Exile

by James Swallow

  ‘You’ve never explained about why you came to Croatia,’ said the other man. ‘When I ask you, you say things like I had a disagreement or I needed a change of scenery. I bet you say even less to Schrader.’

  ‘About right,’ he admitted. Pavic waited for him to say more, and he didn’t. Where could he have started? Hey, man, so I was hired by the NSNS because a friend in the British Secret Service called in a favour at the United Nations. And that’s because a year ago my own country declared me a fugitive. After a traitor in MI6 killed everyone in my team. And I ended up running halfway around the world to clear my name and stop a terrorist atrocity.

  After the dust settled, he had dragged the truth into the light, but what Marc Dane had had before was gone for ever – and the men who were to blame were still out there. For all he had won back, he had lost much more. Unconsciously, his hand strayed to the place on his chest where the puckered mark of another healed bullet wound lay.

  He remembered a cold morning in Washington D.C. and the sharp bark of gunshots. A basement that stank of stale blood. He remembered fire raining from the sky and a pale face falling away from him into dark water.

  ‘Hey.’ Pavic patted him on the shoulder. ‘Did you hear what I said? You faded out for a moment.’

  ‘I’m right here,’ Marc said.

  The cop glanced around, making sure they were alone in the room. Then he dug in his sports bag and produced a cheap cell phone, an untraceable burner with prepaid credit that could not be connected back to him. ‘I asked you to meet me here today because one of my informants has something.’

  The dial on Marc’s mood shifted toward hopeful. ‘And here I thought you wanted an excuse to slap me about a bit.’ He peered at a message on the phone’s screen, but the mix of text-speak abbreviations and Bosnian Cyrillic was impenetrable to him. ‘Tell me it’s something we can use.’

  Pavic’s grin returned. ‘You’re going to make sure I get the lead on the arrest, right?’

  ‘One step at a time, mate.’

  The cop nodded. ‘What if I told you that not only were you right about the Kurjaks being in Split, but also that they’re meeting with someone?’

  Marc’s pulse raced, but he tamped down his immediate reaction. ‘You’re sure about this? The source is good?’

  ‘Vanja, he and I have known each other since we were boys,’ Pavic insisted, waggling the phone in his hand. ‘We took different paths. He’s wayward, but I trust him not to lie to me.’

  ‘What do we know about the meet?’ Marc was already running an analysis in his head. This was a break in profile for the Kurjaks. They tended to stick their necks out when there was real money on the line, but only if it was enough to make their greed briefly overcome their desire to keep breathing.

  ‘Just that it is happening tonight. But whoever it is, they came out of nowhere and the targets jumped.’ Pavic showed him the phone again, indicating a particular sentence. ‘Velika Stvar,’ he read aloud. ‘Big Deal.’

  THREE

  Marc found Schrader up on the fourth floor of the police precinct, in conversation with an officer from the Split Port Authority; de Wit was standing sentinel nearby. Marc made his way from the elevator and out through the overcrowded office space, but the Dutchman saw him coming and stepped in to intercept.

  ‘What is it, Dane?’

  ‘I need to talk to Schrader.’

  The other man paused and sniffed the air.

  ‘I was at the gym on my lunch break.’ Marc frowned. ‘Yeah, I didn’t bother to hit the shower on the way out. I thought this was more important.’

  ‘If this is about the Kurjaks –’

  Marc cut off de Wit before the deputy investigator could get the words out. ‘I told you I had leads.’ He lowered his voice. ‘I think I have an angle on them. I just need some manpower to follow up on something, and hopefully we’ll be able to bring these creeps in.’

  ‘You think?’ echoed de Wit. ‘Where is this actionable intelligence suddenly coming from?’

  ‘A strong source,’ Marc told him, hedging his bets. ‘He comes with good form.’ But the brief pause before he answered was enough to make de Wit shake his head.

  Schrader stepped away from the uniformed port officer and shot Marc a warning look. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Dane says he has information on the whereabouts of the Kurjak brothers.’

  ‘I’ve got good reason to believe they’re here in Split for a meeting,’ Marc added. ‘In the north of the city, most likely. They’ve been tracked before up near the port at Sjeverna Luka. I think they have a bolthole in that area.’

  Schrader released a sigh. ‘This new data comes to light just hours after I reassigned you to the waste-dumping arrest? Conveniently.’

  ‘I was going to say helpfully, but whatever,’ Marc replied.

  ‘While you were out working up a sweat, the driver taken at the border cracked under interview,’ she told him. ‘We have the name of the ship he was meeting, and it is in port for another few hours. The Croatians are assembling a unit from the Intervention Police to come in and secure the vessel for examination. Even if I was inclined to provide you with officers to follow up on your sudden discovery, I cannot spare them. We’re about to make some major arrests, Dane. I need all my people on this, and that includes you.’

  ‘It doesn’t have to be one or the other,’ he insisted.

  Her gaze bored into him. ‘Where is this supposed meeting taking place?’

  ‘I don’t have that intel yet, but –’

  ‘Do you at least have the source?’ asked de Wit. ‘You can bring him in. We’ll talk to him, see what he has to say after we’ve dealt with the boat.’

  ‘No,’ said Marc. ‘This has to be moved on right bloody now.’ His voice rose, earning him sideways looks from several of the police officers working around them. He took a breath and worked to keep his tone even. ‘I mean, we know how these men operate. By nightfall they’ll be somewhere else. By tomorrow morning, out of the country and gone.’

  ‘If you have an informant, do as Maarten says. Have the police bring him in for questioning,’ Schrader said firmly. ‘If all you have is hearsay and rumour, then you are wasting my time. I am not going to keep repeating this, Dane. We need to work as a team, and that means following orders.’ She walked away, leaving him to de Wit to dismiss.

  ‘You’re not helping yourself,’ the Dutchman told him. ‘Every time you open your mouth, you’re reminding her of the officer she chose whose position you took instead.’ He shook his head. ‘You want to think carefully and decide if your future is working with this office.’

  ‘She gave me that fucking case in the first place,’ Marc hissed, as he turned away. ‘Now I might actually be on to something, and you’re not interested?’

  The other man stopped himself from retorting, and waved Marc away. ‘Go back to your desk and cool off. Goss will need some assistance processing any intelligence we recover from the cargo ship. We’ll go over what you have after that.’

  Marc turned around, his jaw hardening – and found himself staring into Franko Horvat’s dark, beady eyes. The police inspector made a mock-sad face. ‘Arguing with mummy and daddy? Very bad.’

  ‘You’re like a bad penny, aren’t you, pal?’ Marc said angrily. ‘Turn up every place you’re not wanted.’

  Horvat’s English wasn’t the best, so he missed most of what Marc said, but he got the gist from his body language. ‘Be friendly,’ he warned. ‘This? This is all my place up here.’

  Marc pushed past him and walked away before he said something he wasn’t going to be able to take back, but a question pressed at him. How long had Horvat been there listening?

  He paused near the edge of the office bull pen. Marc pretended to wait for the lift to arrive, shoving his hands in the pockets of his jacket, angling himself so he could see what Horvat was doing without being obvious about it.

  From the corner of his eye, Marc saw the man fish a smartphone from a desk drawer
and start walking in his direction, raising the phone to his ear and talking quickly. He glanced at Marc and sneered at him, keeping up the conversation on his way toward the break room.

  ‘Postoje psi njuškati,’ Horvat said, Marc catching the string of curt, slick words in Croatian as he passed by. ‘Su blizu. Budi oprezan.’

  The lift arrived and Marc stepped into the empty elevator car. When the doors shut again and the lift began to move, his left hand came out of his pocket with his own smartphone held there. Marc tapped an icon to stop the recording app he had set running and played back what it had just captured. Above the background noise of the office, Franko Horvat’s voice was clearly discernible.

  Getting out on the next floor, he found Pavic as quickly as he could and thrust the phone at him. ‘What’s he saying?’

  The young cop grimaced as he heard Horvat’s voice. ‘Something about a dog. Play it again.’

  ‘He heard me talking to Schrader and de Wit. He looked me right in the eye. Taking the piss out of me to my face, because he thinks I don’t understand him.’

  ‘You don’t,’ noted Pavic. He frowned and had Marc run the replay a third time. ‘He’s telling someone that there are dogs . . . sniffing around. Getting close. He says they need to be careful.’

  Marc felt a jolt of cold run though him. Horvat was passing on a warning. For a moment he wondered if it might be connected to Schrader’s toxic dumpers, but if it was, the message would have been far more urgent. That left only one other conclusion. ‘He’s got to be talking to the Kurjaks. Damn.’

  Pavic made a face like he was going to retch. ‘Why am I not surprised? Everyone says Horvat is on the take, so why not from those Serb assholes as well?’

  ‘How would you like to prove it?’ Marc studied the other man. ‘Nothing sticks to him, does it? But if we help each other, we could change that. If the Kurjaks are brought to book, you can bet they’ll roll right over on any bent cops they have in their pocket.’

  ‘Agreed,’ said Pavic. ‘But that greasy bastard could ruin everything. If anyone moves out of this precinct, he’ll know about it! He’ll tell them.’

  Marc was shaking his head, thinking through the angles. He ignored the nagging echo of Schrader’s words about following orders and concentrated. ‘Luka, mate. You’re seeing this all wrong. This isn’t a problem. This is an opportunity.’

  *

  ‘When have I ever lied?’ Bojan Kurjak leaned forward in the back seat of the S-Class Mercedes, holding the phone to his good right ear, his hand reaching up to flick absently at the deformed lobe of the left with his index finger. It was a tell that he pretended he never had, one that always made itself plain when he was irritated. ‘To you, I mean?’

  Bojan’s younger brother, Neven, stood outside on the pavement and spread his hands in an irritated gesture that said, What are you doing? Bojan waved him away from the car’s open door.

  ‘You’ve been light on your expenditures recently,’ said Horvat, his voice echoing down the line. The cop sounded as though he was in a bathroom. ‘I take that personally.’

  ‘It’s pay-for-play, you know that.’ Bojan’s hand ran up through his tightly permed hair and he resisted the urge to form a fist. ‘You tell me something I can use, I weigh you out. You’re not on a retainer, Franko.’

  ‘Don’t say my fucking name on an open line,’ spat the other man. ‘I’m giving you something now. You’ve got heat on you. Maybe leave town.’

  ‘I’ll take it under advisement.’ Bojan climbed out of the car and slammed the door, beckoning to Neven and the handful of men standing with him. ‘You want to make a bonus? Keep an eye on it for me. Run some interference.’ He rang off and slipped the gold-plated iPhone back into his leather coat.

  ‘What did he want?’ Neven demanded immediately, his hands grasping one another. ‘Do we need to pull out?’ He rocked back and forth on skinny legs, the tracksuit top he wore zipped up tight against the chill of the day. Neven nodded toward the apartment block rising up above them. The sides of the building were surrounded by scaffolding and sheathed in plastic sheeting that rippled in the breeze. ‘Fedorin’s not even here yet . . .’

  ‘No,’ Bojan replied with disdain. ‘It’s too late to reschedule this. Let the pig earn his pay for once. It shouldn’t take long anyhow.’ Neven was always quick to worry, and Bojan was downplaying it for his little brother, but he did have some concerns. The elder Kurjak wandered over to one of his men and told him to be extra watchful. Just in case, he reasoned.

  Neven and the others entered the vacant apartments first, and Bojan trailed in behind them. The Kurjaks owned the building through a series of shell companies, and the construction agency that was supposed to be renovating it was a front for an allied bratva clan out of the Ukraine, part of a scam that kept both groups earning by doing nothing. The block was kept in a state of permanent incompleteness, worth more to the Kurjaks as an off-grid place for illicit storage, or, like now, as somewhere they could hold a meeting without drawing attention.

  At least, that was the idea. Bojan scanned the faces of the men around him as they walked up a few floors, wondering about Horvat’s call. Was somebody in their group talking when they shouldn’t be? If so it might be necessary to make examples of some people.

  The fifth floor had largely been gutted, most of the party walls gone so the space was open from one side to another. Neven was already telling the men to spread out and make sure the place was clean, so Bojan wandered to one of the windows. Through the dirty glass and the thick green sheets of polypropylene hanging outside, he looked down on Domovinskog Rata, watching traffic passing back and forth along the wide street. He didn’t see anything out there that rang alarm bells.

  Neven was another story. ‘Brother,’ he began quietly, his eyes intense. ‘I’m not sure this is worth both of us being here. Maybe –’

  ‘You want to go? You’re the one who brought Fedorin in the first place.’ He spoke from the side of his mouth. It annoyed him that he always had to keep Neven in line, and tamp down his impulses. ‘He doesn’t see you here, he’ll walk away and we’ll never know what he’s got to trade. Waste of time.’

  Neven shook his head. ‘I don’t like this. He pushed us for this meeting, and I hate being pushed. It means someone is up to something.’

  ‘Just be patient,’ Bojan told him, glancing at his watch. There was still a while before the meeting was due to happen. ‘Like it or not, Fedorin has brought us good commerce in the past. He’s earned a little latitude.’

  ‘I don’t know . . .’ Neven began again.

  Bojan silenced him with a look. ‘If things don’t go how we want,’ he told him, gesturing toward a shadowed section of the wall, ‘there’s always other options.’ In the gloom, it was hard to see the patch of bare concrete that had been sluiced with strong industrial solvents a half-dozen times over, but the pockmarks in the wall from through-and-through bullet hits were more permanent indicators of what had happened there.

  *

  Horvat turned the corner past the doors of the interview rooms and ran straight into a wall of muscle. He recoiled, swearing, and found himself meeting the hard eyes of a younger man in a duty jacket with sergeant’s shoulder flashes. ‘Watch where you’re walking, prick!’

  ‘You walked into me,’ insisted the other policeman. ‘Sir.’ He pointed at his face. ‘Maybe you need to get your eyes tested.’ He advanced a step, and Horvat automatically backed away.

  The sergeant was half his age and twice his size. For a half-second, he was actually intimidated, but then he pushed that aside and pointed a finger right in the man’s barrel chest. ‘Who the hell do you think you are disrespecting me?’ Horvat searched his memory for a name, but nothing came to him. He knew most of the senior policemen in the precinct by sight, but these kids in the lower ranks were interchangeable and beneath his interest. He carried on regardless. ‘Don’t you know how to talk to a superior officer?’

  The sergeant snorted
. ‘You’ve got rank on me, old man, but you’re not superior.’ He prodded him back, pushing Horvat toward the door of one of the interview rooms. ‘Not even a little bit.’

  *

  On the other side of the door, Marc sat at the metal table bolted to the floor, leaning low over the screen of a bulky Amrel Rocky-series laptop. Clipped to the casing of the customised military-spec computer was a device that resembled a walkie-talkie handset. At one end, a cable snaked into one of the hardened laptop’s USB port and at the other, a thumb-sized antenna was aimed at the door. Marc heard the low thud of something pressing up against it and the sound of raised voices.

  The device scanned the immediate area for cellular signals and a grid unfolded on the laptop screen. The closest was an active iPhone pinging less than a metre away – the same one Marc had seen Horvat using, the one he still had in his pocket.

  Marc switched to a different window, the display shifting like sheets of paper sliding over one another, and tapped in a command line to launch a spoofing program. The scanner changed modes and began spinning a digital lie to the iPhone, telling Horvat’s cell to talk to it, and not to the nearest wireless tower. At so close a range, it was easy to wirelessly intervene in the phone’s normal operation.

  In the time it took for the heated exchange going on outside to progress to full-blooded cursing, Marc’s hack was well and truly under way. Sampling the iPhone’s number from the signal, he force-sent it a text message hiding an embedded Trojan virus, and let the malicious code virtually kick open the door to the mobile phone’s operating system.

  That done, the message self-deleted and left behind no evidence it had ever been there. Marc took his own phone and called Pavic’s number, letting it ring just once.

  *

  ‘I will have your badge and I will make you eat it, you thick shit!’ Horvat’s face was red with anger. He heard a buzz that seemed to come from the other man’s jacket, but he was too furious to register it. ‘Do you know who I am? Who I am connected with?’