Deathlist (34 page)

‘Two birds, one stone,’ said Bald.

‘More like fourteen birds, one stone,’ said Lakes.

Porter said, ‘You just said the other warlords were small-time. Why would the Firm give two shits about snatching a few Serb thugs?’

‘Because this is the end game for Milosevic,’ Lakes replied. ‘He knows it, and so does the rest of the international community. Kosovo is his last throw of the dice. But he still has the backing of the warlords, and they have a lot of supporters across the country. Hooligans, ex-soldiers, ultra-nationalists, the local mafia. All those nice people. If he wanted to, Milosevic could drag this conflict out for a while yet. Capturing the warlords would deprive him of his last column of support. His regime would quickly crumble. That’s the theory we’re working on, anyway.’

‘We? As in the Firm?’

Lakes said nothing. Her eyes said everything. A thought nudged at Bald.

‘If that’s the case, why don’t you just kick down Brozovic’s door and arrest him? Why bother having us lift the bastard in the middle of the city?’

Lakes flicked her cigarette butt into the water and shook her head. ‘It’s not that simple. If we seized Brozovic through official channels, we’d have to jump through all the usual bureaucratic hoops. He’d get lawyered up before we had a chance to question him. You don’t need me to tell you what would happen next. The other warlords would hear about it and go to ground. Any hopes of bringing them to justice would be gone.’

‘You couldn’t arrest him formally anyway,’ Porter said, following her train of thought. ‘Even if you wanted to. There would be questions about how you found him, right? Questions that would make life awkward for the Firm.’

Lakes smiled uncomfortably, like she’d sat down on a bed of rusty nails. ‘Precisely.’

‘What happens to Brozovic?’ Porter said. ‘After he spills his guts?’

Lakes stuffed her hands into her coat pockets and shrugged. ‘Depends. If he refuses to talk, we’ll make him quietly disappear.’

‘But if he agrees to cooperate?’ Bald asked, his expression tightening.

Lakes shrugged again. ‘That’s none of your business.’

Bald took a step closer to Lakes. Porter could see the fire raging behind his eyes. ‘Yes it bloody is. We’re the ones putting our necks on the line here. Now you’re telling us we have to hand over the guy who orchestrated the whole thing? That’s a bag of bollocks, that.’

Lakes sighed. ‘I’m not the one making the decisions here. I understand why you want Brozovic dead. Believe me, if I had my way we wouldn’t even be having this discussion. But this order has come right from the very top. The powers that be want Brozovic alive, and there’s nothing I can do to change their minds. My hands are tied.’

Lakes stared levelly at Porter as she spoke. She’s telling the truth, he thought.
She doesn’t want Brozovic taken alive any more than we do.

‘You’ll let him off,’ said Bald. ‘If he cooperates. You’ll let the tosser get away with it.’

Lakes hardened her expression. ‘This isn’t up for negotiation. Arrest Brozovic and hand him over to us once you’ve completed your mission. That’s an order.’

‘We don’t work for you, remember?’ Porter said. ‘We’re retired.’

A smile crawled out of the corner of Lakes’s mouth. ‘We still pay your salaries. Don’t forget that. You might be off the books, but you’re still answerable to Whitehall. I’d tread carefully, if I were you.’

‘Are you threatening us?’

‘Not at all,’ Lakes replied. There was a coldness in her voice and a matching look in her pale green eyes. ‘I’m just telling you how it is. You both signed the contracts. You know the score.’

Porter clenched his fists in anger. As much as he hated to admit it, Lakes was right. Trying to take on the Firm was a waste of time. The suits over at Vauxhall had long arms. Infinite resources. All they had to do was push a button, and Porter and Bald would be shafted.

He sighed and said, ‘Just tell us what to do.’

Lakes relaxed her face into something approaching a smile.

‘Once you have Brozovic, you’ll ferry him to the pick-up point. There’s an abandoned airfield ten miles outside Lausanne, at a place called Clarmont. Templar’s local contact will supply you with the details. We’ll have a team waiting for you at the airfield. Once you arrive, hand over the target. Our guys will safely transport Brozovic out of the country to a secure site in Britain.’

‘What happens to us after all this?’

The question came from Bald. Lakes shifted on her feet. ‘You’ll both return to London, as previously agreed. Then our little arrangement will formally come to an end. You’ll remain on the Templar payroll on full-time contracts. Your salary will be eighty thousand a year. Plus benefits and expenses.’ She saw the gleam in Bald’s eye and quickly added, ‘But if Brozovic comes back in a body bag, the deal’s off. Am I clear?’

‘Crystal,’ Bald replied in a low, angry voice.

‘Good.’ Lakes shaped to leave, then stopped. ‘Oh, and before I forget. You’ll be needing these.’

She reached into her tote bag and took out a padded brown envelope and passed it discreetly to Porter. It wasn’t sealed. Porter popped open the envelope and looked inside. There was a bundle of receipts and train tickets inside. They were all dated a few days ago and carried addresses in Zagreb.

‘Leave these behind, once you’ve captured Brozovic,’ Lakes explained. ‘The cops will find them and assume that the men who carried out the attack were Croatian Muslims looking for revenge. They’ll just figure that attackers forgot to dispose of their receipts in their rush to escape.’

Porter took the envelope and stuffed it inside his jacket. Lakes shivered in the cold and straightened her back.

‘Now, if you’ll excuse me. I have a plane to catch.’

Bald grunted. ‘Jetting in and out on the same day? Bloody hell, love. You’re going up in the world.’

Lakes shot him a look. Then she turned on her heels and paced briskly down Quai Gustave-Ador. She headed south towards the roaring traffic along the wide thoroughfare on Quai du General-Guisan, hailed down a taxi and climbed inside. A few moments later the taxi took off and disappeared from view. Then Porter and Bald set off in the direction of the Hotel Dauphin, retracing their steps down Rue d’Italie. They were both fuming at the prospect of having to hand Brozovic over to the Firm. They had spent the past month tracking down the target. Porter had imagined slotting him. The look of fear in his eyes as the men of the SAS finally got their revenge. Now Lakes was taking that away from them. Porter could feel the anger calcifying in his bones.

‘Fuck’s sake,’ Bald scowled. ‘It ain’t right, mucker. That warlord killed our lads, and now he’s going to get a fucking free pass.’

Porter scratched the nape of his neck. ‘I don’t like it either. But you heard her, Jock. She’s got us over a barrel. We’re not in the Regiment any more. Not officially. If we go against orders, she’ll sell us out. We’d be fucked then.’

‘Not necessarily, mate.’

Porter stopped in his tracks and turned to Bald. ‘What do you mean by that?’

There was a devious gleam in Bald’s eyes. His lips parted into a sly grin. ‘We’ve no worries on that front, mate. I’ve got us covered.’

Porter stared inquisitively at Bald. Waiting for the guy to explain himself. Without saying a word he reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a mobile phone. A pre-paid Nokia handset.

A burner, Porter realised.

And then:
What’s Jock Bald doing with a burner?
The orders from Lakes and Hawkridge had been clear. No one on the team was to have any contact with anyone other than through the official channels. The guys were banned from having any ties to their old lives. And that included a ban on owning a personal mobile.

‘There’s a number stored in the address book,’ said Bald. ‘This bird I know back in Hereford. Sally Higgins. I wore a wire to the meeting back at the Wainwright and gave Sally the tapes. She’s got the original as well as a bunch of copies.’

Suddenly Porter understood everything.
That’s who the blonde was at the Piano Bar
.
That’s who I saw Bald giving the package to outside the safe house on Featherstone Street
. She must have slipped him the wire before the meeting. Then Bald handed it back to her afterwards. Porter was starting to see his mucker in a different light. Christ, he thought. Bald’s even craftier than I’d given him credit for.

Bald said, ‘If either Lakes or that tosser Hawkridge tries to pull a fast one I’ll get straight on the blower to Sally. The tapes are in pre-paid envelopes addressed to every newspaper editor in London. They’ll prove that the Firm was in on this thing from the beginning.’

‘That’s your arse covered,’ said Porter, a rage building inside his chest. ‘Where does that leave me?’

Bald shook his head. ‘This is insurance for both of us. We’re on the same side. The job’s exactly the same as when it started. No one will fuck with us as long as we’ve got hold of them tapes.’ He tapped the burner, grinning. ‘Bloody hell, mate. You didn’t think I’d hang a fucking Blade out to dry, did you?’

Porter frowned. ‘Why didn’t you tell me this before?’

‘I had to be sure you weren’t on their side. With these guys, you never know what they’re thinking. It pays to keep an ace up your sleeve in case they try and shaft you.’

Porter nodded slowly, letting the words sink in. He’d been wrong to doubt Bald. He saw that now. But part of him also started to wonder what other surprises his mucker might have up his sleeve. He shrugged off the thought and turned his mind back to the mission. Back to Radoslav Brozovic.

Back to the warlord they were going to capture.

THIRTY-SIX

Geneva, Switzerland.

Two days later. 0715 hours.

Radoslav Brozovic, the Tiger of the Balkans, marched angrily into the conference room and nodded at the three men seated around the table. The room was situated on the first floor of the sprawling four-storey mansion on the banks of Lake Geneva, and like every other room, no expense had been spared. The table was solid oak with a cherry veneer and the chairs were white leather and handmade in a shop in Milan. Religious art paintings hung from the walls, along with a display cabinet of antique bullets from the First World War. A tall window at the back commanded an impressive view of Brozovic’s private dock and ornamental pagoda. Through the window he could see the winter sun reflecting brilliantly off the calm waters like a million gold coins, crisp and clear and cold. This view had cost him the best part of twenty million dollars, and he fucking hated it.

It had been Tatyana’s idea to move to Geneva. She was a pop star back in Serbia, with pop-star tastes and pop-star needs. So when they’d been forced to leave Serbia for good, Tatyana had argued that it was better to go into hiding somewhere with good schools and high-end shopping. Plus, Tatyana sucked dick real good. Better than any whore he’d ever had. Way better. It was all in the lips, Brozovic decided. The bigger the lips, the better the blowjob. And Tatyana had huge red lips. Things were the size of inflatable dinghies. What Tatyana wanted, she got. So, Geneva it was.

But the city left Brozovic feeling cold. There were too many Muslims, for a start. Wherever you went there were fat Saudis with their vast entourages, being driven around in their designer Italian cars. The creeping rise of Islam was everywhere he looked, and Brozovic often yearned to be back in his native Serbia. And if that wasn’t bad enough, now he was being made to feel like a prisoner in his own home.

He’d first learned of the Brit’s death in the papers. One of his contacts in London had alerted him to the article in the
Daily Mail
. It was only a few cursory lines, mentioning that the body of a former paratrooper had been discovered in a storm drain in Fuengirola. No suspects had been arrested but there was speculation that it was part of a recent spate of gangland slayings. Then Kavlak and Petrovich had disappeared from the safe house in Valletta. And two nights ago the Tiger had received a phone call from one of the cops on the organisation’s payroll in Zlatibor. Ninkovic had been found drowned in Lake Ribnica, not far from his usual fishing spot. A weight belt had been tied around his waist and there were bruises on his face and neck consistent with a struggle.

The news of Ninkovic’s death had struck Brozovic hard. The other guys were mere gunmen. Disposable. But Ninkovic had been a constant through the years, his right-hand man. Together they’d grown the Red Eagles from a small band of warriors into a powerful organisation with thousands of foot soldiers. And now he was gone.

Brozovic glanced around the three men at the table and noted the unease stencilled across the faces of each man. They could sense his anxiety. They could smell it. That wasn’t good, Brozovic knew. An organisation like this depended on fear and loyalty. The moment you showed the first sign of weakness, you were finished.

Brozovic sat down at the head of the conference table and glanced at his Blancpain Fifty Fathoms watch. It had cost the thick end of fifteen thousand dollars. His wife had bought it for him as a present on his fortieth birthday, along with a set of gold-plated golf clubs monogrammed with his initials. In addition to sucking dick, Tatyana was also good at spending his money.

‘Let’s make it quick,’ Brozovic said. ‘I’ve got fifteen minutes until I have to take my kids to school.’