Black Flagged Redux (6 page)

He'd been slowly rotting in the United Nations Detention Center for seven years, watching one former Serbian colleague after another leave for various reasons. Some were indicted and sentenced to lengthy prison sentences. He didn't envy their fate. They were rumored to have been transferred to Germany for imprisonment. Others had been released pending further trial proceedings, a feat not even Srecko's lawyers could accomplish, which only served to fuel his daily rage.

Above all, nothing stoked his anger like the luckiest of his former Serbian "friends," who were suddenly freed from custody when the chief prosecutor for the war crimes tribunal, Carla Del Ponte, simply excluded them from the draft indictments of "criminal enterprise" leveled against Milosevic's regime. Her indictment focused on Slobodan Milosevic, essentially ignoring several other key members of the regime, who Srecko knew had ordered many of the crimes that held him firmly entrenched in his own cell.

Not one of them looked back or offered their support to him as they scurried to freedom like cowardly pigs. Now, the number of true Serbs in the detention unit was dwindling, and his trial had been postponed for another year, forcing him to mingle with the disgustingly impure Croatian and Kosovar dogs roaming the floors here. There was no shortage of war criminals in the detention center, from all sides of the war, and he had to sit around on a daily basis and make small talk with the very people he had tried to ruthlessly stomp out, on behalf of the traitors who had turned their backs on him. He had little to look forward to, but the visit today from one of his most trusted and cherished allies might give him a renewed sense of purpose. The chance to taste the sweetest nectar of life. Revenge.

The nondescript, gray metal door leading out of the courtyard opened, and Josif Hadzic stepped through the solitary breach in the courtyard’s walls. Josif had changed significantly since Srecko's imprisonment, transformed from the young, scrawny, awkward nephew into a muscularly lean, handsome, young Serbian man. His thick black hair, prominent brow, and deep-set brown eyes proclaimed to the world that he was of pure Serbian stock. A true testament to the cause Srecko had spent his entire life fighting for…and for which he had been summarily discarded by the so called "patriots" that now lived in luxury.

Despite Josif's soft, almost serene composure upon entering the courtyard, Srecko harbored Josif's secret. He was a dedicated ultra-nationalist, like his uncle, after having seen the direct impact of the NATO-imposed restrictions on their just campaign to carve out a little space for the true Serbia. His family had lost everything due to their allegiance with Milosevic's army, but fortunately, none of them had been imprisoned. Josif's father, Andrija, Srecko's younger brother by three years, had wisely kept his nose out of the seductively lucrative spoils of Srecko's enterprises.

He had taken care of his brother, but always from a distance. He respected Andrija's choice, and his brother had served loyally in the regular Yugoslavian Army for several years, fighting for the cause during the Bosnian war. Now, Josif's family was in shambles. His father an absent, raging alcoholic and his mother a catatonic drone working several shift jobs in the outskirts of Belgrade. She refused to accept the modest amount of money Srecko had offered to keep them afloat. "Poisoned money," she would say.

Josif started visiting Srecko during the early days of his incarceration at The Hague. Srecko immediately recognized the hunger and intelligence in his eyes. He soon arranged for Josif to stay close by in Amsterdam. Srecko had unfinished business and plenty of hidden money to keep an underground organization alive. More than anything, he needed loyalty that would not abandon him in his time of need.

Josif walked briskly to the stone table. "Uncle," he said, and Srecko rose from the table to hug him with the cigarette still burning in his right hand.

"My Josif. Have you brought me some good news?" he said, glancing at the hardcover book in Josif's hands and signaling for the young man to have a seat at the table.

"Always good news, Uncle. And a gift. I know how fond you are of the Fruska Gora National Forest," Josif said and slid the book toward his uncle.

"One of the thickest, most mysterious forests in the world. We used to take a lot of trips there, your father and I. Lots of good memories…and a few bad," he said and raised a knowing eyebrow at Josif.

"I think you'll find page twenty-three to be your favorite," he said and looked away at the sky.

Srecko opened the book and casually thumbed through the pictures, stopping once or twice to admire the picturesque scene of a forest engulfed village, or a hidden waterfall. He stopped on page twenty-three and his eyes narrowed to a reptilian quality. Page twenty-three was not part of the original picture book’s publication, but rather a cleverly-designed and professionally-inserted counterfeit addition. Designed to look the same in structure and layout, the half-page-sized picture had nothing to do with the Fruska Gora National Forest from an outsider's perspective. To Srecko, the photograph had everything to do with the forest.

"This was taken recently?" he said, still staring intensely at the picture.

"A few days ago in Buenos Aires. Our guy emailed the pictures while they finished lunch."

"Do we still know where they are?" Srecko said and looked up from the photo.

Josif lowered his head slightly in a subconscious deference to his uncle.

"No. Once they started walking, our guy found it impossible to follow them without tipping them off. I'm sorry about that, but…"

"No need to apologize, Josif. Never apologize. Not even to me. This is great work. It shows great patience and intellect, my nephew. Very important traits to have," he said, glaring at the picture.

"They'll show up again. That bitch is predictable and has a taste for expensive things. She won't be hard to find. As for him, tell our people to be extremely cautious. This one is capable of just about anything."

"What would you like to do about them, Uncle?"

"I want them dead, but first, I want to know what they did with my money. I don't care what needs to be done to get this information out of them. They’re trying to indict me on charges that I ordered the systematic rape of over two hundred Kosovar whores…why not add another rape to the list? Or two."

"We'll try for both, but what if we can only grab one?"

"Grab the woman first. I can't stress to you how badly I want her to suffer…and I want to see it on video. I have a DVD player, and I'm getting tired of the usual movies."

Josif grinned and stood up. "Understood, Uncle. I'll keep you informed. See you next week," he said and his grin faded into a deadly serious gaze.

"You know, the security here is pretty terrible. I'm worried about your safety," Josif said.

Srecko stifled a laugh at the audacity of what Josif had just implied.

"Perhaps one day it will come to that, my nephew. For now, I'll let the lawyers work their magic. One of my dearest friends was granted a provisional release a few weeks ago. Haven't heard a word from him since, of course," Srecko said.

"Mr. Stanisic hasn't disappeared, as some expected, which is a good thing. Maybe the lawyers can get you the same deal," Josif said.

"Maybe," he said and hugged his nephew.

He watched Josif stride toward the door, which buzzed and opened from the inside. He waved one more time at his nephew before the door closed, sealing him off from his only contact with the outside world besides his lawyers. He sat down slowly and removed a crumpled pack of generic cigarettes from the front breast pocket of his wrinkled gray collared shirt. He tapped a cigarette and lit it with a disposable butane lighter retrieved from the back pocket of his threadbare pants. He took a long drag on the cheap tobacco, then exhaled the thick smoke through his nose several seconds later, tapping his free hand on the picture in front of him.

Staring at the picture of Marko Resja, or whoever he claimed to be now, sitting alongside that supposedly beheaded whore, stoked the deepest embers of his seething rage. He started to feel sick and immediately took another nicotine-filled drag on his cigarette, igniting the tobacco embers in a fierce orange glow that lasted for three seconds. The wave of nicotine filtered through his bloodstream and entered his brain, triggering pleasure receptors, which barely cut into the anger. It gave him a moment of clarity to process a few level thoughts.

Two years ago, by sheer luck he had stumbled across Resja again. He had been sitting around a large fold-out table on a different floor in the detention center, attending the "release" party of Idriz Dzaferi, one of the Albanian terrorist leaders his paramilitary unit had scoured Kosovo trying to kill. Apparently, the testimony against Dzaferi hadn't been compelling enough for the tribunal to move forward, and once again, Srecko found himself eating cake and "celebrating" someone else's release. As he pushed the tasteless cake around his mouth, his eyes were drawn to the common area's television screen. Two images, side by side, appeared on the CNN feed, and Srecko froze, unable to chew.

The screen showed a man named Daniel Petrovich, wanted in connection with a string of high profile killings throughout the Washington, D.C., area that included the brutal slaying of a police officer and several military contractors. He disappeared after a spectacular neighborhood shootout with FBI and local police that landed several more law enforcement agents in the hospital. Daniel Petrovich? Srecko knew this man by another name. Marko Resja.

Srecko still hadn't made the connection between the stolen money and Daniel Petrovich, until he studied the fleeting image of the woman on the screen. Jessica Petrovich. That's when he almost choked on the mouthful of cake still mulling between his clenched jaws. She looked different now, but he knew he was staring at that deceptive snake, Zorana Zekulic. The woman responsible for the theft of his money, or so he had been told…by the man apparently married to her in the United States! The man who had thrown her supposed head down on the ground before him.

It all made sense to Srecko in those few seconds. Marko Resja's sudden disappearance had been no coincidence. He had engineered the entire thing with the help of that cunt. The theft of over 130 million dollars, leaving him high and dry in Belgrade with a bloodbath on his hands. On May 27, 2005, over cake and fruit punch at the United Nations Detention Unit, he swore to God and the Serbian people that he would see these traitors' heads roll. It gave him a renewed sense of purpose and temporarily lifted him above the fact that he was sitting at a hastily assembled card table amidst two dozen other chubby fifty-year-olds; most of whom had run successful criminal enterprises on the Balkan Peninsula, but now were reduced to eating yellow cake and drinking Kool-Aid like toddlers.

The memory faded, and Srecko Hadzic snapped the picture book shut. He smothered the cigarette against the side of the stone table and got up to leave the courtyard. The fresh air was killing him.

Chapter 6

10:35 AM

FBI Headquarters Building

Washington, D.C.

Special Agent Ryan Sharpe adjusted the files on his desk and checked his watch for the fifth time in the last minute. He was nervous about this meeting. His career hadn't exactly flourished since General Sanderson and his crew popped up and decapitated HYDRA. The Black Flag group vanished into thin air and proved near impossible to track. The quick revenge demanded by the FBI's director, Frederick Shelby, never materialized, and his significantly smaller task force began to shrink with every uneventful month, until he was finally absorbed by the Domestic Terrorism Branch.

The time they had spent scouring the earth for traces of Sanderson's organization hadn't been completely fruitless. His task force stumbled upon some unsavory funding links between foreign organized crime syndicates and a rising domestic ultra-nationalist terrorist organization, True America. Soon after establishing these links, he had been given command of a specialized task force dedicated to investigating foreign funding sources linked to homegrown domestic terrorist groups. Thanks to Director Shelby, Sanderson's crew had been designated a Tier One domestic terrorist organization, which re-landed Sanderson high on Sharpe's list of priority investigative targets.

He had the best of many worlds working for the DTB, a renewed sense of purpose, job security and the ear of Director Shelby, who had vowed to bring the wrath of God down upon Sanderson if Sharpe ever located his new stronghold. After reading the preliminary report forwarded by Special Agent Mendoza, he felt goosebumps. Something about the ATF summary gave him the first real glimmer of hope he had experienced in nearly two years.

Sharpe heard a familiar knock at the door and stood up to walk around the desk. "Get in here, Frank," he boomed.

Special Agent Frank Mendoza entered, followed by Special Agent Dana O'Reilly and a short, angular-faced female wearing a navy blue suit jacket over a sharp-collared white blouse and matching dark blue trousers. She looked extremely serious, and her dark blue eyes pierced the room with a hint of disapproval. She wore an ATF badge clipped to her suit lapel.

"There he is. Special Agent Mendoza. Recently promoted to Ops Section One. You better not give up my favorite chair," he said, vigorously shaking Frank's hand.

"Well, it needs to find a new home. My so-called 'promotion' landed me in a cubicle. It's a whole different world down there. Small fish in a big pond. Ryan, this is Special Agent Marianne Warner. She leads the task force that nabbed Javier Navarre."

"Special Agent Warner, I can't thank you enough for taking the time to meet with me. Please have a seat," he said and nodded at Dana O'Reilly, who closed the door behind them.

Once they were situated in his cramped office, he opened the file sitting at the top of the smallest pile on his desk.

"Special Agent Warner, tell me a little more about Javier Navarre?"