Scorpion Trail

by Geoffrey Archer

  Inside, he made for the aisles marked Tools and Safety Equipment, looking for protective masks. He prodded through the packaging to reject those that were flimsy, choosing a type that covered the full face, made of soft rubber. He took two from the rack and headed for the tills.

  Just before the Stasi headquarters were stormed by East Berliners in January 1990, Konrad had tried to find and destroy documents detailing the murders he’d carried out for his masters. He’d suspected he’d not been totally successful.

  For months he had lived in fear of arrest, hiding out at the house in the Harz. One day, walking in the woods, he’d been approached by a tall man he’d never seen before who had a face like crumpled leather. Schiller was the code name he’d used. He’d claimed to work for the BND.

  Schiller had revealed that amongst the Stasi papers uncovered in Berlin, they’d found enough evidence against Konrad to get him jailed for life.

  He had offered a deal. Konrad could avoid prosecution on one condition – to continue to kill, but for him.

  Konrad had had enough of executions, but prison was no option for a man of his age. He’d accepted.

  That had been three years ago. Since then, Schiller had paid him a regular retainer but had made no demands – until a week ago.

  The contract was to eliminate an Iranian and a Russian. A poisoning, Schiller had said, because death must occur after the victims had returned to their own countries. It had to be an untraceable murder – something Konrad was skilled at.

  He had demanded half a million marks for expenses, and to his astonishment was told he could have it.

  Schiller wouldn’t tell him who he was acting for, nor why the men had to die. But Konrad read the newspapers. He reckoned he could smell plutonium.

  On the Berlin ring road the traffic thickened. It was just before four p.m. He’d made better time than he’d expected. There was one more purchase he needed to make, at a small shop in Kreuzberg. Might just get there before it closed.

  He joined the long queues on the Mariendorfer Damm. Berlin had become a building site in the rush to reinstate it as the nation’s capital. Diggings pockmarked every crossroads.

  He squeezed the car into a small space near the Kottbusser Tor, then pressed a neatly trimmed, false moustache onto his upper lip, using a mirror from the glove locker to ensure it was straight. He slipped on heavy-rimmed spectacles then set off on foot.

  This was a quarter for night creatures, the air scented with Döner kebabs. Bars stayed open here until dawn and between open sites razed for redevelopment, tenements were homes for squatters and refugees.

  A little further, and the cafés were interspersed with galleries and craft stores. He pushed on the door of a small shop with easels in the window.

  ‘Guten Abend!’

  A thin-faced young man with a diamond stud in his nose emerged from a back room.

  ‘I wanted an air brush,’ Konrad began. ‘I telephoned.’

  ‘Of course. Yesterday evening.’

  The young man turned to a shelf, glancing back. Not many of his customers wore business suits and overcoats.

  ‘It’s for my nephew,’ Konrad explained. ‘A birthday present.’

  The assistant turned back to the counter holding two boxes.

  ‘What does he want to use it with? Inks or acrylics?’

  ‘Acrylics probably. That’s quite a thick paint?’

  ‘Well, he’ll probably have to thin it, whatever he uses. You’d be safest to buy a few nozzles of different sizes.’

  ‘That sounds best. Can you show me how it works?’

  The salesman cut the tape seal with an obscenely long fingernail.

  ‘You attach this can of air to the brush with a plastic tube. Then fill the jar with paint and plug it into the socket at the front. Then you just press the button. Simple as that.’

  Konrad picked up the components. It wasn’t really a brush at all, simply a precision paint sprayer. But in his hands a precision weapon.

  ‘Fine. I’ll buy it.’

  Back at the car, he drove north again, crossing what used to be the Wall at Prinzenstrasse. More building works. If there’s a gap, fill it – that seemed to be the motto of the developers.

  By the time he’d found another parking space near Rosenthaler Platz it was twenty-past-six. Fräulein Pocklewicz would complain at his lateness.

  The bar Zum Weinberg had fewer than half a dozen customers, and Gisela was not one of them. He panicked instantly. He was too old for this game. Even the tiniest hitch unsettled him.

  He sat and ordered a Weisse mit grün – a wheat beer with a dash of liqueur. He sipped gently so as not to wet the fabric backing of his moustache.

  Twenty minutes passed before the whore appeared.

  ‘So sorry to be late, Herr Dunkel!’ Always formal with a man twenty years her senior whose real name she’d never known.

  Gisela Pocklewicz was short and overweight. She had a round face, dark, butch hair and the eyes of a victim.

  She asked the waitress for a Coke, then flashed Konrad a smile.

  ‘We’re in luck, Herr Dunkel! That’s why I’m late. It all happened at the last minute.’

  ‘Go on,’ Konrad pressed.

  ‘As you know, I rang Zagreb yesterday, but they had no idea where he was. And I phoned again this afternoon. Then this evening, just as I was coming here, he called me!’

  ‘Aaah,’ he sighed. ‘And?’

  ‘He asked what it was about of course, but I couldn’t tell him . . .’ she fished.

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘He wants a passport. In another name and another nationality. Says he needs to hide up for a while. Here in Germany.’

  She smiled. If this worked out she’d have a reunion with the only man she’d ever come close to loving.

  ‘Did you ask why he has to hide?’ Konrad asked, fearing the reason might affect his plans.

  ‘Of course not. Can’t trust the ‘phone.’

  Konrad took another sip of beer. So he wants a passport. Easy enough in the old days, he thought. The Stasi’s Normannenstrasse building had housed some of the world’s best forgers. He had to get one from somewhere.

  Acid burned in his gut. He dared not fail.

  ‘Fräulein Pocklewicz, if we are to find a passport in time, I fear it’ll have to be stolen. Can you put the word out?’

  She looked pained. She had no intention of taking any more risks than she had to.

  ‘I don’t know people like that any more,’ she lied. ‘I’m legit. I pay taxes. My clients wouldn’t like it if they thought the Kripos had their eye on me.’

  Konrad wet his lips. He couldn’t get used to people saying no.

  ‘I’ll do one thing,’ she added, seeing his discomfort. ‘I’ll give you an address to go to. Talk to the woman who runs the house there. Some of her girls are thieves.’

  She tore the top off a cigarette packet, then wrote down a name and a street number.

  ‘It’s not far from here. Sorry, but it’s the best I can do.’

  ‘One more thing,’ Konrad whispered, leaning forward. ‘Tell your friend in Zagreb to send some passport photos tomorrow by air courier. Collect them and give them to me. Tell him if all goes well I’ll bring the passport when I join him before the end of the week.’

  ‘And you will bring him to Berlin after the job’s done?’ she asked, doubtfully.

  ‘Oh yes, I’ll bring him back from the war for you.’

  Ten

  Sunday 27th March

  Zenica, Central Bosnia

  SUNDAY DAWNED WITH a steady drizzle smearing the window of Lorna’s bedroom. The cold of the concrete floor penetrated the stained, threadbare carpet that covered it. She tried the bathroom faucet to no avail.

  And she’d forgotten to fill the tub last night when the water had been on.

  ‘You’re a shit-head, Donohue.’

  Still called herself by the name she’d been born with, even though she’d been married for fifteen
years to Rees Sorenson. Nice guy but a mistake.

  She pulled the soft nightdress up over her head and dropped it on the bed.

  ‘It’s so-o-o cold . . .’ she shivered, crossing her arms tightly, hands cupping her small breasts. Nipples like bullets, goose-bumps everywhere.

  ‘Too skinny, that’s what’s wrong with you . . .’ She mimicked the whine of her sister, who was the same height, but at least thirty pounds heavier.

  She caught a look at herself in a wall mirror as she reached into the suitcase for underwear. Okay, so what if her ribs did show, at least she didn’t have stretch marks. Five children Annie had had. Not a pretty sight in the buff. She and Joe must do it in the dark nowadays.

  She pulled on some clean cotton panties, tucking her light-brown pubic curls under the elastic. Then she reached behind her back to secure the straps of the bra. Didn’t really need one, but with Josip around, the less cause he had to misinterpret things the better.

  In the bathroom there was at least electricity this morning. She switched on the light, looked in the mirror and pushed at her hair. The good thing about being a little frizzy was that it didn’t need a wash every morning. She moved closer to the glass. They weren’t going away, those crow’s feet beside her eyes and the deeper lines round her mouth. Ought to be flattered that Josip fancied her, she supposed.

  Her thin face and high cheekbones went with the small frame of her body. She’d always thought her nose a little too big – wouldn’t have minded one of those petite, turned-up numbers. But men liked the strength it gave her face; she’d never been short of admirers. Just a pity most of them weren’t her type.

  A little warmer in jeans and walking boots, a thick green pullover over her white rollneck, she clomped down four flights of stairs to the dining room. If anything it was even colder there. Josip sat alone at a table drinking coffee, his leather jacket draped over his shoulders. His dark hair was greasy and his jaw grey with stubble.

  ‘Morning,’ she said briskly, sitting opposite him. ‘Sleep okay?’

  ‘Mmm . . .’ he wobbled his head, gave her a look that was intended to smoulder, then smiled. ‘Could be better.’

  ‘Is there anything to eat?’

  ‘Some bread. The coffee is okay.’

  She glanced round. No sign of a waiter. Warming himself in the kitchen, no doubt. Two other tables were occupied. UN people, she guessed.

  Then a girl appeared at her elbow. Lorna ordered tea.

  First call that morning was to be at the office of the Coordinating Committee for Refugee Problems, run by staff from what was left of Zenica’s civil government. It was from there the call had come which had brought Lorna scurrying back to Bosnia.

  Not an official message; the bureaucracy would never have condoned it. The proposal had come from a woman called Monika, who’d befriended Lorna last time she was here. It was Monika they now had to find.

  The Land Cruiser was empty. The hotel had given them a store-room for their boxes of medical supplies. Lorna had to find out today where the need for them was greatest.

  The town looked like any drab east European city except for the lack of cars. What little fuel there was in Bosnia was reserved for the war. The only vehicles moving belonged to the BiH Armija – the Bosnian government army – or to the UN and the aid agencies.

  The streets were filled with people, wandering in the middle of the road as if cars had never been invented. Where did they go, she wondered? Nothing to buy in the shops, yet they still went to look. Nothing to drink in the cafés, but they still sat down for a chat.

  No sign of Monika at the office, they were directed instead to a refugee centre near the silent steel works that dominated the town with its dust-coated mills and furnaces. BiH soldiers guarded the gates to the plant. Their 3rd Corps had its headquarters inside.

  Opposite was a school where the refugees lived behind timber blast-barriers and windows of polythene sheet. They parked in the former playground.

  A man carrying a tray of loaves led them down a dark corridor that smelled of boiled vegetables. The power was off again. An old woman shuffled past, holding a plastic bowl, her head covered by a black shawl. Two small children prodded one another in boredom.

  In the huge gymnasium every square metre of floor was covered by mats or rugs, each one occupied. One rug, one family. Toothless grandfathers. Widows in black. Mothers, fathers, children, babies.

  ‘Oh, my! This is full!’ Lorna exclaimed.

  The air smelled of urine and unwashed bodies.

  ‘Lorna! Lorna!’

  A woman in her thirties with dark, straight hair and eyes that had seen too little sleep grabbed her by the hands. She babbled in Serbo-Croat.

  ‘Monika, hi!’ Lorna grinned.

  ‘She says . . . well she says she’s glad to see you,’ Josip translated simply.

  Looking uneasy, Monika hustled them from the gym. She had the frenetic manner of someone for whom the day was always too short.

  She led them to a part of the building where a shell had blown in the front wall, replaced now with polythene which bowed and flexed in the wind.

  Monika turned to Lorna and spread her hands in despair.

  ‘She says sorry about the room,’ Josip explained, ‘but we can be alone here.’

  The Bosnian woman began talking at length. The only word Lorna could make out was Tulici . . . She let her continue for a while before nudging for a translation.

  ‘She say at first they think no survivors at Tulici,’ Josip interpreted. ‘But when Armija search, they find girl, twelve years, called Vildana Muminovic. She hiding in a cellar. She say she saw her mother being shot, and the soldier who did it was a man she knew. He used to live in next village. She say his name is Milan Pravic . . . Later, Armija bring girl here to Zenica. But then some men come asking about her. Monika think they Croats . . .’

  Josip raised an eyebrow. He reckoned Bosnians believed what they wanted to believe.

  ‘Monika think HVO want to kill the girl because she can identify this man Pravic.’

  Lorna nodded understandingly.

  ‘Where’s Vildana now?’

  Josip put the question.

  ‘She say maybe take you see her tomorrow. She asks, do you understand she afraid?’

  ‘Sure. But she wants me, wants CareNet to get Vildana out of the country and find a family to look after her?’

  More Serbo-Croat. Lorna winced. It was understanding the way people said things that mattered as much as the words.

  ‘She asks whether you have plan yet?’

  Had to be careful what she said.

  ‘About getting her out of Bosnia . . .? I still have to talk to some people. Finding a family for adoption is no problem however . . .’

  ‘Nema adoption . . .’ Monika replied, wagging a finger. A flood of words followed.

  ‘She says Bosnian government not allow foreigners adopt orphans, because sometimes they do bad things.’

  ‘Tell her my agency is plugged into a network of Americans who are all top grade professionals, all checked out . . .’

  Rain spattered against the polythene wall.

  Josip sighed.

  ‘She says be careful. If anyone ask, say it is just so the girl can be safe until war is over. Then Vildana will return here . . .’

  Lorna hesitated. A temporary arrangement like that could be harder. Most couples on her network were desperate for families.

  ‘No talk of adoption, then, okay? Tell Monika we understand each other,’ Lorna declared. ‘But first I must see the girl and find out what she needs . . .’

  Tomorrow then. Monika would come to the hotel and they’d go together.

  For Alex the drive over Route Triangle was a nightmare. Fog obscured most of the mountain road and a thaw had turned it into a mud slide. Handling the Bedford four-tonner in such conditions had taxed McFee’s experience.

  Twice the front wheels of the lorry had slipped into a ditch, once perilously close to the edge. They’d
travelled with a British UN convoy all the way up from Split. Without help from an army tow-truck, they’d have been stuck on that mountain.

  It was on the long run down from the Makjlen Ridge to the contested town of Gorni Vakuf that the engine gave up.

  ‘Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!’ McFee screamed. ‘Don’t do this to me.’

  ‘What is it?’ Alex fretted.

  ‘It’s fucking died, that’s what!’ McFee yelled, punching the switch for the emergency flashers. He pulled onto the verge.

  ‘Fuel?’

  ‘I don’t fucking know.’

  McFee got down to the ground. They’d been at the tail of the convoy; behind them just the tow-truck and a Land Rover, both of which halted beside them.

  ‘What’s up, mate?’ The soldier’s chubby face peered down from the truck.

  McFee had the engine hood raised. ‘Water in the fuel maybe,’ he ventured.

  A young officer walked over from the Land Rover.

  ‘Can’t stop here for long, I’m afraid,’ the voice brayed.

  A woman’s voice. Alex contained his surprise. Blonde hair up under her UN helmet. Horsey but pretty. All of twenty-three, and so bloody confident in this spooky place.

  They were near the bottom of a pretty, wooded valley. Could have been Austria, if it weren’t for the crump of explosions from somewhere ahead of them.

  ‘Party-time in Gorni,’ the lieutenant remarked. ‘Supposed to be having a cease-fire.’

  ‘Where are we?’ Alex asked nervously.

  ‘Pretty well on the front line. HVO in the woods all around us. BiH in the town about a mile down the road.’

  ‘BiH? That’s the Muslims?’ Alex queried, still confused by the acronyms.

  ‘Bosnian government army. Mostly Muslim.’

  She stepped back and peered up the road with binoculars.

  ‘Pretty vulnerable here . . .’ she murmured. ‘If you’ve got helmets to go with your body armour, I should put them on. Corp’l Baker? We’ve got to move on.’

  She strode to the front of the Bedford.

  ‘The convoy’s halted down the road, waiting for us . . .’

  McFee was squeezing the rubber bulb on the fuel line to drain off the contaminated diesel.