Exile

by James Swallow

  Goss poured out a generous amount of rich Arabica blend into a plastic cup – having learned the hard way that Horvat never returned the mugs he ‘borrowed’ – and passed it to him. ‘Here.’ Now go away. The rest of the sentence was unspoken, but it hung there in the silence.

  Horvat sipped the brew and turned to leave, but he couldn’t resist a last taunt before he walked away. ‘You should go home,’ he told Dane. ‘Back to English-land. You’re a waste of time here.’

  ‘Please tell me you spat in that,’ Dane snapped, when Horvat was out of earshot. ‘Why do you even give that ratbag the time of day?’

  Goss scowled at his own inability to get rid of the policeman. The last time he had tried to do so, the Austrian’s little Fiat 500 had inexplicably been broken into the very next day, and Horvat had taken great pleasure in lecturing him about the consequences of ‘unfriendliness’.

  ‘It is easier than getting into an argument with the man,’ he said.

  ‘Way I hear it, he’s based his entire bloody career on that.’ Dane shook his head and glared in the direction of the door. ‘I hate blokes like him. Always got to be taking the piss.’

  Horvat’s departing insult angered the Brit far more than Goss realised, and he wondered why. There were other rumours about Marc Dane, and the reasons why he was working for the NSNS. He wasn’t allowed to go back home. He had been involved in a fatal incident. He had been cashiered as a MI6 field officer. Goss couldn’t help but wonder which one was true.

  ‘Have you got those notes for me?’ Dane snapped back to business, back to the reason he had actually come to Goss’s desk in the first place.

  He nodded, pulling a file from atop a pile of other investigation dossiers. Dane flipped it open and scowled at a sheet of paper bearing the crest of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. The information written there was clearly not what he wanted. ‘It’s like you said,’ Goss told him. ‘There are some suspected connections with organised crime groups in Quebec, but nothing actionable.’

  Dane blew out a breath. ‘More data. No conclusions, just more data.’ He forced a grateful smile. ‘Thanks, Jurgen. I appreciate the effort.’ The Englishman took a look at the Cabot diver’s watch on his wrist and shot to his feet. ‘Ah. Gotta go. Briefing.’

  ‘Have fun,’ Goss said lamely. ‘I have to finish up here.’

  ‘I’m sure Schrader will listen. Fourth time’s the charm,’ Dane told him, the dour tone of his words saying exactly the opposite.

  *

  The operations meeting was getting started as Marc slipped into the back of the room, but he wasn’t stealthy enough to avoid getting a slow-eyed look from the man standing at the lectern. Maarten de Wit was Field Office #7’s deputy chief investigator, a tall and shaven-headed Dutchman with a perpetually hangdog expression and a low monotone voice. He looked out over the half-dozen people in the room and frowned.

  The Powerpoint display on the projector screen behind him had a photo of an articulated cargo truck on it, and from the glimpses of police uniforms in the corners of the frame, Marc guessed it was from a stop-and-search.

  ‘We were fortunate, we caught this one,’ de Wit was saying. ‘By chance. The border officers were looking for undocumented migrants.’ He tapped a button on the lectern and the picture changed to the interior of the truck. A dozen oil drums were visible, each one wrapped in a sheet of thick plastic. ‘Contaminated metal slurry,’ he went on. ‘Very high levels of cadmium and caesium. Driver has been detained, but as usual the paperwork connecting him to his employers is all make-believe.’

  ‘Where was he going?’ The question came from one of the local liaison team up at the front of the room.

  ‘To meet a cargo ship. We know the driver wasn’t the only one. We’ll lean on him to get more information.’

  ‘All right.’ A severe woman in a dark pant-suit stood up from the front row and waved de Wit away, taking his place at the lectern. In her late forties and briskly mannered, Gesa Schrader was investigator-in-charge and Marc’s ultimate superior in the NSNS field team.

  Formerly a ranking member of the Bundeskriminalamt, Germany’s Federal Criminal Police Office, Schrader was what Marc considered to be the literal embodiment of the phrase ‘no-nonsense’. He’d been working with the NSNS for months now, and in all that time he couldn’t recall ever seeing the woman show anything like actual emotion.

  ‘Every attempt we make to cut off this pipeline fails. We strangle one route, another opens.’ Schrader’s eyes scanned the faces before her. ‘I am tired of telling head office in Vienna that we have caught another small fish. Narrow the focus, ladies and gentlemen. We are going to stem the flow of this toxic waste, and we will do it with purpose and speed.’ She took a breath and her lips thinned. ‘We all understand why we are here. The mission is in the name. The Division of Nuclear Security.’ Schrader nodded to herself. ‘That means that every last drop of reactor effluent that crosses our path, every criminal polluter who thinks he can skirt the law, every dumper and trafficker, is our target.’ She pointed at the image on the screen. ‘This poisonous material is seeping out of Central and Northern Asia, it is being transited through the Balkans, and we are still guessing at where it ends its journey. But wherever it goes, it makes the earth turn black and die. We are going to stop it. Make sure this waste is dealt with safely, properly.’ Schrader stepped away from the lectern, signalling that she was winding up her statement. ‘I’ve spoken with Europol and our friends upstairs in the Policija, and they will lend us whatever support we need. This tip-off could be the breakthrough we’ve been waiting for. I want your best efforts on this. Nothing less will suffice.’

  De Wit got up and raised his hands. ‘Individual assignments and new taskings will be passed out this afternoon. Each of you will have leads to follow.’

  Marc felt his spirits drop, and he opened his mouth to speak, then thought better of it. But he was too slow to avoid being seen by Schrader. ‘You have a question, Dane?’

  Her tone was telling him that he should shake his head and say no, ma’am like a good, obedient officer – but then he remembered all the effort he had put into the investigation he was currently working on and that went away. ‘What about our active caseloads?’

  ‘As of now,’ said de Wit, ‘this illegal shipping route is our caseload.’

  ‘Look, I get how important it is, but I don’t want to abandon what I’m working on. I’ve got some . . . promising tips.’ Marc could almost hear the eye rolls coming from certain people in the room.

  ‘I thought your investigation had stalled,’ said Schrader, dismissing the other investigators with a wave of the hand. ‘The Kurjak brothers are staying off the radar.’

  Marc shook his head, standing his ground as the rest of the team filed out. ‘The Kurjaks are active. Which means they’re a viable security threat.’ He chose his words deliberately.

  Originally a minor-league Serbian group in the wide network of Eastern bratva gangs, the Kurjaks had made a name for themselves in the 1990s as smugglers and money launderers; but they had come to the notice of the International Atomic Energy Agency in the wake of the Gulf War, when representatives of the gang had offered nuclear materials on the black market, allegedly recovered from secret Iraqi weapons labs. The Kurjaks started a lucrative sideline in selling Red Mercury, a rare accelerant compound that was exceedingly hard to synthesise but, if properly utilised, could magnify the destructive power of even the smallest, crudest nuclear device into something truly devastating. Militants, terrorists and rebels clamoured for the opportunity to bid for the material, believing that possession of it would be the first step toward building a bomb that could make the world tremble.

  However, those murderous ambitions were dented by one simple fact. It was all a lie.

  Red Mercury was fiction, samples of it faked using crimson-coloured fluid and radioactive sources stolen from old X-ray machines. No such compound existed, and nothing real was capable of the incredible list of capabilit
ies its sellers claimed for it. But the Kurjaks were superlative liars, and their nuke scam made them a lot of money, over and over again, as they shopped it to any terror group eager to cause mass destruction.

  Marc had to admit that he had a tiny fraction of grudging admiration for the Serbs. After all, you needed a special kind of greed and unbelievable audacity to run a con on people like al-Qaeda or the Shining Path.

  Inevitably, because of their actions the Kurjaks gained a long line of ruthless killers who put the criminals on their shit-lists, and so they moved like ghosts through the Balkan states, never staying in the same place for more than a couple of days. But they remained a constant thorn in the side of the IAEA and the NSNS. Their fake deals and the fog of rumours they put up clogged the work of tracking down the possibility of real loose nukes from the former Warsaw Pact states. Thanks to them, manpower was continually being wasted on sorting false leads from actual ones.

  Marc Dane had been tracking their movements for some time, trying to tighten the noose. He was getting closer, he was certain of it. Pattern analysis had always been one of his strongest skills, and little by little Marc constructed a frame for the Serbian gang’s movements. They ebbed and flowed down the Adriatic coast, migrating south to warmer climes in the winter and moving north again in the spring. Right now, he believed that the Kurjaks were lying low in Croatia, maybe even in this city. The problem was, no one else in Field Office #7 shared his conviction.

  De Wit hinted that Europol was willing to let the Kurjaks run out the clock on their own. Eventually, he reasoned, their past would catch up to them and one of the terrorists they had swindled would deal with them permanently. ‘These things have a way of working themselves out,’ he said.

  Marc disagreed. ‘Look, even a blind squirrel finds a nut now and then.’ The idiom got nothing but confused looks and he sighed, pressing on. ‘I know that Vienna thinks the Kurjaks are of secondary importance to the NSNS’s mandate –’

  ‘Secondary at best,’ added de Wit.

  ‘I don’t see it that way,’ Marc continued. ‘The regular military hardware these guys trade in, the guns and ammo? The connections they have inside the former Soviet Union? That stuff is not fake. What we should be worried about is not who they are, but who they know.’

  Schrader frowned. ‘Dane, by now you understand that we do things differently here at NSNS from how it may have been for you at British Intelligence.’

  ‘That’s not –’

  She kept talking. ‘You are here because of other people’s decisions.’ She let slip a brief flash of irritation. In the past, Schrader had made it clear that Marc’s arrival in Field Office #7 had not been by her choice. ‘Your analysis skills have proven very useful. You have good insights. But what you lack is the willingness to be a team player. You’ve spent too long operating on your own.’

  Marc glanced at de Wit, looking for some glimmer of support, but the other man showed him nothing.

  ‘I don’t have to remind you what kind of organisation this is,’ Schrader went on. ‘We do not carry guns or kick down doors. We gather and collate information. We work with police forces and national law-enforcement entities. We find leaks and we plug them.’ She tapped a long, elegantly manicured finger on the folder in Marc’s hand. ‘Most importantly, we are here to protect people and this planet’s environment. I am interested in clear and present dangers that can be grasped and most of all, dealt with. Not in liars and vague possibilities.’

  At length, Marc gave a reluctant nod.

  *

  ‘This time, do not lead so much,’ said the other man. ‘It’s like you’re wearing a sign on your chest telegraphing your next move.’

  ‘I’ll try to remember –’

  Marc’s attacker didn’t let him finish, he came in fast and hard with a roar on his lips. The sweeping strike was coming at his throat, the blur of a black baton registering at the edge of his vision.

  Every instinct in Marc’s body screamed for him to fall back and extend the distance, but he did the opposite. Bringing up his right arm, he went inside the arc of the assault and slammed his forearm into the other man’s collarbone, elbow to the sternum and his fist smacking against the side of his throat. Marc twisted his feet and dug in, absorbing the impact of the attacker’s advance and stopping him before he could land his blow.

  He was leaving himself open to a swinging hit from the baton, if the other man could recover quickly enough, but it was a gamble he was willing to risk, his foul mood getting the better of his good judgement. Marc’s free hand came up curled into a tight fist and he fired piston-fast punches into the attacker’s head, throwing him off balance.

  For a second it looked as though he’d turned the tables, and his assailant staggered, reeling. But the baton was still in play, and Marc saw too late that the opening he had provided was still enough to use against him. The stubby rod cracked hard against his chest, shocking the breath out of his lungs with a wheeze.

  A moment before, there had been a sharp, angry focus to his thoughts. Now that evaporated and he lost the edge completely. The attacker followed through, and he blocked far too slowly to prevent the hit that dropped him. Marc felt the world turn around him and he fell backwards onto the thick padded mat with a loud smack.

  The bright fluorescent lights overhead dazzled him and he blinked, swallowing a jolt of annoyance at his own mistake. An oval, smiling face hove into view, the expression widening into a sardonic grin. ‘You know what you did wrong.’

  A hand wrapped in a fingerless training glove reached down and Marc took the boost back up and onto his feet. ‘Yeah.’

  Luka Pavic tossed the rubber baton off the mat and gave him a measuring look. ‘You’re not dropping the left anymore, that’s an improvement.’ He pointed to Marc’s forearm, where the scar from a bullet graze was visible. ‘But what happened? You made a bad choice.’ He pivoted his head on his neck, showing no sign of distress despite the multiple hits he had taken.

  ‘True,’ agreed Marc, shaking off the sting of the fall. ‘Sorry, mate. Having a hard time keeping my mind on the game.’

  Pavic’s hands dropped to his sides. ‘Ah. Schrader said no.’ His normally affable manner became glum. He was a perceptive type – Marc liked that about him. And while that made Luka a good police officer, it also meant that he tended to find his way to things far quicker than was good for him.

  ‘It’s not like the investigation is dead,’ Marc countered, rolling his shoulders and moving around. ‘Just circling the drain.’

  Pavic caught the meaning, straightening the muscle shirt he wore across his broad chest. ‘Still, not good.’ The shirt sported the gym’s logo and a flash that indicated the wearer was an instructor. Pavic was ten years younger than Marc and aggressively fit, enough that it was a push for Dane every time he stepped in to train with him.

  But the skills Pavic was teaching him were worth the effort and the bruises. The stocky police sergeant was into coaching mixed martial arts when he wasn’t on the job, and he appeared to regard Marc as an engaging work-in-progress. So far, Pavic had managed to drum a few good Krav Maga moves into him, enough that Marc thought he might hold his own a little better the next time someone tried to kill him. After what had happened in the previous year, he wanted to make sure he had a fighting chance if and when things went awry.

  The training was free, except that it really wasn’t. Luka Pavic was likeable but he was also ambitious, and somehow he had hit upon the notion that working with someone in the NSNS would give his career a boost. Despite all of Marc’s attempts to dissuade him, Pavic couldn’t let go of the idea that helping out one of the UN’s nuke tracers would be a stepping stone to a promotion – and the truth was that Marc needed all the assistance he could get in tracking down the Kurjaks. But so far their arrangement had paid off little more than helping Marc improve his muscle tone and giving Pavic someone to knock around.

  Right now, Pavic’s street contacts were the only avenue still open t
o them. Marc told him so as they went through a few more block-and-riposte combinations. ‘I’m not going to drop it,’ he insisted. ‘Those creeps are close, I know it. We miss this window of opportunity and they’ll be gone. It could be months before they surface again.’

  ‘The timing is bad. Or good, depending on how you look at it,’ Pavic told him. ‘I’ve got an ear to the ground, inshallah.’ The two of them fell silent for a moment. Both of them were operating outside of the bounds of their jobs, and they knew it.

  Marc saw something of a kindred spirit in the cop, the same drive to do right, the instinct that he had ignored in himself until recent events had forced it to the surface.

  Pavic was a Bosniak Muslim, a child of the war in the Balkans, and Marc guessed that was a lot to do with why he was a policeman. He’d grown up in the wake of horrors, and he wanted to make some part of the world better in return. Pavic was the polar opposite to a man like Horvat, as evidenced by the fact that the cop hated the other man’s guts. The older man wrapped all that in a cloak of bigotry from his Roman Catholic upbringing, seeing someone like Pavic as just another outsider, putting him in the same category as Marc and the others. Luka’s disdain for Horvat and his ingrained corruption was one of the other reasons Marc got on with Pavic.

  ‘You don’t like this job, do you?’ Pavic’s question came from out of nowhere as they finished up, clearing the fighting area for the next sparring pair to step in. ‘Admit it.’

  ‘It’s not that.’ Marc shot him a look. ‘I don’t like spinning my wheels. You know what I think? I reckon that Schrader put me on the Kurjak dossier because she didn’t expect me to get any traction with it.’

  ‘You were dumped on her,’ Pavic told him. ‘Right? See it from her point of view. What would you have done?’

  ‘I don’t know . . .’ Marc threaded his way into the locker room. ‘Respected my skills, at least?’