by Dana Haynes
Jane looked for signs indicating the Red Cross or Red Crescent, or the United Nations. She saw none.
The blue-on-white sign over the barrier arm, in some Slavic script, but also in English, read: kosovo security force—operating base šar.
The nineteen young people were ushered out of the back of the military truck. They were uniformly tired, dusty, scared, and quiet. Jane saw no aid workers and no media. Every adult within sight wore fatigues and berets, and all wore firearms on their hips. Some also carried machine guns.
Guards herded the refugees into a long, brown-and-white one-story wooden building. A large Arabic numeral 3 had been stenciled beside the door. Jane saw two identical buildings to her left and two more to her right, and the nearer was stenciled 2.
Inside, the building featured a large room with rows of army cots, each with one pillow and a coarse, brown blanket. A room off to the right, behind open double doors, showed cafeteria-style tables with benches. Doors off to the left appeared to lead to toilets.
The nineteen refugees were ushered by unsmiling soldiers into the cafeteria room. A large green plastic tray with prewrapped sandwiches sat on the nearest table. Jane recognized the tray as the kind used to slide dishes into an industrial dishwasher. Towers of upside-down plastic glasses stood next to the green tray.
“Arabic …? Greek …?” a guard chanted as the kids walked into the cafeteria. “English …? Arabic …?”
Jane thought back to the aid worker in Macedonia who had tried to separate her from the Bakour siblings because she carried a British passport. “English …?” the guard said as she entered, but she kept her head down and averted her eyes. Mohamed watched her, and Jane gave him the most tentative little head shake.
When all of the refugees were in the dingy hall, a soldier put two fingers between his lips and whistled shrilly. “Listen!” He spoke Arabic. “You are staying in the barracks. Toilets are that way. Water is from the sink, over there. You are not to leave the barracks! Is that understood?”
Jane, who stood near the tough plastic dishwasher tray of sandwiches, raised a tentative hand.
“What is it?”
She replied in Arabic. “There are nineteen of us. There are, um, a dozen sandwiches.”
The soldier shrugged. “We’ll get more, I’m sure. No one leaves the barracks! People caught outside the barracks will be considered spies and will be shot!”
Several of the younger children began crying.
The soldiers marched out.
Some of the older kids began scooping up the sandwiches. Even in times of horror, people who have known hunger will grab for food. Jane snagged one, which she planned to split between the Bakour kids until more food arrived.
Mohamed grabbed one of the upside-down glasses.
As they made their way to the queue in front of the kitchen sink, Jane heard the telltale sound of the barracks door being locked.
C36
Zagreb
Finnigan and Fiero met Shan Greyson at the apartment they’d turned into a makeshift operation command, over a bookstore on avenue Petra Berislavića. The shadow-diplomat stepped into the walk-up and immediately looked like he’d been born to the place, tossing his jacket over a dining room chair and slouching against the refrigerator that formed a de facto wall separating the kitchenette from the living room from the foyer. Finnigan had a flash-illusion that the floral, midseventies wallpaper perfectly matched the pattern in Shan’s tie.
“How goes the good fight?” he drawled.
Finnigan stood in the kitchenette, breaking eggs one by one into a mixing bowl, a towel thrown over his shoulder. Fiero sat sideways on the couch in yoga leggings and a stretched-out Gypsy Kings T-shirt, her legs straight and crossed at the ankles. She’d draped a bath towel over the room’s coffee table and had broken down a P226 SIG Sauer to its component parts, laid neatly on the towel along with a rag, wire brushes, and solvent. The bits of gun lay on the table in more or less geographic proximity to where they would be in a fully formed gun, like the bits and bones of a paleo-hominid in a museum case.
Finnigan threw away the eggshells. “Well, Aleksić is the link to organized crime in Europe. He’s also the distribution. The Kosovo Security Force provides the victims and also the muscle.”
“Or more precisely,” Fiero broke in, running a thin brush through the disconnected barrel of the firearm, “a specific unit of the KSF, run by a Major Driton Basha. He used to be linked to Serbian right-wing death squads after the Yugoslav civil war.”
Finnigan said, “Basha got promoted from being an asshole for a cause, to being an asshole for a paycheck.”
Shan didn’t even bother pretending he wasn’t studying Fiero’s long legs and tanned feet, or the curve of her shoulder where it emerged from the frayed collar. “Can you connect Aleksić the Younger with his victims?”
“Not yet.” Finnigan nodded toward the cabinet over the sink, behind him. “You want breakfast?”
“Famished.” Shan rolled up his sleeves and set about collecting all three plates from the cabinet, along with three forks and both knives and squares of quilted paper towel off the roll by the sink.
“So once upon a time,” the Englishman murmured as he dithered about, “a junior attorney for the International Monetary Fund moved his family to Amsterdam in pursuit of his career. Said family included a sixteen-year-old daughter who fancied herself something of a victim in this move, bereft as she was of her friends and her favorite mall back home in Georgia.”
Finnigan used a fork to froth the eggs, then poured them into a chipped pan. He turned and drew a plastic bag, filled with bread, from a cabinet.
Shan said, “What’s this?”
“Big treat. I had a cousin ship it in from New York. You’ll love it.”
Shan studied the polka-dot wrapping on the loaf. “Wonder Bread?”
“Infinitely better than that baguette stuff you get here. Crazy! Buy a loaf in the morning, it’s stale by noon. Who designed that? Wait and see. This stuff’s great.”
He popped two spongy slices into the toaster. Fiero kept her attention on the internal workings of the SIG.
Shan returned to his tale. “So anyway, the daughter decided to dress all in black—no offense, Katalin, my sweet—and to lurk in coffee shops, writing poetry and inscribing to future generations her suffering. She bought a secondhand Nikon with a zoom lens and fancied herself an artist. She read—as God is my witness—Kafka.” He shuddered.
Finnigan stirred the eggs with the flat underside of the fork.
“Then, one day, the daughter of the junior attorney for the International Monetary Fund stumbled upon yet another urchin whose life was actually sad, as opposed to artfully sad. The girls started talking. The newcomer to this tale, whose name was Daisy, was a source of fascination for the young daughter, in that she wore a plaid microskirt and acrylic platform heels and a white blouse tied off above her midriff.”
Fiero glanced up from her cleaning supplies.
“Rather than become fast friends after that first sharing of overpriced coffee and angst, Daisy’s reaction was somewhat different. She slit her wrists.”
The toast popped. Finnigan plucked out both and slid in two more, then swiveled back to the eggs. Shan eyed the white bread nervously. “Ah. Interesting. You’re sure about—”
“Dude, read this. What’s it say?”
Shan peered at the packaging. “Helps build strong bodies twelve ways.”
“Right. And in the States, they couldn’t say it if it wasn’t true.”
Shan let it go. “Anyway, the junior attorney for the International Monetary Fund, and his beloved daughter, heard about the suicide attempt and dashed to the hospital. Daisy survived. And the surprises were as follows: Daisy was not Daisy at all, but Fatima. Daisy the Teenager wasn’t a teenager at all, but twelve-going-on-forty. Daisy the exotic, ano
rexic beauty wasn’t whiling away her time in a coffee shop reading Kafka. She was escaping a series of horrific sex crimes that no sane human should, or even could, imagine.”
Finnigan said, “Sit.”
Fiero unwound herself from the couch and disappeared to the bathroom to wash her hands. Shan Greyson poured coffee in three mismatched mugs and distributed them, along with a carton of milk and a half-empty box of sugar.
Finnigan split the eggs three ways onto plates. “You found the attorney, or the attorney found you?”
“Friend of a friend. I heard his tale and introduced myself to Daisy turned Fatima. Whence I learned several things: She was from Aleppo. She’d been separated from her family somewhere around Greece. She described Aleksić the Younger to a T, although she never heard his name. I showed her a picture of him, and she was too frightened to properly identify him. Anyway, she’d been sold to a businessman who should die with festering boils. Or better yet, should live with festering boils. I also believe that the incident in the canal was her first suicide attempt, but not likely her last.”
They dug in.
Finnigan said, “We’ve got Aleksić under surveillance.”
“Who’s watching him?”
“Don’t ask. Aleksić lives in a secure penthouse suite in Belgrade, under twenty-four seven security from the KSF. He parties in nightclubs, but always with an armed escort. So far, he’s kept a clean distance between himself and his victims.”
“Well, he needs to be stopped,” Shan said, his eyes on his breakfast.
Fiero said, “Stopped.” Just that. And kept eating.
They ate in silence, listening to the Zagreb traffic and the laughter of tourists.
Until the penny dropped.
Finnigan sat bolt upright, his fork halfway to his mouth, eyes going wide. He set down the fork, loaded with a mound of scrambled egg. He made the T-for-timeout symbol with both hands. “Whoa-whoa-whoa-whoa.”
Fiero smiled up at him; she’d wondered how long it would take.
“Stopped? He needs to be stopped?”
“That,” drawled Shan, “would be my vote. Fatima’s, too, I suspect.”
“And Judge Betancourt?”
Shan shrugged. “She is pure of heart, Michael. You know that.”
Fiero set her knife and fork down on her empty plate, crossing them like the bones on a pirate flag.
Finnigan studied the Englishman. Then his partner. Then the Englishman.
He said, “We’re not assassins.”
Fiero said, quietly, “I have been.”
“Yeah, but we’re not. We’re getting paid to get the evidence that leads to a conviction. We’re getting paid to get that worthless shithead into custody, then into a courtroom.”
Shan said, “Bounty hunting in Europe is illegal.”
“We know that.”
“But that won’t stop me from making sure you get paid, fair and square, should you be successful.”
Finnigan studied him. “Meaning what? Assassination’s illegal, but we’d get paid anyway? You’re equating the two?”
Finnigan wiped his lips on a paper napkin and brushed back his chair. His breakfast was half finished. He stood.
“I’m going for a walk. You,”—he pointed to Fiero—“contact the Harts. Tell ’em we need to get into that penthouse. Contact McTavish. Tell him to get his ass up here.”
Finnigan collected his jacket and sunglasses and stormed toward the door.
“You,” he said to Shan Greyson. “Dishes.”
That night, Finnigan lay in bed, one arm behind his pillow, finishing the Elmore Leonard. Fiero tapped twice and slid the door open enough to peer in.
He looked at her over the top of the pages. “Hey.”
She stood with her weight on one leg, shoulder against the jamb. She wore a long T-shirt that clung to the pronounced muscles in her shoulders and her long, straight torso.
“Is your father in trouble?”
Finnigan said, “I think maybe, yeah.”
“Can you help him?”
“Probably not.”
“You’re not him, you know. You’re not a good cop gone bad.”
Finnigan didn’t respond.
“We work outside the law. But we’re doing good, for all that.”
He shrugged. “Sure.”
He lay there, staring at her. And she stood there, hip cocked, staring at him.
Finnigan said, “We’re not assassinating this jackass.”
Fiero said, “Certainly hope not.”
And closed the door.
C37
Kosovo Security Force Operating Base Šar
They flew Corporal Agon Llumnica directly to Pristina, where an MP with the personality of a brick met him by a Humvee and whisked him south and east from the city, to the isolated operating base that served as HQ for Major Basha’s unit.
Lt. Akil Krasniqi debriefed him and made Llumnica tell the story three times: the ambush in Amboise, France; the assistance of the corrupt French private investigator; the cottage selected for its strategic value; the six-on-two odds; and the moment Llumnica woke up in “some kind of barge on the river” with the American they’d earlier identified as Michael Patrick Finnigan.
When he finished the story, Lieutenant Krasniqi stared at the young corporal for a full sixty seconds.
“Explain it to me again.”
Llumnica did.
“He gave me this.” Llumnica held up the disposable flip phone, the kind available at a few hundred thousand shops throughout Europe. “Said it could call his number. He expected me to betray the unit.”
“And did you?” Krasniqi scowled at the youth—although there were only eighteen months difference in their ages—and took a step closer. “You’re not in some fucking cell in France. Correct? Captain Sorak is. The rest of the team is.”
“I can’t explain that!” The corporal stood at attention, sweaty palms flat against his thighs, back razor-straight. “The bastards took me. Hit me with a Taser. Three times. They expected me to—”
“Show me.”
Llumnica drew up his shirt and undershirt and showed the lieutenant the vampire bite marks on his left side, and those on his right. They were inflamed and swollen.
“And you didn’t talk?”
Llumnica’s discipline broke. “I didn’t tell them fuck-all, Akil!”
Krasniqi took another step into the young corporal’s personal space. “I didn’t tell them fuck-all, sir.”
“I didn’t!”
Krasniqi took the flip phone and checked its memory. One phone number was registered; an international number. He noted zero outgoing calls.
He chewed over the tale and decided it was too unlikely to make a plausible lie. Besides, Krasniqi imagined himself a good judge of his own soldiers. Agon Llumnica was a solid-enough fighter but nobody’s version of a creative genius.
“All right. Go get some food. The major went north to talk to the little blond asshole. I just got back from the refugee checkpoint on the Macedonian border.” He bunched his fingertips, touched them to his lips, and kissed them away. “Some lovely fruit, Agon. They are falling off the trees, and there’s nobody but us to pick them.”
The corporal relaxed, feeling the tension bleed from his bones. “Yes, sir!”
“Get some rest today. Oh eight hundred tomorrow, requisition a truck from the motor pool. Talk to none but Ristić! Get the keys from him, and him alone. You understand?”
“Sir!”
“I have the product in Barracks Three. We’ll gather them at eight, and drive them to Belgrade. Understood?”
“Sir!”
The corporal saluted and turned smartly on his heels.
“And Agon? We get one chance to fuck up in this unit. Maybe you fucked up in France. Maybe you didn’t. B
ut don’t let me down.”
C38
Amsterdam
Shan Greyson felt his phone vibrate. He’d arrived back from Zagreb less than forty minutes before, and now was speaking to a trade commissioner from Finland, nodding occasionally, making the appropriate hmm noises. Shan had no earthly idea what the topic was, but no doubt the apple-cheeked youth was passionate about it. As Madame Betancourt’s unofficial minister without portfolio, Shan often found himself deep in conversations that he neither understood nor cared about. That way people could go back to their bosses or their constituents or their lovers and tell them, Say what you will, at least the judge heard me out.
The call was from the executive assistant to Miloš Aleksić, director for the Levant Crisis Group of the UN High Commission for Refugees.
The assistant informed him that Director Aleksić wished to speak to him on a matter of some importance, as soon as possible.
“Would it be possible for you to stop by the director’s home tonight, Mr. Greyson? Perhaps for a quick drink?”
“Of course! When and where?”
But with a ping, a calendar item with time and address appeared, as if by magic, on his cell phone.
“Please tell the director, it will be my pleasure.”
C39
Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina
Finnigan and Fiero flew into the shabby little airport at Sarajevo, made famous two decades earlier as an easy target for Serbian death squads, who could sit in the hills with rocket-propelled grenades and wait patiently for easy-picking incoming flights.
Bridget Sumner used Airbnb to find them a farmhouse outside of the city. The place looked rundown enough, and isolated enough, that they needn’t worry about snooping neighbors. Bridget herself was hiding in the resort town of Paphos, on the far-western edge of Cyprus and among the expat Russian petro-luminati, but she had a laptop and a high-speed connection, which meant she could whistle up whatever the team needed, whenever they needed it, from the comfort of a chaise lounge working on her tan.
