by Dean Carson
Nonchalantly, hands in my pockets, I strolled the suburbs, nodding at old men on street corners and watching an impromptu soccer game on a bit of waste ground. Outside, I was a man killing time. Inside, I was not myself. Pretty girls passed and I didn’t look. That is always a sign the mind is not focused.
I didn’t last the hour. Fifty-five minutes in, on a long wide street with low apartment blocks, I slipped the battery into the phone and powered it up. Almost instantly it pinged: incoming message.
My heart beating, I opened the message without even checking who the sender was. It was a simple one word message: Well?
My brother, still on about the porn video.
With a surge of irritation I jabbed out a rapid response: She told me it is lesbian porn, so nothing to worry about. I hit send. That would put his knickers in a twist for a bit.
Seven minutes later, the call I was waiting for came in. Bill, back in Langley.
“Bad news,” he began. No preamble. “Like I thought, we didn’t put that job up. I’ve had the tech guys run it through the system. Someone hacked us, used our identity to put up the post.”
“Shit.”
“It gets worse. It was a sophisticated hack. You were the only one who could see the post. So they wanted you, and only you, to take the hit.”
I let that sink in for a minute. It made no sense.
“You still there?”
“Why would someone pick on me like this? I don’t see the point.”
“We’re still working on the whos and the whys,” said Bill. I could hear sounds behind him. He wasn’t calling from a secure location. But he was in the heart of CIA headquarters in Virginia, so I suppose every corner of the building was secure. He didn’t have to scan the street for strange men as he spoke.
“Give me a minute, Eliot.”
There were indistinct murmurings, Bill’s voice occasionally rising above the background. Finally, he was back on the line.
“Wow,” he began.
“That helps,” I replied.
“We know who hacked us. Or at least, who is behind it.”
He paused for a few heartbeats and I waited. I could hear the distress in his voice when he resumed.
“It’s a big fish. Amel Dugalic.”
Now I got the hesitation. No one had heard of Dugalic. His name had not hit the papers or risen in public consciousness. There was a reason; he was the hidden power broker who had been one of the beneficiaries of the war in the early nineties. He had pulled the strings behind the scenes, and made millions. He was a money man for one of the warlords on the Bosnian side who had also played a double game by working for a Serbian faction at the same time. Playing both sides, he couldn’t lose. In the new Bosnia he kept a low profile, but at least four factions owed him allegiance. I knew none of this; Bill had to fill me in. His account left me confused.
“What has that to do with me?”
“Don’t you see? Radoslav was a small fry. He was never on our list. But we are building a case against Dugalic. Bring him down and you bring down four gangs with him, one with ties to fundamentalist Islam. He’s our target, and you’re the man we’re hoping to send in. We’re going to drop a hundred big ones on this guy, and you’ll pull the trigger.”
“Unless I’m dead.”
“Exactly. Dugalic must have found out. So he hacked our account. Now you’re in Bosnia and you have killed one of his business rivals. A win for him. And he kills you. Double win for him.”
“So I have to kill him now?”
“You have to get out of Bosnia now. He’s too well protected. You’ll be back.”
“I’m not the terminator.”
“Exactly — and even Arnie could be killed. You’ve got to run, boy. Run.”
I sighed. So much for my relaxing dinner, glass of wine and easy trip home. “Can you…?”
“No,” he said, before I could complete my question. He was right; I knew the rules. I don’t work for American intelligence. I am a bounty hunter, a freelancer. If something goes wrong, I am on my own. It is the only way this game can work. It provides complete deniability for the governments that use my unique services.
“Do your best to get out on your own, and I’ll see if can I put together a plan B, but it will be strictly off the books if it is possible. Don’t wait for it, because it might not happen. You’re on your own. I’ll pray for you, buddy.”
That bad.
FIVE
I spent the night back in the park. Mostar in summer is not so bad for al fresco sleeping, and there was no concierge to make note of my passport and alert watchers to my presence. I had very little with me, just a few essentials. The phone, of course. That was never more than an arm’s length away. And my wallet. That had been hidden close to the assassination site for the four days I had staked out Radoslav and had been in my pocket ever since. It contained a number of junk credit cards and one library card that was my real credit card. It looked just like a library card but had the full chip and pin and magnetic strip and worked perfectly throughout Europe. Because of its disguise it would not reveal my real identity. I also had my passport — well, one of them. The Mark Wilson one. I also had around sixty Bosnian convertible marka and a few coins. That amounted to less than thirty euro. Damn all use to me.
It got chilly after midnight but I found a low wall and curled down in its lea, taking some shelter from the light summer breeze. I had nothing to double as a pillow and I can’t say it was a comfortable night. But in the morning I was up bright and early.
By seven I was walking the empty streets, and at eight I found a café for breakfast. After, I hit the bathroom. I looked like hell. My eyes were red, I had stubble and it looked as if I had been sleeping rough. I tidied myself up as best as I could and killed another two hours before taking the bus for the short ride to Ortiješ and the airport.
Mostar has the second busiest airport in Bosnia, due to its nearness to Medjugorje, a major Catholic pilgrimage centre. But it would be exaggerating to call it a thriving aviation centre. It was a small low building in the middle of nowhere, with a sleepy feel to it. Security would be lax, with just a few pilgrims and locals heading to Sarajevo. I was tense, but getting through should be no problem.
Nonetheless, I took precautions. The first thing I had to determine was whether my passport was hot; would it set alarm bells ringing? I entered the terminal building and quickly got my bearings. Only a few airlines used the facility and I could see from the departure board that I had two hours until my flight, the Blue Panorama charter to Rome. There were about sixty people in the concourse, and it was not difficult to spot someone on the same flight as me. He was a businessman in his forties travelling with a younger woman. She might have been his wife. She might have been his secretary, or mistress, or both. He had his travel documents in his hand when I bumped into him.
“I am so sorry,” I muttered. Then I said it in Bosnian, and Italian. Covering all the bases. I smiled weakly and then bent to pick up his passport for him. That was when the switch happened. I did it deftly, and he never suspected a thing. I put his ticket into his hand, too, and smiled again.
“Nessun problemo,” he said. Italian. Going home.
As his wife/secretary/mistress fussed around him, I went into the toilet, emerging a few minutes later with sunglasses I had stolen from the backpack of a traveller. I stayed on the edges of the crowd until the flight was called then got into a position where I could see the Italian businessman, but not be in his line of sight.
What would happen next was simple. His passport would be rejected because it was not his passport. It was Mark Wilson’s. If that was all that happened, I would make my way up to him, apologise once more and put the situation right. But it might not be that simple. The next few minutes would tell.
The line moved, edging towards the bored looking officials at the security check. Mark Wilson was at least ten people in front of me. I could reach him quickly or I could fade into the background, depending on
how things went.
The butterflies were circling my innards. I was constantly scanning the crowd, alert for any dangers. That was when I saw her. The tall woman I had passed shortly after the assassination, the woman with no daddy issues. With my shades on and the dust washed from my hair she probably couldn’t recognise me, but I instinctively tried to avoid eye contact.
Using my peripheral vision I could see her looking at me a moment too long, but she was probably trying to place a face in a crowd, nothing more. Tourists bump into each other constantly in foreign countries, and I had nothing to worry about on that score. My worry was now near the top of the line.
The Italian reached the passport official. I watched as he pushed the passport forward and got ready to walk through to the gate. The official looked at the passport and was about to hand it back when he paused. He looked up at the businessman then back down at the passport. The pictures weren’t an exact match, but passport pictures all look like convict mugshots. Now he would discover that the name did not match the name on the ticket, which was what I was interested in.
I couldn’t hear what was being said above the sound of the other travellers, but it was obvious that some discussion was taking place. The official handed the passport to a colleague, who looked at it, then at the Italian businessman. Heads dropped and a discussion followed in rapid Bosnian. Both men looked up and the first nodded slightly.
Immediately two large policemen appeared from nowhere, taking positions on either side of the businessman. They took him by the elbows and began leading him to a door at the side of the concourse. Now I could hear what he was saying because he had raised his voice and the line had gone silent. He was speaking in English, trying to explain to the two policemen that he had bumped into a fellow passenger and that was not his passport. But they kept him moving, and a moment later he disappeared.
I felt a pang of guilt. Obviously the name Mark Wilson on the passport had triggered a security alert, and the Italian faced a few hours of frustrating delay and interrogation. My question was answered; if I had tried to board with that passport, I would have been hauled away. Whoever had set me up had been very thorough. But I had been more thorough. All I had to do was walk up with the Italian passport, explain about the collision, take his ticket from the security desk and leave the Mark Wilson one there, and board. Simple. The sense of relief that I was on the way again banished all guilt, and I sighed.
I flipped open the stolen passport to see how closely I resembled the man I was meant to be and to check my new name. That was when I knew I was in trouble.
I had his mistress’s passport!
SIX
Some situations cannot be made right. I would not be flying today. I made my way out of the airport and used some of my precious supplies of Bosnian convertible marka to get a taxi back to town. I didn’t want to hang around waiting for the bus in case the cops figured out the Italian was innocent quicker than cops normally figure such things out. I jumped in the first cab and gave the only address I knew in the city: the bombed hostel.
Luckily enough, I had the sense to stop a few blocks early and get out. The hostel could be under surveillance. I walked away, towards the more commercial centre. Soon I saw what I was looking for. One more test to see how screwed I was. I took my card out of my wallet and put it in the hole in the wall, keying in my PIN. A notice came up in the Cyrillic alphabet. It could have been a message asking me what service I required. But the flashing yellow triangle with the exclamation mark in it made that unlikely. I hit the button that I know means to cancel, but the machine kept flashing and my card was not returned to me.
Now I knew. I was screwed.
I had been set up by an expert. Despite being confident he would kill me in the hostel explosion, he had covered all bases by flagging my passport and by hacking enough systems to get my card rejected. I had no documents, no money and no way home.
That’s what friends are for. I rang Bill.
“You’re right. You’re screwed,” he assured me when I had brought him up to speed. “And you know I can’t help. What you need is a friend. Are there any other guys in the business in the area?”
On the face of it, not a bad suggestion. We are a small elite group, us big bounty hunters. But we are hardly friends. Friendly rivals in some cases, bitter rivals in other cases. There were a few among the Brits that I could count on, a smaller number of Americans, and very few of the Europeans. And what were the odds of any of them being in the same part of Europe?
“Give me an hour,” said Bill.
He didn’t need the hour. Thirty-five minutes later my phone beeped, and I picked up at the first ring.
“I have good news and I have bad news. I will give you both together. The only possible friend you have is in Dubrovnik, but it is La Donna.”
The silence on the phone stretched. Telling me that La Donna was my lifeline was like telling a man in a dark cave that he could light the fuse on a stick of dynamite and it would provide him with illumination. True, but most of us would choose to curse the darkness. La Donna and I had a history, and it is never good to have a history with a woman like her. I had left my religion behind me in my teens, but I still felt the urge to cross myself.
“Are you still there?” Bill asked eventually.
“Where is she based?” I replied. I would embrace the madness and light the fuse.
Getting to Dubrovnik would be the problem. I had to organise it with no money and no papers. The papers weren’t a major issue. I felt the Italian’s passport would get me through border patrol into Croatia easily enough. It is slack on the road. Most cars are waved through without even lowering a window. But I didn’t have a car, and 140 km was too far to walk.
The obvious solution was to steal a car. It would not be difficult with my skill set. And if you pick the right car, it won’t be reported missing until long after you have abandoned it. It is a risk, but normally a safe one. What bothered me was that Dugalic, or whoever he had hired to do his dirty work, was a step ahead of me all the time. So the risk was too great.
My brother, the most conservative and conventional man I know, loved to trot out business jargon like Think Outside The Box. Easy to sneer, but he might be right. I remembered an old bar story. It might work. It would be risky, but a life without risks would make me my brother.
Walking casually but observing my surroundings like a pro, I made my way back to the bombed hostel. I was surprised to see a portacabin in the small courtyard and much of the rubble already cleared. Back in the UK that would have been a crime scene, and it might have taken months before the rebuild began. I was impressed.
Zloti was running around like a general ordering the troops. Construction workers were moving about in dusty overalls. There was a bustle and energy to the scene. He saw me and grinned.
“Mr Mark Wilson — are you here for your luggage?” And he laughed.
I laughed too, despite not being very happy about losing everything. “Keep it another week,” I joked. “I need your help with my next trip.”
“You stay Bosnia or you go to another country?”
“I have to visit a friend in Dubrovnik, and it is his birthday. I am going to surprise him with a cake.”
“Cake is good surprise. Cake with girl inside, surprise is better.”
“The cake is enough. And a clown. He is on holiday with his family, and I want to bring a clown to entertain the family.”
He looked surprised. I elaborated. “In England it is normal to have a clown at a party.”
“Here is for circus only.”
But on my insistence he borrowed a phone directory from a neighbour and went to the business pages. His face showed his surprise. “Is six children’s entertainer clowns in Mostar,” he said. “You use my phone, you call one.”
That was a great idea, considering my command of Bosnian did not extend beyond Hello and Goodbye. Instead, I pointed at him. “You make the call for me.”
Ten minutes later
, the deal was done. The first two clowns had turned down the gig, but the third said yes. For two hundred euros he would drive down to Dubrovnik, surprise the British family and do his show, then make balloon animals for all the kids. For another twenty he agreed to let me ride with him. He would pick me up in thirty minutes.
There was one last part to my plan. Using my remaining few notes, I went to a bakery and bought a simple cake, but had it placed in a very elaborate box, tied with a fancy ribbon. I was ready to escape from Mostar.
True to his word, the clown arrived in his beat-up little estate car shortly after I got back with the cake. We shook hands. I was a bit surprised at his appearance. I don’t know what I was expecting, but not someone who looked like a miserable hill farmer with a battered suitcase and two plastic carrier bags.
I don’t think he would have passed the Magic Circle entrance exam. But he passed my test. He was the perfect cover for my escape.
We drove through the outskirts of Mostar and joined the M6. It was a good highway, but the surface was rough and our nail bucket rattled as we drove. When we merged with the M17 it got a bit worse, if that was possible. The journey would take a little less than two hours, and though the kilometres passed quickly the time did not. At the start, we tried to pass a few remarks but his English was as bad as my Bosnian, which would not bode well for any British kids he might end up entertaining at our destination.
An hour and forty minutes into the journey, the traffic began to slow imperceptibly. A few clicks later there was a small tailback and a single portacabin at the side of the road. A soldier was standing there, with a few others inside the cabin. He looked hot and tired and not too interested in the passing traffic. Cars slowed down; he nodded them on. More cars took their place; he nodded them on. We were edging closer. Would he nod us on? I had my Italian passport ready.
As we reached the top of the queue, my clown reached across me and flipped open the glove compartment. He took out a red clown nose and popped it on his face. He looked out at the soldier, whose face lit up. He stuck his head in the window and the two men jabbered at each other for a few minutes, then the soldier dropped his rifle and took out a cell phone. He took a selfie with the red-nosed driver, then waved us on, a huge grin on his face.
