The Operative

by Falconer, Duncan

  The elevator arrived at the penthouse. Hobart followed Cano out, past two suited thugs who were guarding the elevator doors and along the curving corridor to the conference room where Skender was studying his model town and making notes.

  Skender looked up as the glass doors opened and the two men walked in.

  ‘Hobart’s emptying out the building,’ Cano said.

  Skender studied them both as if he had not quite heard correctly. ‘Say that again?’ he asked.

  ‘He’s sent the caterers away,’ Cano said.

  ‘Home,’ Hobart corrected him. ‘I’ve sent them home.’

  Something inside Skender almost snapped as he realised the significance of the information. But he held himself in check as he looked at Hobart, reassessing the man.

  ‘Just in case you don’t understand my English, I’ll spell things out for you,’ Hobart said, wearing the hint of a grin. ‘Your party’s over. The opening ceremony – it isn’t going to happen. Not today at least.’

  ‘You want to tell me why?’ Skender asked, putting down his notepad.

  ‘I have reason to believe there’s a bomb in your building,’ Hobart said.

  ‘You do?’ Skender said, glancing at Cano.

  ‘That’s right. I’m not here to argue with you, Skender. I want everyone out of the building.’

  ‘Why do I get the feeling that you suddenly grew a pair of balls, Hobart?’ Skender asked, walking towards him. ‘You used to walk in here with your cap in your hand like some busboy and now suddenly you’re – how is it you Americans say? – walkin’ tall. What happened? Your wife give you your annual blow job last night?’

  Hobart wasn’t fazed by the insult. ‘You’re right about the change. This is just the first step. I warned you about crossing the line.’

  ‘Warn?’ Skender said, closing on Hobart, barely holding on to his temper. ‘Is that like a weather warning, or a tough-guy warning?’

  Hobart suddenly felt a pang of unease in his core as Skender moved into his space, looking more dangerous than he’d ever seen him before. Everything he knew about the man, his history of violence since his youth, appeared to be written on his face. He suddenly felt uncomfortable being this close to it.

  ‘So what was this line I crossed?’ Skender asked, his voice sounding more croaky as it got quieter.

  ‘Kidnapping, for one,’ Hobart said, feeling as if he might get the upper hand at this meeting if he showed Skender some purpose.

  ‘What are you talking about?’ Skender said, genuinely surprised. Then his suspicions flashed to Cano but he did not look at him.

  ‘Sally Penton’s kid,’ Hobart explained. ‘The woman your two boys killed, Leka and that moron Ardian,’ he said, deliberately staring at Cano, knowing that the man was furious but did not dare show it. ‘They’re the reason you have a bomb in your building,’ Hobart continued, looking back at Skender. ‘Come on. Don’t you know what’s going on in your own house? Maybe I should be talking to this guy. I bet he knows what’s going on. What do you say, Vleshek? Or should I say Cano, Ardian’s brother?’

  Cano choked back his surprise. But at that moment he was more concerned about Skender who had thrown him a most dangerous look.

  Skender was beginning to boil over inside. Had Hobart been able to see the danger he might have held back a bit. He had Skender on the run but did not know how tight was the corner that he was chasing the Albanian crime lord into.

  Skender instantly believed Hobart about the kidnapping though he genuinely knew nothing about it. Nor did he know of the supposed bomb in his building but he believed that too. Cano had kept everything from him. Skender knew that Cano’s deviousness was rooted in fear as well as in the hope that he could resolve the problem on his own but matters had gone beyond that now.

  ‘The walls are closing in, Skender,’ Hobart said, unable to hide his satisfaction at seeing these two evil men in mental turmoil. ‘I’ve been waiting for you to drop the ball. It was only a matter of time.’

  Suddenly Skender’s fist slammed into Hobart’s solar plexus under his heart, stopping it just for a second and knocking every ounce of wind out of him.

  ‘Time is what you ain’t got a lot of,’ Skender said. As Hobart toppled forward, grabbing his chest in pain, Skender took him by the throat with a gnarled peasant hand, pushed him upright against the central pillar and powered a fist into his side, cracking something. ‘You need to learn your place in this world, little man.’

  Hobart’s legs buckled. As he went down Skender kneed him viciously in the face, knocking the back of his head against the pillar as his nose burst open.

  ‘Now tell me. How much do I give a damn?’ Skender demanded.

  Hobart dropped to the floor, trembling as he tried to roll onto his side. Skender kicked him brutally in the face and as Hobart collapsed onto his front the Albanian loomed over him like a salivating wolf savouring his kill.

  ‘Let me tell you your future,’ Skender said. ‘My deal with the Feds goes on. I have what they want and I’m gonna deliver, from time to time. One of my new conditions is that they dump your ass. You know they will, because I’m more important to them than you are. Now I’ll tell you what else I’m gonna do, and I want you to listen carefully. Are you listening to me?’

  Hobart was in a bad way but Skender callously rolled him onto his back with his foot. Blood trickled across Hobart’s face and he blinked to hold on to consciousness as Skender went in and out of focus.

  ‘One day,’ Skender went on, ‘a year, maybe two years from now, you’re gonna be somewhere, driving along, maybe leaving a restaurant with your fat wife and you’re gonna have an accident. Hit-and-run maybe, a mugger, whatever. The point is, you’re gonna die, Hobart. That’s an Albanian promise, my friend. I want you to spend every waking minute until that day thinking about it, knowing that it’s going to happen.’

  As Hobart stared up at Skender he heard a ringing sound that seemed to go on for an age. But he was so consumed by what Skender had done and said to him that he was unable to realise it was his mobile phone. Hobart had never been so physically abused in his life and nothing had prepared him for it.

  Skender sneered at the pathetic figure before turning away to rest his callous stare on Cano. ‘Where is he?’ Skender asked with a malevolence that shocked even the other Albanian.

  ‘He got into the building somehow—’

  ‘I’m talking about the kid!’ Skender yelled, his face going red as he closed on Cano.

  ‘The floor below,’ Cano said, wondering what his reaction would be if Skender struck him too. To hit back would mean that he would have to kill Skender, for that would be his own fate if he did not.

  ‘You brought him here?’ Skender growled. ‘Are you completely stupid?’

  ‘No one would think—’

  ‘You’re the only one who doesn’t think around here. Where?’

  ‘In the janitor’s cupboard.’

  Skender wanted to kill him there and then. But this was not the time to execute a man who was obsessed with killing another who was a more immediate threat. Besides, he would expect Cano to fight back and that could be problematic. He fancied his chances against Cano, even with their age difference. Cano was brutal but he lacked Skender’s experience. Nevertheless, this was not the time. ‘How does Hobart know there’s a bomb in this building?’ he asked, turning his attention to the immediate and potentially more dangerous situation.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘The Englishman?’

  Cano nodded.

  Skender was aware of Stratton’s abilities with explosives but the truth was that he had no concern for his own life, feeling secure in such a large structure. What angered him was the thought of even a speck of damage to his beloved new building.

  ‘When was he here?’

  ‘An hour ago.’

  ‘Inside the building? You’re sure of that?’

  ‘He nearly killed one of our people in the garage.’

  Skender lo
oked away in thought. ‘This guy will have a plan.’

  ‘He wants the kid,’ Cano said.

  That was fairly obvious, thought Skender as he stepped towards the glass doors, pausing at them. ‘Get that creep outta here,’ he said, indicating Hobart. ‘And Cano – if that guy does anything to this building, and I mean one broken window, I’m gonna kill you myself.’

  The two men stared at each other. Cano did not doubt the threat for a second.

  Skender walked along the corridor behind the frosted-glass wall to the emergency exit. Cano lowered his gaze to Hobart who was trying to pull himself up, using the edge of the table. But his damaged ribs, among other things, were causing him extreme pain.

  Hobart persevered and pulled himself up enough to slump awk-wardly into a chair, every breath accompanied by a burning stab inside his chest. The pain was one thing but much worse was the degradation and humiliation. He had entirely miscalculated Skender’s contempt for authority and lust for brutality.

  ‘You know where the elevator is,’ Cano said as he walked out of the room, too much on his own mind to care what happened to Hobart.

  Hobart wanted nothing more than to get out of there but at that moment he was not sure if he could get to his feet without help, let alone out of the building. His face hurt like hell, his jaw was probably broken and God only knew how bad his ribs were. He cursed himself for being so stupid and putting himself in such a situation. He should have asked the cops to accompany him but he had been too arrogant to predict for himself what he might have warned others of. And there was yet more to come when he faced his staff and superiors. They would hold him partly to blame for his stupidity in confronting Skender alone. Without a witness Hobart was helpless.

  His phone rang again but he ignored it, unsure if he could actually speak properly. He made an effort to get to his feet, wobbling slightly, fixing his stare on the doorway and staggering towards it.

  36

  Skender stepped through the sixteenth-floor fire exit and went to the floor below his penthouse suite. One of his guards remained at the door while the other followed him along the curving corridor and stopped by the elevator. Skender continued on to the end of the corridor where there was a small kitchen with a janitor’s closet opposite. A key was in the lock. He turned it and opened the door.

  Sitting on the floor in the dark, his legs and hands tied with cloth in front of him, was Josh. The boy blinked rapidly against the sudden light in an effort to focus on Skender. He had long since stopped crying even though he’d been in the cupboard since the early hours of that morning when the horrible man with the eyepatch had released him from a sack. He’d been inside that since he’d been put into the back of a car after other men had taken him from the protection centre. The eyepatch man had checked on him a couple of times and given him water and some biscuits that were still in front of him, untouched.

  Josh did not know this new stranger who now looked down on him. He waited nervously for whatever was going to happen next. He knew that he was in a dangerous situation but beyond that it was all a mystery. He wanted to be back with George and Vicky and, of course, most of all, he wanted Stratton, the only link he had left with his life in England. He had hated leaving his homeland from the moment he’d boarded the plane with his mother. All that now seemed a long, long time ago.

  ‘How you doing?’ Skender asked in a low, calm voice as he squatted to untie Josh’s bonds. ‘You okay?’ he asked.

  Josh nodded. He was frightened, mostly by the man’s strange gravelly voice. But this one did not look as angry and hateful as the eyepatch man even though there was still something scary about him.

  ‘Get up,’ Skender said after removing the ties.

  Josh obeyed and stood stiffly, looking at him.

  ‘You want some juice?’ Skender asked.

  Josh shook his head.

  ‘Something to eat?’

  Josh shook his head again.

  ‘You scared?’

  Josh wanted to say yes. But he had been brought up in the company of men who did not reveal such emotions so he shook his head.

  ‘That’s good,’ Skender said. Then he noticed that the boy’s trousers had a large pee stain around the crotch. ‘You wanna go to the toilet?’

  Josh looked down at the stain, then back up at Skender. He clenched his jaw, embarrassed but also angry. He had not peed himself out of fear but simply because no one had thought of taking him to a toilet and he had been too embarrassed and shy to ask. Josh shook his head again.

  ‘How old are you?’ Skender asked.

  ‘Six,’ Josh said after clearing his throat.

  Skender remembered his own sixth year. The images of his slaughtered village and the screams of his family being gunned down were still quite vivid. They’d replayed in his mind often throughout his life, usually without any warning or prompting, scars as indelible as the one across his throat.

  ‘Let’s get outta the closet, shall we?’ Skender said.

  Josh stepped out of the cupboard and joined Skender in the corridor.

  ‘That yours?’ Skender asked, pointing to the floor of the janitor’s room.

  Josh saw the little camel that had fallen out of his pocket. He quickly picked it up and held it carefully.

  ‘Where’d you get that?’ Skender asked, seeing that it meant a lot to the boy.

  ‘It’s from Iraq. My dad gave it to me. He was a special forces soldier,’ Josh said.

  ‘Oh? Where’s your dad now?’ Skender asked, suddenly wondering if it could be Stratton.

  ‘He’s dead,’ Josh said.

  Skender had given the boy hardly a second’s thought before this moment but now he recognised some of the parallels between them. ‘Tough losing your parents, eh?’

  Skender heard his own words although he had never felt sorry for himself or disadvantaged by growing up without a family. It was only in his later life that he had begun to wonder what they had been like. He had never been particularly close to them – except his mother, a little perhaps – and he had no glowing memories of a classic father-and-son relationship. As he grew older he better understood the difficult circumstances of his youth and the pressures his father must have been under, the constant fighting and periods of cold and hunger. It did nothing to stimulate his total lack of emotion, however. He’d had no experience of love of any kind from a motherly figure or girlfriend and any spark of happiness or contentment he felt was for material things or accomplishments in business. The first man he’d killed had been when he was eighteen – for sitting on the bonnet of his new car. The second, a couple of months later, had been for something so trivial that Skender could no longer remember why. His reputation for brutality had come effortlessly but he never saw himself as others did. His rule of life, as he saw it, was a simple one. Work hard for your gains, any way you can, don’t take what is not rightfully yours, severely punish those who take from you and honour your clan beyond everything else.

  ‘I lost my mother and father when I was the same age as you,’ Skender said.

  Josh looked up at him, unable to imagine this man ever having parents.

  ‘The people who killed them also slit my throat,’ he said, leaning forward and pulling open his shirt to show Josh his neck.

  The boy gaped at the scar, fascinated by it. ‘Did it hurt?’

  ‘Not at the time – I guess I was too scared. They threw me in a river right after to drown me.’

  ‘Wow!’ Josh exclaimed. ‘How’d you get away?’

  ‘I nearly didn’t. The river was cold and flowing fast but somehow I managed to crawl onto a rock and pull myself onto the river bank.’

  ‘Did you get your own back on them?’ Josh said, staring at him in awe.

  ‘Of course,’ Skender said. ‘It took me twenty years to find them, though. They were communists. You know what communists are?’

  Josh shook his head.

  ‘Communists used to be the old bad guys. My father fought against them when they t
ried to take over my country. How long was your father a soldier?’

  ‘Don’t know.’ Josh shrugged. ‘A long time.’

  ‘Well, he probably fought against the communists when he was young. They wanted to take over everyone’s country.’

  ‘My father and your father were on the same side?’ Josh asked.

  ‘Kind of. My father fought for the king of my country.’

  ‘A king?’

  ‘Yeah. King Zog.’

  ‘Zog?’ Josh repeated, finding it a strange and amusing name.

  ‘Zog fought against the communists alongside my father. Anyway, the guy who led the communists who killed my father moved to Paris in France when they lost the war.’

  ‘I know where Paris is. I’ve been there with my dad.’

  ‘Did you like it?’

  ‘It was okay, I suppose. We went to Disneyland.’

  ‘I’ve never been to Disneyland,’ Skender said. ‘Well, I found this guy in Paris and I killed him.’

  ‘How’d you kill him?’

  ‘I slit his throat, of course,’ Skender said, thinking about that day. Skender had also killed the man’s wife and three children in the same manner and left them in their Paris apartment.

  Josh tried to imagine Skender drawing a knife across a man’s throat. Stratton had never been so graphic with his stories. ‘Do you know Stratton?’ Josh asked. ‘He’s killed loads of people all over the world.’

  Skender looked at him. ‘Yeah. I know Stratton.’

  ‘Do you know where he is?’ Josh asked, a note of hope in his voice.

  ‘I believe he’s on his way here to get you.’

  ‘He is?’ Josh exclaimed excitedly.

  ‘I’m just guessing, really,’ Skender said, wondering what Stratton was planning and for the first time feeling a touch of unease. The man was no doubt a planner of some experience, judging by his hits on Leka and Ardian and if one was to read anything into the boy’s description of him. Perhaps there was something to be concerned about.

  Skender’s private cellphone rang in his pocket and he took it out, hit a button and put it to his ear. ‘Yeah?’