vision at the back of the room, shot him a warning look. It said quite clearly, don’t go there!

  He pretended not to have seen her and held up a hand. He’d suddenly seen a way out of this dilemma; a way that would enhance his own reputation and standing and lay the matter to rest – at least, for now. It came from his early days in Wall Street, when he had used his father’s fortune to make an even bigger one. Back then, the general motto was, when your back’s to the wall, come out fighting.

  The hubbub died down, and he addressed the woman from The Times. ‘Mz Henson,’ he said with deliberate emphasis, his handsome face set in a smile, ‘I
’m not sure where you get your information from, but there have been no confirmed “brutalities” by any KFOR personnel in Kosovo. The “rumours” as you so correctly call them, are unfounded and unsubstantiated, based on enmity towards the UN and NATO in general. There may have been some incidents by untrained NATO personnel, but—’

  ‘You don’t call bar-fights and the shooting dead of an unarmed civilian brutal?’ called another voice from the back of the room. ‘That was in Gornji Livoc.’

  ‘And the young men beaten up outside a bar in Lausa by so-called NATO Special Forces?’

  ‘What about the shooting of two medical workers by UN peacekeepers in Mitrovica?’

  The volley of voices grew as the reporters sensed blood in the air, citing stories of serious behaviour by, among others, Russian, African, Pakistani and Polish troops, and a British soldier sent home in disgrace.

  Karen Walters moved swiftly from her position at the back of the room, her arm raised in an attempt to draw attention away from Kleeman, who looked like a rabbit caught in the headlights. Suddenly Dorrie Henson’s voice cut through the room with the precision of a surgeon’s knife.

  ‘What about the rape and murder of a young Muslim girl by a KFOR soldier at a UN compound in 1999, Mr Special Envoy? That seems pretty darned brutal to me!’

  TEN

  For several seconds there was stunned silence. Then the room erupted in frantic questioning, some of it directed at Henson by press colleagues desperate to share what she knew.

  Kleeman resisted the powerful temptation to rush from the room, and waved his hand until everyone fell silent.

  ‘That is as yet unconfirmed,’ he said forcefully. ‘We do not have full details of that alleged incident. However, what I—’

  ‘These alleged stories are coming out of Kosovo day after day,’ Henson said cuttingly, ‘and have been for weeks. Some of them through the aid agencies. Surely they’re being investigated, Mr Special Envoy?’

  ‘What I do know,’ Kleeman ploughed on, visibly stung by the heavy irony in Henson’s use of his official title, ‘is that we are hearing this story – not stories, Ms Henson – the same time as you. We have to look into the claims, the same way we look into all alleged incidents involving UN personnel. That takes time. I think it does no one any good to jump to conclusions at this early stage.’ He looked around for support from the more UN-friendly people present. ‘And it does no good for those members of the peacekeeping forces still in Kosovo today to have their role besmirched without – I repeat, Ms Henson – without foundation. They already have a difficult enough job as it is.’

  ‘But it will be investigated?’ an elderly, grey-suited Reuters man in the front row prompted with quiet courtesy.

  Kleeman fastened gratefully on him and said, ‘It will be investigated fully.’ He put on his most earnest expression and turned to look Henson straight in the eye. ‘And I can promise you this: the trooper responsible will be brought to justice, and will pay for his crimes.’

  ‘Trooper?’ Henson looked startled. ‘So you know the rank of this person? What else do you know that you’re not telling us, Mr Kleeman?’

  It was a mistake and he knew it. But before he could reply, Karen Walters stepped in, planting herself firmly between the press and her boss. If it got up Kleeman’s nose, her stance said, she couldn’t care less; this farce had gone far enough. She apologized and pleaded an important call from overseas, allowing Kleeman to bustle out. He may have been reckless in giving such a briefing, but it wouldn’t do to let the press think he’d been reined in like a runaway horse.

  Back in his office, Kleeman wished he dared light a cigarette, but the sensors in the ceiling would have reacted instantly. He gritted his teeth instead and waited for Walters to come in. He had no doubts his aide would be unhappy about the way he had thrust his head out in front of the press pack, but that was too bad. She was there to suit him, not the other way round.

  He felt rattled by the ferocity of the questioning. He had faced the media many times, often at moments of acute international tension, but this was the first time he had felt like a rabbit thrown to the hounds . . . even if he had put himself there in the first place. On the other hand, he was pleased with the way it had gone. He was sure he had come across as determined – uncompromising, even. And fair, too. People could relate to fair, no matter what the circumstances.

  He opened his diary to check the details of his forthcoming trips. Coming on the heels of this press conference, he would be able to use the meetings to press some flesh with the influential members of the Security Council outside the building rather than under the heavy umbrella and constant gaze of the UN administration.

  He had been an also-ran for long enough. The time had come to start the ball rolling and move up a few floors.

  ‘We’ve got to kill this right now,’ Walters muttered, closing the door firmly behind her. She was flushed and angry, eyes glinting like a wild cat at bay. She was tall and slim, and dressed elegantly if clinically in a dark blue suit.

  Kleeman glanced at her legs and wondered how in spite of all the trips they’d shared on UN business, he’d never once found himself physically drawn to her. An absence of chemistry, perhaps. He wondered who was benefiting in that direction; it was bound to be someone in authority. Unless she was a dyke.

  ‘What’s to kill?’ he asked. ‘As far as we know, it’s true, isn’t it?’ He waved a hand in the direction of the briefing room. ‘They seem to have some evidence – what’s the point of trying to deny it?’ His eyes glittered, a warning to his aide not to overstep the mark by questioning his decisions. As a Special Envoy, with the ear of people all the way to the top, he was not someone to fall foul of without incurring serious collateral career damage.

  Of mixed parentage – grandparents Swedish and Danish, father naturalized American, mother Swiss – he had managed to sweep into the diplomatic arena representing a broad range of flags. To some, this was his main strength. Educated at Harvard and the Goethe-Institut in Germany, and with sizeable investments in the Fortune 500 list of US corporations, he had the credentials and, more importantly, the money to take him wherever he wished to go. With friends in the highest places, cultivated over the years in college and business, he had the political clout to have bypassed a number of other well-placed candidates on the UN career ladder. Watchers in the know were even tipping him for Secretary-General in a few years’ time, and in spite of some voices in opposition, no one was betting entirely against him.

  ‘They’ll pursue this now,’ Walters warned him. ‘We must advise everyone on the ground so they can be prepared.’

  He nodded. In spite of her subordinate position, experience told him that he would do well to keep this woman onside. Never forget the little people on the way up, his father had often said. Well, he wasn’t about to. Not yet, anyway.

  ‘Send a note to Field Security,’ he advised. ‘I’m sure they’re already on to it, but it won’t harm to remind them that this could snowball. If the story is true, we have to let it be seen that we’re eager to keep our house in order. Ethics are only worth possessing, Miss Walters, if they are seen to be upheld.’

  Walters blinked at the absurd pomposity of this statement. ‘You realize,’ she said, ‘this could be close to that base we had to use when we were over there?’

  ‘So?’ He seemed indifferent to the connection, and not for the first time, Walters wondered if he was all that bright.

  ‘It would not be good publicity, that’s all.’

  He almost sneered. ‘There’s no such thing as bad publicity. If the story’s true, there’s a soldier out there somewhere who has committed a heinous crime. He must pay for it.’ He flicked open a folder on his desk, signalling the end of the discussion. ‘Now, let’s get on, shall we?’

  Karen Walters returned to her own office feeling deeply unsettled. There was, as Kleeman had said, no point in denying the story was out there. But letting the press know the way he had, that a UN soldier was
involved, even before confirmation of the facts, was like throwing the press a big, juicy bone and telling them to gnaw away. What the hell was he playing at? Was it inexperience that had pushed him to say more than was wise, or was he, as rumours had it in the washrooms of the UN, simply eager to grab the headlines as a means of promoting his own platform?

  The briefing had been a mistake. Kleeman was accustomed to the social wolf pack, a cocktail in one hand and a clutch of patron-acquired opera tickets in the other. He had certainly never been exposed before to the kind of bearpit atmosphere he had volunteered himself for today. And she had been powerless to stop him. She should have known better. Putting himself out there had been an act of pure vanity – a way of signalling his career intentions. Unfortunately, the rest of the organization – herself included – was going to have to pick up the pieces.

  She shivered, remembering the way he’d sneaked a look at her legs. He’d never tried it on with her, thank God. He was married to a social butterfly with old, New England money, although he had plenty of his own, by all accounts. But that had never stopped men like him in the past. She picked up the phone and put out a call for Ken Deane. He was in the UK on unspecified business. She needed to speak to him directly. There were some things you simply couldn’t put in writing.

  ELEVEN

  The Major Trauma Centre at King’s College Hospital in Camberwell, south London, was unusually quiet when Harry walked through the front entrance and checked in at the front desk. The receptionist smiled in recognition but still checked his details and logged him in before nodding him through.

  He knew where to go.

  He walked up two flights of stairs and made his way to a corridor lined with side wards. A security guard sat at the end behind a small desk. He checked Harry’s details again and nodded him through. The air was cool and smelled faintly of lemons. There was none of the medical detritus common to many hospitals; the better, he had decided, to hurry patients out of their rooms to emergency theatres without having to run the obstacle course of trolleys, unused wheelchairs and spare equipment.