by Dana Haynes
C11
Zagreb, Croatia
Lazar Aleksić rarely left Belgrade, Serbia, but his company wasn’t based there. He owned a continent-spanning trucking company, Ragusa Logistics, which had its headquarters in Croatia, closer to the heart of Europe’s international trucking lanes.
Ever the cop, Finnigan wanted to find out everything he could about Aleksić’s legitimate business before tackling his criminal enterprise.
Finnigan bought a cappuccino for Fiero and an Americano for himself. He’d found them a lovely little café, an open-air affair under a striped awning, right on the great and vibrant central square, Jelačić plac, in the heart of Zagreb. A dizzying array of citizens and tourists flooded the square, taking photos or enjoying the sunny day, the townies moving with a mission, the visitors moving in circles. A strangely high percentage of the residents, both male and female, could be categorized as good-looking.
“Zagreb would be a good staging point for us,” he said.
She sat hunched low, long legs under the table, dressed in black as always, with classic Ray-Bans. “We’re too far from Belgrade. We should be there.”
The northern half of the former Yugoslavia gets progressively more European as one moves west, and progressively more Slavic as one moves east, from Slovenia through Croatia, to Bosnia-Herzegovina and finally Serbia. Signage on the west side of the country is in English and German and Italian. In the east side, it’s in English and Cyrillic.
“Zagreb is good,” he argued. “It gives us access to my police contacts and your military contacts in Europe. It gives us access to Ragusa Logistics.”
“Why do we care about his legitimate business?”
Finnigan said, “He allegedly ships underage sex slaves around Europe.”
“I know. We should be …” Her voice petered out. “Ships.”
“Yup.”
“Okay,” she added begrudgingly. “I get that; find out if he uses his own trucking company to move the victims. That’s smart. But Aleksić himself isn’t here. Shan’s research said he never leaves Belgrade.”
“Maybe we can find this Driton Basha here.”
She shrugged. “Maybe.”
“Besides, nobody’s friendlier than Zagrebians …” he said. “Zagrebites … Zagreboids … these people. Friendliest folks in Europe.”
She turned her head a couple inches his way, revealing his own reflection in her glasses. “Is there anything about me that leads you to believe that I like friendly people?”
They sat and watched the crowd in the square for a while. Fiero sipped her coffee. They’d spent the better part of the previous two days learning everything they could of Aleksić’s Ragusa Logistics. They’d watched the warehouse, made note of the comings and goings of trucks and drivers and warehousemen. The place appeared to be legit and likely was.
Fiero ran a pianist’s hand through her long, straight locks. He couldn’t tell what she was looking at behind the glasses. She might have been looking at the lovely townies or the grinning tourists. Or at the estimable general astride his marble horse.
“Wanna hear an interesting story? General Josip Jelačić …” Finnigan pointed to the statue of the proud general. The cavalry officer wore the fine plumage of a conqueror and held his sword before him, facing east. “The statue pivots on a single axis, so the general, and his horse, can face whichever nation is suspected of being the biggest threat to Croats at any given time. In the nineteenth century, he faced north, sneering at the Austro-Hungarians. After Tito fell and Yugoslavia disintegrated, they pivoted the statue to face east, in order to intimidate the Serbians.”
Fiero slouched. She could fall asleep behind those very dark glasses and he’d be none the wiser. A good minute passed, and a slow smile slid across the lower half of her features, appearing almost timidly beneath the glass frames. And finally a laugh. That most coveted and rare of reactions.
“You made that up.”
Finnigan used his contacts to find them an apartment with a kitchen, which would serve as their base camp. He didn’t know any cops in Croatia, but he knew cops in a lot of other countries who vouched for him. They made inquiries about organized crime in the former Yugoslavia, but kept the name Lazar Aleksić out of it.
He learned something useful: The heart and soul of the eurozone was the Schengen Agreement. The deal was designed to facilitate international commerce throughout Europe, and it did. Spend twenty minutes on the German Autobahn, and you’d pass trucks from Poland and the Czech Republic, France and Portugal, Luxembourg and Lithuania. None of which are required to stop for inspection at international borders, provided they had the appropriate tags on their bumpers.
And the trucks of Lazar Aleksić’s Ragusa Logistics had all the right tags.
When the partners figured they’d learned enough about Ragusa’s trucks, warehouses, and offices in Zagreb, they bought a used Nissan for cash. They packed up their go-bags and took a road trip due east to Belgrade, the capital of Serbia.
C12
Belgrade, Serbia
The Club Obsidian was one of the city’s most prosperous nightspots, located on Bulevar Nikole Tesle. It had been built in the nineteenth century as a library, with thirty-foot-high ceilings and ornate, Gothic design on every surface. The windows were narrow and a dozen feet high, and colored lights set outside and aiming upward threw beams of blue and red and gold and green through the glass and toward the cathedral ceiling. A second floor had been designed in an atrium format, with iron grid walkways along all four sides, the center part of the building open from floor to ceiling. The floor was sectioned off into a dancing area, a seating area, and a low stage. Seven wet bars lined the four walls.
Finnigan and Fiero arrived separately (he paid to get in; the bouncer let her in for free). After casing the place separately, they reconnected on the second floor. The din was so loud, Finnigan could feel the vibrations in his clavicle.
“Nice joint!” he leaned in and almost shouted into her ear.
Fiero leaned toward him, and he could feel her hair on his neck. “Face the DJ, and you face Jerusalem,” she said. “Face that bartender, and you face Mecca.”
He laughed. “You learn the damnedest things in a split-faith childhood!”
Finnigan had selected a black shirt and black jeans. Fiero hadn’t changed a thing, which was fine. Her usual goth sensibility fit in well. She hadn’t even removed her sunglasses. Both had been hit on several times, making their reconnoiter interesting, if cumbersome.
They stood on the second floor, drinks in hand, near the ornate iron railing that dated to the origins of the building. The second-story iron catwalks had allowed the original library patrons to look down upon row after stately row of long tables with green-shaded, gooseneck desk lamps and severe, high-backed chairs, and at the bibliophiles who held no truck with modern notions like microfiche or paperback tomes, but who preferred the aroma of paper mold.
That was then. Today, Finnigan and Fiero looked down at the writhing, Boschian mass of dancers, swaying to a mix of Alicia Keys and Black Sabbath, bolted together uncomfortably but workably by an Asian girl on the DJ stand. She weighed maybe ninety pounds and had seen maybe nineteen summers, and she wore one side of her earphones in place, the other against her neck, and sweated over the turntables like a thoracic surgeon over a chest wound. Spotlights pivoted and threw shafts of cobalt, magenta, and violet around the open space.
Two drunken college boys sidled up to Fiero and asked her something in Serbian. Neither Finnigan nor Fiero spoke Serbian, but the most polite possible guess about their query was, want to dance? Other, less polite options might have been possible, too. She turned her opaque glasses toward them and said, “No.”
They apparently understood that word at least.
She turned her head back toward Finnigan’s cheek and spoke loudly. “Aleksić?”
“Got him.�
��
“Where?”
“Don’t feel bad,” he said. “I’m a trained law-enforcement officer. I notice everything. See those couches down there, at ten o’clock? One of them’s green? Check out the guy. Blond with frosted highlights. He’s got a Champagne flute and, to his left, is a bottle of what appears to be Cristal.”
Fiero stared through her shades at the bacchanal beneath them. She turned to Finnigan. “You’re a trained observer?”
“I am. Don’t be ashamed.”
“And that’s how you describe Aleksić? Blond with highlights?”
“I should have mentioned that his black shirt appears to be silk and that more of the buttons are undone than is absolutely necessary. See? It’s all in the details.”
Fiero sipped her vodka. “That’s a good description.”
“Thank you. It’s a skill set you develop over time.”
“Or, you could have mentioned that he’s getting a blow job.”
“Nah,” Finnigan said. “See, that doesn’t work as a description because, as the evening goes on, our buddy Lazar will still be blond with highlights and will still be wearing a black silk shirt. But the blow job’s gotta end at some point.” He sipped his whiskey. “Presumably.”
Fiero barked a quick little laugh, and Finnigan felt good about that. Very few people ever made her laugh, and he chalked it up as a win.
She leaned toward him and said, “Ten.”
“Ten what?” Finnigan squinted as one of the jelled strobes dazzled them. He tried to figure out if Fiero was counting the muscle, clearly seated in proximity to Lazar Aleksić. He’d only spotted four of them.
Then she said, “Seven.”
“Seven what?”
She sipped her vodka. “Five …”
“I don’t …”
She nodded. “… four … three … two …”
Below them, Lazar Aleksić’s face contorted, both eyebrows rising, his mouth a perfect oval. The young woman before him began to stand.
Fiero said, “… one.”
Finnigan whistled, high-low. “Now that is a skill set.”
She patted him on the shoulder and strolled away.
C13
They separated and kept a discrete eye on Lazar Aleksić until he left Club Obsidian around three. When the partners spotted the telltale signs of Aleksić getting ready to leave, they departed ahead of him. They sat in the Nissan, a block away.
A man of military bearing drove an Escalade up to the front of the club. Two more muscular men escorted the youngster out of the club, along with a lustrous bit of silicone and peroxide in platform heels. The men glared at the other drivers and pedestrians.
“Soldiers,” Fiero said.
Finnigan held binoculars so small they fit into the palm of his hand.
“Any idea who Driton Basha is?”
Finnigan shrugged. “Right now, just a name from a stoner asshole ex-cop. Nobody I know has ever heard of him.”
The Escalade started up. Fiero, in the driver’s seat, turned over the engine of their Nissan.
They turned down Kneza Miloša, into the heart of the government district and heading toward the Stari Grad, or Old City. She was able to stay well back because the Escalade was so large and easily visible amid the traffic. All of the truck traffic around them bore logos in Cyrillic. A kilometer on, and Fiero spotted Aleksić’s car begin to drift out of the lane. She pulled into an alley so quickly the car behind her honked.
Ahead of them, the SUV ducked into the underground parking of a tall tower.
Finnigan got a quick glimpse of the building before they pulled away: it was maybe twenty stories high, overlooking the Stari Grad and the intersection of the Danube and the Sava Rivers. He spotted another likely soldier standing at the egress to the underground parking as a steel door rumbled upward, clearing the way.
Then their Nissan was into the alley and the view was blocked.
Fiero slow-rolled the car to the end of the alley so they could head back the way they’d come. Her plan was to reconnect to the same street they’d just abandoned, and to do a leisurely drive-by of the tower.
“We were told that Serbian mobsters are ex-military?” Finnigan asked.
“Yes.”
“These guys look ex to you?”
“No.”
They traveled back in the opposite direction a few blocks, then reversed course again.
“The choke point for any contraband—guns, drugs, children—is at the borders. Right?”
Fiero nodded.
“So maybe Aleksić isn’t working with retired military, like the Serbian mob. Maybe he’s working with current military.”
“Serbian,” she said. “Or Kosovar?”
“The refugees come through Greece, through Macedonia, through Kosovo, then here.”
“And maybe this Driton Basha’s not some hood or a bent cop?” she responded.
“Maybe he’s active military.”
They often finished each other’s sentences. But, if asked, both would deny it ever happened.
They cruised past the high-rise. Signs on the ground floor—in English and Serbian—advertised office space available for lease starting that coming autumn, as well as storefront retail space to let. The tower looked to be about four-fifths finished, the primary contractors probably going through their final punch lists. Tenants would start moving in within a month or two. Except for the penthouse level—it was brightly lit, the only floor that was, looking like a lighthouse awaiting wayward sailors on a rocky shoal.
“If Aleksić is supported by a standing army …” Finnigan began.
“… we’ll need to see if McTavish is available. And here’s another thought …”
“… another thought …” Finnigan chimed in with her. “Say Lazar Aleksić is working with the Kosovar military. That explains what they bring to the party. What does he bring to the party?”
They both said, “Money.”
Finnigan said, “That, and connections.”
“Links to the rest of Europe.”
“Links to the criminal underground.”
“Dark money?”
They looked at each other, and spoke in harmony:
“Ways & Means.”
C14
Turkey
Jane Koury and Tamer Awad made it across to the Red Cross / Red Crescent transit point and into Turkey. Mohamed and Amira Bakour did as well.
Their parents did not.
There was some sort of glitch with their paperwork. Jane couldn’t figure out what exactly it was. But Tamer had had an inkling that something like this might happen, and he’d armed the kids’ father with a prepaid mobile flip phone and charger, just in case. Tamer and Jane had a matching phone, and they had programmed the reciprocal numbers into each.
Jane and Tamer talked to the parents at length, while Mohamed glowered and Amira cried. There was no way of knowing when the parents would get through. It could take days. Meanwhile, a cousin was waiting far, far to the west, with a boat to take the family across the Aegean to Greece. Not a raft either; a proper freighter with a professional crew.
A boat that wouldn’t wait forever.
Jane and Tamer could no more cross south back into Syria than their parents could make the crossing north. It was finally decided—after calls to Jane’s uncle—that the journalists would stay with the kids for the transit of Turkey and the crossing of the Aegean. The kids, along with the journalists, would reunite with their parents in Greece. They had a dozen other family members waiting for them there.
Jane and Tamer, and Mohamed and Amira Bakour, boarded a train. While most of the families they’d traveled with were heading northwest, toward Ankara, and across the Bosporus and on to Bulgaria, the journalists and the teenage siblings headed due west.
C15
Major Driton Basha of the Kosovo Security Force pulled off the main highway at Vrčin, a suburb of Belgrade, and tooled around the main drag toward a series of garages that cater to international trucking. He’d made the trip several times and did so now by rote. A transponder on his dashboard opened a rolling chain link gate. The Quonset hut within offered no signage, the corrugated metal rusty and weather-racked. One truck stood back a bit, invisible from the main street. It was adorned with international transit tags on the bumper and the stenciled logo of Ragusa Logistics on the driver’s door.
A sergeant in Basha’s KSF unit waited outside the hut, smoking. He wore civilian clothes—the same as Basha.
“Major,” he snapped to attention as Basha climbed out of his civilian vehicle.
“How many?”
“Four, sir.”
Basha said, “Give me one of those.” The sergeant smiled and proffered the pack, plus matches. He waited while the major lighted up.
“They’re not what we were expecting, sir.”
Basha’s eyebrows rose. He rarely showed much emotion in front of his men. “How so?”
“Older, sir. Eighteen, maybe twenty.”
Basha took a drag on the cigarette, cursing silently. “Show me.”
The sergeant unlocked the door behind him.
The interior of the Quonset hut was gutted, vacant except for a couple of cots and an old cable spool that made for a passable table. It was hot inside, the air danced with visible dust fibers; likely asbestos, Basha assumed, but then again, no soldier is ever guaranteed a long life. Wax paper had been applied to the windows, letting in weak, milky light but maintaining privacy. By the dim light, he studied the four refugees who stood or sat around the spool, staring back at him. Three men and a woman. A surprisingly tall scarecrow of a woman, actually. Their clothes were disheveled. Each had a rucksack, set on the floor but not too far from their feet. They were around eighteen or nineteen years old. They were Iraqi, although Basha only knew that because he’d been told that a wave of Iraqi immigrants had just hit the border between Kosovo and Montenegro the day before.