Avenger (22 page)

But I never read them."

"Could I see them?"

"They are gone."

"Gone?"

"They took them. Took them all. Even the ribbon from the typewriter."

"The police?"

"No, the men."

"Which men?"

"They came back. Two nights later. They made me sit in the corner, there. They searched everywhere. They took everything he had had."

"There is nothing left at all of what he was working on for Mr.

Kobac?"

"Only the photo. I had forgotten about the photo."

"Please tell me about the photo."

It came out in small details, all via Anna, from language to language.

Three days before he died, Srechko the cub reporter had attended a New

Year party and red wine had been spilled on his denim jacket. His mother had put it in the laundry bag for washing later.

When he was dead there was no point. She too forgot about the laundry bag and the gangsters never thought to ask. When she was making a pile of her dead son's clothes the wine-stained denim jacket fell out. She felt the pockets quickly to see if her son had forgotten any money, but felt something semi-stiff. It was a photograph.

"Do you still have it? May I see it?" asked Dexter.

She nodded and crept away like a mouse to a sewing box in the corner.

She came back with the photo.

It was of a man, caught unawares, who had seen the photographer at the last minute. He was trying to raise his outspread hand to cover his face, but the shutter had clicked just in time. He was full-face, upright, in a short-sleeved shirt and slacks.

The picture was in black and white, not of professional clarity, but with enlargement and enhancement was as good as he was ever likely to get. He recalled the teenage picture and the cocktail party photo he had found in New York and carried in the lining of his attache case.

They were all a bit grainy, but it was the same man. It was Zilic.

"I would like to buy this picture Mrs. Petrovic," he said. She shrugged and said something in Serbo-Croat.

"She says you may have it. It is of no interest to her. She does not know who he is," said Anna.

"One last question. Just before he died, did Srechko go away for a while?"

"Yes, in December. He was away a week. He would not say where he had been, but he had a sunburn on his nose."

She escorted them to her door and the landing exposed to the winds, which led to the non-functioning lift and the stairwell. Anna went first. When she was out of earshot Dexter turned to the Serbian mother who had also lost her child, and spoke gently in English.

"You can't understand a word I say, lady, but if I ever get this swine into a slammer in the States, it's partly for you. And it's on the house."

Of course, she did not understand but she responded to the smile and said "Hvala'. In a day in Belgrade he had learned that it means 'thank you'.

He had instructed the taxi to wait. He dropped Anna, clutching her two hundred dollars, at her home in the suburbs and on the way back to the centre studied the picture again.

Zilic was standing on what looked like an open expanse of concrete or tarmac. Behind him were big low buildings like warehouses. Over one of the buildings a flag floated, extended by the breeze, but part of it was off the picture.

There was something else sticking into vision out of frame, but he could not work it out. He tapped the taxi driver on the shoulder.

"Do you have a magnifying glass?" He did not understand, but elaborate pantomime cleared up the mystery. He nodded. He kept one in the glove compartment for studying his A-Z city road map if need be.

The long, flat object jutting into the picture from the left came clear. It was the wingtip of an aeroplane, but no more than six feet off the ground. So, not an airliner, but a smaller craft.

Then he recognized the buildings in the background. Not warehouses, hangars. Not the huge structures needed for sheltering airliners, but the sort needed for private planes, executive jets, whose tailfins rarely top more than thirty feet. The man was on a private airfield or the executive section of an airport.

They helped him at the hotel. Yes, there were several cyber-cafes in

Belgrade, all open until late. He dined in the snack bar and took a taxi to the nearest. When he was logged on to his favourite search engine, he asked for all the flags of the world.

The flag fluttering above the hangars in the dead reporter's photo was only in monochrome, but it was clear the flag had three horizontal stripes of which the bottom one was so dark it looked like black. If not, then a very dark blue. He opted for black.

As he ran through the world's flags, he noted that a good half of them had some kind of logo, crest or device superimposed on the stripes. The one he sought had none. That cut the choice down to the other half.

Those who had horizontal stripes and no logo were no more than two dozen, and those with a black or near-black bottom stripe were five.

Gabon, Netherlands and Sierra Leone all had three horizontal stripes of which the lowest was deep blue, which could show up black in a monochrome photograph. Only two had a bottom stripe of three which was definitely black: Sudan and one other. But the Sudan had a green diamond up against the flagpole as well as three stripes. The remaining one had a vertical stripe nearest the flagpole. Peering at his photo, Dexter could just make out the fourth stripe; not clear, but it was there.

One vertical red stripe by the flagpole; green, white and black horizontals running out to the flapping edge. Zilic was standing on an airport somewhere in the United Arab Emirates.

Even in December a pale-skinned Slav could get a badly burned nose in the UAE.

Chapter EIGHTEEN

The Gulf

THERE ARE SEVEN EMIRATES IN THE UAE BUT ONLY THE THREE biggest and richest, Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Sharjah, spring readily to mind. The other four are much smaller and almost anonymous.

They all occupy the peninsula at the southeastern tip of the Saudi landmass, that tongue of desert that separates the Arabian Gulf to the north and the Gulf of Oman to the south.

Only one, Al Fujairah, faces south onto the Gulf of Oman and thence the

Arabian Sea; the other six are strung in a line along the northern coast, staring at Iran across the water. Apart from the seven capitals, there is the desert oasis-town of Al Ain that also has an airport.

While still in Belgrade, Dexter found a portrait photographic studio with the technology to re-photograph the picture of Zoran Zilic, increase its clarity and then blow it up from playing-card to soft back-book size.

While the photographer worked on one task, Dexter returned to the cybercafe, enquired after the United Arab Emirates and downloaded everything he could get. The following day he took the JAT regular service via Beirut to Dubai.

The wealthy Emirates derive their riches mainly from oil although they have all tried to broaden the base of their economies to include tourism and duty-free trade. Most of the oil deposits are offshore.

Rigs have to be resupplied constantly and although the vehicles used for heavy cargoes are seaborne lighters, personal transfers are faster and easier by helicopter.

The oil companies operating the rigs have their own helicopters but there is still ample room for charter firms, and the internet revealed three such, right in Dubai. The American Alfred Barnes had become a lawyer when he visited the first. He picked the smallest, on the grounds it was probably the least concerned with formalities and the most interested in wads of dollar bills. He was right on both counts.

The office was a Portakabin out at Port Rashid and the proprietor and chief pilot turned out to be a former British Army Air Corps flier trying to make a living. They do not come much more informal than that.

"Alfred Barnes, attorney-at-law," said Dexter, extending his hand. 'I have a problem, a tight schedule and a large budget."

The British ex-captain raised a polite eyebrow. Dexter pushed the photo across the cigarette-scorched desk.

"My client is, or rather was, a very wealthy man."

"He lost it?" asked the pilot.

"In a way. He died. My law firm is the chief executor. And this man is the chief beneficiary. Only he doesn't know it and we cannot find him."

"I'm a charter pilot, not Missing Persons. Anyway, I've never seen him."

"No reason why you should. It's the background to the picture: Look carefully. An airport or airfield, right? The last I heard he was working in civil aviation here in UAE. If I could identify that airport, I could probably find him. What do you think?"

The charter pilot studied the background.

"Airports here have three sections: military, airlines and private flyers. That wing belongs to an executive jet. There are scores, maybe hundreds of them, in the Gulf. Most have company livery and most are owned by wealthy Arabs. What do you want to do?"

What Dexter wanted to buy was the charter captain's access to the flying side to all these airports. It came at a price and took two days. The cover was that he had to pick up a client. After sixty minutes inside the executive jet compound, when the fictional client failed to show up, the captain told the tower he was breaking off the charter and leaving the circuit.

The airports at Abu Dhabi, Dubai and Sharjah were huge and even the private aviation sector of each was far bigger than the background in the photograph.

The emirates of Ajman and Umm al-Qaiwain had no airport at all, being cheek by jowl with Sharjah airport. That left the desert city of Al

Ain, Al Fujairah out on the far side of the peninsula facing the Gulf of Oman, and, right up in the north, the least known of them all, Ras al-Khaimah.

They found it on the morning of the second day. The Bell Jetranger swerved in across the desert to land at what the Britisher called Al K, and there were the hangars with the flag fluttering behind them.

Dexter had taken the charter for two full days, and brought his handgrip with him. He settled up with a fistful of hundred-dollar bills, stepped down and watched the Bell lift away. Looking around, he realized he was standing almost where Srechko Petrovic must have been when he snatched the photo that sealed his fate. An official stepped from an administration building and beckoned him to clear the area.

The arrival and departure building for both airline and private jet passengers was neat, clean and small, with the accent on small. Named after the emir al family, Al-Quassimi

International Airport had clearly never disturbed those airlines whose names are world famous.

On the tarmac in front of the terminal building were Russian-built

Antonovs and Tupolevs. There was an old Yakovlev single-prop biplane.

One airliner bore the livery and logo of Tajikistan Airlines. Dexter went up one floor to the roof cafe and took a coffee.

The same floor contained the admin offices, including the supremely optimistic Public Relations department. The sole inhabitant was a nervous young lady robed from head to toe in a black chad or with only her hands and pale oval face visible. She had halting English.

Alfred Barnes had now become a development officer for tourism projects with a major US company and wished to enquire about the facilities Ras al-Khaimah could offer to the executives seeking an exotic conference centre; especially he needed to know if they could be offered airport facilities for the executive jets in which they would arrive.

The lady was polite but adamant. All enquiries regarding tourism should be addressed to the Department of Tourism in the Commercial

Centre, right next to the Old Town.

A taxi brought him there. It was a small cube of a building on a development site, about 500 yards from the Hilton and right on the edge of the brand-new deep-water harbour. It did not appear to be under siege from those seeking to develop tourism.

Mr. Hussein al Khoury would have regarded himself, if asked, as a good man. That did not make him a contented man. To justify the first, he would have said he only had one wife but treated her well. He tried to raise his four children as a good father should. He attended mosque every Friday and gave alms to charity according to his ability and according to scripture.

He should have progressed far in life, ins hallah But it seemed Allah did not smile upon him. He remained stuck in the middle ranks of the

Tourism Ministry; specifically, he remained stuck in a small brick cube on a development site next to the deep-water harbour, where no one ever called. Then one day the smiling American walked in.

He was delighted. An enquiry at last, and the chance to practise the

English over which he had spent so many hundreds of hours. After several minutes of courteous pleasantries how charming of the American to realize that Arabs do not like to delve straight into business they agreed that as the air conditioning had broken down and the outside temperature was nudging 100 degrees, they might use the American's taxi to adjourn to the coffee lounge of the Hilton.

Settled in the pleasant cool of the Hilton bar, Mr. al Khoury was intrigued that the American seemed in no hurry to proceed to his business. Eventually the Arab said:

"Now, how can I help you?"

"You know, my friend," said the American with seriousness, 'my whole life's philosophy is that we are put upon this earth by our mighty and merciful Creator to help one another. And I believe that it is I who am here to help you."

Almost absentmindedly the American began to fumble in his jacket pockets for something. Out came his passport, several folded letters of introduction and a block of hundred-dollar bills that took Mr. al

Khoury's breath away.

"Let us see if we cannot help each other."

The civil servant stared at the dollars.

"If there is anything I can do .. ." he murmured.