Turning their attention to a map of the region, Dell had pointed at the FOB, situated just west of the Serb border. ‘You’re to insert into Serbia by vehicle in the guise of UN peacekeepers. They’re a common sight, so you shouldn’t attract too much attention. Our intel suggests that Ivanovic is hiding out in Prizkovo, a one-horse town twenty miles south of Belgrade. We have the imagery for you to study. When you get to the area you’ll need to ditch the UN gear. That part of Serbia is a nationalist hotbed. The peacekeepers know that the best way to preserve the peace is to keep away.’
‘Good job we’re not there to keep the peace, then,’ Luke had murmured.
The ops officer had ignored him. ‘We have reports that Ivanovic is surrounded by at least four heavies,’ he continued. ‘They’re dispensable, but Ivanovic needs to be alive. You’ve been given temporary powers of arrest. These probably won’t stand up in an international court of law, and Ivanovic will most likely know that. He’s not going to come quietly.’
Quiet. Noisy. It made no difference to Chet. He was just looking forward to getting his hands on this bastard. And it wouldn’t be long now.
He picked up a dinar from the sticky table and flicked it in the air.
‘Tails,’ said Luke. He looked like he wanted a response, but he wasn’t going to get one from Chet, who just scowled and continued to flip the coin.
Flick, catch.
Flick, catch.
‘You going to do that all night, buddy?’ Luke asked. ‘’Cos I don’t mind telling you, it’s getting on my wick.’
Flick, catch. Flick, catch.
The TV behind the bar was grainy and flickered every few seconds. To Chet’s relief, the music came to an end and an image caught his attention. The British Prime Minister, Alistair Stratton, his boyish face earnest and open, his suit well cut and his red tie perfectly neat, was sitting in an anodyne studio being interviewed by some bird Chet recognised but couldn’t name. What the fuck Stratton was doing on Serbian TV, Chet didn’t know. Certainly the punters in the bar paid as little attention to him as they had to Boyzone.
‘Always the fucking way,’ Luke drawled. ‘You come on holiday to get away from it all . . .’
Chet glanced back up at the screen. ‘Stratton’s all right,’ he said.
‘Stratton,’ Luke replied, ‘is a politician. Therefore Stratton is a wanker. End of.’
Chet shrugged. He wasn’t going to argue. But he had enough friends in the regular green army to know that in the year since Stratton had come to power, things for them had improved. Better kit, better conditions. It was no secret in the military that the government was gearing up to move into Kosovo if Milosevic carried on giving the Albanians the Stalin treatment, but really Chet knew very little about the politics. That wasn’t his business. All he knew was that anyone who supplied his mates with the gear and the weapons they needed to do their jobs was OK by him. As Luke would say: end of.
Still, it was odd to come across Stratton’s voice in this back end of nowhere, miles from home and translated into impenetrable Serbian by the subtitles at the bottom of the screen. The PM’s earnest tones reached Chet’s ears.
‘The trouble with talking about faith is that frankly people think you’re a nutter . . .’ Stratton smiled a boyish smile. ‘But yes, my faith is extremely important to me. You know, in this job, you’re asked to make some pretty tough decisions, and I’d like to think that my faith always puts me on the right path . . .’
Chet heard Luke snort. Did Stratton know that at that moment a four-man SAS unit was preparing to make an illegal arrest on foreign soil, and most likely take out a number of foreign nationals as they did so? If so, had he consulted the big guy upstairs about the rights and wrongs of it? Chet didn’t much care either way. The only things he had faith in were his Sig and the PPK strapped to his left ankle. The disco gun, they called it back home, but there’d be no dancing tonight.
Chet’s attention wandered from the blaring TV and he started to scan the other drinkers. They were hard-looking men. Flinty-eyed and rough-faced, their hands big and their skin chapped. One of them stood up from the bar and lurched towards the toilet. He noticed Chet and Luke sitting there. Newcomers. He stopped to give them a look that told them how unwelcome they were.
The look Chet and Luke returned was cool. Unruffled. Perhaps the Serbian decided it wasn’t worth his while kicking it off with these two. Perhaps he’d never intended that in the first place. He found his way into the foul-smelling toilets, leaving the two SAS men to continue scanning the remainder of the clientele.
One of them was their key to Ivanovic. And if everything went according to plan, they’d soon know which one.
17.32 hrs.
Stratton had been replaced by some incomprehensible game show. Chet and Luke’s beers were still full. It wouldn’t be long before someone clocked that they weren’t really drinking. Their contact was now seventeen minutes late. It was beginning to look like he’d bailed out, which would mean the last few days had been for nothing.
A voice in the earpiece. Sean, outside in the Skoda. ‘OK, fellas. The preacher’s arrived. About fucking time too – it’s Baltic out here, so make him feel comfortable. He looks about twelve.’
‘The preacher’. Prearranged code for the tout they were awaiting.
Ten seconds later the door opened. The icy air from outside disturbed the warm fug of the bar, and a young man walked in. Only three men clocked his arrival: the fat bartender and Chet and Luke. Unlike almost everyone else in the room, he was clean-shaven. He wore jeans, a thick lumberjack shirt, a hat that covered his ears and was tied under his chin, and a black rucksack over his shoulder. The rucksack was the sign by which the unit were to recognise him, but it made the kid look more like a student than a worker. Everything had a dusting of snow over it.
As the door closed behind him, he looked round nervously, like a teenager not sure if his girlfriend had stood him up.
Chet looked towards the frosted glass at the front of the bar. He could just make out two silhouettes, one on either side of the door. He knew what that meant: Sean and Marty, having clocked the kid, had moved from the Skoda and were now standing guard outside, ready to burst in if anything kicked off.
The kid’s glance fell on Chet and Luke, and he nodded slightly.
‘Fuck’s sake.’ Chet cursed quietly and looked away. He could sense Luke doing the same. This dickhead might be here to help them, but as touts went he was clearly wet behind the ears, and if he stood there gawping at them much longer, he was going to screw the whole operation.
Chet slid the dinar off the table once more.
Flick, catch.
Flick, catch.
The tout was looking around now. His eyes narrowed, as if he had seen something – or someone – he’d been looking for. He slipped the rucksack off his shoulder, carrying it by his side, and approached the bar. The tout chose his place carefully, selecting a stool next to one of the regular drinkers.
That was the sign. The kid was too scared to meet with the unit. Too scared to point out their man in an overt way. So the spooks had got to work on him. It was local knowledge that Ivanovic was in the area. Nobody knew where, but they did know that one of his guys drank in this bar during his time off. The kid was to come in here at a given time and take a seat next to the target. If they wanted to find Ivanovic, all they had to do was follow Ivanovic’s man.
Chet stopped flipping his coin and took another pretend pull on his beer as he scoped out the tout’s new drinking buddy. He could only see the guy’s back. He was broad-shouldered and had thick black hair, slightly greying. He sat hunched forward, his elbows on the bar. When the tout sat next to him, he made no attempt at conversation.
The younger man pointed at one of the optics and ordered a slivovitz, which the fat bartender plonked in front of him. Then he settled down to drink it. Just another loser passing the time.
17.46 hrs.
Ivanovic’s man stood up.
As he turned away from the bar, Chet could see he was unsteady on his feet. His face looked like it had been carved out of rock, with an immense flat nose – well reddened from booze – hooded eyes and deep frown lines on his forehead. He scowled at nobody in particular and walked uncertainly towards the street door. Chet pressed the button on the transmitter in his pocket. ‘Eyes on Target 1,’ he murmured. ‘He’s leaving now.’
‘Roger that,’ came Sean’s voice in his ear.
Chet and Luke waited until their man was outside before scraping back their chairs and moving towards the exit. Chet could sense the tout watching them over his shoulder, but he gave no sign of recognition. That was for the kid’s safety.
They stepped out into the cold night air. It had been dark for no more than half an hour, but already it must have been two below. Chet gave himself a moment to take everything in. The street was lined with Communist-era concrete buildings – ‘Makes Peckham look like Belgrave fucking Square,’ Luke had noted when they first arrived – and while the falling snow softened everything a little, Priskovo was still as bleak as the bar they’d just walked out of. The road itself wasn’t busy. A half-empty blue and white bus trundled past, then a couple of vans with tarpaulin over the back. A few locals hurried past on the pavement, huddled against the snow and concentrating on nothing other than getting home. Certainly they paid no attention to Chet or Luke.
Ivanovic’s man had turned left out of the bar. He’d gone about twenty metres and was weaving his drunken way towards a white Ford Transit with a dent in the back. Sean and Marty had crossed the road and returned to the Skoda – just two more faceless figures in the snow – and were opening the doors to climb back in. Chet and Luke had another Skoda, but theirs was brown. They got in and Chet switched on the engine. The wipers cleared the snow from the windscreen to reveal Ivanovic’s man getting into the Transit. Seconds later he moved off. Chet followed, and in his rear-view mirror could see the white Skoda pull out as well.
The Transit drove quickly, swerving slightly as it went. Luke shook his head. ‘Dumber than a box of rocks . . .’
Chet didn’t answer. The snow was hurtling against the windscreen and the road was treacherous. He kept his eye firmly on the target and drove on.
17.51 hrs.
The thin young man whose black rucksack was now lying at the foot of his bar stool was called Anton. He had been cold when he walked into the bar. Now the blood in his veins was running hot. The heat of excitement. It had gone well. He had earned his 50,000 dinars. Now all he wanted to do was get out of this horrible place and back to his small apartment, where his girlfriend was waiting for him. He would buy her flowers. And if he bought her flowers, perhaps she would give him something in return.
The slivovitz made his eyes water and his throat burn. But he supposed he’d better finish it. He caught the barman’s eyes and nodded – a friendly gesture that wasn’t returned. Anton shrugged, then watched as the guy wiped the bar with a frayed, grey rag and picked up the bottle that Ivanovic’s man had left.
A confused look crossed the barman’s face. He held up the bottle, and Anton immediately saw what was puzzling him. The bottle was full.
The heat in Anton’s veins turned to ice. He dismounted from the bar stool, grabbed his rucksack, then ran to the door and out into the street.
They were waiting for him there.
Two men, each twice as broad as Anton, and twice as strong. They grabbed him, one man to each of his thin arms.
‘
Pogmati!
’ he yelled in Serbian. ‘Help me!’
But none of the passers-by was going to do that.
The two men pulled Anton along the pavement for about thirty metres, then turned into an alleyway. It was dark here, and the snow was drifting against the wall on one side. The tips of Anton’s feet left two lines in the powder as the men dragged him along the alley and out into a courtyard surrounded by the high walls of deserted buildings. Breeze-blocks were piled in one corner and an old cement mixer stood nearby, but it was clear from the virgin snow that nobody had been here recently.
Again Anton shouted for help. But there was no one to hear, and his voice just echoed off the walls.
The first blow was not the hardest, but it was the one that shocked him most: a sudden and brutal knee to the groin that bent him double with pain. From that moment on, Anton was unable to distinguish between the two men. One of them struck him on the side of his head with a wooden cosh. As Anton collapsed to the ground, the other man started kicking him in the stomach and the face. Thirty seconds later blood was oozing from his nose and spewing from his mouth. His teeth were smeared crimson and he was vaguely aware of the way the blood first stained, then melted the snow around him.
He tried to shout again, but the wind had been knocked from his lungs and he couldn’t so much as croak. He didn’t see the knife – smooth on one side, jagged and cruel on the other – until its point was pressed against his neck.
For the first time, one of the men spoke. His voice was heavy and rasping. ‘
Sisadzijo!
Cocksucker! That pretty little bint of yours waiting back in your flat. My friends are fucking her right now. When we’ve finished with you, we’ll go join them. Let her know what it’s like to feel real men inside her.’