Retribution ht-4

by Adrian Magson

  They could not have been prepared for his visit and he guessed their cache of supplies was not far away. They were stupid, he decided. And therefore dangerous.

  The first price was exorbitantly high — enough to buy a car. Ridiculous, Kassim told them bluntly, in a country where you could get an AK47 for a few dollars. But he didn’t want an AK47. He added more notes to show willing, then clasped his hands in front of him, signifying his final offer. He had no time for playing games and did not trust these two for a moment.

  As the two men consulted each other, he heard the scrape of footsteps on the stone stairs behind him.

  It was a set-up.

  He remained calm and nodded towards the box. One of the men flipped the lid open. Inside were three handguns: a.38 Browning, a Spanish Star and a Makarov with a damaged butt. Also a selection of loaded magazines. It was little better than scrap, but good enough. He indicated the Browning. The man took out the clip and showed it to have a full load, and without thinking, handed both items separately across the table for Kassim to inspect. He probably thought the gun being unloaded would be no threat.

  It was a mistake.

  Before the man could rectify his move, Kassim took the gun, slipped the clip in place and pointed it at the head of the second man in the space of a split second.

  The second man still had his hands behind his back. He went very pale and stared down the barrel.

  The atmosphere in the cellar suddenly became very still, and all Kassim could hear was the men’s breathing. He nodded at the table, and the man took his hands from behind his back and very carefully placed a semi-automatic pistol on the table. It was another Browning and looked in much better condition than the one Kassim was holding. It was fitted with a suppressor.

  They had come prepared for this, he realized. Silenced pistols are not for show. He therefore felt no regrets about what he was about to do.

  Smiling coldly, he picked up the gun and calmly shot both men. The noise was little more than a double snap of a twig in the closeness of the room. Then he stepped back across the cellar floor and fired once more, and watched as the youth who had brought him here dropped a revolver and tumbled down the steps in front of him.

  FORTY-NINE

  ‘Kassim was seen at the airport.’ It was Archie Lubeszki on the phone. ‘Three UN cops think they saw him but they only realized it was him after they saw the pictures we circulated. I told them to scour the airport buildings and surrounding area, but I think he’ll be long gone by now.’

  Harry felt a tightening in his stomach. With it came a reluctant admiration for the man’s ability and commitment. Coming out of the mountains of Afghanistan, if that was where he’d been, he’d trailed across Europe and the US, picking off his targets along the way, and was now on his home turf and frighteningly close to his goal.

  He switched the phone to loudspeaker so Rik could hear. ‘What was he doing?’

  ‘Drinking tea and panhandling. They said he looked rough, like he’d been sick. Unless he was faking it.’

  ‘Could be genuine. He must be living on adrenalin by now.’ He wondered what Kassim had been up to. If he was sticking to form, he would have arrived in Kosovo some time before being spotted, so he must have been hanging around the airport for a good reason.

  Lubeszki unwittingly supplied the answer. ‘He was probably watching the press frenzy about Kleeman’s arrival. But he wouldn’t have found out much about his itinerary. Nothing’s been issued yet and won’t be. He might know he’s going to appear at the National Library, but he’ll be behind a wall of protection there. It’d be suicide for him to try anything.’

  Harry said nothing. Seemingly suicidal moves were something of a speciality with Kassim, given his attempts on Pendry and Koslov.

  ‘How about tonight?’ Rik queried. ‘Where’s Kleeman staying?’

  ‘The Grand. It’s where all the VIPs stay. The place is wall-to-wall with security screenings, armed guards and even a few off-duty Special Forces heavies littering the place. Kleeman’s not the only big hoo-hah in town tonight. There’s someone from the German government, two representatives of the Dutch government and a few European Central Bank suits. The hotel staff are hand-picked and never replaced without a thorough vetting, so he won’t be able to suddenly turn up as a cleaner or a room service waiter.’

  ‘You’ve been watching too many films,’ said Harry. ‘If Kassim does anything, it will be what nobody expects.’

  Anton Kleeman yawned with relief as the armoured limousine that had carried him from the airport on a tour of the city, followed by a second vehicle carrying his staff and extra protection team, finally entered the high-security cordon around Pristina’s Grand Hotel. Military and UN police officers were everywhere, and even before the car stopped, the three members of the protection team riding with him were outside and clearing a path towards the entrance. Overhead a US Army helicopter clattered in a tight circle, a watchful figure leaning out of the fuselage with one booted foot swinging over the skid.

  After a day of meetings with various government members, Kleeman was tired and snappy. He had been herded about like a child, pushed, pulled and virtually bullied from one point to another by officials and his close protection team, sparing little or no thought for his status. The bodyguards, increased on the recommendation of New York after some ludicrously over-egged threats against UN personnel, were sticking closer to him than yesterday’s sweat and filling the car with their silent presence. He wouldn’t have minded but there wasn’t a single spark of conversation among them, and they were as jumpy as two-day-old chicks.

  The team leader beckoned him forward with what Kleeman considered a less than respectful gesture. He climbed from the car and allowed himself to be swept into the foyer of the hotel, where at least there was some semblance of warmth and comfort. The general decor was worn and in need of revitalization, but staying here had been a political move. At least the staff knew how to treat someone in his position.

  As he walked across the well-trodden carpet through the bustle of VIPs, military and UN officials, he saw two men standing to one side, oblivious of the hubbub around them. Dressed in casual civilian clothes, they seemed out of place in this predominantly military setting. Yet there was about them something indefinably regimented and watchful.

  He glanced at the leader of the protection team, but the man seemed unconcerned and continued past them towards the stairs.

  Kleeman stopped, recognition slowly filtering into his mind. He remembered. That damned compound. He swallowed, feeling a vague twinge of unease that had begun at the airport that morning. It had started while he was preparing to address the press. Glancing over their heads for a moment, he had locked eyes with a tall, thin man staring at him from the back. He was poorly dressed and showed signs of malnourishment — not an unusual sight here. Kleeman was sure he had never set eyes on the man before, but the intensity of his gaze had crossed the room with an almost tangible power. It had left him momentarily shaken, until a question from the press had drawn him back. Next time he’d looked, the man was gone.

  Now these two. One young, with a colourful shirt under a sports jacket and fashionably dishevelled hair. A stranger. The older man next to him, though, he recognized immediately. Kleeman had a memory for faces. This man had been the leader of the protection team last time he was here. What was his name? Stait? No, Tate. British, he recalled, and insubordinate. But efficient. Odd that he should be here. The thought added to his sense of unease, but he fought to suppress it.

  He approached the men, causing the two bodyguards to swerve sharply.

  ‘Tate,’ Kleeman said warmly. It was a trick that served as well in politics as it did in commerce, especially with his recent visits to China and France. It was something the inhabitants of those two countries had in common; they liked to think they were important enough to be remembered after a single meeting.

  Tate nodded without making a big deal of it and lifted a thumb at the bodyguard who
had nearly fluffed his manoeuvre. ‘You should signal before you turn,’ he said. ‘It throws them off when you do something unexpected.’

  Kleeman was piqued by Tate’s tone. Was the man laughing at him? ‘I’ll try to remember that,’ he said coolly. ‘Are you still in this business?’

  ‘I wasn’t. But the UN asked me back. Rik Ferris, my associate.’ Tate nodded towards the younger man beside him. ‘He’s helping out.’

  Kleeman felt another twinge of unease. The two men were studying him as if they shared something, some secret. Suddenly he regretted having stopped. ‘Helping out with what?’

  ‘The business at the compound.’ It was Ferris this time, his voice as flat as gravel pouring into a bucket. ‘At Mitrovica. You know — the rumour you said was going to be investigated?’ Ferris’s eyes were cold and unfriendly.

  ‘Compound?’ Suddenly Kleeman felt a burst of panic. ‘I don’t think-’

  ‘You know. Where that little girl was raped and murdered back in ’ninety-nine. Then thrown over the wire like a sack of garbage. We’re here to pick up the man who did it.’

  Kleeman felt as if Ferris had reached into his throat and pulled out his lungs. He stepped back momentarily, winded, looking at Tate. But the older man’s face was just as cold. Alongside him, Kleeman’s bodyguards shifted, puzzled by the change in tone.

  Kleeman cleared his throat and wondered, if he were just to walk away, whether Tate would follow him. ‘Are you? That’s good. . very good. I expect to hear details as soon as you can release them. Do you have the man in custody? I seem to remember hearing it was a soldier.’

  ‘Not yet,’ Tate replied. ‘We’re looking at some new evidence. Then we’ll nail him.’

  ‘Evidence?’ The air around Kleeman’s head seemed suddenly very warm, and he had a desperate urge to run for the stairs and lock himself away somewhere dark and safe, away from these men of violence and their aggressive manners.

  ‘Blood samples. DNA. That sort of thing.’ Tate gave a half smile. ‘Amazing how long that stuff hangs around. Like a signature. Excuse us, won’t you?’

  Kleeman watched the two men walk away, then allowed himself to be propelled up to his room, where he went straight to the bathroom and was violently sick.

  ‘You think we rattled his cage enough?’ Rik asked, as they left the Grand Hotel. They had talked it over on the way there, deciding to unsettle Kleeman and see how he reacted.

  ‘If we didn’t,’ Harry murmured, ‘nothing will. You’re getting good at the scary stuff.’

  ‘Well, I try my best. I hope we’re right about him.’

  ‘We’re right. I can feel it. Saw it in his eyes.’

  ‘And if we’re wrong?’

  ‘You’d better take my gun away, otherwise I might just go and shoot him for the hell of it.’

  FIFTY

  From a part-renovated building three hundred yards away, Kassim watched the front of the ten-storey Grand Hotel. He had seen Kleeman’s arrival, counting at least twenty armed security men around the UN envoy and on permanent station as part of the standard security cordon. He sat back, chewing his lip to fight the now permanent nausea he was feeling. He brushed it aside; he was sick, he knew that. But he couldn’t let it derail his plan.

  Getting in the hotel would be impossible; it would be like throwing himself at the front door with the word ‘bomb’ strapped across his chest. So he had to think of somewhere else.

  He thought back to a phone conversation he had overheard outside the airport terminal building earlier. A British journalist had been phoning in his report, listing to his editor a last-minute, press-eyes-only itinerary for Kleeman. It included a tour of Pristina University followed by a meeting at the National Library building at noon the following day.

  So. Two possibilities: the university or the library. Kassim slid backwards from his observation point and made his way down the stairs, spilled plaster and brick-dust crunching under his feet. As he walked away, he made his choice. The chase was closing in, and time was fast running out. He had to do it.

  The library.

  Three in the morning on a building site in Pristina and heavy rain was gusting on a cold wind coming down from the surrounding hills. Sheets of board across half-completed windows snapped like gunshots, and fires in open braziers made of oil drums hissed and spat as the rain hit the red embers, dusting the figures huddled around them in a swirl of vapour and damp ashes.

  For Kassim the weather was a blessing. He eased himself from inside a sheet of corrugated cardboard and stretched his arms above his head, feeling the stiffness in muscle and sinew incurred by spending the night on a bare concrete floor. He performed a dozen squats, his thigh muscles protesting until they began to feel the warmth of blood circulating, followed by thirty quick press-ups. The exercise brought a renewed bite of hunger to his belly, but he dismissed it. It would not be the first day to have dawned without him eating, and given a safe outcome of his day here, would not be the last.

  He peered through a crack in the front of the building, watching and listening for signs of movement. He had counted five security patrols during the few hours he had been here, checking papers and people, but they had no regularity or set pattern. The last one had passed by just five minutes ago, and he had lain still, waiting for it to pass. So far there had been no attempt to check the building. That might happen at daylight.

  Now he had to move.

  The rain was like a cold slap in the face, making his skin itch. He pulled his coat around him and slid along the street. His destination was the National Library. He had scouted it out late last night, studying the building and the ground around it.

  It was here that Kleeman was due to come in just a few hours.

  Kassim slid across the street known as Agim Ramadani and worked his way around the edge of the open area encompassing the library complex to the rear of the building, watching for patrols. The security here seemed lax, but he guessed the bulk of the effort would be reserved for later, in the two hours before Kleeman’s visit. By then it would be as tight as a drum.

  By then he would be inside.

  He sat for a few minutes, tuning in to the dark and allowing his breathing to settle. When he’d got his bearings he reached down and felt for a large section of prefabricated aluminium casing, part of an abandoned central heating system which had never been cleared away. By chance, his earlier foray had shown a maintenance plate on the wall revealing what lay underneath. He eased the aluminium carefully to one side to reveal a square inspection panel set in the ground. It had a lifting ring in one side. A faint grinding noise and the panel came up, bringing with it a gust of foul air. Kassim ignored it; he’d been in worse and could live with whatever was down there. He felt for the rungs of a ladder and stepped down carefully until his shoulders were level with the ground. Then he pulled a paper package from his coat pocket. As he unwrapped it, the pungent smell of human excrement rose to his nose. He dropped part of it on the ground at the lip of the hatch, and some on the lid itself. The paper he discarded on the ground nearby. It would be enough to confuse any patrol dogs.

  His final move was to tug the aluminium casing over the panel, then lower both to the ground, concealing his point of entry.

  At the base of the ladder he squatted in a pool of water and took a slim torch from his pocket. He flicked it on, illuminating a small tunnel, the light reflecting off curved walls glistening with damp and hung with wet, viscous strands of cobwebs. The atmosphere here was musty and heavy. Halfway along the tunnel walls were two openings, each the size of a man’s head. They were the out pipes from the library sewage system. Beneath them was an area of crusted sludge. He knew enough about buildings to realize that there would soon be another panel above his head, this one set in the boiler-room or maintenance-room floor of the library. From there he would have access to all areas of the building.

  Kassim gritted his teeth as his stomach threatened to empty itself, ignoring the slime beneath his feet and the skitter
ing sound of small creatures just beyond the glow of his flashlight. He began to make his way forward along the tunnel.

  FIFTY-ONE

  ‘I think Kassim’s made a move.’ Lubeszki on the phone, sounding tense.

  It was nine o’clock the following morning and Harry and Rik were sitting in a borrowed Mitsubishi four-by-four watching the close protection team assigned to Anton Kleeman comb the area around the National Library. Sniffer dogs ran excitedly around the structure seeking traces of explosives, while technicians with electronic equipment scanned for radio emissions that might betray a remote detonator. Elsewhere members of the UN police supported by military patrols made a floor-by-floor check of all the surrounding buildings to a distance of 500 yards where a sniper might gain a line-of-sight advantage. This included the art gallery, the radio station and several university buildings, all of which had virtual open access.

  ‘Three local arms and drug dealers were found shot dead yesterday evening,’ Lubeszki continued. ‘They were in a cellar in the Old Town. The police had been keeping them under surveillance, but lost contact late yesterday.’

  ‘Could it have been a turf war?’ Harry didn’t want to start chasing the shadows of a local gang feud gone bad.

  ‘Unlikely. Rivals would have made it messy — as a message to others. These guys were taken out professionally, one shot each. A kid who worked as a gofer said they had a visit from a guy wanting to buy a gun. Tall, thin, looked sick, like he was burning up. Spoke the language fluently but with an accent. A second kid took the guy in, then left them to haggle. When he went back to check but didn’t show up again, the gofer went in and found the bodies.’