Night had fallen in Macedonia, and Carver had just taken possession of the quintessential Balkan car, one of the countless battered old Mercedes sedans that are shipped south from Germany to poorer, less discerning markets. This was an eight-year-old C-class diesel, with a creamy-beige paint job that made it look like a motorized creme caramel, and a broken exhaust that spewed thick, gray-blue smoke into the atmosphere. An MI6 agent in Macedonia ’s capital, Skopje, name of Ronan Biddle, had given it to Carver when he flew in that evening, along with the passport, visas, and accreditation papers that identified him as a BBC radio news reporter. The pockets of a scuffed leather fisherman’s bag held the tape recorder, laptop, phone, map, and notebooks that backed up his cover. He’d also been provided with the standard equipment he required as an assassin and saboteur: a selection of tools, plastic explosives, knife, gun, and ammunition. Underneath his clothes, he wore, as ever, the money belt containing the cash, bonds, and passports that were his constant companions. His hair had been clipped short, a basic barbershop crew cut, just before he left France. He was fed up with seeing Kenny Wynter every time he looked in a mirror.
“It isn’t a SIG, I’m afraid,” said Biddle, sounding more pleased than apologetic about this inability to deliver the weapon Carver wanted. “Grantham said you liked them, but you’ll have to make do with a Beretta Ninety-two-best we could drum up at short notice. It’s good enough for the U.S. Army, so it can’t be too bad. We got you a silencer, too.”
Biddle looked at Carver resentfully.
“Don’t know why London had to send someone,” he continued. “We’ve got plenty of first-rate people here, and there are special forces chaps hanging around the place who know Kosovo like the back of their hand. But they never trust the men on the ground, do they?”
Carver just shrugged and opened up the trunk of the car, looking for the best place to hide the plastique. He had no interest in starting a conversation. Minutes later he was on the road out of the airport, on the way to the Kacanik Defile, the gorge that provides one of the few passes between Macedonia and southern Kosovo.
The line at the border was ninety minutes long, a motley gaggle of trucks, vans, and family cars, their roof racks piled high with goods from Macedonia that had become unavailable as violence and anarchy descended on Kosovo-everything and anything, from fresh fruit to video recorders. The people in the line were standing around by their vehicles, smoking, drinking, and talking to the other drivers. Carver couldn’t tell which ones were ethnic Albanians and which were Serbs. There was no sign of any tension or polarization. Everyone was getting on just fine, grumbling about the delay, sharing their bottles and cigarette packets, good-naturedly joshing the kids who ran about between the cars. But as soon as they crossed the line into Kosovo, they’d be divided into warring tribes, each out to obliterate the other.
Carver had seen plenty of communal violence in his time. He’d served in Northern Ireland and Iraq. And no matter where or when it happened, it never made any more sense.
The border guards were shaven-headed thugs in blue paramilitary uniforms. One of them took Carver’s passport and papers and disappeared into a low-slung building decorated with the crest of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, which stood beside the checkpoint. A few minutes later, he reemerged and signaled to Carver to move his car out of the way and park it to one side so that other travelers could come through the checkpoint: This was going to take some time.
It was getting late, but there was still a duty-free store and cafe open in the no-man’s-land between the Macedonian and Kosovan sides of the border post. Carver went in to take a leak and get a double espresso. Four more guards were sitting at a table, their submachine guns propped against their chairs. They were sharing a bottle of plum brandy. It was standing on the table next to a couple of empties. The guards simmered with the brooding tension of drunks who were a long way down the road that leads from cheerful inebriation to unrestrained violence. As Carver passed by on the way to the men’s room, they looked at him with a malevolence that sought out any excuse-a single, inadvertent glance or gesture would do-that would allow them to attack.
When his coffee arrived, he took it outside. He wanted to be able to think in peace. The truth was, he was so angry himself, that if the border guards even looked like they would give him a fight, he might take them up on the offer. And that would just be one more entry on his long list of stupid mistakes.
It went against all his principles, but he couldn’t help thinking of the past, wishing he’d done things differently. If he’d done a better job back at the Inuvik airport… if he’d just told the Consortium to screw their assignment when they’d ordered him onto the plane to Paris… if he’d never let himself become involved with Alix… if he’d put his business before his balls and just handed that bloody list over to Grantham… so many ifs, and nothing he could do about any of them.
Alix wasn’t coming back to him, not now. She’d made her decision and she wasn’t going to change it. He didn’t blame her for what she’d done. When she’d left him at the clinic, he’d been a vegetable. Then she’d been told he was dead. It was hardly surprising she’d fallen for the healthy, successful, powerful guy standing right next to her. He hoped he’d have the chance to tell her that, let her know he understood and bore her no ill will, no matter how much he was hurting. But when were they going to meet again? He couldn’t believe Vermulen would involve her in whatever he was planning to do with the bomb, so she wouldn’t be anywhere near Trepca. And by the end of the night, the chances were that either he or Vermulen would be dead, maybe both. Even if he survived, what then?
Presumably she’d been kept on the boat. He imagined coming aboard: “Hello, darling-sorry I topped your old man. No hard feelings.”
That wasn’t going to go down too well, however he tried to play it.
He could just turn back, of course. If he didn’t get Vermulen, someone else would, and sooner rather than later. Too many people had reasons to want the man dead. If Alix was back on the market again, he could try to win her over.
But that wasn’t exactly a classy idea, hitting on the grieving widow. And it wasn’t going to happen, anyway. The only way to atone for all his mistakes was to clear up the mess he’d made. That meant tracking Vermulen down and taking him, and his bomb, out of commission, whatever the cost. But what about the list? Did Vermulen have it with him? The answer came to Carver in a moment of absolute certainty. No, he’d have kept it safe on the yacht, with Alix.
A sardonic, humorless smile twisted the corners of his mouth. Maybe they would meet again, like it or not.
Across the floodlit no-man’s-land, he could see an official waving at him. His papers had been accepted. He was into Kosovo.
87
