Hobart’s wife, a former journalist for the
Hobart was robust, though. He applied this quality to his own shortcomings when he recognised them, or when they were pointed out to him by his wife. But it was things over which he had no control that frustrated him most and contributed more than anything else to his private cynicism. Most of these things were politicians.
It was during Hobart’s tour of duty in the Balkans that the greatest blow to his confidence regarding US foreign policy, specifically on Kosovo, had been dealt. But even though he felt isolated in his views – enough not to air them with fellow agents, at least – he still wanted to believe there was an intelligent game plan in place. When the Los Angeles posting came along he was content to put aside his private concerns, expecting to be preoccupied with more routine FBI work – until he arrived in his new office and was briefed on his chief assignment and told why, in fact, he had been on the shortlist for the job.
All Hobart’s troubling thoughts returned with a vengeance when he realised that, despite being on the other side of the world now, he was going to be drawn even deeper into the gut of his old East European problem. But had he been told that he would soon find himself in such a dark place that he would tear down the pillar principles on which his entire professional life had been built and light a fuse that would start a war against one of the most powerful crime lords in America, he would not have believed it.
‘What happened?’ Hobart asked.
Both scene-of-crime officers looked up at the three white letters of his badge boldly emblazoned on a black background and then at Hobart himself. He was used to every kind of response from fellow law-enforcers who were not directly connected with the Bureau. The expressions on the faces of the two cops in front of him conveyed the most common reaction: ‘What’s the god-damned FBI doing here?’
‘A detainee got whacked,’ the officer who had been contemplating the universe offered while the other went back to picking at the brick wall with a small tool.
‘I know that much,’ Hobart said. ‘Leka Bufi. What happened?’
‘Not exactly sure yet. Bufi was sitting in the chair here, his back to the window, and he got it through the head. One hell of a gun, if that’s what it was. This bullet-proof glass is good against any pistol and most assault rifles.’
‘It’ll stop high-velocity up to 7.62 long,’ the forensics officer said to the wall.
‘You saying someone got a gun in here?’ Hobart asked, inspecting the glass. The hole was large, the size of a tennis ball, and surrounded by a thick black scorch mark.
‘We’re considering everything at the moment,’ the first officer said. ‘Mind if I ask what the FBI is doing here?’
‘Bufi was a name on my case file.’
‘Albanian Mafia?’
Hobart ignored him as he looked at the body outline draped over the table and the dried blood on the floor and wall.
‘Took most of his head clean off,’ the officer added.
‘Got it,’ the forensics officer said with satisfaction as he yanked something small out of the wall and inspected it. ‘If that was a gun it sure fired a strange kind of bullet.’
He carried the object in a pair of tweezers and placed it on a plastic evidence bag on the table. They all took a close look at the small, twisted, charred piece of metal the size of a fingernail.
‘Looks like there’s a pattern along one of the edges,’ the forensics officer said, holding a magnifying glass over it. ‘A coin, maybe,’ he added, glancing at his buddy who gave him a surprised look.
Hobart straightened to study the walls and windows of the corridor once again. He was interested in the bit of metal but would wait until the lab report to find out precisely what it was. There was a concentration of pockmarks in the wall and door directly opposite the cubicle, suggesting some kind of back-blast effect from whatever had gone through the window. Hobart had had a lot of experience with explosives, particularly in Kosovo, and had seen many bodies shredded by bits of flying metal from mortars, grenades, artillery shells, mines and booby-traps and such like. He had never seen anything quite like this before, though. If he had to choose a word to describe how it stood out from other examples he had seen, that word would have to be ‘precision’. This had been an IED of some kind, he was sure of that, and it had been small, clean and exact.
Hobart looked back at the two officers who were still examining the piece of metal. ‘Sergeant – or is it Lieutenant?’
‘Sergeant Doves,’ the first officer said.
‘I want every piece of debris collected up – every bit of cloth, metal, glass, everything – and placed inside its own evidence bag and sent to the FBI office on Wilshire.’
Doves looked around at the countless bits covering the floor, some of it stuck to the soles of his own shoes. ‘You gonna be sending down one of your teams?’ he asked hopefully but not expecting much. Resent ment was his underlying response to the request since it meant that he was effectively working for the Feds.
‘Not if you do a good enough job, sergeant,’ Hobart said, looking directly at both men, making his point clear, before walking away.
16
Stratton leaned against the concrete barrier that skirted the top of Santa Monica’s cliffs a hundred feet above the Pacific Coast Highway, a road that stretched, with some interruptions, from Panama to Alaska. He was pretending to read a newspaper while at the same time keeping an eye on all movement into I Cugini, an Italian restaurant on a corner just south of his apartment building. It had a broad, exposed entrance with quiet sidewalks and most of the clientele arrived by car. After drivers and passengers had alighted the vehicles were whisked away by redwaistcoated valets to an underground parking lot beneath the large, modern shopping complex of which the restaurant was a small part.
This was the fourth day in a row that Stratton had occupied the same spot in the busy park during the lunchtime hour to observe everyone who went into the place. Seaton’s file had listed two of Ardian Cano’s favourite daytime food stops, the other being a Japanese restaurant in Beverly Hills. I Cugini was certainly the most convenient for Stratton, being literally a stone’s throw from his apartment building. Had it not been for a hotel next door he would have been able to watch the restaurant entrance from the comfort of his living room.
It was nearing the end of the lunch period and still there had been no sight of the Albanian. Stratton was beginning to have doubts about this method of finding him. The file described Ardian as passionate about his food and a creature of habit and listed several of his night-time hangouts where he was often joined by colleagues as well as by his brother Ivor – or Dren. Stratton preferred not to run into that crowd again unless it was on his own terms and placed his hopes on the Italian restaurant.
The newspapers had revealed sufficient detail to confirm that Bufi was dead. The police were not prepared to discuss the cause other than saying that a projectile had entered his head. The media turned this into a grenade attack, based on advice from their so-called experts. The papers went on to describe Bufi’s crime-syndicate dealings and the beating-up of his girlfriend, stating how he was a generally unsympathetic character that the world was better off without. Typically, the media dramatised it further by speculating that it had been a contract killing commissioned by rival mobsters.
Stratton had considered tracking Ardian from outside one of his nightspots to one of the three places where he was thought to be living: with a girlfriend, with a colleague, and – the third and most likely location – his brother’s house in the plush residential area immediately north of Sunset Plaza. Stratton decided to give the Italian
