The Serbian Dane (6 page)

‘So this is not about the cause?’

‘The cause is dead, Vuk. We’ve got to look out for ourselves now. You owe me that. I made you who you are. I took you in when you were nothing but a kid, shaking in your shoes and weeping in horror at what they had done to your parents…’

‘Enough.’ Vuk did not raise his voice, but he saw fear flicker in the Commandant’s eyes. It was the first time Vuk had ever known the Commandant to show fear of him. He was right of course. He was who he was because the Commandant had licked him into shape and given him a mission. Taught him the sweetness of revenge and given him the tools with which to wreak such vengeance. But then he had had the cause. Now there was only the money.

The Commandant put a hand on his arm:

‘Do you still trust me, Vuk?’

‘Yes,’ Vuk lied.

‘Then prove it,’ the Commandant said.

Vuk walked back to the table and sat down. He emptied his glass again. His hands were steady, but his throat was still dry. There seemed to be a spot there that could never be slaked. The Commandant also took a seat, raised his glass, drained it and nodded to Kravtjov.

‘Do you have anything against killing a woman, Vuk?’ Kravtjov asked.

‘As long as it’s understood that I don’t kill for money,’ said Vuk.

‘Of course.’

‘Who and when?’

The Russian leaned forward again and lowered his voice, as if they were on intimate terms. Vuk looked at the Commandant. His face was beaded with sweat. He lit another cigarette, and for the first time since he had known him Vuk felt no sense of awe, respect or love. He felt only contempt. The Commandant had sold him out, but Vuk would make sure that he never got to cash in. He did not hear what the Russian had said, so he asked him to repeat it.

‘I said, we’ll meet in three days’ time in Berlin. I live in Berlin. It makes a good base. All right?’

‘All right.’

‘How will you get there?’ the Russian asked.

‘That’s none of your business.’

‘No, of course not.’

Kravtjov raised his glass in a silent toast and knocked back his drink.

‘Who’s the target?’ Vuk asked.

Kravtjov produced a picture from his inside pocket and pushed it across the table to Vuk. The face meant nothing to him: it was that of an attractive woman of around forty who obviously had a penchant for large gold earrings. She had a round face and curly hair. She had a rather sweet gentle look about her, but there was also something about that face which spoke of a determined and forceful personality.

‘Does she have a name?’

‘Sara Santanda.’

Vuk sat back in his chair and gave a sudden laugh, a quiet laugh, deep in his chest, but it made the Commandant and Kravtjov sit bolt upright in their seats.

‘What’s so funny, Vuk?’

‘You want me to take out a woman on whom those fucking ayatollahs in Teheran have put out a contract because she has insulted the Prophet and a religion that I hate more than anything else in the world.’

At this the Commandant laughed too, a loud bark that rapidly degenerated into a bout of coughing.

‘Exactly, my lad, exactly,’ he said between coughs. ‘That’s the beauty of it. You take her out, some fucking Muslim gets the blame, and we get four million dollars.

Vuk looked at him, then at Kravtjov.

‘I’ll see you in Berlin, Mr Kravtjov. Till then, you keep this to yourself. This is between you and me. Is that understood?’

‘And your commandant?’

‘And my commandant.’

‘Agreed,’ said Kravtjov, putting out his hand. But instead of shaking it, Vuk reached for the bottle and filled his glass again. He drained it in one gulp, got up and walked away.

V
uk left that same evening. He packed his rucksack with a couple of spare shirts, a pair of beige chinos, a blue tie, underwear, camouflage paint, a black polo-neck sweater and black jeans. His apartment in Pale consisted of just two rooms. The bed was unmade, and in the kitchen stood a pan containing the remains of a meal: baked beans with a couple of fried eggs on top. There was a table with three high-backed chairs set round it and an empty bookcase. The floor was bare and dusty.

He stayed off the bottle, drank black coffee instead. Not that it mattered so much tonight, but in a couple of days he would need to be in command of all his faculties. He felt hollow inside but at the same time relieved. He had made a decision, and there was no going back. He felt his own treachery like a solid lump in the pit of his stomach, but he had come to the conclusion that there was no other way. A card had been dealt. Now it was up to him to play his ace. He knew he would miss the light and the scent of these green hills, but he also knew in his heart that he had had his day. And so had the Commandant.

Vuk assembled the bomb. It was a simple device. A few grams of Semtex and a detonator pencil. Once the pencil was snapped it would take an hour for the acid thus released to burn through to the Semtex. The Commandant was a creature of habit. He visited his mistress every day between seven and nine pm, then went home to his wife and two children. Radovan would be sitting in a nearby café, having a coffee and a short, while the Commandant was enjoying himself. Vuk no longer trusted the Commandant. He had sold him once. He would do it again. The first time was always the hardest. Betrayal came easier the second time, and the third. He pressed the pencil detonator
gently into the soft plastic explosive and stuck the magnet to the other side. He held it close to the pan on the top of the cooker and it snapped onto the metal. He wrenched it free and wound some dark-grey tape around the little clump to hold everything in place, then slipped his Smith & Wesson into the pocket of his leather jacket along with a small carton of bullets.

He opened the door of the broom cupboard built in alongside the old gas cooker and removed a brush, a bucket and a dustpan. He opened his Swiss Army knife and carefully prised up two of the floorboards. They were already loose. He fished a brown leather pouch out of the space underneath the rest of the floorboards inside the cupboard and took from it three passports: one Danish, one Swedish and one Russian, all well worn. In the Russian passport photo Vuk had black hair and a moustache. In the Swedish and Danish ones he was
fair-haired
and clean-shaven. Each passport contained a number of stamps. Also in the bag were two Eurocards, an American Express card and a Swedish press card. The man pictured on this last was somewhat younger. The resemblance wasn’t too good, but it might do at a pinch. Vuk tucked the whole lot into the inside pocket of his jacket. He groped around under the floor again and came up with another pouch. He undid the strings and pulled out two bundles of banknotes. A fat roll of American dollars with an elastic band around them and a bundle of deutschmarks held by a money clip. He popped the deutschmarks into his trouser pocket and the dollar bills into the jacket’s inside pocket.

He was quite calm. The alcohol had gradually been sweated out of his system, and he always had his nerves well under control when preparing for or carrying out a mission. His mind was taken up solely with calculating, assessing and predicting what his enemies might do. It was as if there was no room for those demons and unforeseen thoughts to elbow their way to the fore.

Getting out of the country had become easier. Planes were flying out of Belgrade again now that the embargo had been partially lifted. Milosovic had sold them for a couple of plane tickets. Although of course, he thought, that was only the down payment. But it spelled the beginning of the end for the Bosnian Serbs.

It took a few moments, but eventually he got through to Belgrade.

‘Vuk here,’ he said.

‘Yes, Vuk,’ the voice on the other end said.

‘Warsaw tomorrow.’

‘One thousand deutschmarks, plus the ticket.’

‘Okay.’

‘Let me have the name you’ll be using.’

‘Sven Ericson, Swedish citizen.’

‘Spell it!’ came the distant sound of the black marketeer’s voice from his little apartment in Belgrade. The international embargo and sanctions had given rise to a whole new class of business people in Belgrade. Anything could be obtained. Anything could be fixed. You just had to know the right people. Vuk spelled out the name and hung up. It was getting dark outside. He shouldered his rucksack, switched off the light and locked the door behind him.

There was no point in looking back. There was nothing in the apartment to say who had lived there. If anyone in the Bosnian Serbs’ self-appointed capital ever took it into their heads to search the place they would find no leads there. Vuk might as well never have existed. Only one person knew his address, and he would never be able to tell anyone. Emma had no idea where he lived. His heart sank briefly, but he fought back this little surge of longing.

Vuk walked down the stairs and across to the car, a Russian Niva with Belgrade plates. It was parked in a side street, covered by a tarpaulin. He had been holding the little four-wheel drive in reserve for a month. It had a full tank and could handle the narrow roads that would take him that night into Serbia and to Belgrade. He had bought it on the black market, but the dealer had assured him that it was clean. New plates. The Ukrainian officer had returned to Kiev long since. He had reported it as being a write-off and been well paid to do so. So everybody had been happy.

Vuk hauled off the tarpaulin, folded it and laid it on the back seat. He took out the bomb and placed it on the passenger seat. The car started at the third attempt. The engine sounded good. It made a hell of a racket, but that was a Niva for you. He had done a thorough check of the powerful little car himself. Vuk had learned very early on that it was always wise to have a set of wheels handy. The day was still warm, but there weren’t many people around. A couple of soldiers were sauntering along the street as Vuk drove up to the commandant’s Mercedes, which was parked, as usual, in a side street fifty yards from his mistress’s house. Vuk got out, but left the Niva’s engine running. He
looked about him. The soldiers were gone. He was alone. Radovan would be sitting in the café round the corner. It was a shame about him, but in every war people are killed simply because they happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. There was not a soul to be seen. He checked his watch.
Six-thirty
. Half an hour from now Radovan would drive the Commandant home. He had commandeered a mansion in the hills, once the property of a wealthy Slovenian. It would take him forty-five minutes to get there. Vuk glanced up and down the quiet side street one more time, then dropped swiftly to the ground and attached the magnet to the underside of the car just below the fuel tank. The dark-grey tape made the bomb almost invisible, and Vuk knew that the Commandant tended to be a bit slack about security when he was in Pale, particularly after a couple of hours with his mistress. He would come out smelling of brandy and get into the back seat, puffing on his cigar. On the mountain roads up to the mansion it would all be over. The burn-through time on the detonator had a margin of two minutes either way.

Vuk drove through the night. He kept to the minor roads and met no one. In this, the final phase of the war, most people stayed indoors. The negotiations that had now begun were being described as ‘peace talks’, but as far as Vuk was concerned they were ‘capitulation talks’. His people were going to be sold down the river. It was only a matter of months before they would be placed under Muslim and Croatian control. A couple of years back the situation had been very different. They had been all set to conquer almost the whole of Bosnia-Herzegovina, but they had not been sure enough of their hand and had faltered at the crucial moment. Now Bosnia would build up a powerful government army, and those traitorous Serbs in Belgrade would sell them for the price of international recognition and the lifting of the blockade. They would also hand over one or two so-called war criminals to the ravening wolves in the west, to get themselves off the hook. He had made the right decision. It was time to get out.

The border loomed out of the gloom just after Screbrenica. It was patrolled by a sleepy-looking border guard. Vuk reduced speed and rolled his window right down. The guard was little more than a kid. They were on Serbian territory; he could not see any Bosnian guards. Vuk put a hand to his brow in a sketchy salute and handed the guard his military pass signed by the
Commandant, which could usually open any door. But to be on the safe side he had slipped a fifty-deutschmark note inside it. You never could tell these days, but it didn’t look as if security had been stepped up. He hoped, though, that by now the Commandant was in no position to verify his own signature. The guard took the money and gave back the pass with a limp, nonchalant hand before raising the barrier and allowing Vuk to drive into Serbia. Vuk put his foot down and headed for Belgrade.

He reached Belgrade airport in the early hours. It lay still and ghostly in the soft, hazy, morning light. Time was when this had been a busy modern airport with connections to almost all of the world’s major cities, but in recent years the international embargo had reduced the number of daily departures and arrivals to a minimum. Now air traffic was slowly returning to normal, and Vuk could see several of the old Yugoslavian Airlines planes sitting on the tarmac, ready for take-off. There were only a few cars in the car park. Vuk drove the Niva in and parked it. He took the gun from his inside pocket, emptied the bullets out of it and pushed them and the gun under the passenger seat. He didn’t relish the thought of being unarmed, but he knew it was far too risky to carry a gun in an airport.

He leaned up against the Niva with his rucksack at his feet and lit a cigarette. He felt a little groggy from lack of sleep, but that would soon pass. He had gone for several days before without more than a couple of hours’ sleep here and there, and he knew he could do it again. He heard a car door slam and saw a small, dark-suited man in his thirties walking towards him from a grey Ford Scorpio. Vuk straightened up and waited. He knew this man. He was known as the Snake, because he was said to have a cobra tattooed on his right buttock: a souvenir from prison.

The Snake came up to Vuk and clasped his hand.

‘Any problems?’

‘No.’

‘They’re saying your commandant had a bit of an accident?’

‘These are dangerous times we’re living in,’ Vuk said.

‘They are indeed,’ said the Snake, handing Vuk a ticket. ‘With Yugoslavian to Vienna, then Lot to Warsaw. That’ll be two thousand exactly. You wanted them in a hurry, right?’

Vuk slipped the ticket into his inside pocket. He knew it would be okay. It was a lot of money, but you were paying for quality, and the Snake had only survived as long as he had because he knew that the best way of securing future custom was to let it be known that the last transaction was always forgotten as soon as it was completed. Vuk gave the Snake the two thousand marks. The Snake didn’t count them, merely slipped the neatly folded notes into his inside pocket.

‘Do what you like with the car,’ Vuk said.

‘Is it hot?’

‘On the lukewarm side, maybe.’

‘Okay.’

‘There’s a hot piece under the seat.’

‘Right. I’ll have that collected.’

Vuk handed him the keys and hoisted the rucksack onto his right shoulder.

‘Bon voyage
,’ said the Snake.

‘
Merci
,’ said Vuk and stepped inside the terminal.

Vuk slept on the plane to Vienna and had time for a quick shower and shave at the busy airport terminal before boarding a half-full flight to Warsaw. He ate some cheese and a roll, then slept again. Passport control at Warsaw was more thorough than he had expected, but his plane had landed at the same time as an SAS flight from Copenhagen. He left the queue he was in and joined the line of Swedish and Danish business people. It was strange but nice to hear Swedish and Danish spoken again. Particularly Danish. It brought back a lot of memories, but he quashed them and concentrated on gauging how carefully passports were being checked. When a Scandinavian passport was presented it was given only a cursory glance. When his turn came the female passport controller took only one look at his passport and at him. He gave her a big smile, and she couldn’t help but smile back.

‘Have a nice stay in Poland, Mr Ericson,’ she said.

‘I’ll do my best, ma’am,’ he said, took his passport and entered Poland.

Vuk went to the gents. He found a vacant cubicle, placed his rucksack on the floor. He got out his make-up box and a small mirror, blackened his hair with a powder dye. This done, he very carefully glued on his moustache and
popped a baseball cap on his head. He returned the make-up box to the rucksack and got out the Russian passport. He waited until he was sure that all the people with whom he had arrived would be safely through baggage reclaim and on their way into the Polish capital. Then he emerged from the gents and made for the bank, where he exchanged some deutschmarks for Polish zloty.

At the Avis desk he slapped his red Russian passport down on the counter along with his Russian driving licence. The Polish girl behind the counter gave him a sour look, but then her training gained the upper hand and he was treated to a bright Avis smile. He knew she was well aware that, as a Russian, he would be paying cash. Car-hire firms weren’t happy about taking anything but credit cards, but the business in both legitimate and somewhat shadier Russians travelling around Eastern and Western Europe was too good to pass up. So the odd car might go missing, but that was what you had insurance for. Both the passport and the driving licence looked all right, so the assistant decided not to call a superior. In any case the Russian had only asked for a medium-class car. When they meant to strip them down they always went for the luxury models.