Packed with dozens of bars and clubs, the area is a key destination for those who want to have fun. Bruce Fitz was one of them. When he strode into one of the many nightclubs off Kollwitzstrasse he had only one desire: a long weekend of hedonism. On leave for the next three days, he was back in one of his favourite cities and looking forward to kicking back. Yup, Bruce Fitz intended to help himself to everything on offer.
The club was on four levels: a dance floor where you could dance all night to techno-pop, another level for live music, anything from heavy metal to jazz, a restaurant serving German staples, and a swanky lounge bar that served the best cocktails in Berlin.
He started off with a cold beer dished up by a glitzy Fraulein, all dark make-up and red lips. With his back to the mirrored interior, he was in the perfect position to survey a number of skimpily clad young women. There were plenty of German males more handsome and svelte than himself, but Fitz didn’t give a damn. Forty-six years old, a former marine who kept himself in trim, he had confidence, money and status. He was American, for Chrissakes, and Americans were king. Obama got Osama was his mantra.
About to reach for his glass, he was drawn up short. Holy shit. His brain registered bronze shimmering skin, sleek black hair shining blue at the tips. Small, neat features: nose straight and true, mighty fine cheekbones and the darkest eyes imaginable. And my, oh my, this little beauty was tall, with a willowy, supple figure. She held her head erect, and he thought she looked like some magnificent African queen. And she was walking his way. He was getting a hard-on just seeing those hips sway.
Enveloped in a heady cloud of musk and jasmine, he turned on his best film star smile. ‘Good evening,’ he said.
Hesitant and unsure, her eyes drifted towards his. The vulnerability in her expression reminded him of young women he’d come across in Somalia all those years before.
‘Let me buy you a drink.’
‘Well, I’m not…’
‘You with someone?’ he looked over her shoulder.
She glanced down, rounded her back slightly and drew her clutch bag tight under her arm. He swore he caught sight of a tear in her eye. Hell, he thought, some jerk has stood her up. Boy, was this his lucky night.
‘C’mon.’ He beamed, touching her elbow. ‘A pretty lady shouldn’t be alone.’ Next, he ordered cocktails of vodka, raspberry liqueur and vanilla essence shaken over ice. ‘Easy on the fruit,’ he instructed the bartender. ‘The name’s Bruce.’ He took her small hand and, raising it to his mouth, brushed his lips against it.
‘Aziza,’ she said softly.
‘Pretty,’ he drooled, entranced. Even to his ears, he sounded like a heartsick fool.
‘You’re very kind,’ she said haltingly. It occurred to him that she was more at home speaking German than English.
‘The pleasure’s all mine. Here,’ he said, taking their drinks, ‘let’s find ourselves some place quieter.’
Settled at a corner table, he studied her every movement. He thought he was going to pass out when she slid the straw between her cute lips and took a good deep swallow. She glanced up at him, caught his eye and smiled shyly.
‘So what do you do, Aziza?’
‘Nothing special.’
‘You’re kidding,’ he said, beaming.
‘I’m a waitress at a hotel in Alexanderplatz.’
‘Wasted,’ Fitz said. He meant it.
‘It’s not so easy to get work in Germany. There are no jobs and employers are very strict about speaking the language.’
‘Where are you from originally?’
‘Kenya,’ she said, without missing a beat. ‘I’ve been here almost ten years and only now have I found steady work.’
‘I get the picture,’ he said.
‘And you, Bruce, what do you do?’
‘I’m a private security contractor. We do a lot of stuff for the US government.’
She looked mildly uncomfortable, suggesting to him that she was either offended or felt out of her depth.
‘Folks in Europe tend to swing one of two ways,’ he said. ‘Some people hate us, for sure. They think we’re gun-slinging morons.’
‘No, no,’ she protested. ‘I’m surprised, that’s all.’
He let out a deep laugh. ‘I have to tell you, Aziza, I like you.’
She flicked an anxious smile and started to look for the door, to plan her exit, he suspected. No way, he thought.
‘I mean it. We’re just big boys with toys.’
She issued an embarrassed smile, squirmed a little in her seat.
‘And we get to travel some, which suits me just fine. Say, how about I get you another drink?’
‘Well, I’m not…’
‘Sure you are. You’re having a nice time, aren’t you? Come on, humour an old guy.’ At that she flashed a smile that lit the room. Good, he thought, his considerable powers of persuasion were starting to work. ‘Be right back,’ he said and winked.
Minutes later he was sitting next to her, his leg close to hers. She seemed to have settled down a little. He was going to have to handle her with more care, he decided.
‘Have you always been in the security business?’ she asked him.
‘The past fifteen or so years. Before that I served with the marines. Went to some pretty scary places, I can tell you.’
‘Really?’
‘Could say. Sometimes things got a mite crazy.’ He chuckled. He leant in close; let her sweet breath waft over his face. It was a long time since he’d had a black woman, he thought. Hookers didn’t count. ‘I was out in Somalia in ‘93.’
She surveyed him with a blank expression.
‘You know, all that trouble in Mogadishu. Ever see the film Black Hawk Down?’
She shook her head, clueless.
‘Served in a thirty-seven-thousand-strong force, twenty-eight-thousand of us American, part of a UN peacekeeping operation. At the time warlords were stealing UN supplies and using the proceeds for funding weapons.’
‘So you were there to stop these warlords?’ Her look was so intense he could feel the chemistry between them.
‘Uh-huh. Operation Restore Hope, it was called, and the only way to prevent Mr and Mrs Somali and the kids from starving to death.’ Images of heavily armed drug-crazed youths flashed through his mind. Jesus.
‘And did you?’
Fitz puffed out his cheeks and let out a long breath. ‘To a point.’
She said nothing, watched his face, kind of intent. Burn, baby, burn, he could feel heat coming off her. He recalled another time, before they left, a wild, wild time.
‘We pulled out.’
‘Why?’
‘Orders. After that the shit - pardon my language - hit the fan. One of the warlords, a guy called Aideed, got ideas above his station and ambushed two Pakistani units. We went back in and launched a number of surprise attacks.’ His face darkened.
‘What is it?’ she said, her expression earnest.
He shook his head, let out a dry, mirthless laugh. ‘Got a mite messy.’
‘Oh.’ She lowered her eyes, a tug of dismay pulling at her mouth.
‘Collateral damage, sweetheart,’ he said, putting his warm hand over hers and giving it a squeeze. ‘Not nice, but unavoidable. And it was a helluva long time ago. Now, how about you stay here while I visit the john, then we’ll drink up and find us a nice quiet place to eat.’
She looked up, met his gaze. ‘That would be lovely,’ she murmured with such an ardent expression on her face Fitz thought he’d died and gone to heaven. He stood up. ‘Don’t you go away now, you hear?’
The woman who called herself Aziza watched him walk away. As soon as he was out of range she opened her bag and reached for the phial of Rohypnol concealed inside. In seconds, she poured the contents into the remains of his drink.
Birmingham: 0120 hours
Tallis stood, stretched, flexed his back, sat back down and ran a hand over the stubble on his chin. He was amped out on caffeine overload, every fibr
e of his body wired. Only
three-quarters of the way through the file, already he could see a logical sequence of events buried in the text.
One recorded incident concerned one Liu Kai, a former ambassador and Department Representative of China to the UN, killed in a car bomb attack. The Chinese authorities had put the word out that Kai had fallen foul of Chinese gangsters. Digging deeper, Tallis was not entirely surprised to discover that Kai had abstained from a vote to help the people of Darfur during his time in office, and for an obviously grimy reason: China was supplying arms to government forces in exchange for oil. And who were China’s best buddies in the UN Security Council, he thought: the Russians.
He rolled his shoulders, flicked his head from side to side. Could be happenstance. The evidence was, at best, circumstantial. Another recorded incident was a little more illuminating. It concerned a former official from the Cameroons who’d worked in the 1990s at the office of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees. The man, now retired, had been visiting his daughter’s home in Bruges, Belgium. According to the police report, he’d been playing with his grandchildren in the garden when approached by a black woman. The children, only four and five, assumed that the woman was a friend. When she produced a gun and shot the old man at point-blank range, they had reason for doubt. After sensitive and careful investigation, in which the children stated that the woman looked funny, it emerged that the attacker bore certain tribal scars on her face and that the sleeve of her coat was flat and pinned to her side, suggesting that the limb had been amputated at the elbow.
Got him thinking. About Africa in general and Rwanda in particular. Got him thinking about the West’s shattering failure to react to mass genocide during the 1990s when thousands of Tutsis had been maimed or executed at the hands of Hutus, amputation a popular method for setting an example. It had been alleged that, in some cases, UN peacekeepers had stood by and watched as women were dragged past and hacked to death. More critically, the now-dead official was known at the time to be sympathetic to the Hutu cause. On record, he had counselled against intervention. So, in the same vengeful manner of a Mossad hit squad, was a mysterious team at large eliminating those deemed to have blood on their hands for sins committed almost two decades before? And if so, when and where would it stop?
According to the dossier, in spite of an extensive and lengthy police investigation, the killer was never found. It was as if the murderess had disappeared into thin air. Tallis pulled a face. If two little kids could remember, chances are others had also seen her; unless she had an accomplice, or accomplices; unless she had a safe house.
The more he cast his mind back to the turbulent 1990s, a decade dominated by conflict on a massive scale and one in which he’d fought in the First Gulf War, the more he thought there lay a connecting pattern.
The door silently opened behind him. Asim popped his head round. ‘How are you doing?’
‘All right.’
‘Come to any logical conclusions?’
‘Nothing that stands up to scrutiny.’ He wanted to keep his own counsel, not rush off
half-cocked.
By now Asim was in the room, back leaning against the wall, arms folded, the suggestion of a smile on his face. ‘It’s not there, is it?’
‘The Russian connection? Apparently not.’ Both of them knew that in the murky world of espionage it wasn’t wise to rule things out with haste. Neither could you fall victim to conspiracy theory with every foe potentially involved.
‘Think we’re looking at a new type of terrorist group?’
Tallis thought about it, not wishing to be drawn. ‘A group that has a specific grudge against the UN?’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘Motive?’
‘Political.’
‘Reason?’
‘Like it or not, in certain circles the UN is seen as synonymous with appeasement.’
‘You disagree?’
Asim took his time before answering. ‘The UN’s overriding aim is to bring peace. UN delegates are often wheeled in to broker deals and negotiate ceasefires, and make two sides lay off blasting the hell out of each other. Sometimes the ceasefire comes at a price.’
‘With one side making good on the gains they’ve already made?’
‘Exactly that, but to do nothing often results in there being nothing left to save. The Balkans provide a pretty good example.’
It was well known that the Bosnian government had been slow to accept a ceasefire of hostilities because they did not wish to ratify Serb gains. Tallis thought back to Dario, his brutal elimination, what it signified, what it really meant. Just an isolated incident, someone settling an old score, or connected to a bigger picture?
‘What do you think?’ Asim asked.
‘About the motive? What I always think.’ Tallis flashed a grin. ‘Revenge.’
Asim laughed. ‘You’re consistent, I’ll give you that. Much more to read?’
‘Enough.’ Tallis wiped the back of a hand across his forehead.
‘I’ll leave you to it.’ Softly crossing the room, Asim opened and closed the door behind him.
Berlin: 0230 hours: local time
Bruce Fitz came to with the taste of blood in his mouth. The intense pain in his head suggested that he was the victim of a chemical cocktail rather than a blow, and probably accounted for the trouble he was having locating where he was with what had happened. Nothing made sense.
As far as he could tell he was held in some kind of disused factory. His wrists and feet were bound together, and a length of chain secured him to machinery, the like of which he didn’t recognise. There was a strange smell, like molten blacktop, tar mixed with something altogether more renal.
Fragments of memory skimmed across the surface of his mind. He tried to catch them and force them into some kind of order. He recalled a black girl, good looking, a ride in a van, concrete, the rest a blur.
Muzzy, Fitz glanced down, saw that his clothes were all messed up and dirtied. He had pissed himself. Accounted for the smell, he grunted. His mouth was as dry as desert sand. ‘Water,’ he cried out. He felt intolerable heat.
He didn’t hear her approach, wondered if she were a mirage. She crouched down in front of him, took hold of his hair and yanked his head back.
‘Hey,’ he said. He didn’t feel fear. He’d been in worse situations than this. With a little time and thought he didn’t doubt he could out-think this black bitch. He jerked his head forward, tried to smash the nose on her face, but couldn’t co-ordinate the move. Missed by a mile. More thinking time required. ‘Lemme go.’
The woman smiled, straightened up, began to walk away.
‘What the hell is this all about?’ he yelled after her. For a chill moment he wondered whether she’d seen through his lies, whether his abduction was connected to his current employment.
She stopped, pivoted on one bare foot and faced him. ‘It’s about collateral damage, sweetheart. Not nice but unavoidable.’ Her eyes glistened with hatred.
That, he thought, feeling a measure of relief. ‘Naw, you don’t understand.’
‘Somalia, 1993,’ she said, her voice cracking.
He swallowed. ‘But you said…’
‘I was there. You abandoned us, then you came back and killed us. I saw what you and your friends did.’
A kaleidoscope of bloodstained memories rushed to the fore. His nerves fried under her gaze. Fat drops of sweat pooled in his groin and under his arms.
‘But why me?’ he bellowed. ‘What have I done?’ He didn’t recall the rape of several women on his first tour of duty. Such things fell into the category of spoils of war.
Her smile was chill. ‘You aid the enemy.’
‘What?’ he said, bewildered.
A machete suddenly appeared in her hand from nowhere. At that precise moment Bruce Fitz didn’t wonder what she was going to do to him. He already knew.
Birmingham: 0600 hours.
Tallis closed the file. Six in
the morning and he felt stewed with information, and depressed - quite something, given his basic emotional setting. He longed to see the sun, to breathe in fresh, unfiltered air, to go home and think in the sanctity of his own personal surroundings. Above all, he wanted to be free. Asim appeared and granted his wishes with a proviso.
‘Can you get back here for one-thirty?’
‘What happens at one-thirty?’
‘We thought you might need backup on this operation. Time the two of you met.’
Tallis frowned. He didn’t want backup, didn’t need it, never had done. Then, with a jolt, he remembered Charlie Lavender. A whole collection of images fled through his mind: big smile; girl on a motorbike; generous lover; intelligent friend. For Charlie he was prepared to make an exception. A sudden vision of luxuriant dark hair, green eyes and a figure to die for floated before his eyes. And she was good, very good at her job. It was no understatement to say that Charlie had once come to his rescue in more ways than she could ever imagine. He wondered whether again she’d be able to shine a beam of bright light into his sorry soul.
‘Fine,’ Tallis said, clearly wrong-footing Asim, judging by the expression of pleasant surprise on his face.
With a lilt in his stride Tallis made his way out of the building, strode back through the square, crossing through the National Indoor Arena and out the other side and over the bridge at Brindleyplace to where his Porsche Boxster loitered in a secure lot in the car park. Thirty seconds later the Boxster prowled across the cobbled street, negotiated the roundabout and, taking a right, headed on to and down Broad Street. Tallis leant back, flexing his shoulders with pleasure. He still got a buzz from the throaty engine note.
After running the gauntlet of speed restrictions, he arrived at the bungalow in Quinton ten minutes later. He’d long resigned himself to living in what was a humble dwelling by anyone’s standards. He’d inherited it from his grandmother, and his tie was sentimental rather than practical, he was no longer ashamed to admit. He’d never taken a woman back there. Giving sanctuary on a purely platonic basis didn’t count. This was home, his fortress, where he could close the doors on the murky world in which he operated and be himself.
Resolution to Kill Page 8
