The Hit List

by Chris Ryan

  jr stole a glance at Aleksandra Marcovic. Any of emotion or- expression had been ruthlessly I from her face.

  camp was in the south Croatian marshlands the Una and Sava rivers join. We were put in . shacks without even straw to sleep on, fed on gs, and put to work building the guards' s. The wire had gone up at Jasenovac a fortnight but by 1945 there would be a whole network ; from Krapje in the west to Stara Gradiska in t About six hundred thousand Serbs, Jews and would be killed there, one way or another, and

  415

  The Hit List

  the deepest hatred and the worst torture was reserved for the Serbs.

  'If I just tell you what I saw with my own eyes . . . Exactly a year after I came to Jasenovac, a competition was organised to see which of the Ustashe men could kill the most prisoners with his own hands. The winner -- a young Catholic lawyer, I think he was -- managed to cut the throats of thirteen hundred people in one night with a specially sharpened butcher's knife. He won a gold watch and the tide "King of the Killers".'

  Slater, speechless, shook his head.

  'Even the Nazis protested at this kind of behaviour, but then the Ustashe were animals, not humans. How can youjregard as human people who feed children caustic soda,-or beat them to death with hammers and axes, as happened to my sister Drina? I saw all of these things at Jasenovac.'

  She was silent for a moment. The wind pressed at the double-glazing. Beyond the net curtains the sea was the colour of galvanised steel.

  'But you asked about the pictures, so let me tell you about this . . .' she smiled bleakly, '. . . this handsome young Ustashe knight on his horse. His name is Dinko Sakic, and at age twenty-one he was made, j commandant of Jasenovac. They said - although I never saw it -- that his favourite weapon was a welder's j torch. When I saw him he was always carrying th�| whip and a pistol. As the photo shows he was a greafl friend of the Guja, the snake. They used to walbjj around the camp together as if they were in

  416

  Chris Ryan

  junds of some beautiful mansion, admiring the and the statues and the views. People said that were . . . you know.' Slater nodded.

  the same time there were women prisoners - I j't expect you to understand this - who thought that were in love with one or other of them. Dinko the Guja knew this too, and I think it amused q/

  seing Slater's disbelieving face, Marcovic smiled Jy. 'You have to understand that this was a world jut rules, sense or logic. A world of blood, icry and chaos. The Guja was a German SS jter, as you can tell from the uniform, and usually i there were German or Italian officers around the <$he made an effort to behave like human beings, re me, we welcomed the sight of a Nazi uniform

  an SS uniform.

  at no one bothered to moderate their behaviour the Guja was around - quite the opposite, in ecause they knew that he liked what he saw. He |-to the camp so often I think he must have been I somewhere very close, perhaps at Kostajnica. auldn't keep away, and though I never saw him ch as touch a prisoner I think he was in some . addicted to what he witnessed here.' er pulled down the next image. The hiking

  at. The man eating the bread is Andrija bvich, the Poglavnik's minister of the interior.

  417

  The Hit List

  Artukovich was also responsible for the Ustashe -- he was a kind of Croatian Himmler. And there again is the Guja in the foreground. Could you go to the last picture?'

  Slater nodded,

  'I don't know where this is. It could be Jasenovac, or Stara Gradiska or one of the smaller camps, but I think the point of this picture is the necklace worn by the man in the apron. I heard about this, but I never saw it.'

  'What is the necklace?' asked Slater.

  'Human eyes,' said Marcovic flatly. 'The Ustashe were always gouging out eyes. I heard years later that the Poglavnik liked to have baskets of Serbian eyes delivered to his desk. If you were an ambitious young Ustashe knight it was a good way to get ahead.'

  Slater slowly shook his head, appalled. 'I had no idea about any of this.'

  'Well, perhaps it's time that your eyes were opened. Next picture.'

  The snow-scene by the river.

  'This is definitely in Jasenovac, at the south end of the camp by the river. This is the Guja, clearly, but I don't know who these two are. This man, however' she took a deep breath and pointed to the robed monk - 'this man I do know. This man I will remember for all eternity. Can I get you some more tea?'

  'Thank you, said Slater. 'That would be kind.' He didn't want the tea, but he sensed that Aleksandra Marcovic needed a break, a chance to rally herself. For

  418

  Chris Ryan

  re minutes, as she busied herself, he stared out of the idow, trying to make sense of the horrors she was counting. When she came back her voice was ieter than it had been before. At times it was almost audible.

  ,'We called him Fra Sotcma - Brother Satan. I think i real name was Filipovic. He had joined the Ustashe [>m a monastery at Banja Luca, and was promoted to idant of Jasenovac around the time of the ig competition in the Autumn of 1942. He was a 1-looking man with a lisping, almost feminine :e, and of all those Ustashe monsters I would say kt he was the most terrifying. He was only indant for four months - Dinko Sakic rode in |'his white horse at the end of the year -- but the ferry the river to the execution place at Gradina was for all of that time.'

  id this SS officer Wegner was a friend of his too?' fegner came to the camp when Fra Sotona was :, yes. But I'm not sure if they were friends. Sotona * a very coarse man, and I remember him as being fh older than the Guja. Sakic and the Guja -- I can't im by that other name - must have been about

  ic age.'

  at of politeness, Slater addressed his tea. Outside, brightness had gone from the sky, and the first ; of rain were spattering the window. 'So what do E think these pictures prove?' he asked Marcovic. do you think they have been assembled?' frowned. 'These people like Sakic, Artukovic

  419

  The Hit List

  and the priest - other pictures exist. To those who need to know them, they are known. But I have never seen a photograph of the Guja before, and these pictures link him to all these men. Perhaps their purpose is to disprove SS and Wehrmacht claims that they did not realise the full horrors of the Ustashe camps - after all, here is a uniformed SS Hauptmann looking very much at home at the heart of Jasenovac. Anyone who was there could identify the place from these pictures. Otherwise' -- she shrugged - 'I don't know.'

  Slater nodded. Privately he considered that there had to be more to it than that.

  'Why di4 you call Wegner by that name - the Snake?'

  Aleksandra Marcovic folded her hands tightly on the table in front of her. So tightly, Slater noticed, that the knuckles showed white. 'Let me . . . paint you a picture. Imagine a line of children sitting on a bench outside a shed. A shed like the one in that picture i there, of the man with the knife. One by one the children are being taken into the shed, and their ears; are being cut off. The children waiting outside on the * bench can hear everything that is going on inside the j shed. They can hear the screams and they can hear the j smooth, silky voice of Fra Sotona. The last two childrettl waiting in the line are called Goran Nikolic and! Aleksandra Marcovic. Watching these two children as I they wait is a German officer in a black uniform - �j young man, not more than twenty years old. His cap j

  420

  Chris Ryan

  e, however, is the death's head insignia of the SS. a connoisseur of terror, and as the children wait, ig to the screams coming from the shed, and the silences as the victims faint, he moves his face j to theirs. He looks into their eyes and he smiles, almost rapturous smile, and his head seems to jm side to side like a snake. I, Aleksandra Marcovic, am hypnotised with ji>i cannot move, I cannot speak, I cannot think, side me Goran Nikolic is not hypnotised. Even he is only eight or nine years old he sees the sr what he is - a man. And in that moment he himself a sacred vow. That he will live, and he it, and that his children and
his children's will avenge this day.' ently, she leaned forward towards him. ave not asked who you are -- I have been a British for almost half a century now, so it is best, I if you do not tell me -- but if you are a friend of i, I can guess easily enough. As I said, you have sk of death about you.' er said nothing.

  see Goran, will you tell him that I have it about him often over the last few years. He ed many sons to avenge those children who never 1, whose bones lie beneath the execution fields lina, and God sent him a single daughter. How ica?'

  .brave soldier,' replied Slater gently. 'Her father reason to be proud of her.'

  421

  The Hit List

  And it was at that point that Aleksandra Marcovic finally broke down.

  When Slater finally drove away from Philomena Avenue it was late afternoon, the rain had cleared and the sun was making fitful attempts to redeem the day. Rather than returning to London, he drove into Brighton. After the horrors of Marcovic's story he felt the need to surround himself with people - with noise and laughter and bustle.

  Buying a copy of the Sun, he took a seat in a striplit fish and chip shop -- he had had nothing except tea and biscuits all day - and quite deliberately emptied his mind of alUhat Marcovic had told him. When he had finished his meal, read up on the latest immigrant scare-stories, absorbed the facts concerning the Awayday Bonking Vicar, and dwelt at some length on the silicone-free charms of Bethany from Hunstanton, Slater wandered out into the Lanes - an attractive tangle of antique shops near the city centre. In one of these he discovered a small cloth-bound volume entitled The Gentlewoman's Guide to Old Rose Varieties, which he bought as a present for Eve and slipped in his pocket.

  Driving back to London, his mind whirling, Slater attempted to make sense of what he had learned from Aleksandra Marcovic. Why were those half-dozen photographs, taken over sixty years ago, so important? The purpose of collecting them together was clearly to incriminate Wegner, but why had so much effort been

  422

  Chris Ryan

  je to prove his association with Ustashe murderers? ky had it been Branca Nikolic's dying wish that he ce this connection? If Wegner was still alive, surely fact of his former SS membership would be icient to disgrace him in the eyes of the world, le point about these pictures must be that they in ated Wegner both as a Nazi and as a friend of the she, and that was why the Serbs wanted them so But who was Wegner - assuming that he was alive, sixty years after these pictures were taken? pillar of the European community - a business perhaps? If the Serbs could prove that a former and Ustashe supporter was growing old in ly it would represent a huge propaganda coup elgrade. Any linkage between their bombing by in 1941 and by Nato in 1999 would be jiediately exploited. Was that what MI6 was so to prevent? And if so, why had they lied to Slater

  i colleagues?

  fas it, he wondered, because they wanted to use jfphotographs for some purpose so disreputable that ad to be kept secret even from insiders? Were they used to blackmail or apply leverage to some Uy' power? Certainly the fact that Manderson I wanted the CD returned rather than destroyed on spot in Paris suggested something of the sort. But , why had they gone to such trouble to weave this arate deception about the Khmer Rouge training s? Why had they bothered to tell Slater and his ' operatives anything at all? Why hadn't they just

  423

  The Hit List

  handed them their Eurostar tickets and their expenses float and told them to get on with it?

  Eventually, his head spinning, Slater gave up. Whatever the truth behind Operation Firewall, and whatever the purpose of the photographs of Hauptmann Wegner, he had proved to his own satisfaction that his new employers had lied to him and worse, had used his loyalty to his former Regiment to underpin the lie. Well, he thought dispiritedly, at least he knew how it was going to be.

  He was at his lowest ebb as he drove through Croydon, the sad lace-curtained suburb in which it appeared that Aleksandra Marcovic had spent most of her adult life. The roadside villas, grimly individualised with their concrete statues and their privet hedges, seemed to go on for ever. And then the phone on the passenger seat rang, and it was Eve, and the sound of her voice and the anticipation of the week that lay before them drove everything else from his mind.

  424

  SEVENTEEN

  owned a flat in a pretty Georgian square off ington Lane. It suited her, and it struck Slater as 'drank Guinness and picked at a packet of crisps at ble outside the pub, that the other residents all as if their parents might be friends of Eve's its.

  iie men have all got that Rupert look,' he led to her. 'That weekdays in the City, ends in the Cotswolds look. And the women all ihair like you and borrow the men's Jermyn Street ;and turn the collars up.' nearly hit him for that. 'When have you ever, sn me in a man's City shirt?' she demanded, ; a swipe at his head.

  sure you've got some upstairs,' he replied, 'I'm sure a quick check of your wardrobe throw up a striped shirt or two.' fell, you'll never find out. Because if you think climbing the stairs to my flat after making tions like that you can think again. I didn't save life just to be accused of turning my shirt-collars ju big ape!'

  425

  The Hit List

  'Well, just to prove me wrong, tell me that your father didn't work in the City.'

  'He did work in the City, as it happens, but not in the way you think. He was a gunsmith, and worked in the back room of a shop near the Monument. He could mend anything - shotguns, stalking rifles, handguns -- and if he couldn't get the parts from the manufacturers he'd make them himself. He travelled to the shop every day by bus from Dalston, which is where I grew up and went to school. So you see I'm not posh in the least.'

  'But you do give that impression.'

  'Oh, I certainly know how to play the games that posh people play. I worked in the shop in the school holidays, and later, while I was at university I had a job with a firm that did shooting lunches. I kept my eyes and ears open, sure, and when I came to join the civil service I was glad that I had. It's still a pretty old-school organisation.'

  'That's true enough,' said Slater.

  She shrugged. 'If I'd gone into nightclub management I expect I'd have played my hand differently. The point is that these days we can all reinvent ourselves. If we don't like the hand we were dealt we can discard it and pick up another. That's what I've done. That's what everyone does.'

  'Everyone except me,' smiled Slater.

  'Yes, you're pretty unreconstructed,' Eve agreed, tucking herself comfortably under his good shoulder.

  A moment later the phone rang in her bag.

  426

  Chris Ryan

  That was Ridley,' she said when the brief Iversation was finished. 'All Cadre members invited ich at River House tomorrow. Apologies for notice. No three-line-whip but he'd like to see "we're free.'

  Within minutes, Slater's phone rang with the same :. They agreed that they might as well drive up ier--if the others were still in London they would >ably be doubling up too.

  Eve's flat, later that evening, Slater noticed the ils that bore out the truth of what she had told him her background. She owned very few clothes, fvery little furniture, but what she had was of a very quality. She had decorated the flat herself- not a : job, given its size -- and most of her salary still : towards her mortgage. On the mantelpiece was a aph of her, aged about nine, posing like Annie ley with a pair of long-barrelled Colts. Next to her

  man of about forty in a brown coat. Chat's me and Dad. You can't see it there, but I'm ig on the counter of the shop. And the revolvers le real thing, too.'

  and guns,' murmured Slater, burying his face hair. 'Works every time. What do you keep here flat? A cupboard full of Claymore mines?' list my Clock. Nothing serious. What exactly are tfdoing?'

  st kissing your neck and unbuttoning you. ing serious.' jtes closed, she allowed him to undress her. 'You

  427

  The Hit List

  know something,' she said, her back arching as his mout
h found her breasts. 'We still haven't decided . . .'

  His mouth moved downwards. 'Decided what?'

  'What we're going to call each other,' she whispered. 'Let's get your clothes off.'

  Gently, she helped him pull his T-shirt from the hectic shoulder-wound, the cracked ribs, and the fading but still lurid bruises.

  'Perhaps I should do most of the work this time. In Paris you were slightly less damaged.'

  'At least it's just you and me. No corpse making up a menage h trois.'

  She smiled, the smile became a gasp, and she began to move against him.

  Afterwards,- quite a long time later, he came to a decision.

  'You know that CD,' he said. 'The one we took from Fanon-Khayat. The one that the RDB wanted to swap you for?'

  'Mmmm.' Her face was buried in the pillow.

  'I looked at it.'

  She half-rose, frowning at him through sleepy eyes. 'You whatT When?'

  'The other day. When it arrived in London.'

  'And?'

  'And it was nothing to do with Cambodia or the Regiment at all. The pictures were of an SS officer visiting a concentration camp in Yugoslavia during the war.'

  'Well maybe we got the wrong tape. Maybe there

  428

  Chris Ryati

  something they couldn't tell us. Maybe there are ireral tapes. Is that all there was on it? Just some SS icer?'

  I*'His name was Dietrich Wegner. He was a aeteen-year-old captain. In the concentration camp called him "the Snake". He was a sadistic voyeur je got excited by other people's suffering.' fiShe rubbed her eyes. 'How do you know this?' ^tHe took a deep breath and told her. ftShe heard him out.

  iWhen he had finished she pressed the pillow to her and shook her head. 'Will you swear to me you never again do anything so stupid, so reckless, . .' She dropped the pillow. 'I just can't believe I've--' iThey lied to us. They looked us in the eye and

  ig lied to us!' $|So maybe they lied, and maybe they made a stake. Who gives a shit? People do both the whole Our job was to take out Fanon-Khayat and peve that CD, and we did both - end of story.' |*So why feed us all that Khmer Rouge crap?'