his body, including his ankles. When he stood up he held out his hand. ‘I’ll take the meal.’
‘That’s what this is all about? You want my lunch?’
The man smiled thinly. ‘The meal,’ he said.
Stratton handed it to him.
‘Get in the car,’ the fat man said as he shuffled aside.
Stratton glanced around at the others who had closed in. He leaned down and stepped inside the limousine.
The fat thug holding his food tossed it to an even fatter one who looked inside the paper bag while following the others towards a white sedan parked on the street.
The limo interior was spacious, with seats on three sides and a drinks cabinet by the door. Stratton chose the back seat where he faced Cano who sat leaning forward, his fingers clasped together, looking at him solemnly. A glass partition behind Cano separated the passenger cabin from the driver’s compartment where a man sat in the passenger seat beside the driver. The fat thug who had greeted Stratton outside climbed in, closed the door behind him, and sat on the long seat between the two other men. Stratton had for some reason expected to find Skender inside but with his absence and the demonic Cano in his place the situation seemed even darker.
‘This is very nice,’ Stratton said, looking around. ‘My first limousine.’
‘You search him well, Klodi?’ Cano asked his ape.
‘Yeah, I did, Mr Vleshek.’
Cano turned around to tap on the glass partition. A few seconds later the vehicle pulled smoothly out of the car park and headed south in the direction of Venice Beach.
‘You look like a confident guy,’ Cano said in precise English though the Slav accent was strong. His voice was slow and calculating as if Cano was trying to sound as articulate as possible.
Stratton studied the man who, despite the expensive suit and finely trimmed black hair and goatee, was typical of the Albanian KLA types he had known in Kosovo. Stratton had spent several months, on and off, in various parts of the province, mainly in Pristina, its capital, and in the town of Podujevo in the northeast on the main route out of Kosovo for the retreating Serbian army and refugees. Like most of the other operatives with whom he had served in Kosovo, he had initially considered the Albanians borderline okay, understanding their hatred for the Serbs. During the early days it had seemed that all they wanted was to be rid of a people who had tried to wipe them off the face of the Earth, although throughout history it had been a two-way, see-saw fight, one side as bad as the other.
As the war progressed and the Serbian army left Kosovo, forced out by NATO, the dark heart of the Albanian psyche showed itself. Pockets of Serb civilians such as farmers remained, some of whom stubbornly maintained their right to stay while others were unable to escape because they didn’t have transport or were too old, too young or too feeble to make the long journey to Serbia and then reestablish themselves there. The Albanian hatred for them was totally relentless. What had begun as an amicable partnership between NATO and the KLA to oust the Serbian army from Kosovo turned into an internal security situation where the UN and NATO-led K-For were the police and the KLA became the delinquents. On more than one occasion Stratton had crossed swords with them and blood had been spilled but always the KLA – they were not sufficiently well trained or equipped to take on the British military and were certainly not skilled enough to take on special forces.
Stratton had seen the results of Serbian and Albanian atrocities and he reckoned that there was not much to choose between the two as far as brutality was concerned. But due to the area he operated in it had been the ruthlessness and savagery of the Albanians, the KLA, that he had witnessed more often. Looking at Cano reminded him of so many KLA members he had seen: that same brooding, sometimes vacant but usually hate-filled look.
‘What am I doing here?’ Stratton asked, glancing at Klodi who was staring ahead between them and breathing heavily in the way that overweight people sometimes do.
Cano studied Stratton, looking as if he could not make his mind up about something. ‘Where you from?’ he asked. ‘You don’t sound American.’
‘I’m English.’
‘Ah, English,’ Cano said, an unmistakable sneer twisting his face as his thoughts transported him to another very different time and place that was still so much a part of his every living fibre. ‘You’re the first Englishman I’ve spoken to in a long time.’
Stratton could see the contempt in Cano’s eyes and wondered if it was reserved just for Englishmen. According to Seaton’s file Cano had been a mid-ranking officer of the KLA, heavily involved in ‘cleansing’ Kosovo of Serbians. Graphic images of mutilated men, women and children flashed across Stratton’s memory and he wondered how many of those atrocities had been ordered or even carried out by this man.
Despite the many horrors of war that Stratton had seen in his lifetime the sight of women and children butchered by hand had always filled him with immeasurable disgust and hatred for those who did it. Many of the scenes he had witnessed in Kosovo bore evidence that the perpetrators had not just executed but had had fun doing it. A method he had often come across, one he had first seen in Afghanistan and peculiar (so he’d thought) to the Hazara tribe, was the driving of a large nail into a person’s brain, often through the centre of the forehead so that the killer could look the victim in the eye as the spike was hammered home.
In one particular village in the south of Kosovo that Stratton and his team had happened across, not a living soul remained, a common enough occurrence. But on this occasion all the village’s men and women, old and young alike, were found dead in a barn, shot through the head or with their throats slit. An even more sickening sight was that of the babies, a dozen or so, nailed through their heads to the barn door.
Stratton had been consumed with an urge to kill those responsible if he ever learned who they were. Now that he was sitting opposite a man wanted for such atrocities there was a rekindling of that loathing and repugnance, though he tried not to let it show. Strangely, as he stared into Cano’s eyes, they seemed to mirror his own.
Cano had not been to England but he hated the English more than any other nationality outside the Balkans – though that had not always been the case. His was a private hate, one of many. He had been brought up on hate and a lust for revenge. Hate had been a staple part of his educational diet from the day he could understand the concept: as he grew to manhood it had grown with him.
Cano had been born into a vicious conflict that went back hundreds of years. His teachers, neighbours, friends and family made sure that he and all the other youngsters in the commun -ity understood why they should fight and kill for their heritage. The Serbians’ historic entitlement to Kosovo went as far back as the fourteenth century but the Albanians claimed to be descendants of an ancient tribe that had occupied the land before the time of Christ.
The Muslim Albanians profited from a 500-year Turkish occupation insofar as the Ottomans kicked the Christian Serbs out, but just before the First World War the Balkan states united to drive the invaders away and the Serbian army marched back into Kosovo. During the Great War the Albanians managed to kick them out again, only to be reoccupied by the end of it.
The Second World War saw Kosovo taken over by the Axis powers and the Serbs driven out once again. When Tito came along with plans to unite the Balkans, in order to enlist Albanian support he promised them Kosovo. But that had been a lie and once again the Kosovar Albanians found themselves fighting to govern their homeland.
Two decades later Cano was born. During his youth the Albanian struggle to retain Kosovo had been conducted mostly by political means and at one point had looked like succeeding. Then one Slobodan Milosevic arrived on the scene and practically overnight had stripped the Kosovar Albanians of their autonomy.
The Albanian leadership tried to conduct a peaceful resistance against Milosevic but Cano, now a young man full of strength and vigour, along with many others sought to oppose him with violence. Thus was born the Kosovo Liberation Army in which Cano built his reputation for bloody and merciless cruelty. When the West became involved he welcomed their political and material support: for the first time in his life he truly believed that the day might come when the Kosovar Albanians would see their land returned fully to their control. But when the Serbian army was driven from Kosovo Cano and his colleagues became suspicious about the true intentions of the West.
When NATO began bussing back into Kosovo Serbians who could prove their rightful claims to land the Kosovar Albanians reacted violently. Acting on orders from on high, Cano had been one of many young leaders encouraged to organise operations designed to dissuade the Serbs from returning, a task he embraced with unnatural enthusiasm. His lust for blood was insatiable and no Serb, no matter what their age, gender or political
