by Dana Haynes
The three of them stood, thinking. Sally reached for a tablet computer in her tote bag, unlocked it, and brought up surveillance photos. The first one showed the top of a car and the head and upper torso of Marija Aleksić, looking matronly and prim. She was bracketed by two guys, maybe six-two or -three, with dark hair, dark skin, Ray-Bans, and ear jacks.
“The lady of the house went into Amsterdam yesterday for a meeting of some do-gooder nonprofit she chairs. People for … I don’t know … the Ethical Treatment of Salad, or whatever. The transit included a convoy of three vehicles, all armored. She had these guys with her. They’re with whoever replaced Suicide Ride. We haven’t ID’d ’em.”
Fiero sipped her wine. “Kosovars.”
Sally wrinkled her nose. “You think?”
“Pretty sure.”
“Well, we’ve been watching the joint for three days. That was the first time the lady of the house poked her head outside. No sign of the hubby. And another thing: while Missus Do-Gooder Nonprofit was voting for baby seals,”—she tapped the photo of the two beefy soldiers with one trim fingernail—“more of these guys flew into town. A bunch more. I had one of my guys dogging them.”
The partners exchanged looks.
Sally Blue shook her head. “Five’ll get you ten, these boys are gearing up for the OK Corral.”
C61
Prague, Czech Republic
Fiero found out that her mother would be attending a conference on industrialization and the Visegrád Group—Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia—that weekend. The partners used Fiero’s former Spanish Intelligence contacts to leak a story that Hélene Betancourt would be making a surprise visit, too. The idea was to draw as much of the Kosovar forces away from the flying saucer house as they could.
Fiero stopped by the de Havilland, moored outside Amsterdam, and switched into what Finnigan called her grown-up clothes—the same pumps and severe black suit she’d worn on their visit to the judge. She pinned her hair in a chignon, conscious that doing so exposed her pointed, almost elfin ears—she’d been teased about those ears as a kid, and it still reverberated.
In Prague, she lunched with her mother, Khadija Dahar, who talked a mile a minute about women’s health care in China, and the Booker Prize, and the Black Lives Matter movement in the States. They discussed poets and politicians. Katalin Fiero barely getting a word in edgewise.
Khadija noted that her daughter didn’t wear a hijab, her head as uncovered as any modern European woman. But she smiled and said nothing. Khadija’s version of Islam was more about the politics of empowerment than tradition. She couldn’t very well tell her daughter what to wear.
Khadija had not wanted her daughter raised as a Catholic. Alexandro had not wanted her raised as a Muslim. They never settled on a middle ground, and now they couldn’t very well complain about Katalin’s absence of faith.
After lunch, they moved to the assembly hall, where Fiero could watch for signs of the opposition. She said, “Judge Hélene Betancourt might be coming.”
Khadija Dahar adjusted her hijab, switching her thousand-dollar lambskin clutch to her other hand. “It’s worrisome when race and bigotry get entwined in legal battles.”
Fiero stiffened. “Meaning …?”
“Hmm? Oh, I’ve known Hélene Betancourt for years. She hates the Serbs. Hates. It’s well established. This entire case …” Khadija shook her head.
“You don’t think the family is involved in human trafficking?”
“Darling, I have known Miloš and Marija Aleksić forever. They’ve contributed to every humanist, progressive cause I know. Miloš is a fine man. He’s on a couple of boards with your father. He has done much good for the refugees over the years. His resignation from the Levant Group was a blow for the cause of refugee rights.”
Fiero tried to focus on her mission, even though she’d seen no sign of military-trained lurkers. But she couldn’t let it go.
“The son was trafficking children, Mother. He was creating sex slaves from—”
“You don’t have to lecture me on feminist issues, darling.” Khadija smiled warmly.
“This isn’t a feminist issue, Mother. He wasn’t insulting women. He didn’t want them paid less for equal work. He was forcing boys and girls to fuck strangers as slaves!”
Khadija physically stumbled back a step, glancing around the hall to see who had overheard.
“Trafficking is a horror. I know this.”
“And the Aleksićs are involved.”
Khadija took her daughter’s arm. “Don’t believe everything the media writes, darling. And remember that Judge Betancourt has made this a cause célèbre. She loathes Serbs; always has. The Aleksić family is of the highest caliber. Patrons of the humanities and the arts. The initial reports of their son’s involvement likely are exaggerated. It would be good to keep that in mind.”
Fiero saw no way of pushing the topic any further without revealing her role in the entire affair. She stood by her mother, arm in arm, feeling her face burn with rage.
The Kosovar soldiers never showed up.
Later, on the cab ride back to the airport, Khadija took her daughter’s arm and squeezed it. “I’m sorry if I snapped.”
“Don’t be.” She squeezed back. “It’s fine.”
“Actually? I’m pleased to see you get so upset. It would be good for you to be more political, Katalin. Maybe join a political party? Do some volunteer work?”
Her daughter leaned over and kissed her on the cheek.
“I’d love it if my girl became more involved in the good fight,” Khadija said.
Her elbow rested against Fiero’s hip—right where she normally holstered her gun.
Fiero called Finnigan from her hotel room that night. Trying to lure the Kosovar thugs to Prague hadn’t been a bad plan. They remained convinced that Miloš Aleksić and Major Driton Basha would try to kill Judge Betancourt for her role in destroying the life of Lazar Aleksić, and for her role in the war-crime trials of the former Serbian leaders.
But if so, the Kosovars would strike when they were ready and weren’t to be drawn out.
C62
The Netherlands
From the deck of the thirty-footer, Fiero scanned the nighttime face of the flying saucer house through high-powered binoculars. She watched the two guards on random sweeps.
The Black Harts were watching the house from the landward side, just as they were electronically watching the Aleksićs’ accounts and holdings.
Finnigan sat on the edge of the deck of the boat behind her, a beer can held between his knees, his knuckles jammed into his thighs, elbows akimbo, staring the thousand-yard stare. “We should get diving gear.”
Fiero watched the soldiers on patrol. “Why?”
“See if Aleksić has an underwater tunnel leading to a cave under his house.”
She lowered the glasses. “Why would he have that?”
“For his super-secret submarine.”
She turned to watch him. He seemed unaware of it, sitting, staring at nothing.
“You think he has a super-secret submarine?”
“No, but it’d be cool.”
She turned back and raised the glasses, her energy-sapping frustration turned up a couple levels higher than his. “Don’t talk stupid,” she snapped. “Stupid makes me crazy.”
The Telegraph newspaper in England reported that the attorneys representing Lazar Aleksić might drop their client because he couldn’t meet their legal fees. Lazar claimed that all of his belongings, stored in the penthouse suite of an unfinished office building in Belgrade, had been stolen shortly after his arrest. Someone had used his own computer to bleed Lazar’s trust funds and various bank accounts. Or, so he claimed.
The police weren’t buying the story. An international hunt was underway for his stashed fortune.
Finnigan and Fiero sent a fruit basket to Sally Blue.
Sally called in later that day. “Did you read that the investigators are scouring the scum bucket’s properties?”
Fiero put her on speakerphone. “Michael’s here. Yes, we saw that.”
“Well, sugar, my forensic accountants are better than theirs. We found two properties the heat missed. Sending a PDF your way.”
The PDF document showed two properties owned by Lazar Aleksić, by way of several dummy accounts. One appeared to be a garage in Vrčin, a suburb of Belgrade, just off the main highway linking Serbia to Kosovo. Google Earth showed it to be a cluster of dilapidated Quonset huts surrounded by a small sea of parking lots and a cyclone fence. A few trucks were strewn about, two with their cabs tilted forward to reveal their engines.
“A trucking company would need a garage,” Finnigan said. “But why hide it under dummy accounts?”
“It’s between Belgrade and Kosovo,” Fiero said. “We passed it when we were chasing those stolen kids and Jane Koury. D’you think they used Vrčin as a sort of staging area when they moved large quantities of victims?”
Finnigan shrugged. “Could be. Makes sense.”
They checked out the second address, part of a small, commercial enclave near Trieste, in Italy but within a few kilometers of the Slovenian border. It looked to be warehouse space, or possibly industrial space, well away from any main streets or residential zones.
“No space to park trucks,” Fiero observed.
Sally spoke from the iPhone. “And yet owned—through fronts—by a trucking company. The plot thickens.”
Finnigan leaned closer to the phone. “Do you have anyone free to check them out?”
“We’re stretched thin, boychick. I’ve got Mercer.”
The partners were both going stir crazy. But Finnigan thought back on the moment Fiero had snapped at him on the boat. He said, “Okay, send Mercer to that garage near Belgrade. Fiero can check out the property in Trieste.”
That surprised Fiero, but her eyes lit up with the prospect of actually doing something. “You don’t mind?”
As a cop and a deputy US Marshal, Finnigan had grown accustomed to long waits on surveillance. Waiting made Fiero even crazier than usual. “Go. Check it out. The Harts and I will keep an eye on things here.”
Fiero began packing.
C63
Italy
Lachlan Sumner flew Fiero to Venice. She took a couple hours to scan want ads and bought a Honda motorbike and a helmet for cash. Lachlan stayed with the de Havilland as Fiero rode east toward Trieste, finding a room for let over a taverna, advertised by a chipped plywood A-board in the parking lot and the single word, zimmer—room, better to attract the many German tourists who favor the region. That was ideal for Fiero because, of all of the hoteliers in Europe, the Germans are the least likely to demand a passport. That had been ingrained in her during her early training with Spanish Intelligence.
She paid for the room in cash. In exchange for which she received the key to an ill-kept and airless garret with no TV and no internet connection. Perfect for her needs.
She waited until dark and checked the map she’d made of the area. Tourists can be forgiven for thinking that every square foot of Italy is gorgeous; city planners go to some lengths to isolate the grungier neighborhoods.
Fiero tooled the Honda slowly through the industrial cluster, three blocks wide by three blocks deep, an area that likely had been created in the post–Cold War years in anticipation of brisk trade between Italy and neighboring Yugoslavia. That trade never happened, and the industrial cluster looked lifeless and neglected.
Fiero spotted the small and nondescript factory building, brick and sturdy but unkempt. Streetlights were few. She spotted lights inside the two-story hulk of unreinforced masonry. She saw no signage—Ragusa Logistics or otherwise.
She ditched the bike and the helmet at the far end of the industrial neighborhood. In dark jeans, a leather biker jacket, and boots, she blended well with the shadows. She wended her way back to the building, spotting no other pedestrians; the sector didn’t even boast a restaurant or bar to gin up any foot traffic.
What would Michael the Cop do? Fiero asked herself. Michael the Cop would investigate, of course. Usually, Fiero’s own inclination was to simply hit people and see what happens next, but for now, she decided to channel Finnigan. She climbed atop a lidded metal garbage can to peer into the lit front window of the building.
She spotted two men. One sat on a folding chair, helping himself to a cup of instant noodles and watching a video on a laptop. The other read a magazine that featured Slavic script on the cover. The remnants of a poker game lay abandoned on a collapsible table. They were drinking coffee, not liquor. They both wore holstered sidearms.
Basha’s boys, she thought.
Fiero climbed down and decided that a stable corrugated-metal garbage can that didn’t rattle was worth its weight in gold. She lifted it by both handles and carried it around to the side of the building, checked that she was unwatched, and climbed up to peer in another window. She saw a room laid out for assembly-line work. The room had seen no such work in a generation.
Fiero carried the can to the next window, and then the next. She had to climb a fence to get to the back of the building.
She made do and checked three ground-floor windows in back, finding nothing of import.
She climbed another fence to check out the fourth side of the building. That’s when she spotted the refugees.
Four of them, maybe twenty years old or a little younger; three men and a woman. The room they were in was squalid, with camp cots and a displaced picnic table, brought in from the backyard likely, liberally speckled with bird shit. Fiero spotted a bathroom with a shower.
She had no doubt that the door to the room was locked from the outside.
Two of the men were asleep. The woman—surprisingly tall and thin—sat on a cot, holding a magazine in both hands, but not reading it; she stared over the top of the pages at the grimy floor. The fourth refugee lay on his back on a cot, one arm under his head, and read a Koran perched on his chest.
Fiero climbed down from the brickwork onto which she’d been clinging. She peered around at the dark street and at the next building over.
She’d found more refugees. So what?
They were clearly older than the children kidnapped by Major Basha’s unit. But then again, the British journalist, Jane Koury, had been, too.
Fiero couldn’t very well leave them here, in the hands of the soldiers. And she was in no hurry to head back to the Netherlands, and the endless waiting for an opportunity to get to Miloš Aleksić and Driton Basha.
Finnigan had been right to send her to Italy. She was losing her mind, waiting for an opportunity to get to their targets.
Fiero rapped softly on the windowpane with her knuckles.
C64
Rotterdam, Netherlands
The partners planned to commit a major crime and they didn’t want any link between themselves and Judge Betancourt. But they’d left her with the URL for a chat room with an anonymous communications feature. She could leave them untraceable messages if she were in trouble.
Which she did.
Finnigan sent a text to Sally Blue of the Black Harts letting her know he’d be gone for several hours and asking her to keep watch on the Aleksić house.
The judge provided an address in Rotterdam, only a few miles inland from The Hague. Finnigan checked it out and found it to be a houseboat on the Oude Maas, a bit west of the center of the city. The judge insisted on his going there at noon.
Finnigan rarely carried a gun in Europe but he did that day, untucking a plaid shirt to cover the belt holster of his SIG. He walked around the neighborhood for twenty minutes, seeing nothing that raised his concern, then stepped onto the gangplank of the newish, smallish, and
uninspired houseboat, located just south of the urban island known as Krabbegors.
A thickset man with a shaved head answered the door. He wore a starched white shirt that looked naked without a black tie and suit coat, his sleeves upturned exactly one roll over beefy forearms. He had a military mustache and scar tissue around his eyes. Finnigan recognized him as a member of the judge’s security detail; they’d met when he and Fiero first made contact with Betancourt. The man was maybe fifty and decidedly unhappy to see Finnigan on his doorstep.
He stepped away from the door and Finnigan entered. The living room had a low ceiling and horizontal windows that were only of use if you stooped or sat on the furniture. The place was soulless, with few personalized tchotchkes around. The furniture was dirt cheap but spotless.
“This was her idea,” the security man said in English and pointed to a cordless telephone, which rested faceup in its cradle on a coffee table with the speakerphone light on.
“Finnigan.” He offered his hand. The guy paused, then shook.
“Renard. I’m head of her security.” He raised his voice and switched to French. “He’s here.”
The judge’s reedy voice sounded from the phone’s speaker. “Mr. Finnigan. I assumed you wouldn’t want to meet with me in person.”
Finnigan sat on the low couch, nearer to the phone, and Renard sat on a chair at a forty-five-degree angle from him, hunched forward, elbows on his knees, and hands gripped together.
“What’s up, ma’am?”
“Someone attempted access to the court building.”
“How?”
“According to the head of delegate security, unknown persons used a … well, you explain, Mr. Renard.”
Renard glowered. The muscles in his jaw and neck never stopped clenching. “There’s a ten-key pad installed in many of the rooms of the court complex. Two days in a row—yesterday and the day before—someone entered the Fireplace Room, the ground floor dining hall, and input an eight-digit code.”
