Scorpion Trail

by Geoffrey Archer

  ‘Sounds good,’ Alex replied, recovering. ‘Thanks. Eight o’clock you say?’

  ‘Yes. And I’ve had another thought . . .’ Clarke-Hartley flinched at what he was about to suggest. ‘Would you mind . . . I mean, d’you think you could possibly take the body bag with you?’

  Alex caught the alarm in Lorna’s eye. It was a living passenger they’d planned to put in the back.

  ‘It’s just that there’s an RAF Here leaving Split on Thursday that could take it back to the UK,’ the major explained.

  ‘Well, I . . .’ Alex faltered. Then Lorna nodded imperceptibly. ‘I suppose that makes sense. Where . . . where and when would we collect it . . . him. The body bag?’

  ‘I don’t know. Should we say half-past-seven in the camp? You can drive the truck to the medical centre, and then form up afterwards with the rest of the convoy on the road outside.’

  ‘All right. We’ll do that, then.’

  ‘Good. I’ll alert everybody to expect you. Well, I’ll leave you to er . . . to talk about happier times. See you later.’

  ‘’Bye.’

  Alex stared at his disappearing back and watched the front door close. Then he turned to Lorna. Her face was taut with concentration.

  ‘O . . . h,’ he murmured, ‘I can’t tell you how glad I am to see you.’ He hugged her like a life raft.

  ‘Poor Alex,’ she whispered, ‘it must have been the most awful shock.’

  ‘I can’t take it in. I’ve been with him all the time for the last ten days and I never had a clue . . .’

  At that moment she felt a strong urge to sit him beside her, put his big, square head in her lap and run her fingers through his hair. But there wasn’t time and anyway she’d determined not to give in to feelings again.

  ‘He seemed a normal, likeable guy . . .’ she murmured.

  ‘That’s just it. He was, quite.’

  ‘So what does it all mean?’ she checked, easing herself from his embrace. ‘You can take Vildana tomorrow?’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘Then we have to move fast.’

  ‘Is tomorrow too soon for you?’

  ‘No, No! It’ll be okay. Josip and I have just been up to the village again. The girl – she’s real ready. Wants to go to America, now. They’ve filled her head with promises of non-stop Disney and Coke.’ Her face twisted into a look of disapproval.

  ‘Monika’s moving her to the refugee centre in Travnik tonight. We’ll have to fetch her from there early tomorrow morning. Like six-thirty? So we can get her hidden in the truck before you go into the camp to load the body.’

  She was on overdrive, rattling off the plan as it evolved in her head.

  ‘Lorna, hang on a minute. Can we really put her through that? A traumatized child huddling in the back of a truck for eight hours next to a corpse?’

  ‘I know,’ she winced. ‘It’s dreadful, but we don’t have any alternative. This is her only chance. And anyway, she’ll never know the body bag’s there. We’ll make a little house for her in the truck and hide her in it before you drive into the camp.’

  She saw the alarm and disquiet on his face.

  ‘I know it’s a long time for her to stay boxed up, but believe me this is a kid who’s spent much of her life hiding. . . .’

  ‘And what then? What happens to her in Split?’

  ‘I don’t know yet. Maybe we have to hang around a few days until we find the right home for her. All that’s being taken care of over in the States.’

  She crossed her fingers behind her back. She had no idea if there’d been a response yet to her appeal on the Internet last night.

  ‘And if there’s a problem with that, we’ll just start praying . . .’

  Praying. Alex remembered the priest.

  ‘Hey, I’ve got to tell you,’ he said. ‘Something else happened this morning.’

  She was only half listening.

  ‘I met the brother of the killer who led the Tulici massacre!’

  ‘You what?’

  ‘A priest, would you believe . . .’

  He explained.

  ‘He wants him stopped. Killed if necessary. Said he’d help if he could. You see what this means? With the priest as a witness, telling what he knows of Pravic’s psychopathic past, and your Vildana telling the court what she saw in Tulici, we’ve got him! We can get him locked up for life!’

  ‘We?’ Her jaw dropped. ‘What do you mean we, Alex?’

  He frowned, unsure what she was getting at.

  ‘What are you doing here, Alex?’ she demanded, eyes like darts. ‘Who do you work for?’

  ‘I told you. Bosnia Emergency.’

  ‘Which nobody’s ever heard of . . .’ she retorted. ‘Leastways, nobody I’ve spoken to.’

  ‘It’s only been going a few months, that’s why.’ Her venom puzzled him.

  She spread her arms in disbelief.

  ‘And this is it? This is your organization? An old army truck and two guys, one of whom’s a murdering paedophile and the other’s a spook? Shi-it!’

  ‘What are you saying? I don’t understand . . .’ But he was beginning to.

  ‘Oh yes you do. You haven’t changed. Still the guy with two faces . . .’

  He saw pain and disappointment in her eyes. Belfast was biting back, like a knee-capping, never to be forgotten. She’d winded him.

  ‘Lorna, you’re wrong,’ he pleaded.

  The speed of her mood switch made his head spin. Her mask of sympathy over McFee’s death had split to reveal the anger which had smouldered in her for decades.

  It was the moment he’d dreaded from the instant he’d spotted her on the ferry from Ancona, but the crisis had come out of the blue. Its outcome would decide whether their extraordinary crossing and re-crossing of paths would end well or in bitterness.

  He faced a critical choice. He could try to bluff his way out of a corner like before, or admit everything this time in the hope of stopping history repeating itself.

  Whether she accepted his explanation would depend on one key question. Did she still want him as much as he wanted her?

  ‘Lorna, listen. Listen to everything I say. Then make your judgement.’

  ‘Don’t lie to me again, Alex,’ she warned, folding her arms. Her suspicions deepened.

  Truth. It had to be.

  ‘I’m not a spy,’ he insisted. ‘Not a “spook” as you put it. But . . . I am trying to help the UN find some evidence against Milan Pravic so they can put him on trial for the Tulici massacre.’

  ‘You’re telling me you work for the UN? Where’s your blue beret?’

  ‘Yes. No, not exactly. Look, ten days ago, the UN war crimes people in The Hague sent a message to the British intelligence services, asking if they had somebody out here who could help them trace the man who led the Tulici killings. Well, they didn’t have anyone. The only Brits in Bosnia were soldiers or aid workers. Anyway . . . the intelligence people wanted to help the UN if they could. So they had to find someone at short notice . . . and picked me, because they happened to hear I was coming out here as an aid worker.’

  She stiffened. ‘Why did they hear that?’

  ‘Because for twenty years I’ve been on the run. If it weren’t for the security people I’d be dead. The IRA would have put a bullet in my brain. You know why. Everywhere I went, I had to tell the M15 minders so they could watch my back.’

  He paused for breath. Her jaw was set, the corners of her mouth tugged down. It wasn’t working.

  ‘Anyway Lorna, all they’ve asked me to do out here is keep my eyes and ears open,’ he added desperately. ‘That’s all.’

  ‘But you do still work for them!’ She bit her lip. ‘So you lied to me yesterday!’

  ‘I’ve helped them three times in thirty years for God’s sake! Nothing since Belfast, I promise. Until now. And I don’t work for them. They’ve never paid me. I’ve just given them information when it was right to do so.’

  Lorna’s face erupted with a
nger.

  ‘When you’ve felt it’s right, huh? Like in Belfast when you decided it was right three boys should be shot down like dogs! Who d’you think you are? Jesus Christ?’

  He raised his hands in a gesture of surrender. Everything about Belfast had been a disaster. He should have told Chadwick to piss off, and he hadn’t. Should’ve said to Catherine McNulty, the IRA man’s wife, that he loved Lorna, not her, but he couldn’t do it.

  ‘Look. The rights and wrongs of what happened in Belfast we can argue all round the houses. But this is hardly the time . . .’

  ‘No? Why the hell not?’

  Nothing could stop her now. The dam had broken.

  ‘You lied to me in Belfast, Alex! You said such beautiful, loving words in my ears. Then as soon as I left your bed . . .’ Her face screwed up in disgust. ‘You cheated on me! You did the same things, said the same words . . . with an IRA man’s wife. And not just any . . .’ Her voice caught in her throat.

  Alex looked at her, begging for understanding. This wasn’t the day to go into all this.

  ‘I didn’t want to, for God’s sake!’ he moaned. ‘You remember what Catherine was like. I’d been seeing her for months before you turned up. She wouldn’t let go. I tried to tell her I was ending it but she said she’d kill herself if I did.’

  ‘And you were so naive as to believe her? Oh come on! You reckoned you were man enough to decide three kids should be shot, but didn’t have the guts to tell a loopy lady to get lost?’

  He’d lost control of things. He turned his head away.

  ‘Look, let’s get it straight what happened in Belfast. MI5 blackmailed me into betraying you. The message was that unless I got you to tell me what you knew about the jailbreak, they’d make sure you found out about Catherine, and Catherine’s husband found out about me. I’d have lost you, and probably have got a kneecapping as well. And don’t forget, Lorna . . . those guys who were to be sprung from Long Kesh, they were convicted killers. It was right they should stay inside.’

  Lorna’s hand clamped over her mouth in disbelief.

  ‘Stay inside, I said,’ he stressed, defensively. ‘I . . . I never thought they’d kill them. Naïve perhaps, but I just thought they’d put them back behind the wire.’

  Lorna turned on her heel and stood by the window staring out. Josip was leaning against the Land Cruiser, twitching with impatience.

  So that was the excuse she’d waited twenty years to hear. Blackmail. Did she believe him? Did it make any difference?

  She shuddered, remembering the cataclysmic night in Belfast when Alex’s double-dealing had been exposed. McNulty was the Provos’ Belfast quartermaster, and her IRA contact. She’d been friendly with both him and Catherine. Over a drink at their home one evening, bubbly and excited with her love for Alex, she’d told them his name . . .

  In her mind now, she could still see Catherine’s face, beetroot with fury and pain. Then the earth had opened . . .

  She looked, at her watch. Had to get to Travnik to warn them to have Vildana ready first thing.

  ‘I have to go,’ she said flatly.

  Alex stood up. She turned round, avoiding his eye.

  ‘Look, forget the past for the moment,’ he pleaded. ‘What we’re involved in now . . . it’s much more important. We’re both after the same thing, don’t you see? You want to save a girl’s life. So do I. Your way is to get her out of here to a place she’ll be safe. My way is to nail the man who wants to kill her. We’re in this together, right? This was meant to happen – you said it yourself, yesterday.’

  She crossed her arms tightly, as if trying to hold herself together.

  ‘I have to get a move on,’ she said.

  Seventeen

  Wednesday 30th March

  Vitez, Bosnia

  ALEX STUFFED THE last of McFee’s possessions into the battered, soft-sided suitcase. He’d picked gingerly through his belongings, half expecting to find bizarre sexual aids, or used condoms.

  He’d packed his own bags last night, after taking the Bedford to the REME garage to tank up with diesel.

  He downed the remains of a mug of tea then went into the hall to pull on his boots and coat. It was six o’clock. Lorna would be arriving any minute and he still had to prepare the hide in the back of the truck.

  Last night in the junk-filled garage where they’d stored their aid boxes, he’d found a home-made workbench, a sturdy table one-and-a-half metres long with legs made of ‘two by four’. Using sign language he’d indicated to Andrej that he wanted to borrow it.

  Outside, the temperature had turned milder overnight. It was overcast and raining, water dripping rhythmically onto the stone path from a broken gutter. If the weather was like this over the mountains, the drive south would be messy.

  He unlocked the doors of the driver’s cab, then walked to the back of the truck, undid the tailboard hasps, and released the flaps of the tarpaulin. The truck was empty apart from four spare jerrycans of diesel strapped to rings on the floor.

  He hoisted himself into the back and shone his torch around to find fixings for the table that was to be Vildana’s house for the coming day. Stout string should do it. There was a roll of it in McFee’s tool bag.

  He heard the purr of an engine, and looked out to see the Land Cruiser pulling up, raindrops glinting in its headlamp beams. Lorna got out, her face tense, her blonde hair bristling like a hedge. He doubted if she’d slept much last night.

  Josip still looked sullen. Did the man ever smile?

  Alex jumped down from the tailboard looking for some sign as to how things stood between them that morning. He saw none.

  ‘Okay?’ he asked.

  ‘Sure. You ready?’ she answered, brisk and businesslike.

  ‘I need a hand with something. Josip? Could you help me please?’

  He led him to the garage and between them they carried the heavy workbench out to the truck and hoisted it into the back. They placed it against the end nearest the driver’s cab and Alex secured the legs firmly.

  ‘She can sit under that,’ he explained. ‘Need some cushions or bedding, and some cardboard or a tarpaulin to cover the sides.’

  ‘Maybe they’ll have a spare blanket at the refugee centre,’ Lorna suggested.

  ‘Good thought. Shall we get moving?’

  Six-fifteen. Pretty much on schedule.

  Lorna led the way into Travnik, the streets of the old Muslim quarter almost deserted at this hour. They drove into the playground of the school and parked out of sight behind it. The easterly sky was fringed with the soft, grey glow of dawn.

  ‘Monika stayed the night here with the kid,’ Lorna explained under her breath as they went inside. Now the moment was upon her, she seemed nervous about the responsibility she was taking on. ‘Josip will have to help me play Mom, unless Vildana learns English real fast.’

  ‘So that’s why he’s looking so sour,’ Alex commented.

  ‘One of the reasons . . .’ she replied enigmatically.

  There was a clinking from the kitchen as the early risers prepared tea and coffee.

  ‘I told her to be ready for us,’ Lorna fretted. ‘But where the hell is she?’

  ‘Let’s try the kitchen.’

  The two of them were sitting there, pale and drawn, beside one of the wide cookers, Vildana’s short, dark hair freshly washed, her fearful brown eyes like pebbles dropped in snow. Monika had her arm round her shoulder and held her close.

  Lorna took Josip’s arm. ‘Earn your money, Josip,’ she whispered.

  ‘Hi, Vildana!’ Lorna grinned, crouching in front of the child. Josip also dropped on his haunches.

  There was a minute or two of words in Serbo-Croat, with Monika chipping in.

  ‘Well,’ Josip translated, ‘I explain her she stay hide in the truck, until I say she come out. I tell her we look after her, and she will be . . . safe.’ He shrugged.

  ‘And she’s ready?’

  ‘I think.’

  ‘Just on
e thing,’ Alex added. ‘We need to finish off that Wendy House of hers. There must be loads of empty cardboard boxes here. If we stack a pile round the workbench, it’ll disguise it beautifully.’

  ‘Good. Maybe Monika knows where they keep them?’

  Twenty minutes later the job was done. Vildana’s determination not to cry collapsed when Monika gave her a final hug. Then, with a bed made from blankets and Alex’s sleeping bag, she took up residence in the hide, clutching a bag of bread and fruit and a bottle of water.

  Lorna led the way back to Vitez, this time driving the Land Cruiser on her own. Josip sat in the Bedford cab with Alex.

  Past the junction with Route Triangle, they crossed the invisible line separating Muslim-led forces from Croat. HVO soldiers dawdled with their Kalashnikovs, more relaxed now the cease-fire was taking a grip. Alex wondered what they’d do if they knew the truck carried a Muslim child, the only witness to the Tulici massacre.

  Nerves made his gut churn. He breathed deeply to steady them.

  The pole was down across the entrance to Vitez camp. A squaddie checked their UN passes, lifted the barrier and waved them in.

  Seven-twenty-five. Going like clockwork. The truck clunked in the potholes which had been ground out of the hard core by Warrior tracks.

  ‘Hope the kid’s hanging on tight,’ Alex said.

  ‘I think it is nothing to what will come on the mountain road,’ Josip answered gloomily.

  Alex stopped the Bedford by the medical centre and dropped to the ground. He told Josip to stay with the truck.

  Inside the portakabin, a couple of bored corporals were playing cards, one dark-haired, the other ginger.

  ‘About bloody time,’ the dark one growled. ‘We’ve been up all night waiting for you.’

  ‘Wha-at?’ said Alex. ‘The major told me seven-thirty.’

  The ginger soldier stood up with a grin. ‘Take no notice of ’im. Winds everyone up. It is Mr McFee yer after, is it?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  Ginger switched on an expression of concern. “E was your oppo, was ‘e sir? Your mate?’

  ‘We worked together,’ Alex replied tensely. ‘Are you ready? I’ve got the truck outside.’