Evil Deeds (Bob Danforth 1)

by Joseph Badal

  “That was not our deal,” Miriana exclaimed, her voice rising. She kneaded her hands in her lap, scrunching the fabric of her dress between her fingers. “We want the money up front. We–”

  Olga saw fear in the girl’s eyes. “Tough shit,” she said. “You do the job, first.” It was time the girl understood who was boss in this matter.

  Miriana visibly gulped. “What do you want of me?” she asked. “What must I do to earn this money?”

  “I’m going to tell you slowly, and I want you to repeat it – word for word. I want no misunderstandings or screwups. Your life . . . and mine . . . could depend on it.”

  Miriana leaned forward and stared raptly at Olga. She listened to the blond woman’s whispered instructions. Her eyes grew bigger and bigger while Olga talked.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  “One of these days you’re going to knock the door right off its hinges,” Liz said when Bob walked into the kitchen. Her voice displayed mock irritation. It was just part of their normal daily routine.

  Bob paused. “Sorry. I can’t seem to close it softly. I’ll try to remember next time.”

  “No you won’t,” she said, feigning anger. Then she turned from emptying the dishwasher, a glass in each hand, and gave Bob a kiss. “What are you doing home so early? The last time you came home unannounced was two years ago, when you were being sent off on some cockamamie mission to some godawful third world country in Africa.” Liz laughed at the absurdity of her comment. But then she noticed the frown on Bob’s suddenly reddening face.

  “Bob, don’t tell me you’re going into the field,” she said. Her heart lurched. “That’s crazy! You promised that wouldn’t happen again.”

  He hunched his shoulders and spread his arms. “It can’t be helped.”

  She scowled.

  “Calm down, honey. Getting upset isn’t going to change anything.”

  She put the two glasses down on the kitchen counter. “Goddamit! What’s wrong with the Agency?” She stared at him, stepped into his arms, and began to cry. “Oh, Bob,” she said. “Not after all these years. Not now.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Two days later, Bob arrived in Belgrade on a commercial flight from Toronto, Canada. He took a cab from the airport to the Hotel Belgrade. After doing a quick inspection of his room, checking for listening devices and cameras, he reached between the bed’s mattress and box springs and found the 9mm and two fully loaded magazines Stan “Q” Bartell had arranged to be put there. After removing another magazine from the pistol and checking to make sure the chamber was empty, he tested the trigger pull. Satisfied, he replaced the magazine and put the weapon back under the mattress.

  Deciding to reconnoiter the hotel, and to establish his cover as a reporter, he went down to the hotel bar, figuring that’s where he’d find members of the press contingent. He chose a guy sitting by himself at the bar, a laminated ID badge on his vest, sipping a drink.

  “Excuse me,” Bob said.

  The man looked up. “Can I help you, mate?” the man said. He shook Bob’s hand. “Henry McCourt, Adelaide Times.”

  “Greg Davis, freelance out of Toronto,” Bob said.

  “Take a seat,” McCourt said, dropping back into his own chair. “Had ya pegged for a Yank.”

  “Canadian, American. How do you tell the difference?” Bob said, sitting down next to McCourt.

  “Just so, mate,” McCourt answered, laughing.

  “So, what’s happening around here that will interest my editor?”

  “With NATO planes bombing Belgrade, you won’t have to go too far from the hotel to find a story. Milan Bozic, deputy mayor, is holding a press conference at noon today. He’s going to make another speech about how it is NATO bombs – not the poor, misunderstood Serbs – that are driving the ethnic Albanians out of Kosovo.”

  “Interesting.”

  “Why don’t you tag along with me,” McCourt said. “I’ve got a car. I’ll meet you in the lobby at eleven.” McCourt shoved away from the bar. “Gotta file my story,” he explained. “Bloody fuckin’ deadlines.”

  After McCourt went off to file his story, Bob moved to the hotel restaurant and ordered breakfast – coffee, hard-boiled eggs, and hard, dark bread. Afterward, he ventured onto Belgrade’s streets. He had to walk only three blocks before he saw the results of NATO’s precision bombing: Pockets of government buildings and factories destroyed with no damage to the buildings around them. He jotted details of what he saw in a small notebook and took photos. He would turn these over to CIA analysts when he returned to Langley.

  When Bob returned to the hotel lobby, he found Henry McCourt waiting. The Australian led Bob back out on the street and around a corner to a beat-up Lada sedan parked half on the sidewalk.

  “Our limousine awaits,” McCourt said.

  It took fifteen minutes to get to the Belgrade Municipal Building and another thirty minutes to get through security and credentials check. Bob and McCourt took their seats in the pressroom, a large, high-ceilinged room with windows on one wall. Bob looked around, recognizing many of the television correspondents from FOX, CNN, and the broadcast networks. He began to ask McCourt a question when Deputy Mayor Bozic entered. The cameras started rolling.

  “Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for coming today,” the said. “Before I take your questions, I am going to make a statement about the grievous wrong being perpetrated on the Serb people. Many of you have personally seen the damage NATO bombs have done to my city. Nine more people were killed last night, and many more injured.” Raising a fist in the air, Bozic appeared to lose his professional calm. “We will never surrender,” he yelled.

  McCourt jabbed Bob in the side. “Here comes the bullshit.”

  “We are trying to make peace with the Albanians in Kosovo. We would be happy for them to live in Kosovo and become productive citizens of our country. But not as long as the KLA – the Kosovo Liberation Army – continues attacking innocent Serbs. Now, for no good reason, NATO is attacking us. NATO claims Serbs are committing atrocities against the Bosnian Muslims, the Kosovars, the Albanians. I assure you these claims are lies. Their bombs kill people in Kosovo and Bosnia, and NATO claims we are responsible for the deaths.”

  He shook his head and shuffled the papers on the podium. “I will now take your questions.”

  McCourt shot out of his chair, waving his arm. “The Serb government is now holding NATO soldiers prisoner –English, German, American. You’ve threatened to put these men on trial, in violation of the Geneva Convention. Are they being well treated? Are you going ahead with the trials?”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  “Geneva Convention, my ass,” Stefan Radko spat while he watched the press conference on CNN International. “They bombed Serbia. They will be treated like criminals.”

  “I think you are wrong, Stefan,” Vanja said. “Even the President isn’t that crazy.”

  “What the hell do you know about these things, woman?” Stefan shouted. The CNN camera moved from the reporter who’d asked the question, to the deputy mayor, and back to the reporter. At first, Stefan concentrated only on the reporter. Then his gaze settled on the man seated next to the reporter. He rubbed his eyes. The man seemed familiar. Had he seen him before? But where? When?

  And then, as though a flashbulb had gone off in his brain, he shouted, “It can’t be.” He moved closer to the television set. “It can’t be,” he repeated. Stefan knelt on the floor. His mind washed the gray from the man’s hair. It erased the wrinkles in his face. Despite his natural doubts of not having seen the man for almost thirty years, Stefan recognized Bob Danforth. How could he ever forget the face of the man who murdered his son Gregorie? Bob Danforth, the man who had stood at another press conference twenty-eight years earlier and disclosed the role the Bulgarian government played in child kidnappings in Greece. And now Danforth was in Serbia, delivered up like a lamb to the slaughter.

  “What is it, Stefan?” Vanja asked.

  Stefan waved a
way her question and continued staring at the screen until the camera settled again on the deputy mayor. He stood, flexed his fists, and picked up the telephone.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Just as Stefan had instructed, Niko Papolu sat in his car across and down the street from the municipal building entrance and watched people stream out. He still fumed over Stefan’s calling him at home and ordering him around like some young pup. But he was too afraid of the old man to defy him.

  The man Stefan had described suddenly appeared on the steps of the building. Dark-blue sport coat. Wavy salt-and-pepper hair. Mustache. About fifty-five years old. Another man walked with him. The two got into a Lada and drove off.

  After following them to the Hotel Belgrade, Niko parked his own car and ran into the hotel lobby. He frantically jerked his head left and right, searching, and sighed with relief when he caught sight of both men entering an elevator.

  Niko found a bank of pay phones and called Stefan.

  “Halo,” Vanja answered.

  “Daj da govorim ti Stefan,” Niko said.

  “He’s right here–”

  Stefan was suddenly on the line, shouting into the mouthpiece, “I’m listening. Did you see him?”

  “He’s at the Hotel Belgrade. He just went up in the elevator.”

  “What room?” Stefan demanded.

  “How am I supposed to know that?”

  Stefan breathed loudly into the phone. “Watch the lobby,” he ordered. “If he goes out, follow him. I’ll be there in about eight hours.”

  “But, Stefan, my family is visiting. We are having a–”

  “I don’t care if the Pope is visiting you. Stay there and keep your eyes open.” Stefan broke the connection with a bang.

  Niko held the receiver away from his ear and stared at it.

  Bob woke up shortly after eleven-thirty p.m. feeling drugged. Jet lag still lay over him like a wet wool blanket. He forced himself out of bed. He stripped down and stepped into the shower. The cold sting of the spray helped to dissipate his doped-up feeling. By the time he finished brushing his teeth, he felt almost human again. He’d just finished dressing when the telephone rang.

  “Mr. Davis?” queried a rough male voice before Bob could even say hello.

  “Right,” Bob said.

  “Mother told me to contact you.”

  “I’ve been expecting your call,” Bob said, smiling at the use of Jack Cole’s code name. “Are you all set?”

  “Ready to go.”

  “Almost. How will I know you?”

  “Dark-brown Range Rover. Green anorak. I’m parked across the street from the hotel entrance. I’ll stand on the sidewalk by the car. And wear a warm coat. It’s cold and rainy out here.”

  “Okay,” Bob said. “Give me five minutes.”

  He put on a dark-blue ski jacket and then pulled the pistol and extra magazines from under the mattress. He stuck the pistol in one outside pocket of the jacket and the magazines in the other pocket. He made sure he had his papers – press badge, visa, and passport – and put them in an inside jacket pocket. After grabbing the briefcase with the currency, he left his room.

  Stefan walked through the Belgrade Hotel’s wide, brass-trimmed doors while nearby church bells tolled midnight. He spotted Niko dozing in a lobby chair. Stefan walked over to his so-called lookout, kicked his foot, and growled, “Idiota!”

  “Wha . . . who the hell!” Niko said, a startled look on his face. He jumped out of his chair, ran his fingers through his hair, and mumbled something unintelligible. Stefan saw the fear in the man’s eyes.

  “If he’s left the hotel,” Stefan hissed, “I’ll cut your throat.”

  Niko’s fearful look suddenly changed. “Nothing to worry about,” he whispered. “He’s just come out of the elevator.”

  Stefan turned to look just as Danforth hurried past him. It took huge will power to not pull his dagger and stab the man right there in the crowded lobby. He watched Danforth leave the hotel. Pushing Niko away, Stefan rushed after Danforth. He reached the street in time to see Gregorie’s murderer enter a brown Range Rover that immediately pulled away from the curb.

  Stefan waved in the opposite direction. A Fiat pulled out from a parking place half-a-block away and slid to a stop in front of him. In addition to the driver, there were two men in the backseat.

  “Stay with the Range Rover,” Stefan ordered as he got into the front passenger seat.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  “Greg Davis,” Bob said, introducing himself to the driver, using his code name. “What do I call you?”

  “Yanni will do.”

  Bob hefted the briefcase over the seat onto the floor in back and slid the case partway under the back seat. Then he looked closely at Yanni, who had one of those nondescript faces that would allow him to hide in a crowd. His dark hair and olive complexion would help him to pass as a native in almost any of the Balkan or Mediterranean countries.

  “What’s our destination?” Yanni asked.

  “The Kosovo border with Albania.”

  “Don’t lose them, Zoran,” Stefan growled at the driver, a Buddha-shaped thirty-year-old with a shaved head, large belly, and powerful arms and legs. He’d been a member of Stefan’s gang for ten years. Like all of the members of the gang, Zoran was Rom, a Gypsy.

  Zulkar, seated behind forty-five-year-old Zoran, was Stefan’s assassin – the man Stefan had counted on for nearly two decades to do his dirty work. He had murdered a dozen men on Stefan’s orders. He had jet-black hair, mustache and goatee. He looked like a Tartar, with chiseled cheekbones and narrow, slanted, angry gray eyes.

  Kukoch, next to Zulkar in the back seat, wore his trademark beret, which covered his unruly straw-like blond hair. Tall and lanky, twenty-four-year-old Kukoch was fundamentally a non-violent thief who ran Stefan’s black market operations.

  “Where are these guys going?” Kukoch said in his grating high-pitched voice, sounding like fingernails screeching on a blackboard. The son of an old Gypsy confederate of Stefan’s, Kukoch had the body of a weightlifter and a head that was too small for his body. His nickname was Peahead, but no one outside the gang had the nerve to call him that. “What’s the plan, Stefan?” Kukoch asked.

  Stefan hesitated a moment before answering. Finally, he said, under his breath, “Koke per koke.”

  “What do you mean, ‘a head for a head’?” Zoran asked. “Is this about revenge?”

  Stefan glared at Zoran’s profile. “It will be my only reward in this matter. Whatever the men in that Range Rover might have on them is yours. You can split up the spoils. But the passenger is mine.”

  Bob and Yanni’s documents – and a hundred dollar bill – got them through each of the six checkpoints they encountered on the way to the Albanian border.

  They continued south, the rain finally letting up when they approached a checkpoint near Pec.

  Yanni pulled the car onto the road shoulder one hundred yards short of the checkpoint. He peered through the windshield at the four armed men standing in the middle of the road, in front of a barrier. They were highlighted by the Range Rover’s headlights and two floodlights mounted on the guard shack behind the barrier. “I don’t like the looks of this,” Yanni said. “These men look more like bandits than Serb Army regulars.”

  Bob patted the bulge of currency in his jacket. “They’re all bandits. Hopefully, our cash will make the difference.”

  “You’re the boss,” Yanni answered. He pulled off the shoulder, drove up to the checkpoint, and rolled down his window. Two men armed with automatic weapons approached, one on each side of the car.

  The man on the driver’s side spoke to Yanni in Serbo-Croatian.

  “Where are you going?”

  “My friend here is a Canadian reporter. We’re driving into Kosovo. He wants to follow up on reports the KLA is killing Serb residents there.”

  While the guard considered Yanni’s answer, the second one tapped on Bob’s window with the muzzle of his w
eapon, then made a downward motion with it to indicate he should roll down the window.

  Stefan and his crew had been having an easier time of it at the checkpoints. He carried a VIP pass General Karadjic had given Miriana. The bearer could travel anywhere in Yugoslavia.

  When Stefan saw the sign announcing the guard station just ahead at Pec, then saw the Range Rover stopped at the checkpoint, he told Zoran to pull off the road. He got out and walked ahead, staying close to the trees bordering the rutted pavement. The Range Rover’s taillights glowed brightly in the night. Two armed guards bracketed the car. Another two guards stood ten yards away, in front of the vehicle. Then Stefan saw those two split up and go to the sides of the pull the driver and Danforth out of the vehicle. They paired up with the two other guards and began manhandling Danforth and his companion.

  Stefan cursed under his breath. “Shit! They’ll kill him.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  By the time Bob was dragged from the Range Rover, he knew he and Yanni were in real trouble. The guards wore a motley assortment of clothing – Serb Army fatigue jackets over a variety of shirts and sweaters and jeans. Two had military campaign caps; the other two wore blue NATO forces baseball caps. They apparently wore whatever they found or stole. They were nothing but bandits.

  “Who’s your leader?” Bob asked in English as the bandits dragged him off to the side of the road.

  One of the bandits shouted something that Bob thought might be Serbo-Croatian and the other man released Bob’s arm and jabbed the butt of his rifle into Bob’s side. Bob sagged to the ground and groaned, despite his resolve to not show any weakness to these hoodlums.

  The bandits then dragged him along the ground and into the trees. He heard the other two bandits laughing and Yanni crying out. The bandits were obviously beating him.