by Mike Maden
“It will take several weeks to gather and process all of the forensic evidence and begin to put the case together. If the prosecutor decides to move forward, depending on the court calendar and witness availability, it could be two to four months before an actual trial is held. Perhaps longer.”
“I can’t hang around for four months for a trial. My employer won’t allow it.”
“Your employer must be a very important man. Your government has promised to my interior minister that you will make yourself available for any court proceedings should the need arise.”
“So long as I can have a week’s notice to make travel arrangements, I’ll show up.” Jack hoped that they didn’t make that call in the middle of a Campus mission. But Murphy’s law being what it was, that was the likely outcome. Did that mean Gerry might put him on hold status from The Campus until the case was resolved?
“If you don’t appear, a warrant will be issued for your arrest, and our two countries are signatories to an extradition treaty. Failure to appear for a summons carries a mandatory two-year prison sentence.”
“You make it sound like it would make sense for me to drop the case.”
“You might consider it. But it’s up to you.”
Jack started fidgeting. He now wished he hadn’t had that third cup of coffee. His nerves were on edge and his bladder boiled. He couldn’t tell if Oblak was trying to help him out or if he was just a bureaucrat trying to protect his pension.
“But if you are innocent,” Oblak said, “that means she is the guilty party and I need to build a case against her for attempted murder. What I can’t understand is her motive for trying to kill you. Any ideas?”
“None.”
“Perhaps she is a serial killer of some sort?”
“I’m betting you’ve already run her passport and found out she’s an upstanding citizen with no warrants, priors, or Interpol notices.”
Oblak offered his first, small smile. “Very good. You are exactly correct.”
“Maybe I reminded her of an old boyfriend or something. She never did tell me her name.”
“Elena Iliescu. Romanian by birth, but she carries an Italian passport. Does the name sound familiar?”
“Not at all.”
“And you think the attack was spontaneous?”
“I sure didn’t see it coming.”
“What if I told you that the ice chest on the table was empty, except for a block of dry ice?”
“I’m not sure what that means.”
“She also had a pair of surgical gloves, a small bottle of bleach, and a bone saw in her backpack. She claims they aren’t hers.”
“A bone saw?”
“If I had to guess, I’d say she was going to cut off your head and store it in that ice chest.”
Jack felt the blood drain out of his face. “Excuse me?”
Oblak checked his notes again. “You’re a financial analyst, ja?”
“Yes.”
“Perhaps in your line of work you have made some powerful enemies along the way?”
More than you can possibly know, Jack thought.
“Not that I’m aware of.” Jack’s bladder was about to commit its own crime. “Can I go now? I’d like to get back to my hotel and pack. I’m catching a flight tomorrow.”
“To Sarajevo, correct?”
“Yes.”
“Business or pleasure?”
“Pleasure.”
Oblak stood, as did Jack. They shook hands.
“It’s an interesting city. Be sure to try the ćevapi. It’s quite good.”
“I’ll do that.”
Oblak opened the door and waved Jack through. “We’ll be in touch, Mr. Ryan. Safe travels.”
“Thanks,” Jack called over his shoulder as he bolted for the men’s room.
TOLMIN, SLOVENIA
Twenty minutes away from Kobarid, Elena Iliescu lay quietly in a hospital bed in the small medical clinic, her mind fogged with painkillers but her soul raging like a caged animal. Jack Ryan’s face kept flashing in her fevered brain. She consoled herself with images of tearing out his eyes with her lacquered nails and pissing in the open mouth of his bleeding corpse.
But for now, she was trapped in a broken body, immobilized and feeble. Her fractured forearm had been X-rayed and stabilized in a sling but not yet cast in fiberglass because corrective surgery on the torn ligaments in her broken wrist was scheduled for the following morning. Her broken jaw had also been wired shut by a local dentist who thought she might need corrective surgery on that in the near future.
But if she was honest with herself, the raging hatred she felt for Ryan was only a mask for her unspeakable fear. In reality, she was already dead.
She’d failed her assignment for the Iron Syndicate, something that had never happened before. She was the Mantis, and no doubt called upon because of her unassailable record of kills over the last ten years. A Code Red assignment had the highest priority, as well as the highest penalty for failure.
Her only hope lay in the private phone call she had with her attorney, whispered through the clenched teeth of her wired jaw. The attorney had told her to be on the lookout for an Iron Syndicate contact. “Arrangements are being made for you, even as we speak,” the attorney said. Had Elena the capacity, she would’ve cried for gratitude.
A contact could only mean the syndicate still had faith in her to complete her assignment once her injuries had healed. It was a great honor to be trusted in such a manner, she reasoned, but nothing would please her more than to slaughter the American who had injured her so badly and caused her such great shame.
Elena saw movement through the tiny window of her hospital door. The policeman who guarded her door was being relieved by another cop. A moment later, the door opened and a harried nurse with thick ankles and a dour look came in with a pressure cuff and thermometer to check her vitals. The cop stood in the doorway and glanced in her direction, then looked away as the nurse wordlessly cuffed her arm and began pumping the squeeze bulb.
Elena glanced up into the nurse’s pinched face as the cuff gripped her arm. The nurse scratched the side of her nose with the tip of her nicotine-stained finger, an inconspicuous gesture. But Elena understood it perfectly. Nothing could be said, nor need be.
Contact made.
KOBARID, SLOVENIA
Detective Oblak watched the vehicles pull out of the police station parking lot from his private office on the second floor. Struna, Ryan, and his attorney would arrive in Ljubljana in a little more than two hours.
Oblak had a lot on his mind tonight, and not all of it good. He had Jack Ryan’s contact information, and also his address in Sarajevo.
The detective picked up his encrypted cell phone and dialed the number of a colleague working in the Bosnian Intelligence-Security Agency (OSA-OBA).
“Dragan Kolak here.”
“Dragan, it’s Valter Oblak.”
“Yes, of course. I didn’t recognize the number.”
“My apologies. A new phone. A precaution.”
“I understand. But it’s rather late for a call, isn’t it?”
“A man is arriving in Sarajevo tomorrow. I thought you might be interested in him.”
“If you’re calling, Valter, you know I’m interested.”
16
SARAJEVO, BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA
Ambassador Topal sat in the deputy director general’s office, flipping through the documents and photographs in the intelligence folder on the table. Topal was homing in on the deputy’s anxious tone of voice more than the content of his briefing, the substance of which he was already familiar with from his own sources.
The deputy director general of Bosnia’s OSA-OBA was a competent but unimaginative political appointment in an underfunded intelligence agency tasked with the internal and external sec
urity of perhaps the most dysfunctional country in the heart of Europe. The Bosnian government itself seemed incapable of imagination or vision; why should this poor fellow be expected to exceed the limits of his political masters?
Topal understood the man’s anxiety, however. In fact, he expected it, partly owing to the deputy director’s own traumatic experience during the Yugoslav wars. As a younger Muslim man, he’d been trapped in the crossfire of the siege of Mostar, surrounded on both sides by Serb and Croat armies relentlessly pummeling the historic city with mortar and artillery fire. The man had every right to be nervous this morning, and his calling Topal into this private briefing was a good sign.
“As you can see, social media activity by the extremists has exploded in the last few days. Everybody is accusing everybody else of perpetrating this vile act,” the deputy said. “But according to the police transcription of the two surviving witnesses, it was clearly an act of war by the Serb militia.”
Topal read the last statement again out loud: “‘Croatia for Croats, Bosnia for Serbs.’” He nodded grimly. “Any other evidence?”
“Turn to the next page. See the artist’s rendering? Both girls confirmed that this was the shoulder patch on each of the uniforms of the men who raped them.”
Topal turned the page. He recognized it immediately as both the national symbol of Serbia and the unit insignia of the infamous White Eagles, one of the most vicious of the many paramilitary units that fought in the genocidal Yugoslav wars. This particular unit included Orthodox Serb militia, armed, trained, and directed by the Serbian government to carry out its policies of ethnic cleansing in an attempt to create a pure Greater Serbia devoid of Catholics and Muslims. The White Eagles were forcibly disbanded after the war and some of the leaders tried for war crimes. The news that they had reassembled caused enormous concern among the other ethnic groups, who were now reconstituting their own militias in response.
“And if that wasn’t enough evidence,” the deputy said, “there’s this.” He slapped an ace of spades playing card in front of Topal.
The Turk picked it up and turned it over, revealing the same White Eagles logo.
“A death card,” Topal said. He shook his head grimly. “This is bad news.” He set the hateful thing back down on the table. “I’m surprised your government allowed this information to get out.”
“Believe me, we tried to keep a lid on it. The police reports were sealed and the officers sworn to secrecy against their formal protests.”
“Perhaps they leaked it.”
“No. It was the Serb criminals themselves who took credit for it on Facebook and Twitter.”
“Then you must be hunting them down.”
“We are searching high and low, in cooperation with the Ministries of Security and the Interior, of course. But so far, we haven’t been able to find them.”
“What about tracing them through their social media?”
“Dummy accounts, untraceable e-mail addresses—these guys know what they’re doing, or they have help from someone who does.”
“Help?”
The deputy director stood and turned, jabbing the large paper map on the wall, his finger touching the capital city of Belgrade.
“I think it’s the Serbians.”
“The White Eagles were Bosnian.”
The deputy director nodded. “Yes, Bosnian Serbs, but directed by Belgrade and the old Yugoslav counterintelligence service.”
“Greater Serbia again?” Topal asked.
“Yes, of course. The ‘dream’ never dies, does it? Or maybe it’s a nightmare.”
Ambassador Topal shook his head. “It’s hard to believe. I thought we were past such things.”
“The past is prologue, my friend.”
“But why jump to such a conclusion? If what you say is true, the Serbians are engaging in an act of war.”
“Think about it. This is classic New Generation warfare, straight out of the Russian playbook, and you know how close the Serbians and Russians have become in recent months.”
Topal was well aware of the growing alliance between the two countries. In fact, the Russians were holding the Slavic Sword and Shield military exercises just over the border in Serbia at this very moment, over the protests of Topal’s government. It was the largest deployment of Russian Special Forces in a foreign country training exercise ever.
The ambassador was even more familiar with Russia’s New Generation warfare concept, which they had deployed with devastating effect in Chechnya, Georgia, and even earlier in Ukraine.
New Generation warfare was a multidimensional, nonlinear strategy that engineered and exploited social, moral, ethnic, and political tensions within a target country. It included arming and training local civilians as paramilitary units, often seeded and even led by Russian Spetsnaz special operators posing as civilian fighters. New Gen warfare also appealed to ethnic unity, and against ethnic discrimination by the local government, and pushed those narratives out into the public arena through sophisticated mass media campaigns and “fake news.”
False-flag events were also staged to reinforce that narrative with paramilitary factions armed and directed by Russian forces, resulting in further social division and political destabilization. Terrorism, extortion, and crime were also deployed as needed. Anything to disrupt and demoralize the social order.
Finally, sophisticated Russian electronic and kinetic weaponry were inserted to win the battle against organized government forces within the target country.
In short, it was the high-tech Russian version of the old Soviet Cold War model for Third World conflicts: exploit class and ethnic tensions through political propaganda, fifth column action, political subversion, and the support of armed insurgency until revolution was achieved.
“And your government believes the Serbians are engaged in this New Generation style of warfare? Or is that your own opinion?” Topal asked.
“Given the presence of large numbers of Russian Spetsnaz troops next door in a ‘training’ exercise with Serbian Special Forces, the interior minister and I have concluded that it’s a strong possibility. He and I have a meeting scheduled with the security minister within the hour to discuss the matter.”
“Perhaps you are correct,” Topal said. “But I would be quite careful about taking any overt action against Belgrade.”
“We aren’t in any position to do that, frankly,” the deputy director said. “But NATO is.”
“But you know that NATO has lost interest in this part of the world. Brussels is far too occupied with the Middle East and Africa these days.”
“That’s why I was hoping your government would intervene on our behalf. As a member of NATO, Turkey has a great deal of influence in these matters.”
“Not so much as you suppose.” Topal didn’t mention that the German armed forces had withdrawn entirely from Turkey over recent political tensions.
The Bosniak intelligence officer sat down again, folding his hands in front of him on the table. “As I’m sure you know, the number of NATO peacekeepers in the region has fallen from several thousand a decade ago to just a few hundred. A strong NATO presence here in Bosnia along with NATO resources to support our own security forces would be enough to stem this rising tide of ethnic violence.”
Topal shrugged. “Of course, I will raise the issue with my superiors, but I fear the Europeans have no interest in coming back into a conflict that only confuses and frustrates them.”
The deputy’s neck reddened. “It was the Europeans who refused to act when the Serbs began their ethnic-cleansing campaign against my people, and thousands of us died.” His clutched hands flexed. “And it was the Europeans who embargoed arms against us to keep us from defending ourselves. And when the Bosnian Army turned the tide and was finally on the verge of victory, it was NATO that threatened to bomb us—us! The victims! Why? To keep us fr
om winning the war.”
“I know the story well, my friend,” Topal said, nodding in commiseration. Topal didn’t need to remind him that Turkey illegally broke the NATO arms embargo and smuggled weapons in to Muslim fighters during the war.
“And all of that because the Europeans couldn’t stomach the idea of a Muslim majority country on European soil.” The deputy director sighed through his nose as if trying to vent his anger away. “NATO has a moral duty to prevent another war.”
“Since when have we ever been able to count on NATO to protect Muslim interests?”
“Still, you must try. I know you have unofficial connections in Brussels.”
“And I will do everything in my power to persuade them. But one way or another, my government will do what is necessary to protect the people of Bosnia, and our Muslim brothers here, just as we are elsewhere in the world.” It was no secret that the Turks were expanding their military presence in the Caucasus, the Middle East, and Africa.
The deputy director nodded. “This I know well, Kemal. You have always been a good friend, and Turkey our great, strong brother.”
Topal closed the file in front of him and slid it back across the desk. The deputy director reached out his hand to slide it toward himself, but Topal’s hand didn’t release it.
“One thing occurs to me,” Topal said.
“Yes?”
“The Serbians may, indeed, be taking a page from the Russian playbook. But have you considered the other possibility?”
The intelligence bureaucrat frowned. “What possibility?”
“That it’s actually the Russians who are behind all of this.”
Judging by the deputy director’s ashen face, Topal guessed that he had not.
17
BELGRADE, SERBIA
General Sevrov, the stocky deputy commander of Russia’s Electronic Warfare (EW) Forces, stood at the lectern, where his laptop computer was located. He stole a glance at the double-headed white eagles adorning the Serbian national and army flags that hung from the tall, wood-paneled walls of the auditorium. They were flanked by oil portraits of mustachioed Serbian generals from wars long past, glaring down at him with martial ferocity.