The couple gaped. Wald glared. Then snarled, ‘Fuck off.’
The couple complied. Quickly.
Wald turned and offered a hand. Jashari winced as he was hauled to his feet. ‘Best get that seen to.’ Wald gestured at the bloodied gash along Jashari’s side.
‘We’ll get the whores first. That’s the plan. Take Falck’s bitches.’
Jashari took a step towards the ajar door, but Wald placed a firm palm against Jashari’s chest. ‘No time,’ Wald said. ‘Those two lovers will be talking to the police now or very soon. We need to go.’
A protest formed in Jashari’s chest and splurted out as: ‘We should have taken care of them too.’
‘No, that would be dumb,’ Wald said evenly. ‘Two dead scumbags, and the police will shrug and go through the motions. A young couple murdered in Cologne’s historic old town? Don’t be stupid. The police would be banging on everyone’s door, not just Falck’s. This way, the police will be here soon, they’ll find the women in the brothel, take them away and return them to wherever they were trafficked from. Upshot, Falck loses a whorehouse and a small fortune in women. Same result we came for.’
‘But we don’t get the merchandise.’
Wald sighed. ‘Big picture Dren. This is a victory. Take it. Falck will get the message.’
Part of Jashari wanted to argue, but the adrenaline rush from the fight with Falck’s whore-minders was ebbing and his slashed side was beginning to throb. Besides, he knew Wald was right. Again.
9 years, 8 months ago
They had needed a sniper for the Serbian job, but Dren Jashari had resisted bringing in another outsider before eventually conceding the level of skill they required meant hiring a specialist. While Jashiri would have provided more than adequate back up if Wald had needed it during his face-to-face with Falck in Bratislava, that encounter had primarily been about theatre.
‘Trust me,’ Wald had told Jashari shortly before the Falck confrontation, ‘you won’t need the rifle. Hollywood misinformation will give me all the edge I need. I’d send you up there with just the laser sight, but I can imagine your face if I armed you with just a torch.’
There would be no laser sights this time. Real snipers didn’t use them: gave away their position. Besides which, unlike a beam of light, a bullet had to negotiate wind and gravity on its way to a target. Bullets didn’t travel in laser-light perfect straight lines.
The sniper Wald recruited was a Brit. Alasdair MacAndrew, recently of the 1st Battalion, Parachute Regiment. And he had skills.
A shot. A heartbeat. A second shot. The Serbian stared at Wald and Jashari, plainly confused to see them still standing. He looked about, scanning the roofs of two of the abandoned factory’s buildings.
‘Sorry, should we be dead?’ Wald asked. ‘Um, my sniper taking out your two snipers broke my train of thought … I think you were saying something about wanting to renegotiate our deal. Is that still the case?’
The Serbian and his men reached for their weapons. A shot. A second. A third. Blood spattered across the back of the Serbian’s head as the men around him dropped, lifeless before they hit the ground. The Serbian froze, mid-draw.
‘You seem to be short on ex-army buddies.’ Wald stepped forward and relieved the Serbian of his weapon. ‘I hope you brought the ordnance we paid for.’
9 years, 5 months ago
Wald raised his arm. Blam! Jashari thought he saw disbelief in the Russian’s face. The face slackened and the body dropped to the floor. The two Russians positioned by the shop’s shuttered entrance opened fire, and their wild shots into the shelves next to Jashari and Wald drowned out the corpse thunking on the vinyl floor.
Jashari dropped behind a chest freezer, drew his gun—an FN Five-seveN—and glanced up at Wald, whose only movement had been to cup his left hand under the Glock gripped in his right. Jashari didn’t hear Wald’s weapon—the room was a blare of gunfire and clanging tins—but he saw the jerking blur of the Glock’s recoil. Twice. Twice more. A moment’s silence …
Thunk, thunk.
Jashari’s lips parted just a crack, but before he could say anything, Wald spun and fired twice. Jashari looked behind him; he saw two ragged holes torn in the flimsy back office door. Wald took two steps to the side. Fired into the wall. Adjusted his aim. Fired. Adjusted. Fired. Puffs of dust hung in the air where bullets had ripped through plasterboard. The punctures were a metre apart and marked out an equilateral triangle pointing at the door.
Blam!
A hole in the centre of the triangle. A muffled thump. Someone had been in the back office.
‘Backstabbing bastards.’ Wald turned to Jashari. ‘We weren’t meant to leave here with a pulse.’
Late night Düsseldorf traffic rumbled on the other side of the shop’s shutters. ‘The shots will have been heard,’ Jashari said, rising from the floor.
‘In that case, you grab our money, I’ll get their drugs.’
Valon Varoshi ran a hand over the elegant curves of the yellow Lamborghini Gallardo and down to the scratch along the door. A tiny part of him was saddened such craftsmanship had been defaced. But the paintwork would be repaired within the hour, and the following day the good-as-new sports car would be delivered to the Tirana businessman it had been stolen for.
‘Olek ...’ Varoshi looked across the Lamborghini: on the other side of the sports car stood the eldest son of a cousin from Durrës. ‘Well done,’ Varoshi said.
This had been Olek’s eleventh highwayman job: Target an expensive car on one of central Italy’s highways; deliberately collide with the high value vehicle; when the driver stopped to examine the damage to his shiny toy, overpower him and take the car; make the fourteen hour drive to Tirana where the damage would be fixed and the vehicle sold on.
The Lamborghini Gallardo Olek had returned with had been a special order, a favour to one of Varoshi’s money laundering associates. Olek had even sourced the preferred colour; no need to re-spray. ‘Very well done.’ Varoshi added.
Olek acknowledged the praise with an appropriately subdued semi-smile. The boy will do well, Varoshi thought.
Kreshnik Xhepa appeared at Varoshi’s side. He held up a phone. ‘The Austrian.’ Xhepa never let his disapproval of Varoshi’s repeated use of Wald leak into tone or expression, but Xhepa’s refusal to use Wald’s name was a reminder of the frank exchange of views Varoshi and his younger sister’s husband had had on the matter.
Varoshi took the phone and turned to Olek. ‘Go.’
The young man turned and quickly joined a group of mechanics gathered round a Porsche at the far end of the auto repair shop.
With the phone to his ear, Varoshi slowly circled the Lamborghini. ‘Yes?’
‘The meeting was unpleasant,’ Wald said. ‘Harsh words were exchanged.’
‘I see. That is disappointing.’ Varoshi continued his sauntering lap of the sports car. ‘A counter offer will be made.’ He glanced at Xhepa. ‘I will send our top negotiator.’
From Tirana to the Adriatic coast through Montenegro and Croatia, then up into Slovenia, through Austria, into Germany, then on to the travel agency in Cologne. A twenty-four hour drive. Xhepa had slept in the Volkswagen Autosleeper while two others had taken turns at the wheel. He didn’t have the tired eyes and slightly sagging posture of the drivers. But he was just as cranky.
‘The weapons and ammunition are in the van,’ Xhepa barked in Wald’s direction.
The Austrian nodded sagely. ‘Good to know.’
Xhepa stared.
Wald tilted his head, appraising Xhepa’s glare. Then slid a long pace forward and leaned in. ‘Listen,’ Wald said, voice low, tone neutral, ‘I’m not a porter. If you push it, you’re going to need all of those guns right now.’
Dren Jashari was sure only he had heard the exchange. And he knew he had moments to take action.
Jashari had accompanied Wald on every job in Germany that the Austrian had been given by Valon Varoshi. Jashari, as directed, had kept a close
eye on Wald. He’d watched, he’d appreciated, he’d learned. The next few seconds flashed through his mind: Xhepa not backing down, reaching for a weapon, but a Glock appearing in Wald’s hand preternaturally fast and pushed into Xhepa’s body, then two shots.
No, that’s not how it would happen, Jashari thought.
Everyone in the courtyard was bound by blood and marriage, except Wald. If Wald killed Xhepa, Wald would have to kill all of them. And Wald would know Jashari would realise this.
Instead of pushing the Glock into Xhepa, Wald would spin, bend and lunge backwards, putting his weight behind an elbow powered under Xhepa’s ribcage while bringing the Glock up towards Jashari. There would be two shots. Wald would complete a 360 degree turn, bringing the Glock round to put two rounds in a doubled-over Xhepa. The Glock would be raised. Another two shots. Then two more. As Xhepa and his drivers started to fall, Wald would be arcing round again. Two more double shots would fell the two men behind Jashari, who would by then be a corpse on the ground.
Jashari had two choices. Draw a weapon on Wald immediately. Or ...
Two finger clicks, followed by Jashari’s forefinger thrusting towards the van. The two men behind Jashari stepped forward. As they started unloading the gear from the large campervan into the back of the travel agency, Wald stepped back, maintaining unblinking eye contact with Xhepa.
‘You must be thirsty after that journey,’ said Jashari, ‘I have raki inside.’
Xhepa glanced at Jashari, back to Wald, then turned and walked past Jashari to the propped open fire exit.
Wald turned and said, ‘Thanks.’
‘For what?’ asked Jashari.
‘For choosing to stay alive.’ Wald winked.
Anyone who had been watching the building would not have been surprised to see a regular stream of people enter, wait to be seen, be shown something on the desktop monitors, then leave after thirty minutes or so. After all it was a travel agency.
Sunshine and smiling faces beamed down from the walls, but despite the enticing posters, the office printer had yet to run off a single itinerary and the computers had only ever been used to access porn. The number of pale-skinned tourists the travel agency had sent on two week missions to do pre-breakfast battle for poolside sun-loungers numbered exactly zero. That was because the business being carried out on the premises was money laundering.
The travel agency was in fact a bank. The deposits made there came from the drugs, the extortion and the prostitution operations run by the Varoshi clan in an arc of German cities running from Bonn through Cologne, Düsseldorf, Essen and Dortmund. Couriers arrived at pre-arranged times and viewed a few implausible sex scenes while the money was counted. The cash was then stored in a number of floor safes located in the basement until another set of couriers kept their scheduled appointments. These couriers were issued with wide, multi-pocketed belts carefully packed with cash to be delivered to similarly organised travel agencies in Albania, Italy and Spain, from where the money would eventually be invested in bars, restaurants, nightclubs and the construction industry.
So far, so good. In fact so good, a Russian gangster named Korikov had decided he would like a piece of it. With a piece meaning all of it.
‘The Russians would not dare attempt this with one of The Fifteen Families,’ Kreshnik Xhepa said. He downed his third glass of raki. The alcohol had eased his mood, and he grinned round the room, even at Wald. ‘So tomorrow, we show the Russians there is now a Sixteenth Family.’
The plan involved pulling together most of the Varoshi clan’s Germany-based muscle to mount simultaneous late-night raids on ten Russian operations: two brothels and a drug repository in each of the cities of Cologne, Düsseldorf and Dortmund, plus a residence in Mönchengladbach used to entertain individuals with occupations useful to the Russian mobsters. Their locations had been acquired through a classic combination of incentives: cash and pain.
But the Varoshi plan had not gone well.
‘Where did the fucking police come from?’ Xhepa snarled. He was crouched at the bottom of a spiral staircase, reloading. He had the same weapon as Jashari, an FN Five-seveN.
Wald had his back to a wall across the hallway. He nodded towards the heavy front door. ‘Step outside and ask them.’
The door was closed but it had a charred and splintered fist-sized hole where a shotgun had blown the lock—that had been the work of one of Xhepa’s drivers, Olek Varoshi, just a few minutes earlier.
The drug repository was a large house in the respectable Raderthal district in the south of Cologne. Many of the neighbouring houses had been the quarters of Captains, Majors and Colonels when the British Army had been stationed in the area. They were large residences (the smallest had four good-sized bedrooms), they were close to the Volkspark and the Marienburger Golf Club, and—after the British military had quit Cologne for JHQ in Rheindahlen—the properties had been snapped up by senior-management types: all very decent, and upright, and quiet.
The Russian guards posted outside had been complacent. And the Albanians had taken full advantage. But the ensuing firefight had been cut short when an ad hoc truce had been imposed by the almost immediate arrival of vanloads of heavily armed police.
Seven Albanians (and Wald) controlled the ground floor, while the surviving Russians occupied the upper floor and the basement. The basement was where the Russians’ drugs would be stored. The plan had been to kill all of the Russians and seize or destroy the drugs.
‘No plan survives contact with the enemy.’
Xhepa frowned at Wald.
‘Moltke the Elder,’ said the Austrian. ‘Smart guy.’
Xhepa’s phone buzzed. He answered it. Grunted. Swore. Threw the phone against the wall opposite. Turned to Wald. ‘That was Jashari,’ he growled. ‘The police were waiting in Mönchengladbach too.’
Wald shrugged.
‘You don’t seem surprised.’
Wald sighed. ‘Why would I be? Someone’s been yakking to the police. Makes sense they’d blab about all of it. But that’s not really important right now. We can deal with that after we’ve dealt with this situation.’
Xhepa didn’t try to keep the irritation out of his voice. ‘Suggestions?’
‘Well we could take that twenty-round canon of yours and get all Butch and Sundance with the Federalis … or we could put our guns down and put our hands on our heads.’
Xhepa made a sneering guttural sound.
‘Suit yourself,’ Wald said, ‘but I can get us out of handcuffs. Body bags, not so much.’
The paperclip had been concealed in Wald’s boot. It was straightened, inserted into the keyhole, bent at ninety degrees, twisted and turned until the cuffs clicked.
Fifteen seconds of violence later, their two German police escorts were incapacitated. After another fifteen seconds, Xhepa was uncuffed and the two of them were exploding out of the police van, each with a newly appropriated Walther P99.
Fifteen minutes later they were breathing heavily, but now walking casually along a waist-high wall surrounding the grounds of a large church. ‘This is Lindenallee.’ Wald pointed up the street. ‘Keep following it and you’ll get to the river. Up to you what you do from there.’
Xhepa frowned. ‘And you?’
‘To paraphrase Elvis, it’s not healthy to go on together with suspicious minds.’
‘No one is accusing you—’
‘Not yet. But that’s not the point. Someone informed. I know it wasn’t me, therefore I can’t trust your organisation.’
Stung honour twitched Xhepa’s fingers towards the Walther concealed under his jacket, but he controlled the impulse.
Wald smiled and turned off into a side street. Xhepa stopped, watching the Austrian walk away.
‘Good luck cleaning up your house,’ Wald called out. He waved without looking back, turned into another street and disappeared.
19. ASSESSMENTS
Geoffrey leaned into the Pennsylvania Room, the delicate synchronous rising of
his chin and eyebrows forming a silent query. Ryan Lachkovic waved it away, then immediately reconsidered. ‘Actually,’ he said, ‘an Irish Coffee would be splendid.’
Geoffrey smiled, nodded and was gone.
Splendid? And which English shire do you hail from? Lachkovic chided himself for his crude rapport-building trick; his instinctive ingratiatory language was a clear indication of how much the FBI agents had rattled him.
They were gone now. But Lachkovic knew they weren’t done with him. He presumed his genuine zero-knowledge of the Fifth Flag Financial Group was thanks to The Coalition’s don’t-ask-can’t-tell policy regarding the redistribution of finances. That plausible deniability had helped him side-step the FBI quizzing, but Lachkovic knew he’d been caught off-guard by the wholly unexpected linking of himself to Wald. Lachkovic had been shocked to be told he and Wald had shared the same former pharmaceutical employer; that detail surely should have red-flagged in the extensive background checks carried out during Wald’s recruitment.
Paranoia nipped at his thoughts. Could The Coalition be setting him up? The plan he was privy to was complex and multi-layered. Could there be a higher-level plot that made him just as much a sacrificial pawn as De Witte?
Stop.
Lachkovic dismissed the idea. If nothing else, what he knew would sink too many others. Among them the Chairman. And the Chairman owed Lachkovic. No, betrayal was inconceivable. The FBI had just been lucky, a monkeys-and-Shakespeare fluke.
Calm confidence returned. And Geoffrey appeared with the Irish Coffee Lachkovic no longer needed.
‘Lachkovic is smooth.’
Grace Breckinridge switched her gaze briefly away from the road ahead to glance at her partner. ‘Is this the point where I say too smooth?’
Oliver Jamieson grinned. ‘This is the point where you say let’s get an overly-complicated coffee order or we’ll never stay awake long enough to save the day.’
The Hunting Command (Grey Areas Triptych Book 1) Page 12
