At first he had been nothing more than a blip on Amadayo’s radar, one more bandit warlord among a population of smugglers and pirates. That underestimation had been his biggest miscalculation. Day after day, Amadayo got word of new alliances between Ramaas’s band of brigands and the antagonistic clans in Puntland, Galmudug and elsewhere. Even worse, it was said that the ruthless Al Shabaab Islamists had found a kind of accord with the man. He was undercutting the work that Amadayo had spent painstaking years constructing. Every thug he had sent to kill Ramaas never returned. Most, he feared, had switched sides and given their fealty to the warlord instead – Somalians always respected strength. As Amadayo searched Ramaas’s scarred face for some ounce of humanity, he knew that here and now, the warlord had all the power over him.
‘The clan elders are sick of you,’ Ramaas was saying. ‘They mock you in Haradheere. Like a woman who lies with any man, they say, the biggest dhillo in Mogadishu.’ He prodded him in the chest with a thick finger, and nodded toward the camera. ‘In the pocket of the gaal.’
‘I am no whore!’ Amadayo dredged up what little of his defiance still remained, but the outburst drained him and he folded.
Ramaas saw it, a hunter knowing his prey had given up, and nodded. ‘Time for you to go.’
Was he being given a way out? Amadayo took a wary step toward the door, but an angry-looking man in a bright red soccer shirt was barring the way.
‘You’ve been lucky,’ Ramaas told him. ‘Getting to here.’ He surveyed the room. ‘I want to see if you are still lucky.’ The warlord fished in a pocket and produced three careworn playing cards, each bent into a curve. He showed Amadayo their faces; the Jack of Spades, the Jack of Clubs and the Queen of Hearts. ‘Find her.’
Amadayo knew the game, and he knew it was a trick, but Ramaas was already laying the cards out on the desk, moving them about with a deftness at odds with his heavy boxer’s hands. When he was done, he drew back a step and waited.
One chance in three, Amadayo reasoned. He had no other choice but to play along. Reaching out, he tapped the middle card, and he heard the outlaw in the soccer shirt give a derisive snort.
Ramaas gave an indulgent nod and let Amadayo flip the card over. The pale face of the Jack of Clubs pictured there reminded him of Brett’s studied features.
‘Come, mister-doctor. I want to show you something.’ A smile played around Ramaas’s mouth and he pushed Amadayo in the direction of the balcony.
He reluctantly allowed himself to be directed outside. His eyes darted around, searching for anything that could be a method of escape. Below them, the warlord’s men were already looting the house, walking in empty-handed and out again with anything of value they could carry. Amadayo stifled a moan of dread.
A heavy hand landed on his shoulder. ‘You see that?’ Ramaas pointed out toward the city. ‘It was never yours to begin with. You were a fool to think otherwise.’ He paused. ‘Do you believe in a God? Do you think he looks well upon you?’ Amadayo didn’t know what to say, but he suspected Ramaas knew the answer to his questions already.
‘Brother, please,’ Amadayo whispered, pleading. ‘You are going to let me go?’
‘No.’ With a vicious shove, Ramaas’s hand clamped around Amadayo’s neck, his thumb choking him as it pressed into the soft flesh of his throat.
He stumbled back and collapsed against the bullet-pocked balustrade, but Ramaas kept up the pressure, forcing him over the edge until his torso was hanging out over the drop. Amadayo’s hands came up, flailing and scratching, fright overwhelming him as he realised that this would be his end.
Ramaas grabbed at his belt for leverage and tipped him over the edge. Amadayo spun and landed hard against the tiled patio surrounding the murky swimming pool, bones breaking against the concrete. Agony blinded him and blood spread around his body, soaking into the silk shirt.
*
‘Boss.’ Zayd glanced at the twitching body on the ground and looked up at the balcony where Ramaas was wiping sweat from his fingers. He pointed down at Amadayo. ‘Still alive.’
‘Oh.’ Almost as an afterthought, Ramaas removed the Desert Eagle from its holster and blind-fired four rounds into the dying man. The reports of the heavy-calibre pistol echoed like claps of thunder, and then the matter of Welldone Amadayo was dealt with. ‘Get up here,’ said the warlord.
Zayd’s head bobbed on his thin neck and he shouldered his rifle on its strap, making his way in through the house. Expressionless, his gaze ran over the expensive furniture and the garish paintings on the walls. Every square metre of the place was crammed with overblown, gaudy clutter. Zayd looked away – Amadayo’s home was full of hollow things that only had value to rich fools, but like the man himself they were worthless. There was nothing here that had been earned through sweat and toil, only by guile and lies.
The other outlaws were in the process of stripping the place. What could be sold on would be used to fund their group. The remainder would be left for those gathering outside the gates – the people who had been forced to live in the shadow of Amadayo’s offensive wealth – to take and do with as they saw fit. Zayd pushed past a man on the stairs laden down with armfuls of colourful women’s clothes, and found his way to the dead politician’s office.
Inside, he came upon Guhaad emptying a bag across the floor. Small bars of gold thudded on the thick carpet and his eyes widened. Zayd ignored him and looked to Ramaas, as the warlord pulled on a fist-sized plastic ball mounted on a television screen.
He drew it toward him, and the device cracked, trailing out wires. ‘You liked the show?’ he asked it.
On the screen, a well-dressed foreigner cocked his head like a curious dog. ‘It seems as though you have dealt with a problem that we both shared. Perhaps you would be interested in accepting the position that has just been vacated?’
Ramaas gave a grumbling chuckle and shot a look at Guhaad, who belatedly shared a rough snigger. Zayd’s expression remained blank. Little amused him, and certainly not some pale-skinned gaal who talked at them like he thought they were all fools.
‘Messenger,’ Ramaas said to the white man. ‘Go and tell your masters that I am in charge here now.’ Then with a jerk of his wrist he wrenched the camera the rest of the way from the wall and tossed it onto the desk. The screen flickered and went blank.
Zayd nudged the camera ball with a finger, ensuring it was dead. Next to it, he saw the warlord’s cards lying in a line. He flipped over the two that were still face down and found a pair of identical Jacks. ‘Amadayo should not have played this game,’ he noted, handing the cards back to the warlord.
‘So true,’ said Ramaas. ‘Greed makes a man overstate his chances. He knew chance did not favour him, and yet still he played on. You see the arrogance of that? To the end, Amadayo believed the rules of the world did not apply to him.’
‘What do you want me for?’ said Zayd.
Ramaas studied the computer on Amadayo’s desk. They had men who were knowledgeable about such things, and the machine would go to them just as the spoils from the house would go to the rank-and-file of the outlaws. Ramaas looked Zayd up and down. ‘You are no bigger than the late mister-doctor. His clothes are very fine. Go to his rooms, gather some up. Take what you like.’
‘Why?’
‘You are going on a vital journey.’ He nodded in the direction of the screen. ‘There is more work to be done.’ He leaned in and spoke quietly. ‘Only you can do this for me, brother.’ The rest went unspoken. It would not be the first time that Zayd had carried the warlord’s flag for him. There were few to whom Ramaas was willing to give such an honour.
From across the room, wood crunched and splintered as Guhaad bodily shoved a rack of shelves aside, to reveal a hidden compartment behind it. He broke open the lock on the metal door with the butt of his rifle and slid it open. ‘Boss. Look here!’
Ramaas reached inside and came back with plastic-wrapped bricks of American dollars in high denominations. He gave a nod. ‘Empty it. Amadayo will b
e generous in his passing.’ Zayd watched him lay a hand on Guhaad’s shoulder. ‘I can rely on you to keep things in order while we are gone?’
‘We?’ Guhaad shot a look in Zayd’s direction, confused and annoyed all at once. He didn’t like the idea of being left out of something.
Ramaas was already shaking his head. ‘I need your strong hand here while I am away.’ He had a way of managing the thug’s moods that the rifleman could never comprehend. ‘Zayd has a mission, and so do I. These things are significant, brother. I could have sent you two alone to do this thing today, but I did not. I am here. You know why?’
‘It is important to do some things in person,’ Guhaad replied, remembering other lessons he had been taught. ‘A man must be seen to do the deed.’ A thought occurred to him. ‘That’s why you let the Yemenis live. To say what you did.’
Ramaas nodded. ‘All men should live by a code. A set of principles.’ He released his grip and walked away, turning the bale of money over in his hands. ‘Just a few more things need to be done. There are ropes that hold us tethered which need to be cut.’
‘And then?’ asked Zayd. It was rare for him to even think of questioning Ramaas’s orders, but the need to know pushed at him. Each day they were moving closer to some goal that only Ramaas saw clearly.
‘Waaq will provide,’ said the warlord, using the Cushitic name for God. Zayd cared very little for religion, but he kept that to himself rather than offend his Muslim brothers in the war band. For his part, Ramaas held to the old Oromo folk beliefs and no-one had the courage to challenge him on them. More than once, Zayd had heard him talk of Mission and of Duty. Ramaas could be compelling when he wished to be, then terrifying, turning from one to another like the rise and fall of ocean waves.
‘We are change,’ he told them, speaking with such certainty that it seemed as though his desires were already fact. ‘We are the storm that will sweep over our nation. Believe that.’ Then he smiled, squeezing the fat bundle of dollar bills in his fist. ‘But to make it happen, we will need more of this.’
TWO
‘I like the P90 better.’ Jurgen Goss raised his hands up in front of him and mimed holding the Belgian-made submachine gun. He aimed across the cramped interior of the ill-lit office and drew a bead on an equally insubstantial enemy. ‘Brap Brap! Good grouping!’ He lolled back in his chair and it creaked under his weight as he chuckled. ‘And you must love the cool plastic ammo magazine. See the bullets go, one-two-three . . .’
‘Good for a close-up dance, I’ll give you that.’ Sitting on the edge of Goss’s untidy desk, Marc Dane shrugged. ‘But I’d prefer something with more stopping power.’
‘Assault rifle?’
Dane nodded. ‘Assault rifle. SCAR-L, 5.56mm NATO with an extended mag, ACOG sight. And a laser designator. I like the laser.’
‘Slower to reload,’ Goss noted. He shifted forward. The Austrian was doughy, and he tried to ignore how his girth tended to pool around him in the too-small chair. But he was sick of trying to have new office furniture sent in from procurement.
‘You don’t need to keep reloading if you actually hit your target first time, yeah?’ Dane told him. ‘You know what your trouble is?’
‘You’re going to tell me,’ Goss sighed.
The Brit made a hosing motion with his hand. ‘Too much spray-and-pray.’
‘Put enough lead in the air and someone is going to die,’ he countered.
‘Yeah,’ Dane said pointedly. ‘Your teammates, if we’re stupid enough to be in your line of sight.’
Goss rolled his eyes. ‘You are not going to let me forget that, ever?’ Earlier that month they had ignominiously lost an online tournament to a collective of foul-mouthed Texan high-schoolers, after Jurgen’s lack of weapon control had caused a match-ending blue-on-blue incident. ‘I’m sure I’d do much better if I had a real gun.’
A shadow passed over Dane’s face and the other man’s mood shifted. ‘It’s not as much fun as you’d think.’
Goss didn’t press the point. The Brit could be an odd sort at times. For the most part, he was good natured and hard working, even in the face of the grinding bureaucracy of the office’s labours. Fast with a joke and funny, too – but then he could change, as quickly as a cloud across the sun, becoming sullen and withdrawn.
Like the technician, Dane was in his mid-thirties, but that was where the similarity ended. Goss had an unkempt shock of oily black hair that rose up from a high forehead and a face better suited to a schoolboy than a grown man, whereas Dane’s dirty blond look and stubbly beard framed a wolfish expression that was too serious by half. Goss was, if he was honest with himself, letting his body run to flab with too much desk work and not enough exercise. Dane looked rail thin, but it was mostly whipcord muscle.
He knew only a little about where the other man had come from prior to joining the United Nations investigation team in Croatia, mostly rumours about him leaving the British security services under less than ideal circumstances. Goss didn’t pry. In his experience, the English thought asking any kind of personal question was crass.
He decided to change the subject. ‘Are you coming for a beer after work?’
‘Nah. The Whites are playing Dinamo Zagreb tonight,’ Dane said, referring to the city of Split’s premier football team. ‘Pubs will be full of shouty fans. You know how they get.’
‘But Croatians don’t wreck the place when their team lose, not like your hooligans,’ Goss countered. He took in the walls around them with a gesture. ‘We are in Split, not London. Don’t you know? It’s a cultured town.’
‘Fuck off, mate.’ Dane gave a brief smile at the mild dig. Goss had learned early on that the Brit missed his home and would use it to jokingly needle him.
‘What did you say?’ The question was a rough bark, dragging both men’s attention around to the alcove where Goss’s prized espresso machine sat.
The Austrian’s heart sank. The squat, square-headed form of Senior Police Inspector Franko Horvat stood there toying with a bowl-shaped coffee cup, glaring at the two of them.
The man had an unpleasant habit of sneaking up on you. He wore a grey sports jacket and unmatched trousers that were two decades out of date, and a permanently irritated air that made him seem like he was always picking a fight. He usually was.
Horvat waved the cup at Goss. ‘What are you saying about Split? I was born here. You’re making an insult to me?’ The policeman’s breath smelled of stale tobacco.
‘He’s joking,’ Dane told him. ‘It is Austrian humour, yah?’ He said the last few words in a bad imitation of Goss’s clipped accent, defusing the moment.
Goss blinked, thankful for the other man’s intervention. He found Horvat and most of the other Croat police officers to be quite intimidating, and it was a continual source of dismay to him that their unit was forced to share a building with them. When Jurgen Goss had come to work for the UN he had hoped it would be in some gleaming glass-and-steel office space in Vienna or New York City, not a grimly functional police precinct in Split.
‘How does this work again?’ Horvat fiddled with the espresso machine, mashing artlessly at the controls, and Goss sprang out of his chair to stop him from breaking it.
‘Let me,’ he insisted.
Horvat thrust the cup into his hands and smiled victoriously. ‘You make it. You do it well. Like a good wife.’
Dane jerked a finger at the ceiling. ‘You’ve got a coffee machine up on your floor,’ he told the policeman. ‘But you still keep coming down here. Why is that?’
‘Not working.’ Horvat didn’t even try to sell the lie. Goss suspected the real reason was half that the policeman was too cheap to pay for it, and half that he liked showing his face around the UN investigator team, to continually remind them whose turf they were on. He leered at Dane. ‘You find any bombs today?’
‘You arrest any of your mates?’ Dane shot back. It was widely speculated that Horvat’s extended tenure in the Policija was more
down to his connections in the criminal world than those in law enforcement, but the man was so slippery that nothing stuck to him. Still, he got the Brit’s inference and his toothy grin snapped off.
‘Mislite da ste pametni.’ Whatever it was Horvat said, Goss didn’t doubt that it was something insulting. ‘You must come upstairs,’ Horvat added with a snort, his small eyes narrowing. ‘See real police work for a change.’ He tapped himself on the chest. ‘You will see an important man do his job.’ He pointed a nicotine-stained finger at the wall, where a map of the Adriatic Sea and the countries surrounding it was studded with pins and taped-up data sheets. ‘Not that.’
Along the top of the map frame was the investigation team’s designation: Division of Nuclear Security (NSNS Field Operations #7) – International Atomic Energy Agency. Beneath that, a logo depicted the orbits of electrons around a nucleus surrounded by a pair of olive branches.
Goss bristled at Horvat’s offhand dismissal of their work, but he expected little more from the man. Horvat’s idea of policing was pushing suspects down staircases, taking bribes and blaming crimes on immigrants, he lacked the sophistication to handle the idea of bigger threats to the world at large.
Once, Goss had tried to explain to him what the NSNS were doing in Croatia. The country was a choke point for clandestine smuggling routes from Russia and its former Soviet satellite states, a gateway port to the rest of the world through which illegal trade flowed as freely as honest commerce. Much of those proscribed goods were weapons from the mountain of military material created by the USSR during the Cold War – and not just bullets and rifles. Enriched uranium, plutonium rods from fast breeder reactors, atomic waste, all kinds of fissile materials – a whole bestiary of radioactive horrors that might be used to create a dirty bomb, or even an actual nuclear device.
Field Ops Unit #7 was one of many NSNS groups around the world, watching for traffic in nuclear technologies and hardware, constantly gathering intelligence and coordinating with the UN member states to make sure humanity’s worst weapons stayed bottled up. But all Franko Horvat saw was a bunch of foreigners on his territory, getting in the way, draining resources and showing nothing for it.
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