Retribution ht-4

by Adrian Magson

  It was part of his plan to elevate his own position within the organization at a time when other envoys and special delegates were busy catching the eye of news channels and scoring points in the media and PR battle. His plan had been to brief on reports coming out of Africa about alleged atrocities by UN troops against women, and the older reports about brutalities in Kosovo which were currently making the news and growing day by day. Now he was beginning to wonder if this had been such a good idea. Kosovo’s grim past was still too vivid for many, especially with war crimes tribunals involving Serb and other warlords running their course. With any new allegations threatening to send the UN itself into a scandal-ridden spin, the occasion could have been better timed. And he’d forgotten how much of a squalid rabble these media wretches could be. Yet instinct told him there was no other way to hit the headlines.

  ‘Is it true, Mr Kleeman,’ opened a man from the Washington Post, ‘that not all the Kosovar refugees who have returned to their homeland are satisfied with the peacekeeping force out there — with KFOR? Isn’t this causing the UN some PR problems?’

  Kleeman smiled to disguise his dismay, surprised that it had gone this way so soon. He’d expected to get a few of his own shots in first before things got to this stage. ‘I think you’ll find it’s called UNMIK now — the UN Mission in Kosovo,’ he said dismissively. ‘As you know, under UN mandate twelve forty-four, NATO-led forces entered Kosovo in June 1999 and-’

  ‘But isn’t that the problem?’ the man interrupted Kleeman’s flow. ‘In the minds of the refugees in the region, the two are indivisibly linked. The personnel come from the same countries in most cases.’

  ‘Well, that’s a difficult quest-’

  ‘What about the stories we’re hearing?’ A shrill voice cut across his words, and he felt his blood pressure rising. The voice belonged to Dorrie Henson from The Times, a regular pain in the ass of the UN and a confirmed radical. ‘Stories about alleged brutalities by UN-attached military personnel in Kosovo, going back several years?’

  Kleeman felt a sudden tightness around his eyes as a buzz rose around the room, and glared at the woman. He had not been prepared for this. Henson smiled triumphantly back at him as her words unleashed a volley of questions on the subject, and he wondered if it were possible to get the damned woman banned from the building altogether. See how her editor liked those cookies. With luck she’d be out of a job within days and permanently out of his hair.

  He held up an imperious hand and was about to speak when Karen Walters, a long-time aide, standing in his line of vision at the back of the room, shot him a warning look. It said quite clearly, don’t go there!

  He pretended not to have seen her and held up a hand. He’d suddenly seen a way out of this dilemma; a way that would enhance his own reputation and standing and lay the matter to rest — at least, for now. It came from his early days in Wall Street, when he had used his father’s fortune to make an even bigger one. Back then, the general motto was, when your back’s to the wall, come out fighting.

  The hubbub died down, and he addressed the woman from The Times. ‘Mz Henson,’ he said with deliberate emphasis, his handsome face set in a smile, ‘I’m not sure where you get your information from, but there have been no confirmed “brutalities” by any KFOR personnel in Kosovo. The “rumours” as you so correctly call them, are unfounded and unsubstantiated, based on enmity towards the UN and NATO in general. There may have been some incidents by untrained NATO personnel, but-’

  ‘You don’t call bar-fights and the shooting dead of an unarmed civilian brutal?’ called another voice from the back of the room. ‘That was in Gornji Livoc.’

  ‘And the young men beaten up outside a bar in Lausa by so-called NATO Special Forces?’

  ‘What about the shooting of two medical workers by UN peacekeepers in Mitrovica?’

  The volley of voices grew as the reporters sensed blood in the air, citing stories of serious behaviour by, among others, Russian, African, Pakistani and Polish troops, and a British soldier sent home in disgrace.

  Karen Walters moved swiftly from her position at the back of the room, her arm raised in an attempt to draw attention away from Kleeman, who looked like a rabbit caught in the headlights. Suddenly Dorrie Henson’s voice cut through the room with the precision of a surgeon’s knife.

  ‘What about the rape and murder of a young Muslim girl by a KFOR soldier at a UN compound in 1999, Mr Special Envoy? That seems pretty darned brutal to me!’

  TEN

  For several seconds there was stunned silence. Then the room erupted in frantic questioning, some of it directed at Henson by press colleagues desperate to share what she knew.

  Kleeman resisted the powerful temptation to rush from the room, and waved his hand until everyone fell silent.

  ‘That is as yet unconfirmed,’ he said forcefully. ‘We do not have full details of that alleged incident. However, what I-’

  ‘These alleged stories are coming out of Kosovo day after day,’ Henson said cuttingly, ‘and have been for weeks. Some of them through the aid agencies. Surely they’re being investigated, Mr Special Envoy?’

  ‘What I do know,’ Kleeman ploughed on, visibly stung by the heavy irony in Henson’s use of his official title, ‘is that we are hearing this story — not stories, Ms Henson — the same time as you. We have to look into the claims, the same way we look into all alleged incidents involving UN personnel. That takes time. I think it does no one any good to jump to conclusions at this early stage.’ He looked around for support from the more UN-friendly people present. ‘And it does no good for those members of the peacekeeping forces still in Kosovo today to have their role besmirched without — I repeat, Ms Henson — without foundation. They already have a difficult enough job as it is.’

  ‘But it will be investigated?’ an elderly, grey-suited Reuters man in the front row prompted with quiet courtesy.

  Kleeman fastened gratefully on him and said, ‘It will be investigated fully.’ He put on his most earnest expression and turned to look Henson straight in the eye. ‘And I can promise you this: the trooper responsible will be brought to justice, and will pay for his crimes.’

  ‘Trooper?’ Henson looked startled. ‘So you know the rank of this person? What else do you know that you’re not telling us, Mr Kleeman?’

  It was a mistake and he knew it. But before he could reply, Karen Walters stepped in, planting herself firmly between the press and her boss. If it got up Kleeman’s nose, her stance said, she couldn’t care less; this farce had gone far enough. She apologized and pleaded an important call from overseas, allowing Kleeman to bustle out. He may have been reckless in giving such a briefing, but it wouldn’t do to let the press think he’d been reined in like a runaway horse.

  Back in his office, Kleeman wished he dared light a cigarette, but the sensors in the ceiling would have reacted instantly. He gritted his teeth instead and waited for Walters to come in. He had no doubts his aide would be unhappy about the way he had thrust his head out in front of the press pack, but that was too bad. She was there to suit him, not the other way round.

  He felt rattled by the ferocity of the questioning. He had faced the media many times, often at moments of acute international tension, but this was the first time he had felt like a rabbit thrown to the hounds. . even if he had put himself there in the first place. On the other hand, he was pleased with the way it had gone. He was sure he had come across as determined — uncompromising, even. And fair, too. People could relate to fair, no matter what the circumstances.

  He opened his diary to check the details of his forthcoming trips. Coming on the heels of this press conference, he would be able to use the meetings to press some flesh with the influential members of the Security Council outside the building rather than under the heavy umbrella and constant gaze of the UN administration.

  He had been an also-ran for long enough. The time had come to start the ball rolling and move up a few floors.

  ‘We’
ve got to kill this right now,’ Walters muttered, closing the door firmly behind her. She was flushed and angry, eyes glinting like a wild cat at bay. She was tall and slim, and dressed elegantly if clinically in a dark blue suit.

  Kleeman glanced at her legs and wondered how in spite of all the trips they’d shared on UN business, he’d never once found himself physically drawn to her. An absence of chemistry, perhaps. He wondered who was benefiting in that direction; it was bound to be someone in authority. Unless she was a dyke.

  ‘What’s to kill?’ he asked. ‘As far as we know, it’s true, isn’t it?’ He waved a hand in the direction of the briefing room. ‘They seem to have some evidence — what’s the point of trying to deny it?’ His eyes glittered, a warning to his aide not to overstep the mark by questioning his decisions. As a Special Envoy, with the ear of people all the way to the top, he was not someone to fall foul of without incurring serious collateral career damage.

  Of mixed parentage — grandparents Swedish and Danish, father naturalized American, mother Swiss — he had managed to sweep into the diplomatic arena representing a broad range of flags. To some, this was his main strength. Educated at Harvard and the Goethe-Institut in Germany, and with sizeable investments in the Fortune 500 list of US corporations, he had the credentials and, more importantly, the money to take him wherever he wished to go. With friends in the highest places, cultivated over the years in college and business, he had the political clout to have bypassed a number of other well-placed candidates on the UN career ladder. Watchers in the know were even tipping him for Secretary-General in a few years’ time, and in spite of some voices in opposition, no one was betting entirely against him.

  ‘They’ll pursue this now,’ Walters warned him. ‘We must advise everyone on the ground so they can be prepared.’

  He nodded. In spite of her subordinate position, experience told him that he would do well to keep this woman onside. Never forget the little people on the way up, his father had often said. Well, he wasn’t about to. Not yet, anyway.

  ‘Send a note to Field Security,’ he advised. ‘I’m sure they’re already on to it, but it won’t harm to remind them that this could snowball. If the story is true, we have to let it be seen that we’re eager to keep our house in order. Ethics are only worth possessing, Miss Walters, if they are seen to be upheld.’

  Walters blinked at the absurd pomposity of this statement. ‘You realize,’ she said, ‘this could be close to that base we had to use when we were over there?’

  ‘So?’ He seemed indifferent to the connection, and not for the first time, Walters wondered if he was all that bright.

  ‘It would not be good publicity, that’s all.’

  He almost sneered. ‘There’s no such thing as bad publicity. If the story’s true, there’s a soldier out there somewhere who has committed a heinous crime. He must pay for it.’ He flicked open a folder on his desk, signalling the end of the discussion. ‘Now, let’s get on, shall we?’

  Karen Walters returned to her own office feeling deeply unsettled. There was, as Kleeman had said, no point in denying the story was out there. But letting the press know the way he had, that a UN soldier was involved, even before confirmation of the facts, was like throwing the press a big, juicy bone and telling them to gnaw away. What the hell was he playing at? Was it inexperience that had pushed him to say more than was wise, or was he, as rumours had it in the washrooms of the UN, simply eager to grab the headlines as a means of promoting his own platform?

  The briefing had been a mistake. Kleeman was accustomed to the social wolf pack, a cocktail in one hand and a clutch of patron-acquired opera tickets in the other. He had certainly never been exposed before to the kind of bearpit atmosphere he had volunteered himself for today. And she had been powerless to stop him. She should have known better. Putting himself out there had been an act of pure vanity — a way of signalling his career intentions. Unfortunately, the rest of the organization — herself included — was going to have to pick up the pieces.

  She shivered, remembering the way he’d sneaked a look at her legs. He’d never tried it on with her, thank God. He was married to a social butterfly with old, New England money, although he had plenty of his own, by all accounts. But that had never stopped men like him in the past. She picked up the phone and put out a call for Ken Deane. He was in the UK on unspecified business. She needed to speak to him directly. There were some things you simply couldn’t put in writing.

  ELEVEN

  The Major Trauma Centre at King’s College Hospital in Camberwell, south London, was unusually quiet when Harry walked through the front entrance and checked in at the front desk. The receptionist smiled in recognition but still checked his details and logged him in before nodding him through.

  He knew where to go.

  He walked up two flights of stairs and made his way to a corridor lined with side wards. A security guard sat at the end behind a small desk. He checked Harry’s details again and nodded him through. The air was cool and smelled faintly of lemons. There was none of the medical detritus common to many hospitals; the better, he had decided, to hurry patients out of their rooms to emergency theatres without having to run the obstacle course of trolleys, unused wheelchairs and spare equipment.

  In this place, speed was essential and taken as read.

  His footsteps echoed along the corridor. Each room had specialist monitors bleeping quietly or displaying figures Harry didn’t pretend to understand, each linked to a person who had suffered gunshot or similar trauma. Each room was its own small universe, but one where survival was not a given.

  He stopped outside the second door from the end just as a nurse came out carrying a tray covered by a cloth. She smiled sympathetically and closed the door behind her. It was a signal to him to wait.

  ‘Any change?’ he asked. The last time he’d been here a few days ago, there had been no reaction, just the steady breathing of sedated sleep.

  ‘Some,’ she replied. ‘She speaks occasionally, when it suits her. Mostly she doesn’t. But she’s on the mend. . if she wants to be, anyway.’

  Harry knew that this nurse, like her colleagues in the unit, was a specialist in treating the Centre’s patients. Part of their remit was to take more than a strictly post-operative and clinical interest in their charges. For most of the inmates, coming round after severe wounds and surgery was to encounter a set of circumstances they could never have envisaged. They were awaking to face a lifestyle that would bear no resemblance to anything they had known so far, a future that was at best uncertain. It required a certain specialized approach by the staff.

  ‘You think she doesn’t want to?’

  The nurse tilted her head to one side. ‘Hard to say. She doesn’t give any indication one way or another. She knows she’s got a fight on her hands, though. The instinct is there in everyone, so we can only hope.’

  ‘Any other visitors?’ He asked the same question each time.

  ‘No. A couple of men dropped by after your last visit, but I wouldn’t classify them as sympathy callers.’ A lift of an eyebrow showed she knew official visitors when she saw them.

  Probably Ballatyne’s men, he thought, checking that the patient wasn’t stealing the cutlery.

  ‘Can I go in?’

  She nodded. ‘Of course. Don’t stay long, though. She needs lots of rest.’

  Harry hesitated, a question forming that he hadn’t wanted to ask before. ‘Is my coming here helping or hindering?’

  The nurse looked at him for a moment, then nodded. ‘I know you’re not her boyfriend or anything,’ she said shrewdly. ‘But I’m guessing you have a. . connection?’

  ‘She saved my life,’ he said simply. And got shot in the process, he wanted to add. Her last words then had been to ask for his help. Would anyone have asked that if they didn’t have the instinct to live?

  ‘In that case,’ the nurse said, ‘I think it helps.’

  He nodded his thanks and opened the door. As he stepp
ed inside, the woman on the bed shifted slightly, sensing his presence. Her head swivelled on the pillow.

  He still wasn’t sure whether Clare Jardine hated him or not. Maybe she just hated everyone. He walked over and stood looking down at her.

  ‘I didn’t bring any grapes or stuff,’ he said. ‘And flowers aren’t your thing, are they?’

  Clare licked her lips, which were dry, and flicked a glance towards the bedside cabinet holding a jug of water and a pad of cotton wool. It was a mute request for a drink. There was nothing of a personal nature from outside: no flowers, no magazines, no cards. Just the water.

  Harry dipped the cotton wool in the jug and touched it to her lips. She nudged forward, trying to get more of the liquid, but he pulled it away. He’d had instructions before about what was permissible, and drinking wasn’t.

  ‘Bastard,’ she whispered. But there was a flicker of something in her eyes that had not been there for a while.

  She was tough, he knew that. And dangerous, with a predilection for cold steel. A former member of MI6, she had shared the Red Station posting with him and Rik Ferris after being embroiled on the wrong side of a honey trap with a foreign agent. Rik had been caught hacking into highly sensitive security and political files. Nobody had thought to mention that they were not meant to come back alive.

  He pulled up a chair and sat down, his eyes coming level with the shelf of the cabinet. Inside was a bright pink powder compact. Harry smiled. An ironic gift from Rik Ferris. They weren’t friends, but it had been significant because Clare had helped save Rik’s life, too.

  At least she hadn’t had it thrown out yet.

  ‘I called by,’ he began casually, as if they were old friends, ‘because I might not be in for a bit. It looks as if I’m being drawn into something I can’t get out of.’

  No reaction. She wasn’t even looking at him. Her breathing was low and measured.