For Valour (20 page)

‘Anna said you still have nightmares.’

‘I have some good days. And, of course, Anna and I have witnessed and reported upon many other episodes of extreme brutality and corruption. But that’s the one which keeps coming back. The look of trust in that little girl’s eyes. The blood blossoming on her forehead as she lay in my arms at the end of that awful bridge. The touch of her mother’s hand on my cheek, so gentle, even though she knew her daughter was dead.’

‘It wasn’t your—’

He held up his hand. ‘Don’t, Nick. Don’t tell me it wasn’t my fault. Of course, deep down, I know that. In my head I know it’s not about blame. I know it shouldn’t be about guilt either. It’s about being in a world of shit and trying not to sink too deep. Yet in my heart I can’t stop wondering why the sniper in the hills chose to take her instead of me. And it’s her eyes I see when I close mine.’

He wrapped his fist around his cup like he was trying to squeeze the life out of it, then left its crumpled remains on the table between us.

I’d hardly touched mine.

He looked at it, then at me. ‘I don’t know about you, Nicholai, but I could use a real drink.’

He knew a place nearby that served at least thirty different kinds of vodka. I told him I didn’t have time to try them all.

He guided me north of the Arbat, then fractionally east towards the Lubyanka. His bar was in a basement, and even darker than the Moscow afternoon. He ordered a couple of shots of Stolichnaya Gold for each of us and got embarrassed when I insisted on paying.

Pasha raised his glass and toasted Nicholai, but I knew he was still thinking about the little girl on the bridge. After we’d both taken a sip he continued his story.

He had carried Amina back along the walkway. Aleksa went to find the imam, who supervised the washing of Amina’s body in scented water. They didn’t wrap her in a shroud. She was a martyr: she had to be buried in the clothes she was wearing when she died. Pasha had accompanied her body to the gravesite, and watched as she was buried on her right side, facing Mecca.

Muslims, like Catholics, believe that a better life beckons for the departed. I’d never really bought into that, but took some consolation from the fact that Amina’s agonies in this one had been cut short. She hadn’t shared the fate of another kid called Zina, who’d died of multiple gunshot wounds a few feet in front of me when I’d had Ratko Mladić in my sights. She’d tried to escape from a bunch of his thugs who were busy gang-raping her mates. She was fifteen years old and dreamed of being Kate Moss, and I couldn’t lift a finger to help.

I also thought about the women I’d seen hanging from trees along my route, and the ones I’d heard about who’d thrown themselves and their babies into a lake rather than endure the brutality of their advancing enemy. Sometimes suicide beat the shit out of survival. And when the Bosnian Serb leader was put on trial for war crimes in The Hague last year, it wasn’t a moment too soon.

Pasha did his best to savour the vodka, but he looked like he’d rather drown himself in it. ‘The imam told me who had done this terrible thing. I’d heard rumours about the Crvena Davo, of course, but never had first-hand experience of them. I tell myself that I have lived to fight other battles, in other ways, but the truth is this: if I had possessed a gun at that moment, and known how to use it, I might well have gone in search of vengeance.’

I knew that feeling, big-time. And I found myself wondering if vengeance was on the Leathermen’s agenda. Had Trev crossed them during his Hotel Gradina stint? Were they aware of my LTD tasks? Did they know I’d once tried to put a two-thousand-pound bomb up Mladić’s arse a hundred Ks or so north of Sarajevo? We knew these lads didn’t forgive and forget.

‘The imam counselled me wisely. Like Martin Luther King, he believed that an eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind, and that while there could be no possible justification for Amina’s murder, these conflicts are never straightforward.

‘Yes, the Serbs
were
determined to starve the Muslim enclaves into submission. But the Muslims themselves were not averse to using convoys like ours as shields, and siting their gun batteries behind hospitals like the one we were trying to reach.

‘When a tank stalled on the outskirts of Goražde, they tore the Serb crew limb from limb, literally, with their bare hands. So it’s not difficult to understand how their compatriots were brainwashed by the propaganda about the atrocities committed by the advancing Islamic hordes.’

He wasn’t wrong. The Bosnians might have looked like Worzel Gummidge, with full yokel gear and string tied round their trousers, but they also had some very unlovable moments. And there hadn’t been only one war in the Balkans, there had been hundreds.

‘And look at Srebrenica. Sure, Mladić and his Scorpions were responsible. But they did what they did with the help of Greek and Russian
volunteers
– so I and my fellow countrymen must for ever share that shame.’

I didn’t turn down the offer of a second vodka when it came. I wasn’t going to use it to celebrate the imam’s eye for an eye theory, though. Sure, you had to break the cycle at some point – anyone who’d been on the sharp end of a Balkan thousand-year vendetta didn’t need that message to be spelled out – but there was a time and a place for everything, and after hearing what Pasha had told me, I was even more pleased that I’d helped one of those fuckers take a nosedive off a Bermondsey roof.

It wouldn’t bring any of the Aminas and Zinas back, but it would go some way towards evening the score, and help stop me barking at the moon.

7

Pasha gave me contact details for Aleksa and the imam, and promised to set up meetings with both of them.

I took a cab back to Anna’s villa and asked if I could borrow her Range Rover for a couple of hours. We’d traded in the Touran after Nicholai was born. Anna liked the idea of keeping him as safe as possible on the road, and so did I. The place I was about to head for was full of the things. It would fit right in.

I set the satnav for a
dacha
the size of the Kremlin about forty-five minutes to the north-west. It was owned by a Ukrainian oligarch called Frank Timis. You wouldn’t want Frank as an enemy, which was one of the reasons he was a good man to have onside. We weren’t best mates or anything, but I’d rescued his son from al-Shabab, Somalia’s answer to the Taliban, and he’d become my private banker after last year’s Mexican trip.

We’d lifted twelve million dollars of cartel drug money from an
estancia
outside Narcopulco, and Frank was still busy filtering it into the real world for us. He wasn’t doing it entirely for sentimental reasons: he’d end up trousering 25 per cent.

Frank’s village was a throwback to the time of the tsar. This was where the serious money came to get away from the stresses and strains of the big city. Three-and four-storey timber-built palaces with high walls and sweeping driveways stood among huge trees.

I let Frank’s people know I was approaching when I reached the outskirts, and his vast wooden gates slid back as I arrived. I drove past his snow-covered pool and playground, and a sprinkling of shadowy figures patrolling the grounds beyond them, then parked up alongside his fleet of shiny black wagons. They all had red diplomatic plates to help beat the Moscow jams.

It was even colder here than it had been in Anna’s enclave. The chill wind made our Black Mountains bolthole seem almost tropical by comparison. The short journey across Frank’s veranda to his enormous kitchen felt like a polar trek.

The triple-glazed, aluminium-framed door and the original hand-carved monster behind it opened into a world of gleaming marble and stainless steel.

‘
Niiiiiiiiick
…’

As I shook the snow off my boots a small person rocketed across the polished stone floor and wrapped his arms around my legs.

Frank was sitting in his favourite spot, behind a white marble table at the centre of the room. He was a compact, neatly groomed man with a very big presence. He smiled quietly as his little boy clutched my knees, then after a couple of beats decided that was enough affection for one day. ‘Stefan …’

The boy stepped back and looked up at me. He had wide, smiling eyes and dimples in his cheeks. I ruffled his hair, then rotated him back towards his homework.

Frank waved me in the direction of a coffee machine the size of a nuclear reactor. This was only my third time here, but it already seemed like a bit of a tradition. I fired up a double espresso and took a seat opposite him.

‘So, Nick. Mexico again?’

I shook my head. ‘Serbia.’

At some unseen signal a soft and cuddly version of a large, brightly painted Russian doll suddenly appeared. She dipped her head respectfully at us and wiped her hands on her apron, then swept Stefan up in her arms and carried him out of earshot.

I showed Frank Anna’s Crvena Davo print-out and told him they’d taken out a friend of mine. ‘I need to find out more about them. I need to find out who has let them loose.’

He examined the photographs, giving particular attention to the ones of the tattoo, and nodded slowly. ‘Sarajevo?’

‘And Goražde. But all that shit was nearly twenty years ago.’

He fixed me with his ice-cold eyes. ‘What is twenty years in a war that has been waged for a thousand?’ He ran a hand across his perfectly shaved chin. ‘I have heard a little about them, but they have never interfered with my business, so I regret to say that I cannot help as much as I would like. I can only tell you what you know already. These are bad people, Nick. Garbage.’

The eyes glanced down at the pictures again before returning to meet mine. ‘And you remember what I told you about garbage?’

How could I forget? In the last twelve months we’d followed the refuse trail to Somalia and South America. ‘If you want to find garbage, you must go to the garbage dump.’

He nodded like a benevolent teacher, then stood up. As always, his jeans were so carefully ironed you could have cut yourself on the crease.

I asked him for one more favour before I left. He had sent his boys round to look after Anna and Nicholai while I was in Mexico. Anna’s enclave was
über
-secure, but I needed him to keep an eye on them now.

I dropped the Range Rover back there forty-five minutes later. She suggested that I stay the night, but couldn’t disguise her relief when I stuck to my guns.

1
Ulica Pariska, Belgrade

Thursday, 2 February

I caught the late Turkish Airlines flight from Vnukovo to Aerodrom Nikola Tesla. The eight-hour stopover in Istanbul suited me fine: it gave me plenty of time to switch back to my bomber jacket. It was also a fraction of the price of the Lufthansa non-stop, and only a nutter would take it. Or someone who didn’t want to be followed.

I sat next to a Serb in his thirties on the final leg of the journey. He was beanpole thin and dressed in black. He’d gone for the Russell Brand look – long dark hair and a wispy beard – rather than the jarhead and leather-jacket combo, so he clearly had a big sense of humour. Seconds after take-off he pointed at the emergency exit alongside us and told me he’d be very happy to open the door if I wanted to leave early.

I thanked him, but said I was planning on going all the way to Belgrade because I’d never been there before. He didn’t need any further encouragement. For the rest of the flight he told me what I had to see (the fortress, the St Sava Temple, the NATO bomb damage), and what I had to eat and drink (
ćevapčići
, which sounded like the Serbian version of a lamb kebab;
karađorđeva
, rolled veal coated with breadcrumbs and stuffed with cheese;
slivovitz
, their plum-flavoured rocket fuel, and a bucket or two of Lav beer). He even pointed me in the direction of a nice little hotel halfway along Vajara Djoke Jovanovica, on the southern edge of town.

I thought for a moment that he was going to offer to escort me there, but he left with a smile and a handshake at Passport Control and I headed for the hire-car counters beside the arrivals hall.

2

Pasha had managed to fix me a meeting with Aleksa at her home on the Morava River in the early afternoon, and with the imam by the Belgrade Fortress after Maghrib, the sunset prayers.

The Audi A3’s satnav told me that the drive to Aleksa’s place would take two and a half hours, so I programmed it with the evening’s RV point first. I wasn’t going for the full Russell Brand tour, but I didn’t want to meet anyone, however friendly, in this neck of the woods after dark without recceing the surrounding area in advance.

The Belgrade Arena was already looking forward to hosting Il Divo and Jennifer Lopez later in the autumn as I passed through New Belgrade, where gleaming space-age office and residential developments did battle with bog-standard Communist-era monstrosities in uniform shades of brown and grey. The traffic ground to a halt under a motorway bridge long enough for me to admire a few samples of Belgrade’s finest spray-paint artwork, and a portable toilet that seemed to be so full of shit its door could no longer close.

I found a parking space on one of the side-streets leading off Ulica Pariska. Thumbing through the guidebook I’d bought at the airport, I looped back onto Kneza Mihaila, the pedestrian street that ran through the centre of the old town and led to Kalemegdan Park and the fortress.

The pavement cafés were already humming with locals and the odd tourist. I wasn’t sure whether they were doing their best to smoke themselves to death or just trying to avoid eye contact with the bootleg DVD vendors and wizened old ladies flogging long-stem crimson roses for a handful of dinars. Along with the rest of the world, they all seemed more interested in whoever was at the other end of their mobile phones than the person sitting opposite.

I dodged a couple of crowded trams on my way across the main and walked down an avenue lined with trees and market stalls piled high with Serbian infantry helmets and Red Star Belgrade football scarves. It wasn’t cold enough for Russian tank commanders’ furry hats.