Retribution

by Adrian Magson

  ‘It could be a politically motivated scam.’

  ‘And that’s just as bad. This could reflect badly on us for years to come.’ He glanced at Harry. ‘What do you think? Your gut feel.’

  Harry thought about it. Common sense told him this could all disappear with tomorrow’s newspapers, overtaken by something bigger and more newsworthy. But it could do the opposite and blow up in their faces. And if anyone wanted to smear the UN, drawing in one of their top officials with a rape scandal involving one of his bodyguards would be a good way to do it.

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t really remember the others and I doubt they remember me; we were just a bunch of men thrown together for a couple of days. It wasn’t an opportunity to make lasting friendships.’

  ‘Jesus, Harry.’ Deane looked disappointed, and Harry suddenly realized that there was something else to this visit. To this meeting.

  He gave Deane a hard stare. ‘I think you should cut to the chase, don’t you? What exactly do you want?’

  Deane toed the grass underfoot. ‘OK. To the chase, then. I need your help in closing this thing down.’ He sounded relieved now, as if he’d got something difficult out of the way. ‘I asked a few people and spoke to a guy called Ballatyne. He said you were reliable and knew your way around.’

  Richard Ballatyne was an operations chief in MI6. Harry and Rik had worked for him on a couple of occasions before, when non-attributables were required for tasks falling outside the scope of any specific government agency. Now, it seemed, Ballatyne was playing at being a part-time job finder, dropping Harry’s name in convenient corners.

  ‘You know what he does?’

  Deane nodded. ‘Sure. MI6. Why – is it a problem?’

  ‘It might be if he ever asks you for a favour in return. Just don’t agree to meet him in an Italian restaurant; the coffee’s rubbish.’

  Deane suppressed a puzzled smile, no doubt writing it off as British humour. ‘OK. Are we on?’

  ‘Why me?’

  ‘Ballatyne said you’d ask that.’

  ‘Good. I’m choosy about the jobs I do. Still asking: why me?’

  ‘What can I say?’ Deane shrugged. ‘I’ve got plenty of guys, but not for this. They’re too close. I need an outsider. I can arrange for a full UN ID card and whatever facilities you need short of a guided missile, but you’ll be outside the dome.’

  Harry figured that Deane would have many resourceful and skilled people on his staff, most if not all with military training. But organizations like the UN were rife with gossip, and speculation was a regular party game. Deane also had a secondary reason for calling on Harry: if the rumour about the dead girl was true and names began to come out, then Harry himself was going to be in the firing line. It was a great motivator.

  ‘Let me think it over.’

  Deane’s face tightened. ‘Ballatyne said you’d say that, too. Trouble is, I need your answer now.’

  ‘No.’ Harry began to turn away, but Deane put a hand on his arm.

  ‘Wait.’ Deane scrubbed at his face, his eyes going walkabout with tension. ‘Just hear me out, OK? Two minutes.’

  ‘All right. Two.’

  Deane breathed out and said quietly, ‘It’s not just rumours from the backwoods or some press hack driving this, Harry. We have credible intelligence that there’s an organized group behind it, and they intend blowing it wide open in a way that nobody will be able to ignore.’

  ‘How can they guarantee that? The UN has dealt with accusations before and come out smiling.’

  ‘I know. But this is different. Intel suggests they’re sending someone. Sounds crazy, huh?’ He gave a smile but it didn’t reach his eyes.

  ‘To do what?’

  ‘To go after the CP team.’

  Harry digested that for a few moments, trying to picture the possibilities. It didn’t seem credible. Dramatic as hell, yes. But one man? ‘Who is he?’

  ‘We don’t know. An Afghan. That’s all we have. No name, no description.’

  ‘An Afghan. You’re saying this is terrorist-related?’

  Deane lifted his shoulders. ‘Looks that way to me. Who else would benefit by hitting the UN?’

  ‘And does your intel say what he’s going to do?’

  ‘Yes. He’s going to find the men who were in the compound that night. And he’s going to kill them. All of them.’

  In Paris, Kassim made his way to the Gare du Nord. He felt bone-tired, as if he had run into a wall. He’d been stunned by seeing the Frenchman, Orti, enter the café, and for a moment had nearly allowed his caution to overcome him. But then reason took control, and he realized that it was natural for the man to use the café, being in the same street.

  In the end, it had worked to his advantage. It demonstrated that the photo in the pocket binder was good, which boded well for the rest. Satisfied that he was looking at the right man, he’d waited for the Frenchman to take his first mouthful of coffee, then got up and left, to find a quiet doorway further along the street.

  This one had gone well. Yet he felt a strange sense of disappointment. Something told him that Orti had not understood what was happening, even at the end. The eyes had been too clear to be mistaken. He had not known why Kassim was there.

  He bought a ticket for Brussels, the next stage of his journey, and found a seat at the rear of a carriage and sat down, tucking his rucksack under his legs. He did not trust to leaving the bag out of his reach for a second. The Makarov was in the bottom, unused, wrapped in a towel with the hunting knife. There had been no sense in leaving them behind, as it saved him acquiring others later. He checked the right sleeve of his jacket, where he had earlier noticed small spots of blood. He had scrubbed at them with a damp cloth before leaving Orti’s apartment, and the brisk walk to the station had helped the material to dry. Now the stains were almost invisible.

  He stared through the window at the empty tracks, running over the killing in a series of flickering snapshots: going through the door, pushing Orti in front of him and trussing him like a goat, ready for the kill. The shock of surprise had generated a rush of adrenalin, helping him overcome the soldier in the first few seconds. It was a tactic learned in the training camps, then at first hand in various fields of combat.

  Yet he had no sense of pleasure at taking the man’s life. It had been a task accomplished, nothing more.

  Most of Kassim’s killing had been done on the hilly battlefields of Afghanistan, where personal contact was rare and death was meted out at a distance. Occasionally he had used the night to cloak his attacks, overcoming guards with a knife to ensure silence. But always he had managed to move on, brushing aside the dreams that later came to haunt him by telling himself there had been no other way.

  This time, though, had been different. He had used Orti’s own blade, seen his eyes up close; had felt the other’s body warmth, sensed his final breath on his cheek; seen the flicker of something desperate in Orti’s face in the moments before he went.

  But that wasn’t all. There had been a need to mark the killing for those who would understand. His trainers had been emphatic about that. He had closed his mind to what had followed, like a surgeon from his patient, and with a few swift cuts of the knife, his task was complete.

  As the train slid almost noiselessly out of the station, Kassim felt relieved. He was not clear yet, but every second took him beyond the reach of any random police activity.

  He slept most of the hour and a half it took to reach Brussels, lulled to sleep by the warm air and the hum of the engines. His dreams were vivid and random, a kaleidoscope of scenes from long ago, when life was very different, and those from more recent times. And among them, the image of Orti’s face swam up like a fish coming to the surface of a pool, staring up at him. He sat up with a jerk, wondering if he had said anything in the quietness of the carriage. But when he looked round, nobody had noticed.

  EIGHT

  ‘Harry?’ It was Deane’s voice, dragging him out of a restless sleep per
meated with jagged images of narrow mountain roads, snow-covered slopes and war machines. And Paulton’s face. That never went away completely.

  Harry swung out of bed, the phone clamped to his ear. ‘Yes.’ He checked his watch. It was just after six. Too early to be anything good. ‘You gave me until noon.’ Deane had finally relented, seeing that Harry wouldn’t be pushed.

  ‘I know. But our situation just got worse. Marble Arch, thirty minutes?’

  Harry debated telling Deane to go jump in front of traffic. He had a hospital visit to make. But he knew it would merely be delaying the inevitable. He was going to say yes in the end, and they both knew it. He gave his assent and put down the phone, then got washed and dressed and went out to find a cab.

  Deane was standing near the giant Fiddian-Green horse’s head sculpture, sipping at a mug of coffee. He handed a second mug to Harry.

  ‘Sorry about this, but I got an alert from my office just over an hour ago.’ He led Harry away from a group of early-bird tourists planning their day. ‘Yesterday you mentioned one of the CP team. Orti?’

  ‘Yes. French Foreign Legion. What about him?’

  ‘I said this man – the Afghan – was coming.’ He stared out over the park. ‘Well, I think he’s already made his first move. Orti’s dead.’

  If the coffee didn’t blow away the cobwebs, this bit of news certainly did. Harry had seen death enough over the years, as a soldier and an MI5 officer, to have developed a reasonably pragmatic view of it. For men like Orti, it went with the job, especially in an elite Special Forces outfit like the Foreign Legion. Even so . . .

  ‘How?’

  ‘He was tied up and knifed late last night.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘In his sister’s apartment in Paris. She was away and he was using it to bed down while on leave. He’d just got back from a bar in the same street, where he’d been drinking coffee. There were signs he’d been exercising in the apartment – he was due to report back today and was probably sweating off a hangover.’

  ‘Nobody saw anything?’

  ‘No. It was professional and quick – and no signs of robbery. The local cops think Orti must have pissed someone off, maybe an Algerian from way back; someone who recognized what he was and decided to get one back for old times’ sake.’

  ‘So what’s wrong with that?’ There was something in Deane’s voice and manner that showed doubt.

  ‘You were in Kosovo . . . you saw what they could do to each other.’

  Harry nodded. He knew all right. If every story had been reported in full, they would have had readers throwing up their cornflakes. He had seen the grim results of ethnic cleansing and the terrible revenge attacks by the Kosovars and ethnic Albanians. Gruesome failed to describe the horrors perpetrated on all sides in the name of nationalism and religion. Amid the killings, rapes and beatings that happened daily, there were numerous examples of torture, amputations and live burials.

  ‘There was that thing some of them did,’ Deane continued, his voice thick. ‘They’d leave a calling card, to show they weren’t going away.’

  Harry remembered. It hadn’t been widespread, but it had occurred often enough to be noticed. One group had cut off the noses of the people they killed; another carved a cross on the forehead. Either way, it was another form of terror, a symbol of the undying hatred on either side and the lengths to which they would go to induce fear in their enemies.

  ‘And this one?’

  Deane’s eyes looked bleak. ‘Orti had the letters “UN” carved into his chest. Throw in the rumours about the kid’s murder, it doesn’t take much to figure out who the killer had a grudge against – and it wasn’t the French Foreign Legion.’

  Harry felt a tickle on the back of his neck. Deane was right. It was too pointed, too deliberate.

  ‘If Orti wasn’t still attached to the UN, how did you hear about the killing so quickly?’

  ‘A fluke of European manners. A customer in the bar told the police that Orti was with the Legion and had once been with the UN in Kosovo. They meant KFOR but my office was copied in on the news as a courtesy. My deputy ran Orti’s file to see who he was . . . and up popped Mitrovica.’

  ‘And that rang alarm bells.’

  ‘You bet. It could be a coincidence thing, something in Orti’s background with the Legion. But I don’t think so.’

  Harry didn’t, either. He tried to picture the man, but having known him for such a brief time didn’t help. Running a short-term CP team wasn’t the ideal way to get to know anyone; more time is spent looking outwards than in, watching for threat, not judging the character defects of the man next to you.

  ‘If it was me,’ Deane continued, ‘and one of my men was hit like that, on the back of the rumours going around, I’d be keeping one eye over my shoulder.’ He looked keenly at Harry. ‘I looked up your ShootReps and IncReps while you were there. You had a couple of wild incidents.’

  ‘Nothing most other units didn’t come across.’ He wondered at the change of direction. Shooting Reports and Incident Reports were made by UN or KFOR ground troops. Harry’s unit had reported on several ‘hot’ incidents, some serious, others less so. ‘How is that relevant?’

  ‘It’s not. I’m just thinking of other angles. Did any of your “hot” contacts involve any collateral damage? Women killed by accident? Kids killed or badly hurt by stray fire? Anything Orti was involved in, maybe on the side?’

  Harry considered the question dispassionately. Not all UN or KFOR troops behaved impeccably, although they were generally picked for their attitude and inter-personnel skills. But occasionally the stresses and dangers of a peacekeeping posting could get to an individual and spiral out of control. Boredom was a problem, made worse by being isolated in a compound with not enough to do and men you had already spent too many hours with. That could lead to many things, not least of which was gambling.

  By its nature, it inevitably spilled over into the local community, always on the lookout for ways of making money in a desperate situation. Money, or any other form of currency such as pilfered stores and equipment, was always the target. It was part of the desperation economy wherever foreign troops were called in to keep the peace.

  ‘Orti seemed a good soldier, but I can’t say I knew him.’

  ‘Pity.’ Deane looked glum. ‘Looks like we’re no further forward, then.’ He checked his watch. ‘I’ve got to get to the embassy. There’s a press conference in New York today. A couple of reporters have tabled questions about the rumours.’ He pulled a face. ‘They’re not going to let this go. And when they hear about Orti, it’s going to gather weight and speed.’

  Harry nodded. ‘I agree. And the answer’s yes.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’m in.’

  Harry left a relieved Deane to make his way to the US Embassy to do whatever damage limitation he was able to, and walked round to Rik’s place in Paddington.

  ‘He doesn’t give much away, does he, your mate?’ Rik greeted him at the door dressed in a lurid purple T-shirt and jeans, his hair spiky and unruly, as if he’d just rolled out of a hedge.

  ‘He’s not supposed to. What have you got?’ Harry gestured at a laptop blinking quietly on the table where Rik usually worked, and guessed he’d been up for some time.

  Rik spun the laptop round to face him. He’d cut and pasted a variety of documents culled from several sources, but it didn’t take long to read. From early enlistment in the US Marine Corps, Ken Deane had applied for a job with the United Nations as a field security officer. He had served in a number of UN operational areas, including Kosovo, rising through the ranks to become a leading figure in the Department of Safety and Security, dealing with everything from security clearance procedures through protection of humanitarian volunteers and UN personnel, and linking to investigations into the behaviour of personnel and claims against the organization. Much of it appeared to be desk driven, but Harry guessed that Deane’s major role was as a troubleshooter, ready to
up and go at a moment’s notice when trouble flared. As it had now.

  He pushed the laptop back towards Rik. Deane was looking to nip this thing in the bud before it got out of hand. Speaking to Harry was the logical step in the investigation, trying to ferret out quick answers at first hand and protect the UN’s back. He couldn’t hold that against the man; he’d have done the same. But the implications for Harry were clear: if the rumours and the intelligence were true and a member of the CP team had been involved in rape and murder, it meant they were all at risk.

  He rang Richard Ballatyne on his mobile number. Since the MI6 officer had pointed Deane his way in the first place, he must have a point of view on the matter.

  Ballatyne sounded cautious. ‘To be honest, Harry, this is not something we want to get involved in.’

  ‘That didn’t stop you putting my name forward.’

  ‘Sorry. I should have warned you.’ He didn’t sound sorry. But then, he never did. ‘If you want the general feeling around here,’ he continued, ‘it would be in all our interests if this thing could be laid to rest. The UN’s too vital to all our interests to become embroiled in a long-running scandal with no resolution. And if that means finding and hanging out the guilty party to dry before this escalates, then so be it.’

  ‘Thanks.’ Harry felt cornered. He was already mentally committed to helping Deane; Ballatyne had just placed the full stop at the end of the sentence.

  ‘There’s just one thing, Harry. If you start on this, there’s no dropping the baton halfway. This isn’t like our normal work: there are no shadows, no smoke and mirrors. It’s in the full glare of the sun and there’s already been too much focus on it. If you find anything, it’s likely that you’ll only be a step ahead of the press and whoever’s driving this.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So make sure you get it right. Close it down.’

  Harry put down the phone with an uneasy feeling. He’d just been given official approval, such as it was, to help the UN with their problem. But it was a nod at arm’s length and free of any recorded official sanction.