They would buy their Ethiopian visas at the border. Border guards, in his experience, were always bribeable. And the Ethiopians notoriously so.
Once he and the girl were safely out of the country, he would be home free.
SIXTY
Watching the Captain smoke his cigarette in such a relaxed way had lulled Hart into a false sense of security. He had assumed, wrongly as it turned out, that the Captain had been suffering from nerves on meeting his daughter, and had needed to go outside and smoke a cigarette to calm them. And then the impossible had happened, and he had seen the Captain running towards his car with Biljana in his arms.
Something closed down in Hart when he saw the Captain carrying Biljana. It was as if a portcullis had rolled down over his heart. He began to hyperventilate like a man caught out by a freak wave.
He threw down his newspaper and ran outside, but the Captain’s car was already fifty yards down the street and accelerating all the time.
Hart pulled out his mobile phone and rang Amira.
Before she could answer, he said, ‘The Captain’s taken her. She’s gone.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean she’s gone. The Captain carried her out to his car and dumped her in the back. He was off before I could get to him.’
‘Was she alive?’
‘I don’t know. But even the Captain wouldn’t stoop to murdering his own flesh and blood. No man could do that? Surely?’ It was clear that Hart didn’t believe his own protestations. ‘She must have been unconscious. Maybe he got angry and hit her? That must have been it.’ He stood for a moment, staring up the road. ‘What have I done? What the fuck have I done?’
Amira was shouting down the phone. ‘Wait for us. Don’t move from there. Don’t, above all, do anything stupid. We can rectify this. We can get her back.’
Hart tried to damp down his rising panic. ‘Listen. Did Rider manage to plant the tracker in the Captain’s car?’
‘Yes. He’d left the thing open. Rider crawled along the pavement as if he was looking for a dropped mobile phone. He cracked the rear door and sneaked in from the side. No wonder you didn’t see him.’ Amira bit back the rest of what she had been about to say. It had become almost automatic with her to needle Hart. To remind him of his shortcomings. There were times when she wondered if it wasn’t some form of unconscious revenge for the fact that he had been the one to break off their relationship after she had aborted their child, not her. Either way, this wasn’t the moment to plunge the dagger in any further.
‘So wait there. Do you understand? We’re coming. We’ll be with you in five minutes.’
Hart stepped inside the clubhouse. He expected to see upset chairs – some evidence of a scuffle – but there was nothing. It was as if Biljana had never existed.
He sat down at a table and put his head in his hands. What had got into him? How had he ever allowed a vulnerable fifteen-year-old free rein to put herself into danger? What insane stupidity had caused him to call everything so wrong?
He looked around vacantly, as if the walls themselves might choose that moment to open up and explain what had occurred within their purview.
But they were silent.
SIXTY-ONE
The Captain pulled up outside the Sheraton Hotel. He checked in the back of the car but the girl was still out cold. There were moments when he didn’t know his own strength. She’d angered him so much about the Muslim thing that, for a second there, he’d come perilously close to killing her. Which would have been seriously counterproductive. A wise man doesn’t shit his pot full and then insist on turning the thing over to see the full extent of the mess he has created.
The Captain felt inside Biljana’s jacket and came up with a purse and her passport. Well. That would make things easier. He looked inside the passport. Biljana Dardan. And her date of birth. Yes. It all made perfect sense. She was his all right. No doubt about it. He had sealed her mother in her room at the rape house for three solid weeks. Only he had had access to her. No one else. Those had been the good times.
He locked the car and stepped inside the hotel. The hall porter pointed to his car and hunched his shoulders interrogatively. The Captain passed him a five-dollar bill. ‘I’ll be five minutes. A buck a minute suit you?’
The man saluted and stepped backwards.
The Captain walked to the hall desk and confronted the clerk. ‘I found this passport in the street outside the hotel. Is this young lady registered here? If she isn’t, I will take the passport along to the police.’
The desk clerk looked at the passport. Then he checked his computer. ‘No. She is not registered here.’
‘Maybe her mother or father registered under another name? Looks like the owner of this is only fifteen.’
The desk clerk shook his head. ‘We would have checked this passport and registered the young woman under her own name. That’s the law. Every passport must be checked. Each individual consolidated against their own identity papers. She would be on our records. No one of this name is staying at our hotel.’
‘Consolidated?’ The Captain rolled his eyes. ‘Consolidated against their own identity papers?’
‘Consolidated. Yes, sir.’
‘Okay. Right. I’ll take this along to the police station then. Thank you.’
‘You’re very welcome, sir. She’s a lucky girl that you found her passport. There are people passing by outside who would have stolen it as soon as look at you, and then sold it onto the black market.’
The Captain manufactured a dramatic double-take. ‘A Macedonian passport? Who in his right mind would want one of those? They’re not even in Europe yet.’
‘You’d be surprised, sir. Believe me. There is more evil on this earth than we can reasonably give credit for.’
‘Asshole,’ muttered the Captain under his breath as he exited the hotel. ‘Reasonably give credit for? Bumptious little asshole.’ He manufactured a fond picture in his inner eye of him carving off the desk clerk’s head, just like the Daesh did with their prisoners in Iraq. There were times when he bitterly regretted the good old days. Then, you just acted as you saw fit. You possessed total power. Now, in the so-called civilized world, the Captain felt like a furious misfit. A square peg in a round hole. Still. He couldn’t very well join IS. They’d take one look at him and lop off his head.
The Captain went back to his car. He looked inside. The girl was still curled up in the rear footwell. He leant in and checked her eyelids. No flaring. She’d be okay when she came out of it. A headache. Maybe a sore throat. But she’d be okay.
The Captain eased himself into the front seat. So she had been lying about her mother. That put a very different perspective on things. Maybe, though, she’d just lied about the name of the hotel? To put him off the trail? He got out again and searched Biljana’s pockets for a hidden mobile phone. A crumpled piece of paper. A bill.
Nothing. That would have been too much like good luck.
He called the corporal again. Checked on how he was making out. ‘We’ll meet at the border. Take both cars across. Then we can sell yours for cash. This one has four-wheel drive. We may require it before we’re through.’
‘Are you sure we need to do this? To slink away with our tail between our legs. We’re not being premature?’
‘Dead sure. I’ve got an unconscious girl in the back of my car. The major knows I was meeting her this morning. Chances are he suspects a lot else. You know what the man’s like. He’s got a ramrod stuffed up his arse. It would give him immense pleasure to send me to the stockade. My true name will be high up on the War Crimes list. Yours too. And the Legion has them somewhere in their records. All they need to do is look. We can’t risk it.’
‘What do we do when we get to Ethiopia?’
‘How the fuck do I know? All I know for certain is that we’ll be beyond the clutches of the Legi
on. That’s the first item on the agenda. We can take it on from there at our leisure.’
‘What’ll you do with the girl?’
‘Same answer. I’ll decide when we get there. Her mother is lurking around some place. We need to silence her. While I have the girl she’ll keep quiet. So the kid’s worth her weight in gold to me.’
‘How do we get her through the border?’
The Captain laughed. ‘I have her passport. Plus I’ll scare the living shit out of her. She’ll fall into line.’
‘They’re not going to be happy seeing two grown men travelling with a fifteen-year-old girl.’
‘Bullshit. The Ethiopians couldn’t care less. They get married at twelve there. Even before. They’ll probably offer to buy her off me. Always assuming the bitch is still a virgin.’
‘You wouldn’t sell your own daughter?’ The corporal sounded almost shocked.
‘That all depends. Maybe if someone made me the right offer?’
The corporal fell silent.
‘Jesus, Danko. I was joking. When will you get your fucking sense of humour back?’
SIXTY-TWO
‘What’s the range of your tracker, Rider?’ Hart was sitting in the back seat of Rider’s hire car. He was concentrating all his attention on the road ahead. His face looked drawn and pinched.
‘The makers claim eight miles. Considerably less in an urban environment. But that’s all malarkey. We have to keep within a mile of the target in case we need fuel. Otherwise we risk losing them.’
‘How accurate is it? Really, I mean. Forgetting the publicity.’
Rider sat forward in his seat. He always got excited when talking about technical matters. ‘Very accurate. It’ll pinpoint the target car’s position to within ten feet. And before you ask, the battery lasts for two months. And it’s satellite, not cellular. Cellular would have been a waste of frigging time out here.’ Rider jerked his head at the windscreen. ‘God, this is a forlorn bloody country. Look at all that litter. How do they manage to pin plastic bags to every frigging thorn tree? Takes real skill to do that.’ Rider cracked the car window, hawked and spat.
‘Does it do anything else?’ said Hart.
‘Like what? Tie its own bootlaces?’
‘Can it, Rider. You know what I mean.’
‘It can monitor conversations if you get close enough,’ said Rider. He looked like a man demonstrating how to conjure a rabbit out of a top hat.
‘You’re kidding.’
‘No. Truly. Only trouble is, Biljana and the Captain will be talking to each other in Serbian, won’t they? Do you happen to speak Serbian, Hart? Is that one of your many accomplishments?’
Hart looked at Amira for support. She stared straight ahead at the oncoming traffic.
‘Well, at least we’ll be able to confirm that Biljana’s still alive.’ Hart sounded bereft.
‘Yeah. We’ll be able to do that. Sure thing, Hart. Sure thing.’ Rider’s tone, exceptionally, was almost kind.
‘How far are they ahead now?’
Rider glanced at his laptop computer. He’d set it up in the centre of the dashboard to the detriment of forward visibil- ity. ‘Seven miles. At the outer edge of reception, I’d say.’
‘Shouldn’t we be speeding up then?’
Rider made a face. ‘Look at the map, Hart. We couldn’t lose him if we tried. This road only goes one way.’
‘And where’s that?’ said Hart.
‘Ethiopia,’ said Rider. ‘My guess is he’s making for Ali Sabieh. Then he’ll cross the border and head for Dewele. There aren’t many more directions he can go. Only a frigging nutcase would go to Somalia.’
‘The Captain is a nutcase. Haven’t you realized that yet?’
‘Not that much of a nutcase,’ Rider said. ‘Believe me. He wouldn’t make it past the first border post. They’d have his money, his car and the girl off him in two shakes of a lamb’s tail. And not necessarily in that order.’
‘And in Ethiopia?’
‘Ethiopia is a civilized country, in case you hadn’t heard. They have a booming tourism industry. The Captain will have no problem getting in. Once he’s in, he can head for Addis Ababa and get a plane to wherever he wants. The world is his oyster after that.’
‘How long will it take him to drive to Addis?’ It seemed to Hart as if he was going through the motions. That nothing he said could have any influence on the outcome of what was occurring.
Rider shrugged. ‘If he drives straight there, maybe ten hours. But Ethiopian roads are piss awful. The Chinese are busy building new ones, but they haven’t quite finished yet. So it could take a lot more than ten hours. Especially if it rains. Ethiopian roads transform into mud slicks in the rain. You’re lucky if you don’t drift over a ravine.’
‘Sounds like you’ve been there?’
‘I have.’
Hart pondered that for a moment. Then he discarded it. ‘We need to hit him this side of the border then.’
‘Easier said than done,’ said Rider. ‘The bastard is averaging around eighty. Which is a stretch for this sardine can with three of us on board. We’ll not catch him in time. We’ll need to go into Ethiopia after him.’
‘Got your passports?’
Amira and Rider nodded. ‘We’re journalists. What do you think? Of course we bloody have.’
Hart cleared his throat. ‘Are you both still up for this? I don’t want to drag you into anything that could turn dangerous. And this could.’
‘I could do with a change of clothing,’ said Amira. ‘But apart from that I’m as ready as I’ll ever be. I’ll do pretty much anything for a story, short of actual murder, as you know. Rider’s the same. He’s a newshound like me. You’re the one we’re always wondering about. Whether you’ve really got the flannel to be a photojournalist. Or whether you’re as half-arsed about it as you always seem.’
Hart ignored the jibe. He was used to Amira riding him. Despite all the bombast and the hard talk, he sensed that she was worried about Biljana too. The two women had bonded during the days they’d spent together in Djibouti. Amira was even in danger of becoming something of a mentor figure to the girl.
‘Have we got anything resembling a weapon?’ he said.
‘No.’
‘Great.’
Amira twisted in her seat and looked at Hart. ‘We weren’t expecting to have to do this, John. Seems to me we’ve done pretty well so far. And Rider set up the tracker. Without that, we’d be nowhere. You need to give us a little credit.’
‘I know. I know.’ Hart hung on to the seatback in front of him. ‘I’m just worried about Biljana, that’s all.’
‘We all are. But worrying won’t get us anywhere. We need to outthink the man. He’s going to imagine his cover is blown. That goes without saying. And we have to assume that he will prise the fact of our existence out of Biljana sooner rather than later. She’s fifteen. She won’t be able to hold out against him for long. But he won’t know about the tracker because Biljana doesn’t. Once he’s in Ethiopia he’ll relax his guard.’
‘Are you sure the tracker’s safe, Rider? If he finds it we’re blown.’
‘He’d need a GPS detector to find it. And someone to use the detector while he’s driving. Chance would be a fine thing. He won’t find it. I guarantee it.’
‘So now.’ Hart looked sick. ‘The big question. Why has he taken Biljana with him?’
‘That’s simple,’ said Amira. ‘He did it by default. He’ll reckon her simple presence at the chess club means that people already know about him. So he’ll have taken her to give himself an edge. And to guarantee himself a regular source of information. My guess is that once she regains consciousness – assuming for the moment that that’s the significance of what you saw when he carried her out to his car – he’ll want to debrief. Find out everything she knows. So mayb
e he’ll stop on the way to Addis. Spend the night. That’s when we can intervene.’
‘Without weapons?’
‘The Captain won’t be gunned up either. He left too abruptly for that. So let’s buy ourselves some knives. Or a machete. Or a fucking sickle. Strikes me that Ethiopia is just the sort of country where people use those sorts of things in the normal course of their day. And we’re three against one.’
Hart shook his head. ‘God, we sound like a bunch of bloody amateurs.’
Amira smiled. ‘That’s what happens when you let the enemy take the battle to you. We missed a trick in Djibouti. We underestimated the bastard. We felt he had too much to lose to risk monkeying with Biljana. When, as far as he was concerned, he stood only to gain.’
SIXTY-THREE
‘So you’re awake?’ The Captain glanced round his headrest at Biljana, who was struggling to get out of the footwell.
Biljana didn’t answer. She eased herself onto the back seat and rubbed her throat, which was still sore from the Captain’s pawing.
‘Cat got your tongue?’ The Captain’s Serbian seemed rusty. Almost old fashioned. As if he had not been speaking it on a regular basis.
‘You tried to kill me.’
The Captain laughed. ‘You’d be dead if I’d tried to kill you. You angered me, so I punished you. If you anger me again, I will punish you again. Is that clear?’ The Captain glared into his rear-view mirror. ‘Is that clear?’
Biljana nodded.
‘Good. I’m glad we’ve got that straight.’
‘Where are you taking me?’ Biljana coughed to try and clear her airway.
‘Ah. A sensible question at last.’ The Captain pulled the car over onto the side of the road. ‘Get out. I’ve decided I want you sitting next to me, not behind.’
Biljana stared at him. ‘I need to… you know.’
‘You can go the other side of that tree. I’ll watch you.’
Biljana’s breath caught in her throat. ‘I can’t go if I’m being watched.’
The Templar Succession Page 20