‘Syria.’
Gunnymede looked at him as if he’d grown another head. ‘Did you say Syria?’
‘You, not me.’
Gunnymede had his full attention. ‘What the fuck am I doing in Syria?’
‘First you’ll go to Dubai for some training.’
‘Training? Training for what?’
‘Before going into the field.’
‘Field?! What field?’
‘You were brought back to find Spangle.’
‘To help find Spangle. Be a part of the team.’
‘There is no team.’
‘What do you mean there is no team?’
‘You are the team.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘Spangle will reach out to you. You’re a crook. A thief. You stole from him.’
‘What if he just wants to kill me?’
‘Harlow thinks Spangle will want to use you, not kill you.’
‘Don’t you think he’ll wonder why I’m not in prison? More than that, why I’m back with the firm?’
‘That can be explained.’
‘I look forward to hearing it.’
‘It’s more than just about heroin for Spangle. There’s something else.’
‘What?’
‘We don’t know exactly.’
Gunnymede contemplated the update. ‘Why Syria?’
‘We think Spangle has made contact with someone there. We cannot miss an opportunity to chase a contact with Spangle.’
‘Who?’
‘A member of ISIS.’
‘ISIS?’
‘His name is Saleem.’
‘Saleem?’ Gunnymede checked.
‘He’s British.’
‘What has Spangle got to do with ISIS?’
‘That’s what you’re going to find out. It’s also an opportunity to let Spangle know you’re back.’
Gunnymede looked out of the window at the shops flying by. Pedestrians going about their daily lives. ‘I want to go back to prison.’
‘No you don’t,’ Aristotle said with certainty.
He was right.
Chapter 3
Pandi Lako joined the Albanian Policia Kufitare, the border police, when he was twenty years old. His older brother and one of his uncles were already members and pretty much paved the way for his entry. Nepotism went a long way in the Albanian Policia Kufitare, in the Debar region at least, which was where Pandi was to spend his career, short-lived though it was.
Pandi had no skills to speak of. He’d successfully avoided popular apprenticeships such as plumbing and carpentry despite his mother’s efforts. His brother and uncle were the ones who kept on at him about joining up. There were benefits for them too. Having family members in the force was always useful. In Albania, blood was trusted above all else. And the border police wasn’t such a bad career. It was easy if one didn’t push for promotion and it would always put food on the table. While there were borders, men would be required to police them. That was true of the Balkans at least.
The Lladomerice road to the Debar border crossing ran parallel to the Albanian-Macedonian border on the Albanian side for several kilometres. It was this geographical characteristic that made the border at that point popular with smugglers; anyone in fact who needed to cross to avoid the authorities. There was one minor disadvantage and that was that no roads along that stretch headed inland other than to local farms. A large range of hills created an imposing obstacle. A smuggler had to head some miles north or south in order to go west. This provided the border police with an advantage.
It was a fresh, early winter’s morning when Pandi and the eleven other members of his patrol, designated K-17, arrived at Dontrav Pikë Kontrolli, a semi-permanent checkpoint, to take over from the men of K-23 who’d completed a twenty-four hour posting. It was one of the more popular locations with the patrols in winter because it had a cabin with a wood burner and room for everyone to cram inside, just about.
K-17 had three vehicles, two cars and a flatbed pick-up truck. The patrol was lightly armed, each man responsible for a Beretta pistol and an AK47 assault rifle. A PKM belt-fed machine gun fixed onto a post on the truck bed directly behind the cab was the unit’s heavy firepower if such force should be required.
The road was rarely a busy one, the traffic mostly local with many of the vehicles and drivers familiar to the officers. It was estimated on average there were three illegal crossings per week along that particular stretch of border and more could be done by the border police to reduce this.
Apart from an ugly situation involving a United Nations lawyer and his bodyguard early on in the year, there’d not been a situation in a while where a gun had been used other than to fire warning shots at u-turners or to bag a piece of venison that happened to wander within sight. The incident involving the UN lawyer was an unfortunate day for his bodyguard. Pandi had no participation in the incident but saw much of it from outside the log cabin where he’d been cleaning his rifle. He saw the car stop and the driver approached. The passenger and driver got out. A few minutes later he heard raised voices and then a gunshot. The UN lawyer, a Brazilian, accused the border police of brutality and one in particular, Storen, of cold-blooded murder. The officers supported their colleague by claiming the bodyguard had been aggressive and, after assaulting Storen, reached for a concealed weapon whereupon Storen drew his pistol and shot the man in self-defence. In a bar some weeks later, while consuming two bottles of Rakia, Storen bragged that he hadn’t liked the bodyguard and so he killed him. But with so many police statements providing evidence in Storen’s favour, the incident would never go to trial. Pandi had submitted one of those statements after being coerced by his brother and uncle.
On this particular day, when the team arrived at the checkpoint, the sun was out and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. Pandi was leaning back against the cabin having a cigarette when an old BMW series 7 with dark tinted windows came into view. No-one
