triumphantly vacated. Amid shouts of “Christ is risen… He is risen indeed,” the glory of the resurrection and the conquest of death were celebrated in a service of matins that echoed around the 950-year-old building in an act of worship that embodied both the awesome power of faith and the glorious joy of life.
92
Kurt Vermulen bore no physical wounds. To his shame, he had been taken without firing a shot. So now he sat in the back of what had been his Land Cruiser, appropriated by the man who had so expertly defeated him, a man who introduced himself as Dusan Darko.
“We have a meeting,” Darko said, looking up from the front passenger seat and watching Vermulen in the rearview mirror as he spoke. “A friend of yours, Mr. McCabe. He is paying me twenty million, U.S., to deliver the suitcase to him. Perhaps you can pay me more. I am always interested in making a better deal. It is not too late.”
Vermulen said nothing.
“I guess not,” said Darko. “In that case, I will have to deliver you to Mr. McCabe. He will decide what to do with you then. I am sorry about your men, that they had to die. Please understand-it is just business. I have no bad feelings against you. I love America, great country. You do not want to talk-I understand. You have much to think about. Cigarette?”
Darko lit up. His driver was already smoking. Vermulen could see the orange glow of burning cigarettes in the truck ahead of him. No one in Serbia seemed too bothered by the risk of lung cancer or heart attacks. But then, men at war rarely did. They assumed they wouldn’t live long enough to catch a disease.
Vermulen was trying to work out how he had allowed himself to fall for the trap McCabe had set for him. The old man had played him right from the start, drawing him into plans that seemed insane to him now. Spending months chasing after nuclear bombs, hiring thieves, leading men into mortal danger-what had he been thinking? Maybe they’d been right, back in Washington, the people who’d tried to tell him, as politely as they could, that the grief of losing Amy had driven him off the rails.
Yet he hadn’t been wrong about the things that really mattered. He still believed, as passionately now as ever before, that his country and its allies were ignoring a terrible danger, refusing to recognize enemies who worshipped death, hated freedom, and happily sacrificed their own lives for the sake of killing others. Next to that malignant insanity, his own actions had seemed entirely rational. He had at least tried to raise the alarm.
And he’d been right about Natalia, too. Part of him, the old intelligence agent, had always wondered whether her arrival had been too good to be true. Poor Mary Lou had died, then this vision had appeared on his doorstep: Looking back, he knew it was too pat, too convenient. But even accepting that, he had no doubt that Natalia’s love for him was genuine. Countless times he’d asked himself whether he was just an old fool, letting himself be seduced by a beautiful young woman. Perhaps it had been that way at the start. Perhaps she had been pretending then. But not now. With every day that had passed, his certainty had grown. He was, at the very least, right to trust in her.
Only one aspect of the whole disaster still remained a mystery to him. He couldn’t see why McCabe had double-crossed him. He must have had something in mind all along, a purpose for his treachery. But Vermulen could not comprehend what that might be. And if he found out, what difference did it make? He’d been a professional soldier long enough to know defeat when he tasted it.
93
So that was how the plane had disappeared.
Carver was crouched in the long grass beside the runway at Pristina airport. It ran north-south, along a narrow valley, with mountains on either side. At the north end all the regular airport buildings were clustered: the control tower, terminal, aircraft hangars, and oil bunkers. But Carver, driving with his lights off, had followed a service road to the very southern end of the runway. There, a taxiway left the main runway and ran due west to a broad tarmac apron at the base of a peak that rose thousands of feet into the darkness. It was only when Carver left his truck parked away from the road, and crawled through the grass to the high wire-mesh fence topped with razor wire that lined the taxiway, that he saw that the mountain’s rock face was actually pierced by a pair of massive, camouflaged steel blast doors. As he watched, a helicopter came in to land on the apron, waited while the doors rolled open to reveal a giant hangar, dug into the hillside, and taxied into the cavernous opening. Once it was inside, the doors rolled shut again, but not before Carver had caught sight of an executive jet, its belly distended by a slight bulge just aft of the wings. That was McCabe’s plane, and it either had its deadly cargo, already sitting like a malignant fetus in its metal womb, or was waiting to receive it.
He needed to get inside. But before he could even think about breaching the doors, he had to penetrate the perimeter fence. The service road curved around toward the hidden air base, but access was only possible through a guarded checkpoint, manned by two sentries. The fence even ran across the taxiway, with a wheeled section that could roll back whenever a plane was cleared for landing or takeoff. Signs at regular intervals indicated that the perimeter was patrolled by dogs.
The only way in was through the main gate. Carver was steeling himself to make a frontal attack, knowing that he would have to kill the sentries, when he saw headlights, away in the distance, coming in his direction. He dashed back to his truck and watched as three vehicles went by: two open trucks, with men sitting in the cargo areas at the back, and one Land Cruiser. He let them get a ways down the road, then swung his truck in behind them, the lights still off.
As the first of the trucks pulled up by the checkpoint, Carver turned on his lights and pulled up at the end of the line. One of the sentries walked up to the driver’s door of the first truck. Carver took out his gun, screwed the silencer onto the barrel, and put it within easy reach on the seat to his right. Then he put on the CD player headphones, gritted his teeth, and pressed play again.
Rap had turned Carver into an old man. To him the music sounded like a tuneless, incoherent cacophony and the only words he could understand were the obscenities. He’d spent too long on parade grounds and assault courses, being shouted at by rabid sergeant-majors whose capacity for verbal abuse and physical violence would put any street braggart to shame, to be impressed. But duty called.
Finally the sentry came up to his window. Keeping his face in the shadow inside the cabin, Carver stuck his hand out of the window and handed over Krasnic’s I.D.
