The Operative s-3

by Falconer, Duncan

  Hobart was standing in the apartment’s main doorway when the elevator doors opened. He looked up to see Hendrickson step out and walk down the corridor towards him.

  ‘Sir,’ Hendrickson said before he reached the door. Hobart could tell from his pensive look that the young man had something urgent to reveal.

  Hobart wore his usual dry expression as he walked out into the corridor and waited for his eager young assistant.

  ‘Sir. Sally Penton had a son. He was with her when she was killed.’

  Hobart flashed him an angry look. ‘You’re telling me this now?’

  ‘I’m sorry, sir, but I didn’t see the relevance of it at the time.’

  ‘Relevance? Stratton killed the boy’s mother’s killers. The son was nothing but relevant!’ Hobart exclaimed.

  ‘I was on my way over to the child-protection centre today to interview him and—’

  ‘Don’t tell me. Stratton’s taken him,’ Hobart said, reckoning immediately that Stratton would want to protect the boy from Skender.

  ‘I don’t think so, sir. Stratton’s working alone here – at least, we think he is. The kid was abducted by two men this morning, neither of whom matched Stratton’s description. In fact, a witness who was beaten by the men knew Stratton and swears that neither was him.’

  Hobart flashed Hendrickson another look as a new set of implications pelted his brain.

  ‘Stratton’s been in contact with the kid nearly every day since he’s been in LA,’ Hendrickson went on. ‘The boy was due to fly out of here in a couple days back to the UK.’

  Hobart looked out of the window at the clear blue sea beyond the palm trees. But he saw only his thoughts. ‘So, what do you deduce from all of this, Hendrickson?’

  ‘Deduce, sir?’

  ‘Yes. To deduce. To draw a logical conclusion from something already known or assumed by a process of reasoning. It’s what we’re supposed to do for a living, goddamn it.’

  ‘Well … Skender’s people killed Stratton’s best friend’s wife—’

  ‘What?’ Hobart interrupted.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Hendrickson said, feeling like a schoolboy who had forgotten to hand in his homework. ‘I only found that out from our people in London before I left the office this morning. Stratton is or was in Brit special forces.’

  ‘Wait up a minute,’ Hobart interrupted again. ‘Stratton’s a civilian now?’

  ‘No, sir. He works for the British government, that’s a certainty. It’s just that it’s unclear who he belongs to, the SBS – Special Boat Service – or SIS. Jack Penton was also in the SBS – they’re like the SAS but they also do seaborne operations. Penton and Stratton were on an op together in Iraq a month ago when Penton was killed. Stratton is also Josh’s godfather, Josh being the kid’s name. But Stratton isn’t on the special forces books, like he’s been moved. All enquiries to the SBS about him are deferred to the Brits’ Ministry of Defence. That’s why it’s been difficult to get anything on him.’

  Hobart readjusted his thoughts. ‘Go on with your deduction.’

  ‘Okay,’ Hendrickson said, looking into space as if this was a quiz. ‘So … Stratton revenged Sally Penton’s murder because of his relationship with the family. One of Skender’s people then decided to avenge the deaths of Bufi and Cano—’

  ‘Why’d you say one of Skender’s people and not Skender himself ?’ Hobart interrupted again.

  ‘Because Skender’s not related to either of the men. He himself should have had them punished but he didn’t for some reason. I think Skender is less of an Albanian today than he was before he came here. He wants to stay in the States so he’s trying to adapt his m.o.’

  Hobart nodded. Hendrickson’s reasoning was crude but interesting. Hobart himself hadn’t gone so far as to suspect someone else in Skender’s organisation but it was undeniably worth considering. ‘Go on,’ he said.

  ‘Well, maybe Skender but most likely someone else orders a hit on Stratton which backfires and so the kid is abducted.’

  Hendrickson stopped there and Hobart looked up to see he was not about to continue. ‘Why?’

  ‘To get at Stratton, swap him maybe, I don’t know. I doubt whether the kid will survive those guys.’

  ‘And the possible repercussions? What now?’

  ‘Now … now I think the faecal matter could hit the air-oscillator. This Stratton guy is no pushover. He’s showed that he’s capable of taking on Skender’s people and winning. But not like the David and Goliath concept. More like a small guerrilla group taking on a professional army. He has advantages in being alone and being able to move freely. I don’t know what his skills are other than explosives but the guy kicks ass. The score is five to one if you count the kid. I think Stratton’s gonna go for them.’

  Hobart found himself broadly agreeing. ‘So what do we do now?’

  ‘Look for Stratton.’

  ‘Of course. But should we give Skender protection?’

  ‘Not for me to say, sir.’

  ‘Off the record. What would you do?’

  ‘I don’t want to say even off the record, sir.’

  Hobart knew that like everyone else on the team Hendrickson would like to see Skender and his people burn in hell. The thought of protecting the mobster was anathema. But Hobart had a job to do. How to achieve that was another problem. Skender would refuse any overt protection and if he suspected even a covert operation to protect him he’d accuse the Bureau of spying on him, which was against their special agreement.

  Hobart decided to deal with that later. Right now he had to find Stratton. He would also put a team on the abduction but he knew that there was little chance of finding this kid Josh if the Albanians had him. Hobart needed more information on Stratton. A photograph would be a great start. The Brits would eventually help, once they accepted that their man was involved in a civilian homicide. But depending on how high up the ladder Stratton was they would want to get involved too. That could take time.

  Then Hobart had a thought. The Brits worked hand in hand with the Americans in Iraq and in other matters too. There was therefore a good chance that Stratton had worked with American intelligence at some time and if so there would be a file on him somewhere in the USA. Then Hobart’s thoughts went back to the explosives that Stratton had acquired while in the US and suddenly the chance that he had once associated with US intelligence became more than just a possibility.

  ‘Sir?’ Hendrickson asked, taking Hobart out of his thoughts.

  ‘What?’

  ‘What do you think, sir?’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘My deduction.’

  ‘I think it was pretty good, Hendrickson. I want you to put out an APB to every US intelligence and special forces unit in this country.’

  ‘What’s an APB, sir?’

  ‘Don’t you watch old cop movies, Hendrickson? An all-points bulletin. Keep it simple. No information or mention of the homicides. All you need is a response to a British military operative named John Stratton. Cover everyone, and I mean everyone including the Salvation Army and the Boy Scouts. And make sure it’s in yellow,’ he said, referring to the highlighting of the text that everyone who read it would know meant highest priority.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Hendrickson said.

  ‘Now,’ Hobart said.

  Hendrickson nodded and turned away.

  ‘Hendrickson,’ Hobart called out. ‘I was joking about the Salvation Army and Boy Scouts.’

  ‘I know, sir,’ Hendrickson said. He hurried to the elevators only to discover that they were both on the top floor. He moved to the emergency stairs.

  Hobart glanced back at the apartment. He did not expect to find anything in there that would lead to Stratton’s discovery so he headed for the elevator and pushed the call button. He considered Stratton’s likely options from this point on, assuming that the guy would expect the cops to be looking for him now. He’d probably go strictly cash, withdrawing as much as he could each day from various ATM ma
chines. He’d also move to a low-profile and cheap local hotel. The main question was, how might Stratton go about getting Skender to hand over the kid? The obvious method would be to offer up in exchange something that Skender valued more than the kid – or more than Stratton, in fact. That would probably be Skender himself.

  The elevator arrived and Hobart stepped inside, lost in thought. He had to assume for now that Stratton had more explosives – they appeared to be his preferred weapon. Skender would need to be convinced that Stratton could take him out, perhaps with a demonstration of some kind. That was what Hobart would do. But there he stopped himself, suddenly seeing the futility of trying to put himself in this Brit’s shoes when he and Hobart were completely different animals. Hobart could never have conceived hits like those in the court cells or the restaurant, for instance. Those had been conceived by the mind of a person greatly experienced in that world, which made Hobart wonder what kind of an SIS operative Stratton was. In the CIA, for instance, there were two categories of front-line field agents: one was intelligence gatherer, the other direct-action operative and some, the best of them, could play either part. Hobart was convinced of one thing. He was probably going to need an adviser, someone who could shed some light on Stratton’s options. The question was, where would he find such an operator?

  The elevator doors opened and Hobart stepped out into the lobby and through to the alleyway where his car was parked. His plan for the time being would be to carry on with the search routine and hope either that they got lucky or that Stratton got sloppy. But it looked as if it was anyway going to be a case of waiting for the man’s next move. That wasn’t an unusual situation in Hobart’s line of work but there was another reason why he would not rush to shift heaven and earth to find the Brit agent. The real victim in all this now was the kid: Hobart had to admit, though he would never say as much to anyone else, that Stratton might well be the boy’s only chance.

  24

  Stratton, wearing a baseball jacket and cap, watched Skender’s new building complex from inside a small office-block entranceway across the street. For almost an hour he had studied the place from every angle, circling the block and observing the comings and goings of workers, especially Skender’s security team. Skender himself had arrived a few minutes after Stratton had begun his surveillance, turning up in his cavalcade surrounded by bodyguards like some visiting state dignitary, and Cano had come out of the building with yet more guards to escort his boss inside.

  The surrounding security fence had been removed and the landscaping, a complex design of lawns, flower beds, trees and fountains, was almost complete. The entire block was ringed by new steel street lamps with added spotlights on top of each one to illuminate the building at night. The finishing touches to the curving drive that led from the boulevard to the entrance were being made. A crane was slowly positioning a large crate in the centre of the concourse, directly in front of the ornate entrance – some kind of statue, Stratton suspected – while a handful of helmeted engineers carefully supervised its touchdown, inch by inch.

  The place was very much a fortress, with guards covering every entry point including a barrier to the underground parking. Adding up all the men Stratton had seen on duty on the first-floor balconies, at various windows and emergency exits, the main entrance, the garage and doing roving patrols – plus another dozen to allow for those he could not see – there were around fifty. Then, working on the assumption that they did three eight-hour shifts per day the total came to a hundred and fifty. Assuming one shift was on standby or stand-down inside the premises Stratton felt that a fair estimate of security manpower would be about a hundred men at any one time. Quite the small army.

  Stratton reviewed his objectives in order of priority once again in the hope that doing so would help to inspire a so far uninspired plan. The final outcome obviously had to be getting Josh back to England alive. To achieve that Skender had to believe that his own life was at stake if he did not hand over Josh. To convince the Albanian of that was the hard part. A demonstration of intent could be useful but Stratton had no time to waste and he might get only one shot. Another option was to find something that Skender valued as much as his own life but unless Stratton could figure out what that was, or even if there was such a thing, he was still at the starting block. Meeting Skender face to face was an option but reaching him and then getting away after looked like too much of a risk.

  Stratton told himself to step back and take a completely new look at matters. In the meantime he decided to use another essential tool in any operation of this nature: psy-ops.

  A payphone hung on the wall of the lobby and Stratton walked over to it. He took his notebook from a pocket, flicked to a page of names and numbers, inserted some coins into the slot and dialled a number.

  Cano was in the small kitchen on the top floor of Skender’s business centre pouring himself a coffee when his cellphone rang. He took it out of his pocket, hit the receive button and put it to his ear. ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Vleshek? This is Stratton.’

  Cano was about to pour some milk into the cup and paused. ‘How’d you get this number?’

  ‘I’m full of surprises. I know a lot about you, for instance. Your real name is Dren Cano.’

  Cano put down the carton of milk. He struggled to contain his shock at hearing his real name on the lips of another man besides his boss for the first time in ten years.

  ‘I could give that information to the police and you’d end up in a cell in the Hague waiting for your war-crimes trial, but I’m not going to,’ Stratton went on. ‘I’ll tell you what the deal is, Cano. You hand the boy over to the police or take him back to the child-protection centre and I’ll leave you alive. If you don’t it’s war.’

  ‘That right? You need an army to go to war.’

  ‘I work alone. The kind of war I have in mind, you’re already outnumbered.’

  Cano closed the kitchen door and kept his voice low although the anger in it was plain to hear. ‘Now you listen to me, you piece a’ shit. You can take your threats and shove ’em up your ass. I’ll tell you what the deal is. Your life for the kid’s. It’s as simple as that. I’m gonna give you a couple days to get your things in order, say your goodbyes, and then you call me. If I don’t hear from you, you can say goodbye to the boy. I’ll personally slit his throat and sell his organs. And that bitch you were with the other night – I’ll fuck her too. There’s no negotiation. Oh, and one more thing. If anything happens to me, the kid dies anyway. The next time I hear from you, you better be letting me know where I can send the boys to pick you up. Now get lost.’

  Cano disconnected from the call and screwed his solitary eye shut. The empty socket of the lost one was beginning to throb beneath its silk patch. He reached for his painkillers and popped several in his mouth. But Cano had worries apart from his physical pain. The first was what would happen if the Englishman did not take the deal. The hits on Bufi and Cano’s brother had been the best that Cano had ever seen and the guy had escaped his clutches twice now. Hobart was looking for Stratton, which might play in Cano’s favour but the bottom line was that Cano wanted Stratton dead. Cano held the ace, of course – the kid – but he had no plan. What bothered him was that Stratton had to make the next move and Cano strongly doubted that he would simply hand himself over. Nor did Cano know if Stratton was willing to sacrifice himself or even the boy to get even.

  Cano wondered if he should approach Skender with the problem. But there were greater dangers for Cano in that direction, the most obvious one being that Skender did not know that Cano had kidnapped the boy and would be none too pleased if he found out. Cano remained hopeful that he could wind up this business without Skender discovering what his henchman had done.

  Cano was treading a fine line and was feeling dangerously rattled.

  Stratton replaced the phone and walked back to the window to look up at the top of the pyramid. He did not know whether he had gotten to Cano and he was not entirely c
onfident that he had. But at least it set the goalposts firmly in place, for now at least. Stratton either turned himself in, whereupon both he and Josh would be executed and possibly Vicky too, or he went on the offensive. With the police now probably looking for him and with no idea yet what he was going to do this was beginning to look like an impossible task. But that was because he didn’t know enough about his enemy. The more he could learn, the better the chances were of finding a chink in Skender’s armour.

  As Stratton stepped out of the building, pulling his baseball cap low over his eyes, he saw a man walking from one of the site contractors’ portable cabins on the edge of the square as a crane moved into position, getting ready to lift it onto the back of a truck. The man, who was wearing a shiny white hard hat, was carrying several large tubes and rolls of paper. He placed them inside a car parked on the street and went back to the portable cabin.

  Stratton didn’t waste a second. He crossed the road, went to the car and looked inside. As he suspected, the rolls of paper were construction blueprints. After a quick glance to make sure that the man had gone back into the cabin, Stratton opened the car door, removed them and walked briskly away without looking back.

  25

  Vicky walked down the pathway from the child-protection centre entrance, out of the gate and along the empty street towards her car around the corner. As she approached it, reaching for the lock with the key, she stopped and looked up. Standing across the road watching her was Stratton.

  Vicky was a little shocked. She’d expected never to see him again and did not know what to say or how to react. Then she looked down, ignoring him, and opened her car door.

  ‘Vicky – I need to talk to you,’ Stratton said as he crossed the road.

  She stopped and watched him walk around the back of her car and step onto the sidewalk to face her. ‘I spent two hours with the FBI today. You’re wanted for two murders,’ she said.

  ‘Those were the men who killed Sally.’