The Operative

by Falconer, Duncan

  For Cano to admit that he had to the English who evaluated everyone else by their own holier-than-thou criteria and who could never begin to understand the true nature of the struggle between Albanian and Serb would only invite bitter judgement. But to deny it would compromise Cano’s dignity and self-esteem and he was not prepared to suffer that no matter what these foreigners intended. ‘They were Serbs,’ he said, spitting out the name as if it was dirt in his mouth.

  The sergeant’s disgust deepened. ‘You piece of shit,’ he muttered, shouldering his weapon. ‘Turn around.’

  Cano did not obey, unsure how far the man was prepared to go. He kept his gaze fixed on the English soldier’s face.

  ‘I said turn around,’ the SAS sergeant repeated, an unmistakable threat in his grim expression.

  The barrel of the gun in the hands of the trooper beside the sergeant drifted towards Cano’s chest. Unwilling to trust his judgement of their likely tolerance any further, Cano obeyed. The sergeant’s hands landed hard on Cano’s shoulders as he faced his men and for a second Cano thought he was about to get a beating. Then the hands moved down his body as they searched him. They paused at a bulky side pocket, reached inside, and removed a ball of white malleable matter the size of a small fist. A quick sniff revealed the substance’s identity and the sergeant spun Cano around to face him again.

  ‘What’s this?’ the sergeant asked.

  ‘You know what it is,’ Cano said.

  ‘Good quality,’ the sergeant said, squeezing it and inspecting the light oily residue it left on his skin. ‘C4?’

  ‘PE4,’ Cano said, aware of the irony that he had used the British and not the American military variety of plastic explosive to carry out the ambush.

  The sergeant didn’t care how this KLA shit had got hold of British explosives. That wasn’t what this was about. ‘You like this stuff, don’t you?’ he asked, holding it in front of Cano’s face as if he was about to shove it into his mouth.

  Cano did not waver.

  The sergeant checked inside Cano’s bulging breast pocket and removed a small coil of fuse wire. ‘Regular Guy Fawkes, ain’t we?’ he said with a grin that had danger written all over it. ‘Eat it,’ he said.

  Cano looked at the explosive, then back up at the sergeant, refusal written across his face.

  ‘I said eat it,’ the sergeant growled, pushing it closer to Cano’s face.

  Cano did not show the man any weakness and maintained his resolve.

  ‘You don’t eat it, I’ll shove it up your arse and detonate it,’ the sergeant said, tossing the ball of explosive slowly up and down in his hand.

  Cano did not relent.

  The sergeant handed his gun to the trooper beside him and swiftly grabbed the lapels of Cano’s jacket, lifting him slightly as he swept his feet out from under him. Cano dropped heavily on his side as he landed on the floor. Several of the Albanians took a step forward but froze again as the SAS troopers’ fingers tightened menacingly on their weapons’ triggers.

  The sergeant knelt down, his knee landing solidly on Cano’s chest, and pushed the plastic explosive against his mouth. ‘Eat it, you fuck,’ he growled. But still Cano would not obey. ‘Eat it,’ the sergeant repeated, brutally pushing the explosives against Cano’s lips, trying to force them apart but without success.

  The sergeant stopped to reconsider. ‘Fine,’ he said, sighing. ‘We’ll go for the other option, then.’

  The sergeant rolled Cano onto his front. Then the SAS man removed a long slender knife from a sheath on his belt, pulled up Cano’s jacket, grabbed the waist of his trousers, inserted the knife between it and Cano’s skin, and cut through the fabric with ease, tearing the trousers and underpants open all the way to the crotch to expose Cano’s white buttocks. The Albanians watched motionless as their leader was humiliated but few had the desire and none the loyalty to intervene. Most of them were conscripts who had been practically press-ganged, or at best strongly co -erced, into joining the KLA on pain of violent punishment for themselves and their families if they did not. So any allegiance to Cano was largely superficial.

  The sergeant held up the ball of plastic explosive and looked at one of his lads. ‘This ain’t gonna fit,’ he said. ‘I’ll ’ave to make the hole bigger.’ And with that he knelt heavily on Cano’s spine, took hold of one of his arms and twisted it across his back. Then he stuck the end of the blade between Cano’s arse cheeks and pushed it into his rectum for several inches.

  Cano jerked in spasm as the blade cut into him. He let out a yell, unable to control himself. The sergeant pressed down harder on Cano while twisting the arm further up between his shoulder blades. The weapons in the hands of the other SAS men remained firmly aimed at Cano’s mates.

  The sergeant withdrew the bloody knife and wiped it on Cano’s back. ‘Right, then,’ he said in a business like manner. ‘Let’s see if it fits now.’

  He rolled the plastic back and forth over his thigh until it resembled a phallic shape and shoved the end between Cano’s cheeks, pressing it firmly into his bleeding anus. Cano shuddered but did not make another loud sound or effort to roll over, as if allowing the man to do his worst.

  ‘Won’t go all the way in. Bit of a tight-arse, are we? Never mind. We’ll just have to make the hole bigger.’

  But instead of using his knife the sergeant left the explosive in place, half its length sticking from between Cano’s buttocks. Then he took the fuse wire, placed one end into the detonator and crimped it with his teeth. Next, he pressed the det into the plastic and searched one of his own breast pockets. A second later he produced a lighter, struck it, and held up the flame, pausing to look at the faces of the Albanians whose expressions ranged from mystified to horrified. His own men even glanced between themselves, wondering if it was their leader’s intention actually to light the fuse. Everyone in the room was surprised when he really did touch the flame to the end of the fuse. It crackled into life, hissing as it burned, giving off a thin wisp of smoke.

  The sergeant got to his feet, put the knife back in its sheath and took his firearm back, looking at the KLA members with contempt. The fuse was a couple of feet long and, depending on its quality, the flame would take about a minute to reach the detonator.

  Cano was tense and shaking in sweaty agony, still refusing to make any move.

  The two groups faced each other, the sergeant standing, smiling broadly as he waited until the fuse was halfway consumed before nodding to his men to head out.

  Seconds later only the sergeant remained in the doorway. ‘Shit’s gonna fly any second now, lads,’ he said.

  And so it appeared that the sergeant had not been bluffing, though all of his men would later say that they believed he was right up until the moment he lit the fuse. The Albanians had also doubted his seriousness but were now convinced that their leader was about to have his backside blown off. They moved back, a couple of them dropping to the ground and covering their faces, except for one who could not bear it any longer. As the fuse burned down to an inch from the detonator he lunged forward, grabbed it, pulled it from the charge and threw it into a corner where a few seconds later it exploded with a loud crack.

  The SAS sergeant burst into laughter. ‘I wondered how long you pricks would leave it before someone saved his arse.’ He stopped laughing and his threatening scowl returned. ‘Anyone sticks their head outside this door in the next hour will get a bullet through it … And you,’ he said, looking down at Cano. ‘I ever see your face again I’m going to slit your throat open like a goat’s.’

  A second later he was gone.

  Cano reached behind him with a shaking hand, removed the bloody lump of explosive and rolled onto his back, keeping his legs straight, gritting his teeth in an effort to ride the stinging pain. It was the humili ation that hurt more than the wound: he silently vowed the same throat-slitting threat against the English soldier as the sergeant had made to him and could only pray that one day he would meet him again in more favourable ci
rcumstances.

  Cano’s men let him be, knowing better than to try and help him – they knew they would only get abuse or worse for their troubles. It was more than a week before Cano was walking normally and a couple more before he could pass solids in the toilet without pain.

  Several months later, as Cano was preparing for an ambush beside his old haunt, the Pristina-Podujevo road, he received word that the West was planning to set up a war-crimes tribunal for Albanians as well as Serbs. He learned that his name had made it to a list of persons wanted in connection with ethnic cleansing. Obviously he needed to leave Kosovo if he was to avoid imprisonment so he accepted the unexpected assistance of a distant member of his family and made his way into Albania.

  A few days later the same family member invited Cano to meet the man who had given him the ori ginal warning as well as helping him to get out of Kosovo. (The money necessary for his escape had been channelled via the distant relative.) The man was Skender, whom Cano had never met although he had heard of him. His reputation for brutality as well as for generosity to his family was legendary. Shortly after submitting his curriculum vitae, most of which Skender was in any case familiar with, Cano was enlisted into the vast crime organisation.

  There was plenty of work for a man of Cano’s skills. Although he had expected to operate from Albania, Skender had bigger plans for him. Two months after arriving in Albania Cano was sent to Turkey to ‘cleanse’ a section of Skender’s trade route that was having minor problems with local bandits. Eleven months later and after more than five hundred suspected bandits and members of their families had simply disappeared he was moved on to Russia where, to his complete surprise, he was given a new identity – or an old one, depending on how you looked at things: it had once belonged to a vacuum-cleaner salesman who no longer needed it after he mysteriously disappeared.

  Skender had already earmarked Cano for his forthcoming Pacific Rim operation and a year later he arrived in America, travelling as ‘Ivor Vleshek’. It had been remarkably easy getting a visa to travel to America. All that was required was payment to a crooked judge in Russia, of whom there were plenty, to provide a detailed profile and an affidavit for the visa application. It was practically impossible for the FBI to investigate the information over the head of a senior Russian official and, as in so many cases, the Feds had little choice but to grant the request.

  Two years after leaving Kosovo, Cano, or Vleshek, was a legal resident in the US and as long as he remained gainfully employed as a ‘Specialist Interpreter for Albanian/American Businesses Opportunities’ he could stay in the country indefinitely. Within three months Cano married an American woman whom he met only once and two years later, a year before the woman met with a fatal car accident while driving under the influence of alcohol, he received his Green Card along with an application form with which to apply for full citizenship after three more years of residence.

  Cano stared at Stratton as the memory of the day when he’d been defiled back in Kosovo lingered. He hoped that such a bizarre coincidence was possible and that this was one of the men who’d humiliated him, though as far as his memory served there was no resemblance. The man was old enough to have been one of the SAS men and certainly looked as if he could once have been a soldier. But even Cano was aware that he was clutching wildly at straws. It was of no real consequence anyway since Cano didn’t need an excuse to be brutal and the man was, after all, English.

  ‘You ever been to the Balkans?’ Cano asked anyway.

  ‘Where?’ Stratton answered.

  Cano gave it up. ‘What are you doing here?’ he asked, sitting back.

  ‘I’m on holiday.’

  Cano took a cigarette packet from his pocket, removed one and offered the pack to Stratton.

  ‘No, thanks.’

  Cano put the cigarette in his mouth and the packet back in his pocket. ‘Why’d you come to LA for a holiday?’

  ‘I’ve never been here before.’

  Cano lit his cigarette with a gold lighter and blew a long line of smoke into the passenger cabin.

  ‘You here alone?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You always go on holiday alone?’

  ‘Sometimes,’ Stratton said, glancing at Klodi and the lump in his jacket that revealed where his pistol was.

  ‘You a fag?’

  ‘You got something against gays?’

  Cano shrugged. ‘I just wondered. There’s a lot of fags in this city. A single man comes here on holiday, you gotta figure, the guy must be a fag.’

  If Cano was trying to wind Stratton up he obviously had little experience of the English who were the wind-up masters of the world. ‘Well, don’t knock it unless you’ve tried it is what I always say.’

  Cano looked for an insult in Stratton’s expression but could not see one. ‘What’s your name?’ he asked as he drew on the cigarette.

  ‘John Stratton.’

  ‘You can prove that? You got ID?’

  ‘Why do I need ID? You want to tell me what this is about?’

  ‘You’re not in a position to demand anything,’ Cano said. ‘Show me some ID.’

  Stratton was waiting for a moment that he could use to his advantage. What that might mean he had no idea and he would only know when the moment presented itself. Until then he would play along. As he reached into his shirt’s breast pocket Klodi moved surprisingly fast for a fat man, grabbed his hand and reached into the pocket. He pulled out a passport and handed it to Cano.

  Cano opened it, compared the photo to Stratton in the flesh, then flicked through the pages. ‘You don’t travel too much.’

  ‘That’s a new passport,’ Stratton told him. He’d been through more than a dozen since working for the intelligence services.

  Cano kept hold of the passport and stared intently at Stratton once more. ‘What do you do for work?’

  ‘I’m a diver.’

  ‘See, Klodi?’ Cano sneered, looking at his thug. ‘Aren’t divers all gay?’

  Klodi, who looked as if he had the IQ of a fish, nodded in solemn agreement.

  ‘A deep-sea diver,’ Stratton emphasised. ‘Oil platforms.’

  Cano was uninterested. ‘What were you doing at the DA’s office?’

  ‘I was curious about maybe getting a job here and I wanted to see what I had to do to get a visa.’

  ‘That’s Immigration, not the DA’s office.’

  ‘That right? Maybe you could give me some advice.’

  Cano did not appreciate Stratton’s attitude: his dislike for the Englishman was increasing by the second. He took a puff of his cigarette, put it out in the ashtray on the drinks cabinet and removed a large, shiny bone-handled knife from a sheath inside his jacket.

  Stratton’s gaze flicked to the blade. He watched as Cano put the tip on the carpeted floor and, balancing the knife in the vertical, spun it while he thought.

  Stratton could feel the seconds ticking closer to the moment when he would have to do something. His heart was starting to beat a little faster and his breathing grew shallower as his body began to pump adrenalin through him in preparation for something that he knew he had to do. Precisely what and how, though, he could not decide since the choices were so limited. It was his habit from years as an undercover operative, where overreaction was ill-advised, to wait for the enemy’s move that signalled their intent and then initiate his own – but this was fast becoming a case for him to act first. His body tensed as his senses screamed a warning that the two villains were about to do something.

  ‘You ever had a knife shoved up your ass?’ Cano asked, his stare following the edge of the blade.

  Stratton sprang forward, slamming Klodi in the throat with the side of his hand while at the same time kicking the knife out of Cano’s grip. As Cano made a grab for him Stratton brought his elbow across, catching him in the side of the head. Klodi quickly recovered and rolled his weight forward to grab Stratton and take a swing at him. The heavy blow caught Stratton in the gut while Can
o followed it with a punch to his face. As Klodi laid into Stratton Cano scrambled for the knife. Stratton twisted to avoid a savage haymaker and Klodi’s powerful fist plunged into the drinks cabinet, shattering bottles and glasses.

  The front passenger looked back to see the fracas as did the driver who received a warning slap from the passenger to keep his eyes on the road. The glass partition opened and the passenger got onto his knees and leaned in through the narrow opening in an attempt to get involved. But he was too big to squeeze in very far and Stratton stayed just out of his reach.

  Stratton made a lunge for Cano who was reaching for the knife, the single most dangerous item in the fight. He put his weight onto the man’s back while grabbing the door handle and pushing it open against the wind. The limousine was passing through Venice on the beach road, shops and buildings on either side, the sidewalks crowded with pedestrians.

  Meanwhile, Klodi grabbed Stratton’s hair from behind in an effort to yank him back as Stratton took hold of Cano’s arm above the hand that now held the knife. Stratton jabbed his elbow back, catching Klodi in the jaw and almost breaking it. But this gave Cano the opportunity to take a firmer hold of the knife. As Stratton lunged forward once again and threw Cano back onto the seat the front passenger was able to land a blow on Stratton’s head. Still unsatisfied with his contribution to the fight he reached into his jacket and pulled out his pistol.

  The driver glanced back for a few seconds. When he looked forward again the vehicle in front had stopped at the end of a line of cars halted by a traffic light. He slammed on the brakes, sending the passenger backwards into the dash, winding him. At the same time his head thumped heavily against the windscreen, causing him to drop his pistol.

  Blood trickled down Stratton’s face into one of his eyes from a cut on his head. But things were far too serious now for him to care about it. As the limous ine pulled away with the flow of traffic Klodi grabbed Stratton from behind and flung him to the floor against the open door. Cano stabbed down at him with the knife but Stratton managed to twist himself around and grab the hand that held it. Cano straightened his arms and pushed down in an effort to shove the tip of the blade into Stratton’s chest as his head and shoulders were forced outside, the door pressing against him – if it hit anything he would be crushed.