by Dana Haynes
Fiero tried yet again as Finnigan helped himself to a bottle of Lazar Aleksić’s Champagne. He said, “Still no word?” and poured two flutes.
“The young lieutenant told me something interesting,” she whispered. “Aleksić, too. Tell you on our way out.”
Fiero stepped to the window and peered down at the pack of reporters on Belgrade’s main avenue. She could just barely make out the parliament building from up here. She accepted the glass and sipped.
She turned to Jane. “You’ll leave us out of it?”
The British girl had showered—for the first time in over a week—but had no alternative clothes to wear. With her face and hair clean, she looked closer to twenty-five than eighteen. And so far, the adrenaline was doing a fine job of fighting off her fatigue.
“You’re part of the story.”
“But you owe us,” Fiero said. And not in a bargaining tone; just stating a fact.
Jane peered over at the Bakour siblings, who were deep in conversation on the buttery sofa. The Afghan boy sat near them.
“All right,” Jane said.
Finnigan and Fiero nodded to each other and finished their Champagne. “We’re going to the garage,” Fiero said. “Once we’re down, direct the car to the lobby. I’ve … asked the lieutenant to open the doors. Remember, you can only control the elevators from up here, so don’t go down to greet everyone.”
Jane said, “I won’t.”
The partners gathered their stuff. Fiero said, “Keep my phone.” They had more phones onboard their plane. And she’d wiped it of any incriminating evidence.
Jane stepped into their path before they reached the elevators and threw a hug around Fiero’s shoulders, up on her toes, squeezing her tight. Fiero froze, eyes on Finnigan, who rolled his eyes behind Jane’s back. Katalin Fiero was not a hugger to the same degree that she was not a fire truck.
Fiero awkwardly patted the girl on the shoulder and waited to be disengaged.
“God! Thank you!”
“You’re welcome.”
Fiero disengaged and knelt before the Bakour siblings. She offered her hand to Mohamed, who shook, his face serious and oh so grown-up.
“You did well. Your parents will get here, and they’ll be very proud.”
“Actually,” Jane said, disengaging her hug from Finnigan. “I just spoke to their parents. They made it into Greece. Reuters is chartering them a plane. They’ll be here today.”
She said it again, in Arabic. The siblings looked stunned.
Finnigan and Fiero moved to the elevator bank and called up one of the cars. As it rose, Jane came to them.
“Our deal is for today. But once I’ve slept for a couple of weeks, and eaten a lot of food, and slept some more, I am going to find out who you are. And I’m going to tell the world what you did here today.”
Fiero studied the girl a moment, then shrugged and turned toward the elevator.
“Publicity is the last thing we want,” Finnigan said. “It’d be bad for business.”
“But you’re heroes!”
“It’s your call. But do you really wanna make an enemy of her?”
Jane turned and studied the tall Spaniard by the elevator. She remembered the sudden noises she’d heard in the bedroom, remembered the shock and fear in the eyes of Aleksić.
She turned to Finnigan. “Okay. Good luck.”
On the way down to the garage, Fiero said, “Krasniqi, the lieutenant. I asked about Driton Basha. He said the major went to The Hague on behest of the Aleksić family.”
“Basha knows Miloš? The old man?”
“When we talked in the bedroom, Lazar gave up his father. The Levant Group director has been perfectly aware of his son’s human-trafficking operation.”
Finnigan snorted. “Figures.”
“There’s more. Lazar said his family have come to understand that Judge Betancourt is the true threat. They blame her for our messing about with their mission in France and with the rescue of the refugees. Lazar said the family considers Judge Betancourt to be a mortal enemy of the Slavic people and of Serbians and Kosovars.”
The elevator reached the garage level. Finnigan ran a hand through his messy hair. “Well, crap.”
Down in the garage, the two corrupt cops noticed the knot of reporters gathering topside. They were more concerned with getting out of the building unnoticed than arresting the guy who’d smashed into their BMW. Besides, a crew of three workers in overalls had entered the garage on board a garbage truck that apparently had access to the garage door code. The crew parked the behemoth well away from the classic cars, and the smash-up of the BMW and Jeep at the bottom of the ramp. The workers climbed out and stood around their truck, leaving a good distance between themselves and the disgruntled cops, who eventually walked up the ramp and snuck past the reporters.
When Finnigan and Fiero got to the garage, they walked over to the three garbage workers and exchanged hugs and handshakes. “Sally,” Finnigan said, “Mercer, Gian.”
The tall redhead, Sally, rested both forearms over Finnigan’s shoulders, as if they were about to slow dance. “I’ve always had a thing for Scottish guys.”
“I’m Irish.”
She shrugged. “In the ballpark.”
Fiero smiled. “We are done upstairs.”
The members of the Black Harts nodded. The crew of thieves had agreed to provide 24-7 surveillance of the Ragusa Logistics building with the understanding that once St. Nicholas was done, they could steal whatever they could get their hands on.
“Reporters are gathering in the penthouse,” Finnigan said, as Fiero wandered over to the classic cars. Her plan was simple: steal Lazar Aleksić’s Jaguar. Why the hell not?
“Give ’em an hour,” he continued. “When they clear out, the place is yours. The shit-heel who owns this building is going to do time for trafficking underage children. And the guy’s stinking rich. Anything you take, he can’t hawk later to pay for his defense. So, live large.”
“That,” said Sally, the brassy American, “is most definitely in our wheelhouse.” She tousled his wavy hair. “See ya.”
Finnigan climbed into the Jag and Fiero revved the engine. The tires squealed as she burst up the ramp and swerved onto Kneza Miloša, accompanied by angry honking. “Here,” Finnigan said, rummaging through Lazar’s glove box and coming up with a pair of designer sunglasses.
She slipped them on. “Major Basha travels to The Hague, and now Shan isn’t answering his phone or email.”
“Yeah. And if he’s in trouble, the judge is, too.”
“Of course.” She cut into oncoming traffic to smoke a Nissan, then swerved back into her lane. She caught the signs for the freeway, for the westbound routes to Bosnia and Herzegovina, and to Croatia. And of course, to Lachlan Sumner and their de Havilland. “Why else go after Shan? All he is, is a conduit to Betancourt.”
“We gotta get to the Netherlands if we’ve got any hope of saving them.”
She hit the on-ramp doing seventy. “Or avenging them.”
C57
The Hague
Two of the Kosovar soldiers took a break in the spacious kitchen of the flying saucer–shaped house overlooking the North Sea. The boss kept Finnish vodka in the sub-zero freezer, and one of the soldiers—a short, overly muscled bulldog of a man—liked to grab a shot between shifts. The younger, slimmer soldier thought that that was a mistake; he didn’t want to be caught lifting booze from the boss. They’d been told to help themselves to his coffee maker or the bottles of still and sparkling water in the fridge. Going for his vodka was pushing their luck, the younger soldier said.
“Pussy,” the bulldog replied.
Shortly after they hit the kitchen that morning, Miloš Aleksić strode in with a mobile phone against his ear, looking harried. His salt-and-pepper hair, usually pristine and adhered in place
with military precision, stuck up in back and exposed more of his pink scalp than he preferred. The bags under his eyes had turned a deep eggplant, contrasting with the rest of his exposed skin, which had taken on the pallor of undercooked chicken.
“But I explained it to you,” Miloš pleaded in a tone that suggested he’d made the exact same point a few dozen times. “The media have it completely wrong! Couldn’t be further from the truth. If I were being perfectly honest with you here, I have to say, some of these chaps might be paid according to the distance they put between the facts on the ground, as it were, and the published version! If you follow.”
Miloš walked to the sub-zero, opened it, and retrieved the bottle of Koskenkorva. The soldiers made eye contact. They stayed near the coffee maker.
Marija Aleksić, the lady of the house, entered carrying a vase with a spray of tulips. She poured a little water into the vase and set it on the speckled marble countertop and then did something with her fingertips designed to rearrange the flowers in some manner that escaped the two security men.
“No … yes, see, that’s precisely the kind of nonsense I mean!” Miloš emphasized into his phone, throwing ice into a tumbler and splashing vodka into it. “I mean, honestly, George! This story is phantasm! It’s a work of fiction!”
He kept pouring. Marija Aleksić kept batting the tulips the way one might bop soap bubbles with an upturned palm, gingerly, to keep them afloat but intact.
“Preposterous! I mean, simply absurd … Yes, I quite agree. Yes … well, take my word for … Hmm? Of course! Of course! Thank you … No, thank you!”
He looked at the phone in order to find the end call button. He took a significant pull from the glass, thought about it a moment, and added two more fingers from the bottle.
He noticed the soldiers, standing uncomfortably around the coffee machine. “What in God’s name are you doing here?”
Marija juggled the blooms in the vase. “They are taking a break, dear. Came in for a cup of coffee. Everyone needs a break. Workers work best with a bit of relaxation. My father always said so, and he ran a tight ship, I dare say. A tight ship.”
The soldiers tried smiling. Miloš Aleksić sipped vodka and stared dourly at them. They got the impression that, despite the early hour, this wasn’t his first foray into the booze.
“Quite. Well, back at it,” he said. He might have been talking about the security men or about his own efforts. His mobile vibrated.
“Ernest? God, yes … Thank you for all you … I know. Incredible! Entirely unprecedented …”
He stormed out.
Mrs. Aleksić dabbed at the flowers a few more times. She wore a pale-blue twin set with a simple strand of pearls and matching earrings. Her hairdresser had come to the house earlier that morning, and the security guys could smell the cloud of hairspray. As her husband’s tirade faded with distance, she turned to the soldiers. Her face lost a little of the blandness she wore like a mask around her husband.
“Mr. Greyson?”
The bulldog shrugged. “Tough guy, madam. Tougher than you’d expect from a poofter like that. But he’ll talk. Everyone does. Everyone.”
Something changed in her visage; another persona beneath the plump and addled society matron. She said, “We require Mr. Greyson’s knowledge of his employer and her security system. You understand this.”
“Don’t worry. We understand. He’ll break.”
She listened to her husband extolling yet another old friend over the phone. She tilted her head, studied the tulips a bit.
“See that he does.”
They had started with his testicles, though Shan barely remembered that. At the time, the pain had been all he knew. But so much pain had passed since then, it was hard to keep it all straight.
Shan lay on his side, on the floor of a subbasement of the flying saucer house by the sea. He stank of sweat and urine and feces. One eye had swollen shut, and blood oozed from his jagged gum line, where teeth had been removed with pliers. At some level, Shan hated the stench as much as the pain; maybe more. He was an Englishman, a fair-haired son of Eton and Oxford. One does not smell bad. It simply isn’t done.
The thought made him smile, and smiling cracked open his split lip.
The stench wasn’t all bad. As horrible as the smell of piss and shit, it had masked some of the smell of cooked flesh when the soldiers brought out the acetylene torch.
C58
The Hague
The ground floor offices of the International Criminal Court were open to the public, and hundreds of lawyers, clerks, civilians, and journalists wandered its halls each day. The judge’s chambers were upstairs, and there, the court didn’t skimp on security. The teams they hired came directly from the British SAS and the Vatican’s Swiss Guard. Judges don’t get gunned down in some parts of the world, but they definitely do in others. And to date, no judge of the ICC had been lost to a gunman or a suicide bomber.
The detail assigned to Senior Judge Hélene Betancourt had no intention of breaking that streak.
As Betancourt stepped gingerly into the ground-floor corridor, two men moved into position, as did two men near the entrance of the court, and the monitoring team stationed in an outbuilding, keeping track of each justice. Betancourt had dined with another judge in the so-called Fireplace Room, a ground-floor dining room dedicated to the justices and their guests.
As they chatted, Fiero strode up wearing sky-high heels, a black suit, and stylishly framed glasses. Her hair was up in a chignon, and she carried a Gucci attaché case. She asked one of the guards in a surprisingly loud voice, “Can you tell me how to get to Saint Nicholas?”
The guard looked perplexed. “To where?”
Betancourt excused herself from her fellow jurist and, with the aid of the cane, came abreast of the hulking guards. “Ask the young woman to come along to my chambers, please.”
The nearest guard blinked. He was a thickset man with a shaved skull, a military mustache, and a fine web of scar tissue around his eyes. “Ma’am?”
“We have city maps, don’t we?”
Around the corner from Hélene Betancourt’s chambers, Fiero pointed to Finnigan, leaning against a water cooler. “May my colleague join us?”
As the guard began to say no, Judge Betancourt said, “Of course.” She moved slowly, thanks to a recently broken hip. The guards had to walk at a glacial pace to keep astride her, as did Fiero. The guards looked none too happy about the visitors.
In the antechamber, Betancourt stopped to speak to her security detail, sotto voce. Finnigan and Fiero stayed well back until the jurist nodded toward her office. She ushered them in; the unhappy guards stayed outside.
The space was massive and ornate, with twenty-foot-high windows that looked out on a cool, lush forest and, beyond that, the iron-gray North Sea. The judge favored antiques and dark hardwoods. Her picture frames surrounded original watercolors and pencil sketches rather than photos of herself with famous people.
Fiero slipped off her eyeglasses. “We’d hoped that Shan had mentioned the name of our organization to you. We couldn’t think of another way to get to you.”
Betancourt moved slowly around her massive, messy desk. She settled her cane within easy reach and eased herself into her chair. “We had agreed to keep a safe distance between us. Shan always praised the work you do, and I often asked for details, but he insisted on keeping you shrouded.”
Finnigan stepped forward. “Michael Patrick Finnigan. This is Katalin Fiero Dahar.”
Fiero checked the office windows, standing at an oblique angle—observing, not observed from without. “Shan was supposed to get us out of Kosovo, but he didn’t show. We’ve been unable to raise him since.”
“Nor I,” the judge said. “The same for his driver, who served as his bodyguard. Two nights ago, Shan received an invitation to meet with Miloš Aleksić to talk about the ref
ugee crisis.”
“At night,” Finnigan repeated.
The judge lifted one palm off her green desk blotter, rotating at the wrist. Her hand fell horizontal again—the equivalent of a shrug for a person with extreme back pain.
Fiero noted the bulletproof and explosion-proof glass in the window. “Miloš Aleksić.”
Finnigan spoke directly to the judge. “You’ve seen some of the details against the kid, Lazar. He’s in this up to his neck. So’s his dad.”
“I likely won’t be able to touch Miloš,” she said. “There is very little chance that prosecutors will even bring charges against him. The man has too many friends in too powerful of positions. Oh, he’ll likely have to resign, thanks to the scandal. But that’s all.”
“He’ll retire.” Fiero addressed the window. “Get a job running a bank, or an international nonprofit.”
“Yes, likely.”
Finnigan played it through. “So the son is going to prison forever, but the old man’s likely okay.”
“Mr. Finnigan, do you think that whoever has Shan will trade him for Lazar Aleksić? Is that why he’s missing?”
“Nope. Wish it were that simple. But Shan’s not the target, ma’am. You are. They grabbed him to get to you.”
Fiero turned from the window. “I … chatted with Lazar Aleksić in Belgrade. Also to one of the Kosovar lieutenants in charge of the trafficking operation. They told me they blame you. For everything.”
Judge Betancourt blinked behind her enormous eyeglasses. “Oh, dear.”
“They blame you for the sentencing of the war criminals following the Yugoslavian civil war and the ethnic cleansing campaigns in Bosnia and Herzegovina. They blame you for the harsh sentencing of former high government officials. And they blame you for what we’ve been doing—for destroying their human-trafficking operation. They blame it all on you.”
“I see.” The jurist nodded ponderously. “And … by they, you mean …”