The Code

by Nick Elliott

  I poured him a glass of wine which he downed as if it was there only to quench his thirst.

  ‘Right, here’s how I believe we should play this. I’ll stay here with Valdis. I need to be close to the NATO people here anyway, and to the Six station and the IAEA too. Me getting bogged down in the Balkans isn’t going to help get the attention of the right people. Go to Belgrade and see if you can track down the whereabouts of the Phoenix Saturn. I’ll activate the Lloyd’s Agent there. I met him once at some conference here in Vienna a few years ago and I judge him to be a capable character. By the time you’ve found the ship, I’ll have worked something out to stop these mad bastards. That’s the best I can do for now. We’ll just need to keep in close touch. This one will be fast-moving, Angus.’

  I’d become a bystander, now I felt I had a role to play again. And back at the hotel the Admiral gave me two black cotton bags. Inside one was a .38 revolver, in the other, a dozen or so bullets. I remembered my uncle taking me up into the Lammermuir Hills as a teenager and showing me how to use a twelve-bore. Then he’d pulled a Smith & Wesson .38 out of a bag just like the one I was holding now. ‘This was your father’s,’ he’d said. ‘Standard issue to the Royal Hong Kong Police Force. I’ll keep it for you.’ It was loaded and we’d spent the afternoon on improvised target practice.

  ‘Ever used one of these?’ the Admiral asked.

  ‘A long time ago.’

  ‘Your father’s, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, how did you know?’

  ‘We’re not without our means.’

  ***

  Iveta’s performance of her Chopin piece the next evening was impressive. I sat next to Valdis with the Admiral on his other side. Tears rolled down Valdis’s cheeks and at the end, as she took her bow, the audience in the concert hall erupted in applause.

  ‘Bravo!’ cried the Admiral amid the cheering and wolf-whistles.

  We waited in the foyer, the plan being to take her out to dinner in a smart Italian restaurant across the street. Iveta’s boyfriend was working late and had not attended. Knowing how uneasy her father felt about him, I wondered if this was a diplomatic absence. After a few minutes she appeared, still dressed in the simple, low-cut black evening gown in which she had performed, but carrying a hold-all she’d retrieved from her dressing room. Valdis hugged her, we congratulated her and members of the audience stared, smiled and made approving comments as they passed us on their way out. A tall, grey-haired man with a neat goatee approached, bowed and kissed her hand. ‘An exquisite performance, Fräulein,’ he said in English, and bowed again before moving on. Several young women queued for her autograph. Iveta complied, looking embarrassed as she scribbled her signature on their programmes.

  We headed down the steps and out onto the street, waiting to cross to the restaurant. I either didn’t notice or don’t remember what make or model of black car pulled up at the kerb. The three men who stepped out were in evening dress. They moved smoothly, surrounding us, smiling, talking, congratulating Iveta. With hindsight they had looked incongruous, their jackets too tight over muscular arms and shoulders, their hair close-cropped. As one of them continued with the charade the other two moved behind Valdis, grabbed him by his arms and bundled him into the back of the car before he had time to react. Belatedly I lunged forward towards the back door as it was closing. The third man elbowed me out of the way. I grabbed him by the lapels but it was a wasted effort. He tore himself free and made it into the front of the car, by which time it was on the move. With a squeal from the tyres, it shot down the street as he slammed the door shut. The whole episode had taken no more than a minute.

  Iveta stared at us, stupefied, rooted to the spot.

  ‘Let’s get away from here,’ I said, taking her by the arm. There were too many people still spilling out of the concert hall. We moved round the corner into a side street.

  Iveta was taking deep breaths, trying hard to compose herself. ‘My car is here. We must go after them. Did either of you see the numberplate?’

  ‘Part of it,’ I said. ‘BG, then a red coat of arms, then the number. Belgrade?’

  ‘Yes, of course! We must go there now. We must find him.’

  ‘That means finding the Phoenix Saturn then, if Belgrade’s where they’re taking him.’

  ‘Right, here’s what’s going to happen,’ said the Admiral reasserting himself. ‘I will call the Lloyd’s Agent, Aleksandar Nenadovic, now. Iveta, how long will it take you to drive there?’

  ‘It’s about seven hundred kilometres I think, so maybe seven or eight hours.’

  ‘Go now, with Angus. I can be of more use here. I have Nenadovic’s address. Can you find it?’ He pulled a notebook out of his pocket.

  ‘We’ll find him,’ I said scribbling down a note of the address and phone numbers.

  ‘He will be our point of contact then. If you can’t reach me on this,’ he said, waving his Nokia, ‘get word through Nenadovic. You’ll find him resourceful. Descended from some warrior nobility, he told me.’ For the Admiral this was clearly the ultimate accolade.

  ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘So it looks like, not only do those bastards know that Valdis has the launch code, but they’ve been unable to get at it by other means.’

  ‘You’re probably right. Just because they’re ex-GRU doesn’t mean they can tap into classified military secrets whenever they feel like it.’

  Iveta was getting agitated. We parted company, the Admiral hailing a taxi and Iveta and I heading for where she’d left her Golf. And from there into a war zone.

  Chapter 20

  Vienna - Belgrade, Serbia

  12-13 June 1999

  I had my new passport with me, but little else. I’d left the Admiral’s gun in my room safe, not thinking I’d need it. Clearly I had much to learn. Iveta had to collect her passport, which meant stopping off at her apartment on our way out of the city. We pulled up outside an elegant old building in a tree-lined street on the south side of the city.

  ‘I’ll be five minutes,’ she said. I waited in the car and she came out after fifteen, having changed her clothes and showing no sign of panic now, just a controlled sense of urgency. She’d even brought a flask of coffee along with some food and cold drinks in a cooler bag.

  ‘Was your boyfriend home?’ I asked clumsily.

  ‘I told you, he’s working late. Why, are you suspicious? I told Papa, you have nothing to worry about. He’s the last person on earth who would get involved in this kind of thing. And he hates the GRU, the KGB and all those Soviet-era spies and apparatchiks.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I needed to hear that.’

  We drove through the night, Iveta for the first couple of hours, after which I took over. Now she sat still and silent, staring at the road ahead.

  ‘How long have you known of your father’s spying?’

  This time she was less troubled by the directness of my question, although I had intruded on her thoughts. ‘Ten years perhaps. I was in my mid-teens. He had become withdrawn. We were always close. He played such an important part in my life, in encouraging my interests in music, and in science too. Then came the end of the Soviet regime, and our Singing Revolution and independence. We were so happy. And one day he took me to a park in Riga. It was after a demonstration we had been in the capital for, just the two of us. We sat on a bench in the sunshine and he told me how he’d sat there on the same bench with an Englishman, his friend and handler who was retiring. At first I had no idea what he was talking about, but then it all came out: Cuba, Beirut, his years at sea. I was so proud of him for following his conscience. Only later did I think of the danger he had placed us in: my mother and I as well as himself. But still I was proud.’

  ‘We’ll find him,’ I said.

  Low on fuel, we stopped at a filling station on the Budapest ring road. Iveta asked about the situation at the Hungarian/Serbia border and was told it was open, but to expect delays on the Serbian side. ‘He thinks we’re crazy. He thought we might get turned back
. He said we would be better trying one of the quieter crossings. He mentioned Kelebija or Tiszasziget as alternatives to the main Horgoš–Röszke post on the main road. Also, he said there’d be more traffic crossing over from the Serbian side. There are thousands of ethnic Hungarians wanting to get out of Serbia although it’s been their home for generations.’ She sighed. ‘It’s always that way isn’t it.’

  ‘Yes, it is. But those quieter crossings might arouse suspicion. I think we should stick to Horgoš–Röszke. Your IAEA ID should see us through.’

  We’d agreed that I was simply her companion, an old friend whom she’d asked to accompany her as a safety measure under the prevailing circumstances. Her IAEA role was at the request of the UN, issued at short notice, which was why she had no official invitation. But she had observer status, which she assured me was not unusual in itself. It was flimsy but if it failed we had the Lloyd’s Agent to fall back on. The Admiral had said Aleksandar Nenadovic, as part of a blue-blooded and still highly regarded Serb dynasty, carried weight in those parts. I’d have to take his word for it.

  ‘Did you ask him about the security situation in Belgrade?’ I asked her as we drove away.

  ‘Yes, he thought it was quiet. The bombing has ended he said – for now at least.’

  We pressed on, reaching the border at six in the morning. There were some tense moments on the Serb side while the border guards checked our papers and searched the car, but Iveta’s ID helped and with traffic building all the time on the northbound crossing, the Serb guards were in danger of becoming overwhelmed. After some cursory questioning we were waved through and headed for Belgrade.

  To my surprise, Iveta had GPS mapping in the car. She told me she loved exploring her new homeland. They hiked in the summer and skied in the winter. Her boyfriend had bought her the Tom Tom device recently for that purpose but we used it now as we entered the city’s northern suburbs to locate Aleksandar’s address in the old township of Zemun. We were both exhausted. Iveta, carrying the burden of her father’s abduction on her shoulders, had become jumpy as well, not helped by the strong coffee we’d drunk through the night.

  On the journey down I’d been giving thought to our meeting with Aleksandar. With their uncompromising nationalism, the Serbs were not winning any popularity contests on the international stage these days. Aleksandar Nenadovic was our only contact in this alien city and, despite the Admiral’s reassurances, I wasn’t sure what kind of welcome we’d get. I needn’t have worried. He greeted us warmly as, having passed through wrought-iron gates and pulled up, we climbed the steps to his mansion. It stood in splendid isolation at the end of a leafy lane that served as a private drive, as there were no other houses nearby. Zemun was a maze of narrow streets crowded into a small area, yet this house stood like a citadel surrounded by its lowly cohorts.

  ‘Welcome to this pitiful country,’ he said, beaming. ‘I am Aleksandar.’ First he took Iveta’s hand and bowing slightly, kissed it. Then he gripped my hand in both of his. ‘I have spoken with the Admiral again, just this morning. He wanted to know whether you had arrived. Now I must call him. Come in, come in. Your luggage? You poor dears.’ His English was precise, if somewhat old-world and heavily accented. He was somewhere in his sixties, tall and lean, his silver hair swept back off his forehead. But his eyebrows were black, his eyes blue and clear, and between them, a striking aquiline nose. He reminded me of the actor Christopher Lee.

  We entered the house through a huge pair of doors leading into a dark, panelled hallway. We were led through into a brightly lit room at the back of the house on an equally grand scale as the hall. Sofas with faded oriental covers juxtaposed with well-worn leather Chesterfield wingchairs and an ottoman, all set on old carpets from Samarkand or Bokhara I imagined. Open French windows led out onto a paved terrace beyond which was a formally laid out garden stretching for a hundred yards or more down to the Danube. He ushered us to sit and served thick, sweet black coffee from small porcelain cups accompanied by a plate of crescent-shaped pastries filled with walnut and apple jam.

  ‘Skaltsounia,’ he said before sitting down himself. ‘First, you will wash and rest. And don’t worry, the caffeine has been boiled out of the coffee,’ he added. ‘My housekeeper is not here. I sent her back to her village away from the bombing, and I’m afraid my culinary skills are limited, so tonight I will take you to a restaurant just along the river where we will dine under the stars, though hopefully not the bombers!’

  Charming host that he was, I did wonder when we would get to the subject matter, but I wasn’t going to argue with him yet. Iveta was desperate too to pursue the search for her father, but we both needed to rest. He took us to our rooms. The shower was welcome and I slept dreamlessly until he woke us at seven that evening.

  The Balkan Express was based around an old railway wagon set well above the Danube. We walked to the end of Zemun Quay and climbed a stairway up to the restaurant. A waiter with a black waxed moustache that Poirot would have been happy with seated us at a table outside with a view across the river. Strains of Romantic music wafted across the terrace and I asked Aleksandar what it was. ‘The Serbs are a creative people, and that creativity extends far beyond the pen and the page. The history of our music is full with classical composers, but they have not received the credit they deserve.’

  As we drank a local Muscat called Tamjanika and ate perch and bream cooked in a fish soup, Aleksandar told us about his life and his work. Here we were, enjoying excellent food and wine in good company, with a war raging around us and a nuclear warhead on the loose nearby.

  ‘It’s true I come from a noble family but there were plenty of rotten apples in the barrel too, I’m afraid. I was educated in England and joined a Lloyd’s brokerage after I graduated. After seven years I returned to Belgrade, to the family home and the business my father had established in 1932.

  ‘As the Committee of Lloyd’s of London had stated when they established the network: “It is highly important to the interests of Underwriters, that a regular and universal system of intelligence and superintendence should be established in all the principal ports and places, both at home and abroad.” I was introduced to your Admiral while still working in London. When this war broke out I was not surprised to hear from him and I have been reporting to him regularly throughout these tragic times.’

  We let him talk. Iveta and I exchanged glances and I knew we were thinking the same thing: was he going to get to the purpose of our visit or should one of us jump in?

  ‘Aleksandar …,’ I began, but he had read our thoughts.

  ‘And so my friends, here we are and I will tell you what I know, and what I fear. Then we can discuss what we are to do about it. I wanted you refreshed and well fed first, and to give you a little context.

  ‘So, the IAEA’s intelligence is partly correct: the Phoenix Saturn has transported this weapon, but not to Belgrade. She berthed at the port in Smederovo, forty-five kilometres downstream from here,’ he gestured eastwards downriver. ‘As you were on the road the vessel was approaching. She discharged her cargo before dawn and the amphibious vehicle, with its launcher, together with what we must presume is the nuclear missile camouflaged under a tarpaulin, are, as we sit here, heading south accompanied by an army truck of some kind.’

  ‘So what are we sitting here for?’ I asked.

  ‘Because, my friend, I only learned of this minutes before I woke you this evening. It is better that you have rested and are prepared for what lies ahead. Anyway, these amphibious vehicles are only capable of travelling at fifty kilometres per hour and I have my people monitoring their progress minute by minute.’

  It didn’t surprise me that his ‘people’ could monitor the ship and the cargo’s movements; it was what Lloyd’s Agents did. But I was still impressed by the reach of his contacts and the efficiency of communications in a country that was, after all, at war.

  ‘Which brings us,’ he continued, ‘to the questions: what is their destination, and o
nce they reach it, what is their target?

  ‘Do you know anything of Balkan history, and politics?’ Neither of us replied. ‘Then let me tell you. Don’t worry, I will not attempt to educate you on the entire history of these troubled lands. But I must begin in 1389 when the Battle of Kosovo was fought and the Serbs were defeated. The battle took place on the 15th of June between the Serbs and an invading army of the Ottoman Empire. It was fought on the Kosovo Field in the territory ruled by a Serbian nobleman about five kilometres from what today is Kosovo’s capital, Pristina. The bulk of both armies were wiped out and many of their senior commanders killed. The Serbs were left with too few men to defend their lands while the Turks had many more troops in the east to call upon. Consequently, the Serbian principalities that were not already Ottoman vassals became so in the following years.

  ‘The defeat in battle is very important to Serbian history, to our traditions and our national identity. Some would say it has led to a national sense of victimhood. Without doubt, it scarred our nation. Today, Kosovo seeks independence and I believe it will and should have it, even if most Serbs would disagree. The truth is, we are oppressing the Kosovars, Kosovo’s ethnic Albanian majority. The Kosovars have pursued a policy of peaceful resistance for several years but eventually they formed the Kosovo Liberation Army and an armed internal struggle followed. This, in turn, prompted Serbian security forces to conduct a massive military operation against the Kosovars, and 800,000 of them were forced out of their homes into neighbouring countries. And that is what has led to where we are now: NATO airstrikes.

  ‘Now, as I said, the battle of 1389 was fought on the 15th of June. Today is the 13th. Yesterday we learned that NATO’s KFOR peacekeeping force has entered Kosovo. There is still fighting going on there. And in three days’ time it will be the 610th anniversary of the battle – of our national humiliation.’

  Aleksandar paused.

  ‘What are you saying?’

  ‘I told you the convoy had left Smederevo and was heading south. My fear is that, aided – albeit under duress – by your father, Iveta, they plan to launch the missile from somewhere in the south of the country across the border to strike Pristina, the capital city of Kosovo and home to 200,000 people.’