Resolution to Kill

by E. V. Seymour

  Clay nodded. ‘All over. Scraping around in the dust with a bowl of rice and minimal sanitary facilities is not everyone’s idea of fun, but if you want to catch the bad guys you have to get down and dirty.’

  ‘Your spell in the more sophisticated environment of Istanbul must have seemed like a welcome change.’ He hadn’t forgotten being abducted by Clay in a previous encounter and almost put on a rendition flight.

  ‘So you remember.’ Clay snorted a laugh.

  ‘How could I forget?’

  ‘Certainly left your mark.’ Clay lightly touched the deep scar that ran from his eye to his mouth.

  ‘Sorry about that.’

  ‘No hard feelings.’ Clay’s tone was not altogether convincing. Tallis couldn’t really blame him.

  A waste of time to fish into Clay’s personal background - Clay would only give the story he wanted Tallis to believe - but he reckoned he could push it a little with regard to Clay’s professional credentials. ‘You play for the Alliance, right?’

  ‘The guys who work in the shadows and win every time,’ Clay snickered with a self-satisfied smile.

  Cocky, Tallis thought. Nobody won all the time. It wasn’t a bloody baseball match they were engaged in.

  ‘That said,’ Clay continued, the shine largely gone from his voice. ‘Some quarters in Washington would be a whole lot happier if we didn’t exist.’

  Pretty much fitted with Jon’s appraisal, Tallis recalled, and not dissimilar to his own work situation. ‘To defeat terrorism, sometimes you have to do deals with bad guys to get the really bad guys.’

  Clay twisted round, looked at him with genuine regard. ‘Well said, my man.’

  Good, Tallis thought, at least they had some kind of accord. And that was crucial if they were going to work effectively together. Unlike the rest of intelligence, where in an ideal world there were straight lines of communication and appropriate co-ordination, in black ops the same rules didn’t apply.

  An hour later they were touching down at Tegel, the smallest and most convenient of the three Berlin airports. After negotiating their way through a series of circular corridors, they had a pain-free passage through Customs. Harry Schwartz met them outside the departure gates. A shade under five foot eleven, he had a portly build, shirt buttons straining over his belly. A mop of reddish hair flopped over his smiling pudgy face, his pale blue eyes concealed behind

  gold-framed lenses.

  ‘Hi,’ he said, extending a hand first to Tallis, then Clay. ‘Car’s in the parking lot. It’s not far.’

  Tallis and Clay followed Schwartz to an unassuming dark grey 3 series BMW. Blinking against a fine spray of evening summer rain, Tallis deliberately climbed into the front passenger seat, leaving Clay no choice but to slip into the rear.

  ‘We’re about eight kilometres from the city centre,’ Schwartz explained, belting up. ‘I’ve booked rooms for you at the Adlon, a hotel close to the Brandenburg Gate. It will give you guys a chance to clean up and have something to eat. We’re scheduled to meet Alia at eleven tonight. Before then I thought we’d pop into Friedrichs.’

  ‘The scene of crime. Smart move, buddy,’ Clay said, causing Tallis to wince, although the affable Schwartz took no visible offence.

  Tallis looked out of the window, watched the city aglow with dancing light, the spire of the Fernsehturm, the television tower, puncturing the skyline. As if from left field, he wondered whether Clay was all that he appeared to be. Clay’s crass and opinionated American image was played up a little too much. For reasons he hadn’t yet worked out, Tallis suspected that the smokescreen was deliberate.

  London

  From the moment Senka Martinovic had pulled out the pistol, Mrs Everett had begged for her life and the life of her husband. She’d pleaded when they were blindfolded, protested when they were stripped of belts and ties and had their pockets emptied, panicked when she realised there were not one but two hostage-takers, remonstrated when forced into a car late at night and taken on a long, circuitous journey to a hideout. Hysterical at the sight of their new surroundings, a dank, windowless cellar without heat or light, Mrs Everett had screamed with such anguish, that Martinovic’s partner, Nasik, slapped her hard twice across the face. Only then did the general, who had remained calm throughout, partly because of his training and partly because he was in no physical shape to argue, appealed to them for mercy.

  ‘Mercy?’ Nasik spat. ‘Where was your mercy when you left the Kurds to fight Saddam alone?’

  ‘What?’ Mrs Everett wailed. ‘What’s she talking about, Laine?’ The side of her face where she’d been hit glowed crimson.

  ‘The first offensive,’ the general said, his voice gravelled by exhaustion and ill health, ‘the First Gulf War. Am I right, miss?’

  ‘You stirred us into rebellion, blew up our arms caches so that we couldn’t fight, then walked away. You left my father, my uncles and brothers to die.’

  The general shook his head sadly. ‘We had no choice. Our mission was to liberate Kuwait and crush Saddam. We had to eliminate Iraq’s weapons arsenal, to reduce the risk of further conflict.’

  ‘Conflict for whom?’ Nasik snarled. Petite, with big eyes and hair the colour of wet coal, anger slashed her face and distorted her features.

  ‘I appreciate your point of view, ma’am.’

  ‘Tell that to my mother, who lost everyone and everything.’

  Mrs Everett let out a low uncomprehending sob. ‘What has this to do with us?’

  ‘You’re Americans.’

  ‘But Laine was not personally responsible,’ Mrs Everett said, cupping the palms of her hands in protest.

  ‘He’s part of the American machine, the machine that is only ever interested in feeding its greed for oil, for wealth, for control, and for imposing its worthless values on the rest of the world. If you’d truly believed in the virtue of your mission you would have rid yourself of Saddam there and then, but you chose to keep him in place.’

  ‘Now that’s not…’

  ‘Fair?’ Nasik’s eyes blazed.

  The general turned his tired gaze towards Martinovic. There would have been a time when his training kicked in, when he would have gained valuable intelligence from his assailants, when he would have memorised every word and action down to the last detail. Truth was, Laine Everett was a dying man and he knew it. ‘And you, miss?’ he said to the woman he believed to be Miss Sterne. ‘What have I done to the Germans to cause such grave offence?’

  ‘I am not German.’

  The general frowned. ‘But your papers said th…’

  ‘I belong to the narod, the tribe. I am a Serb.’

  All blood in the general’s face collapsed below the surface of his skin.

  Berlin

  After checking into the Adlon, he and Clay were escorted to adjoining rooms. Tallis briefly examined his plush new surroundings, showered and ordered steak and coffee from room service. He needed fuel to get him through what he believed would be a long night. Around nine-forty, Schwartz collected them and drove them to Prenzlauer Berg. Dark and cloudy skies obliterated all natural light, the gauzy glow of cars and street lamps the only illumination. Tallis peered into the shadows. It seemed that everywhere the city was shrill and fevered with activity.

  They arrived at Friedrichs, went inside and climbed up the stairs to the bar at the top. Harry ordered expensive cocktails that Tallis had no intention of touching, and quickly fell into easy conversation with the bartender who pointed out the exact spot where Fitz had entertained his lady friend. Taking their drinks, they trooped over to the corner table and drew up chairs.

  ‘Still no sign of a body?’ Clay said, sipping a Coke that cost as much as Tallis’s cocktail.

  ‘No,’ Schwartz replied.

  ‘Cops putting their backs into it, or merely talking the talk?’

  Schwartz shrugged.

  ‘Oh, I get it,’ Clay said, cunning in his eyes. ‘They’ve been asked to lay off, to leave it to the experts. Am I
right?’

  ‘Couldn’t say,’ Schwartz said with a wide smile.

  Tallis, who couldn’t give a damn about the protocol, had been mapping out his own line of enquiry. ‘The black girl must have had help,’ he maintained. ‘Fitz is a big guy. That’s a lot of meat to manoeuvre, and he left apparently worse for wear. They were sitting here on the fourth floor. There’s no lift. Even if she could have aided him down four flights of stairs, what did she do when she got him out into the open?’

  ‘There’s no evidence to suggest she called a cab,’ Schwartz said.

  ‘Exactly, so she or rather theywere collected.’

  ‘Still think Fitz is alive?’ Schwartz looked from Tallis to Clay.

  ‘Depends on the message his abductor wants to deliver. Is this murder or kidnap? What surprises me is that we haven’t discovered either a body or Fitz. This is a European capital, not some maze of dirty streets in the Middle East. There our main problem was finding the hostage before he was moved on.’

  Tallis slotted another piece of Clay’s professional jigsaw into his mental picture. ‘Could there be something else about Fitz that we don’t know?’

  ‘Something connected to his more distant past?’ Schwartz said, his lenses glinting in the light.

  ‘Maybe,’ Tallis said non-committally, uncomfortably aware that there was only so much they could discuss in front of Harry Schwartz. Fortunately, Harry decided to take a leak. As soon as he was out of earshot, Tallis leant towards Clay.

  ‘It was rumoured that US peacekeeping troops were involved in rape in Somalia. Is there a slim chance that Fitz was one of the offenders?’

  ‘Jesus, there are always rumours like that,’ Clay said, dismissive. ‘Peacekeeping is right up there with abuse.’

  ‘Well, that’s fine, then,’ Tallis said, throwing Clay a caustic look. ‘Glad we got that straight.’ He didn’t say that peacekeeping was also synonymous with rescuing children abandoned in the crucible of warfare, of protecting food convoys, of trying to strengthen the rule of law.

  ‘I’m just saying, is all,’ Clay said, downing his Coke, catching Schwartz’s eye as he sauntered back from the men’s room. ‘Now let’s split and see if Harry’s Arab friend can shed some light on what the fuck is going on here.’

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The lights down low, Jules Belgrand lay naked in bed in a trendy apartment on the Left Bank in Paris. He’d bought the love nest as a birthday gift for his mistress. Small and arty, filled with natural sunlight, and with a Juliet balcony off the bedroom with views of the domed Pantheon, the place made him feel more at home than anywhere else on earth. At any moment he expected Monique to return and express her gratitude in full. A student at the Sorbonne, she was the same age as his twenty-year-old daughter. Belgrand thanked God every day that he was French. When it came to affairs of the heart, his countrymen were progressive in their thinking, true liberals.

  Closing his eyes, he imagined Monique’s supple hands on his body, her skin touching his, the vitality and insatiability of young flesh. Since Monique had come into his life he’d felt at least a decade younger. Even his wife had remarked on his renewed energy.

  At the sound of his mistress’s key in the door, he felt himself harden beneath the cool Egyptian-cotton sheets.

  ‘Monique, cherie,’ he murmured, stretching out like a lazy lion, ears straining for the sound of her soft footfall against the thick-pile carpet. He measured the distance from the front door to the bedroom in his mind, mentally negotiating the narrow hall with the big mirror that they’d found at a bargain price in a brocante in Montmartre, passing the doors to the kitchen and bathroom until…

  There was more than one set of footsteps. He sat up, let the sheet fall away from his chest, puzzled more than alarmed.

  ‘Monique?’ he called, louder now.

  The door swung open. Monique stumbled inside, her arm held in a claw-like grip by a

  small-boned woman with dark colouring and black hair. The point of a wide-bladed knife was at Monique’s white throat, her cheeks the colour of wood-ash. Fat tears spotted her face, sliding down and pooling underneath her nose.

  Unable to process the precise nature of what was taking place, Belgrand nevertheless calmly assumed control.

  ‘It’s all right, Monique,’ he said, looking her in the eye, then, in cool authoritative tones, he addressed the assailant. ‘Drop the knife. We can talk this through. What is it you want?’

  The woman’s stare scorched his skin. It was as if she could peer inside his soul, as if she could behold all his faults and weaknesses. He tried to escape her haunting gaze. He couldn’t. He had never seen eyes so black. As a former major serving in Bosnia, he had come face to face with hatred in his time, and he recognised it now. He felt as though he were standing in the middle of a filthy, contaminated tide.

  In the absence of a response, he begged the woman not to hurt Monique and, taking his gold watch and wallet from the bedside table, threw them to the woman. ‘It’s all I have. I can get you more.’

  ‘I don’t want your money.’ The voice with the foreign accent crackled with enmity. The assailant’s lips, Belgrand noticed, were the colour of smoked cherries. An immigrant, he deduced, no doubt one who’d escaped after the closure of the jungle, a camp filled with illegals. All right, he thought, his inner composure restored, this is a situation that can be dealt with.

  Monique let out a terrified squeal.

  ‘Shut up,’ the woman cursed, lightly piercing the girl’s throat, drawing blood.

  Belgrand locked eyes with the woman, slowly pushed back the covers, swung his legs out of the bed, planting both feet on the floor. ‘Let us talk,’ he said, keeping his voice neutral. ‘My name is Jules Bel…’

  ‘I know who you are.’

  Belgrand blinked. Forced to review his earlier assessment, he now realised that this was a targeted attack. As concerning, the woman had shown her face, never a good sign. It inferred that she didn’t give a damn. Made her infinitely dangerous.

  He tried again. ‘What is your name?’

  ‘What do you care?’

  Belgrand swallowed. ‘Of course I care. Now, please, what do you want?’

  ‘To make you suffer as I suffered.’

  In a flash a distant memory from his past emerged and locked on to the present. Bosnia. Karadzic. A personal shot at fame and glory that failed. ‘You’re Muslim.’

  The woman with the dark eyes nodded.

  ‘Then it’s me you want, not the girl.’ He took a step towards her, his palms open in supplication.

  ‘Stay where you are.’

  He stopped, turned, not because he was ordered to, but because the door to the balcony was open. A masked figure stood on the threshold. Female. The gloved hand held a pistol. Anguished, Belgrand looked back to Monique and gasped in horror as the other woman, her face so calm and blank, plunged the blade down and across.

  Berlin

  The nightclub, bathed in a flat red glow, was the kind of seedy joint in which arms dealers and people traffickers did business. Schwartz had commandeered a corner table away from the action. Faghiri looked like a man who expected front-row seats at a concert only to be given the back row and a measly view of the stage. Every so often his shifty eyes flickered towards a faraway point where nubile, mostly naked women with oiled bodies gyrated.

  Schwartz made the introductions and rolled the conversation, skilfully putting Faghiri at ease. Within seconds he’d elicited that Faghiri was indeed in good health, that his part-time job as a waiter was fine and that his studies were going well. After a further spate of small talk, Schwartz dropped his voice and enquired whether Faghiri had been able to access a list of protesters from the Iranian embassy.

  ‘Easy.’ Faghiri’s eyes glittered. ‘As you said, I waited until the main course was served, then I sneaked into the code room.’ He slipped a piece of paper from inside his leather jacket and handed it to Schwartz. Providing a ready pool of potential agents for Schwartz to
recruit, Tallis thought, mentally storing the information away.

  ‘Good boy,’ Schwartz said, looking at Clay, who was clearly eager to cut to the chase.

  ‘We’re trying to find an American, Alia, guy by the name of Bruce Fitz, a private security contractor. Picked up by a black girl, maybe a hooker.’

  Despite the surprise interpretation, Tallis remained expressionless while Clay sketched out the detail. Faghiri listened carefully but addressed his reply to Schwartz. ‘I know nothing of this.’ He spread his surprisingly large hands.

  Deciding to go with Clay’s version, Tallis asked Faghiri which crime syndicates were mainly running the girls in Berlin.

  ‘Albanians. They get killed all the time.’

  ‘Names of the players?’

  ‘I do not know. I could find out maybe. Wait,’ Faghiri said, jabbing the air with a thick index finger, his face suddenly animated. ‘There was one, a guy, Bilal. He is not on the scene all the time. He has economic interests elsewhere.’

  Tallis nodded and looked at Clay, who shrugged. ‘And the girls,’ Tallis said. ‘What nationalities?’

  ‘Many were trafficked from Bosnia, but the Albanians will take anyone - Bulgarians, Romanians, girls from Montenegro.’

  A pain was developing behind Tallis’s left eye. He knew he was failing to ask the right questions and yet he felt there was significance in the answers. Time to get back to Fitz, to the possibility of abduction, and where he was now.

  ‘Where’s the most likely place to spirit someone away?’

  Alia frowned. Tallis repeated the question. ‘If you wanted to hold someone captive, where would you take them?’ He knew Berlin. He had his own views, but he wanted to see what the Iranian would say.

  Alia continued to look dim. Exasperated, Clay let off a quick burst of Farsi, startling both Tallis and Schwartz.