The Serbian Dane (10 page)

‘It’s perfect,’ Kravtjov said. ‘It’s perfect, Vuk. No one loses out.’

‘Except Sara Santanda,’ Vuk said.

‘Just silence that infidel bitch,’ Rezi snarled. ‘Send her to hell. She deserves to lie there and rot until the end of time.’

‘Okay,’ Vuk said, getting to his feet.

Kravtjov looked up.

‘From now on it’s between you and me,’ Vuk said.

He strode quickly away without shaking Rezi’s hand. Kravtjov rose and went after him. They stopped by the door.

‘Meet me at the Tiergarten tomorrow. At the Goethe Memorial. Twelve o’clock,’ Vuk said.

‘Right,’ said Kravtjov.

‘Watch out for Rezi. The Germans are bound to be keeping an eye on him.’

‘He only got here yesterday.’

‘Even so.’

‘Okay, Vuk. It’s a good deal.’

‘We’ll see.’

Vuk placed his hand on the door handle. Kravtjov whispered in his ear:

‘I heard your friend in Pale had an accident.’

Vuk turned and looked him straight in the eye:

‘It’s a dangerous world we’re living in. Remember that, Kravtjov,’ he said.

Kravtjov nodded. He felt a chill in the pit of his stomach. Vuk was so young, but he had the same effect on other people as a venomous snake. He had a nice smile but teeth of steel, Kravtjov thought to himself.

‘Until tomorrow, Vuk,’ was all he said and left Vuk to vanish into the Berlin night while he returned to Rezi to finalize the details concerning a down payment, the channelling of the money, weapons and other equipment which he wanted the Iranian government to deliver by diplomatic bag. Best to get everything sorted out tonight. Kravtjov was like Vuk in that respect. As an old KGB man he had great respect for the German security service and did not want to be seen in the company of an Iranian agent any more than was absolutely necessary. Besides, you never could tell with the Iranians. He didn’t have many old friends from his halcyon days in Teheran. Moscow had been on the other side in the war between Iran and Iraq, but that hadn’t stopped Kravtjov from keeping up with his contacts there. That was in the days when he was serving a state that commanded respect. He was better off financially now, but given the chance he would happily turn back the clock in order to work once again for a major power whose influence extended to every corner of the globe. There was nothing quite like the feeling of belonging to the nation’s elite. So deep inside him Kravtjov also felt a little thrill of pleasure. This reminded him of the old days when he pulled the strings and sent agents out into hostile territory. Nothing could compare to an undercover operation. Not even sex, he thought.

This same thought struck him again the next morning as he was walking through the Tiergarten. The trees in the park were a dusty-green, and the first yellow leaves lay scattered around his feet as he strolled along the gravel paths, making for the Goethe Memorial. Every now and again a bike would pass him. Mothers pushed babies in prams. He could hear the distant drone of the city traffic. Lovers walked by, closely entwined. A squirrel scampered nimbly up a tree. The whole scene put him in mind of the parks in Moscow and his youth. He wandered on, lost in his own thoughts. A smartly dressed
middle-
aged
 
man taking a morning stroll. Anyone watching him could have been forgiven for mistaking him for a businessman who had done so well for himself that he had been able to take early retirement.

Kravtjov did not notice the young man in the blue tracksuit stretching out by a tree twenty yards or so behind him. He was just one of many joggers in the park. A cyclist pulled up next to the guy in the tracksuit. He had a camera slung round his neck and a book on the birds in the Tiergarten in the carrier. He stopped, and the jogger gave a faint nod. The birdwatcher lifted his camera and took a series of quick shots of Kravtjov. This done, he climbed back onto his bike and cycled past the strolling Russian. A little further on he stopped, got out his book and looked at it. He propped the bike up on its foot stand and sauntered across to the grassy bank beside the path. He raised his camera and took some pictures of a tree in the distance. Then he whipped it round, aimed it at Kravtjov walking along the path and took two rapid shots of the Russian’s face before consulting his bird book once again.

Kravtjov had in fact noticed the photographer and immediately been on his guard but only for a moment, then he saw the book, the man’s checked baseball cap and the ecstatic look on his face – that of a birdwatcher who has spotted some rare feathered creature – and he lapsed back into his reverie. He was thinking about his youth and his career with the KGB. In the greater scheme of things maybe it had all been in vain, but he had memories of successful operations and good comradeship that no one could take away from him. He thought of Vuk. A strange, young man. Unbelievably intelligent. Charming, when he had a mind to be. With nerves of steel and iced water in his veins. And those remarkable blue eyes: so cold looking, but harbouring some terrible hurt. He had come across young men like him in Afghanistan, in Angola and, of course, in Bosnia. They gave nothing away, and yet they gave away everything. They were good to have on one’s side. And they made lethal enemies. If they had any scruples, they did not let them show. Had he not been the same? Once. In the days when he had not baulked at throwing himself out of a plane flying at ten thousand feet and swooping towards the dark earth below, waiting until the very last minute before releasing his parachute. When, instead of inducing paralysis, that fear which all men feel acted like a propellant, sharpening every sense and causing all one’s muscles to
work together and do their utmost. He had been in the field himself, so he knew that he had become a good commander. Demanding, hard-headed and tough but always loyal and sympathetic. And all to no avail. Or…? He had all the money he needed now, but he knew in his heart that this was not the only reason why he was now employing his skills in the service of another secret organization. It gave him a buzz that he could not do without. And he knew too much for them simply to let him pack it in now and enjoy his retirement. The organization was his family. That was how it had always been. It went by another name these days; that was all. It did not serve one country, it served Mammon, but like the KGB in the old days, the Mafia also considered itself to be above all laws except its own.

Kravtjov caught sight of Vuk. He was standing next to the statue of Goethe, smoking a cigarette. He was clad in his usual blue jeans and leather jacket. But he had had his hair cut this morning, quite short with a side parting. Kravtjov saw Vuk follow a jogger with his eyes and, moments later, the bird lover, cycling past him on his tall gent’s bike. He was a cautious one, this Vuk. What was his real name, he wondered. What was his story? Perhaps he would tell him one day. These young agents often had need of a father figure. Personal bonds were frequently forged. Doing something for your country was a strangely abstract concept. Doing something difficult and often terrible for a friend, a comrade, was much easier. That was how he had always run his network. Taken time to listen, to have a drink, get them to open up to him. It inspired loyalty. Unfortunately it looked as though Vuk did not need this. It was as if there was a block of ice inside him. But perhaps…when all this was over, he would invite Vuk to Moscow. When the winter had really set in and they could sit by the fire in his new dacha and drink vodka and tell stories.

‘Good morning, Vuk,’ he said.

‘Let’s keep this short, Kravtjov,’ Vuk said.

‘No one knows I’m here. I am retired, you know.’

‘Short, Kravtjov,’ Vuk said. ‘Let’s walk.’

They walked side by side along the gravel path.

‘I want a Danish passport. Clean. Not stolen.’

‘No problem. Two days. When were you born?’

‘Nineteen sixty-nine.’

A Danish passport was the easiest in the world to forge or alter. Kravtjov could not understand why the Danes had produced a passport in which the two most important pages were so easy to remove and the photograph wasn’t even laminated. Mind you, this did make it easier for people like him, so the longer this style of passport was in circulation the better he liked it.

‘Okay. What else?’ he asked.

‘A British passport. Also clean. A driving licence in the same name and a credit card. They have to be good for a week.’

‘No problem.’ This was more difficult but still doable.

Vuk handed him two passport photos. He was wearing a tie in the picture, which had probably been taken in a booth that morning. In the photograph Vuk looked like a high-flying young businessman, candidly and confidently looking the observer in the eye.

‘No more meetings. We’ll keep in touch by post. Poste restante, Købmagergade Post Office, Købmagergade 33, 1000 Copenhagen K.’ He handed Kravtjov a slip of paper containing the Danish address and went on: ‘I’ll write care of the Central Post Office here. To Mr John Smith, if necessary. You will send me the key to a left-luggage locker when the guns have been organized. It’ll be up to you to get them into Denmark.’

‘Okay. What type?’

‘Dragunov rifle with both day and night sights. Beretta 92. Two extra magazines. Ammunition, naturally.’

Just what I would have expected him to choose, Kravtjov thought. The Dragunov sniper rifle was manufactured in Russia, and the Yugoslavian Army had produced a copy of it. The Beretta 92 was a modern, mass-produced pistol holding fifteen cartridges. Not the world’s most sophisticated weapon, perhaps, but solid, reliable and readily come by. A good choice.

‘Right. Anything else?’ he said easily, although he was feeling anything but easy in his mind. Behind that calm exterior, Vuk was on edge. It suddenly struck Kravtjov that underneath the veneer of self-confidence, the kid was cracking up. But his eyes and hands were steady.

Vuk stopped in his tracks, handed him a slip of paper with some figures on it. Kravtjov studied the figures briefly then stuffed the slip into his pocket. Neither of them noticed the birdwatcher. He had parked his bike by the grass
verge and was lying behind a tree. He had the telephoto lens trained on Kravtjov’s face. The back of the young man’s head was in the way, but it was the best shot he had had so far. He held down the shutter release button and took several pictures in rapid succession. Then he pulled back the camera and his head. He had been warned that Kravtjov was an old pro, and been told to tread carefully. So that would have to do.

Vuk looked Kravtjov in the eye and said:

‘Have your Iranian friend deposit one million dollars in this account on the Cayman Islands. That’s the first instalment. I’ll be transferring it straight away, so don’t try anything clever!’

‘Vuk! What do you take me for? We’re partners. You can trust me.’

‘Not in a month of Sundays. And I want fifty thousand Danish kroner. In cash.’

‘That’ll take a couple of days. Where do you want it sent?’

‘Put the two passports, the credit card, the driving licence and the money in a locked bag and leave the bag at the left luggage office at the Central Station in West Berlin. Post the receipt and the key to Per Larsen, poste restante, Central Post Office, Berlin. Okay?’

Kravtjov passed him a piece of paper inscribed with an eight-digit number.

‘If there should be anything…call this mobile number. You’ll always get me or someone else…at this number. Just say “Vuk”, give us your number and we’ll call you back. Look upon it as a kind of insurance. And don’t let anyone else get their hands on it.’

Vuk hesitated for a moment, then slipped the paper into his pocket. He would memorize it later.

‘And the rest of the money?’ said Kravtjov.

‘You’ll receive the number of another account in the Caymans.’

‘When?’

‘Oh, you’ll know when. Just read the papers,’ Vuk said, with no trace of sarcasm.

‘Right,’ said Kravtjov. Vuk knew that payment would be forthcoming. This sort of money was peanuts to the Russian Mafia, and Kravtjov certainly had no wish to spend the rest of his life looking over his shoulder for Vuk. Cheating in matters of this nature was bad for business and for customer relations. And besides, they might have need of him again some time. They
didn’t know that once this business was dealt with he would never be seen in Europe again.

‘Right,’ said Vuk. ‘That’s all.’

He looked around him. Peace reigned in the park. Some distance away a couple of children were playing while their mothers sat on a bench chatting, and a man was walking his dog. He threw a stick for it to fetch: a peaceable activity which made Vuk long, suddenly, for another time, but he forced himself to banish such thoughts. The commandant had taught him to focus on the job in hand, rid his mind of anything that might distract him and never let himself be consumed by a longing for things he could never have.

Kravtjov extended his hand, and Vuk shook it briefly.

‘Well…break a leg,’ Kravtjov said.

‘Yeah,’ said Vuk.

‘This is just like the old days. When I sent agents into the field. Thrilling and, at the same time, terrifying. They were good times.’

Vuk nodded and turned to leave. Kravtjov called after him:

‘Does it bother you, going back to Denmark?’

Vuk looked back and said, almost dreamily, Kravtjov thought:

‘Not at all. Killing someone in Denmark is very easy.’

V
uk had to stay another five nights in Berlin. He spent most of the time sleeping and watching CNN or dubbed American movies on German satellite channels: Cary Grant, John Wayne, Tom Cruise and Sean Connery talking in deep voices that didn’t fit. He ran six miles every morning and evening in the Tiergarten and did a stiff half-hour workout on the floor of his hotel room: press-ups, sit-ups and backstretches. The physical activity kept him away from the bottles in the minibar. The TV helped keep his gnawing demons at bay; he had only had the blood-roller dream once, and he had managed to wake up before it appeared over the horizon under the flaming sun.

He bought a medium-size suitcase, a sports holdall and a navy-blue suit, a pale-blue shirt and a tie patterned with tiny red and purple squares. This, he had observed, was what was being worn by most of the businessmen he had seen charging up and down the streets of Berlin, briefcase in one hand and mobile phone in the other.

The hotel staff were quietly solicitous and clearly regarded him as just another harmless tourist taking in the sights of the newly reunified Berlin. Breakfast was the one meal he ate at the hotel; each evening he found a new and anonymous steakhouse close to the crowds on the Kurfürstendamm. The weather was still warm, although the odd shower of rain had fallen on the city, soaking him to the skin on the second morning when he was out running under the Tiergarten’s tall trees. Summer was preparing to pass into autumn, and the bigger leaves on the trees were already yellowing at the edges. It made him feel good to run in the soft rain, with the faint rumble of the traffic on June Seventeenth Street in his ears. These runs reminded him of the happy days with the band of specially selected men at the elite academy, when they
ran five miles at the crack of dawn every day, and his body sang for the sheer joy of being used.

He bought a map of Denmark and of Copenhagen and studied them in the evening, while the television played in the background with the sound turned down. He shut his eyes and called up the memory of those familiar streets. He had no trouble converting the flat lines of the city map into roads, buildings, lanes, railway lines and suburbs. In his mind’s eye he saw houses and blocks of apartments. He populated the Town Hall Square, Nørrebrogade, Valby Langgade and Strøget with Danish faces and tried to call up the sound of the language in his head. He placed a hotdog stall on a street corner and picked up a paper in a newsagent’s where the Pakistani shopkeeper’s Danish was even worse than his father’s. He remembered everything, let the memories come and go as they pleased. Most of them were good. His life could have been very different, had his family not moved back to Bosnia. He might have studied maths or engineering, had a steady girlfriend and lived in a student residence like everyone else. He might have had a wife and kids by now. Told them about the old country and tried to make them understand why it was necessary to fight. And yet. Would he have understood? If he hadn’t gone there but had stayed in that safe little land nestling so snugly in its small corner, sheltered both from stormy weather and from cataclysmic man-made disasters and upheaval. Who could say? In any case, it was a waste of time wondering what might have been. He had been born the person he was, with the nationality he had, on the inside at least, although you wouldn’t have known it to look at him. His features were not the least bit Slavic, but unmistakably Nordic. He didn’t know why this should be, but his mother’s family hailed from Slovenia originally, and there was German blood there too. Maybe that was where he got his blond good looks, his fair hair and his mother’s blue eyes. There wasn’t much of his father about him. He had been a dark, powerfully built man with broad shoulders and big hands. But had he not perhaps inherited his father’s sure hand and cold-blooded nature? Thoughts of his family were not permitted to encroach. It would hurt too much to pursue them.

In a newsagent’s he found a Danish newspaper, no more than a day old. But only the foreign news meant anything to him. He could make nothing
of the Danish stories. What he did see, though, was that Denmark was still a country where minor problems were blown up into major issues, simply because there really wasn’t that much to write about. He read aloud to himself, and the words flowed easily. From the newspaper reports he picked up the name of the current prime minister and an idea of what people in Denmark were talking about. The television programmes now took up a whole page. There were two evening news broadcasts, at quite different times from what he remembered. TV2 was showing more, or at least as many, programmes as the old Danmarks Radio channel, which apparently now called itself TV1. There were also lots of foreign channels, which the Danes could seemingly receive, since they were listed on the TV page. People in Denmark could watch the same programmes as he was watching in Berlin. Everybody in Europe could, so it seemed, watch the same programme at the same time, if they so desired.

Each day he called in at the Central Post Office and presented his Per Larsen passport at the poste restante desk. The day after his meeting with Kravtjov he called the bank in the Cayman Islands that guarded his banking secrets more closely than the Swiss. He phoned from a box where he could pay in cash after making his call. He gave the bank his code number, enquired as to whether the money had been paid in, was told that it had and asked them to transfer the full amount, minus a small handling charge, to a bank in Leichtenstein into which Vuk had been paying his salary and bonuses for the past four years. It was a discreet establishment, would never divulge information regarding a customer’s identity or sums held in foreign accounts to the local or national tax authorities. Access to an account might possibly be gained by court order but as far as the bank knew such a thing had never happened. No one in the tiny principality saw any reason to kill the goose that laid such lovely, labour-free golden eggs. Vuk had opened an account there under the name of Peter Nielsen and could make withdrawals from this simply by quoting his code number.

On the fourth day he was presented with a padded envelope, the sole contents of which were a suitcase key and a left-luggage ticket from the Central Station in West Berlin. He found the right U-bahn line on his map of Berlin and took it to the station. Young people from all over the world were milling
around the left-luggage office, checking their rucksacks in and out, comparing notes on accommodation, cheap eating places and spots you just had to visit where you could stay for next to nothing. Vuk got the impression that the whole point of backpacking was to spend as little as possible and consort only with other like-minded souls. They travelled in order to learn about themselves and other people, but in their search for security they ended up sticking with kids who spoke, thought and dressed exactly the same as themselves. In his blue jeans, trainers and brown leather jacket he blended in easily with the young backpackers. He mingled with them and scanned his surroundings carefully but discreetly. The railway station exuded an air of bustling normality.

He handed over the left-luggage ticket.

‘
Ein Moment
,’ said the beefy elderly man who took it from him.

Vuk glanced round about. His unease made itself felt as a tremor in the small of his back. What if he was being watched? What if Kravtjov wasn’t who he said he was? Or – if he had betrayed Vuk – then this was the moment when the German police were liable to pounce. He was in Germany illegally, and on CNN he had seen that they had now started arresting Bosnian Serbs, to hand them over to the War Crimes Tribunal in the Hague. But Vuk knew that he had always covered his tracks well. He was known only to a very few. On the one occasion when, with the Commandant, he had gone too far, they had left no witnesses. He had been a soldier in a dirty war, but he knew that he had merely done his duty as a soldier. Only the blood-roller told him that he might never forget that afternoon when he had lost his head and they had gone on killing until not a single soul was left alive in the village.

The elderly man reappeared, carrying a small, grey Samsonite suitcase. Vuk took it, paid and walked off quickly. No one took any notice of him. Hundreds of bags, rucksacks and suitcases passed over the left-luggage counter every day.

He took a taxi but asked to be set down at the corner of Knesebechsstrasse and the Ku’damm. He stood for a moment or two with the case at his feet, surveying the crowd on the street, before picking up the suitcase and walking the few hundred yards to his hotel. The case was very light. Back in his room, with the door locked, he opened it with the key he had received in the padded envelope. Inside, as agreed, were the Danish passport, the British passport, the British driving licence and a Eurocard/Mastercard – issued in
London – together with bundles of Danish kroner, two thousand in each, all in one hundred-and five hundred-kroner notes. Vuk unwrapped a couple of the bundles. It was all there. Kravtjov was a pro. He could, of course, still draw on his contacts from the old days, when the KGB operated over the whole of Central and Eastern Europe. The rapid growth of the Russian Mafia and its ability to function had much to do with its close links with the old regime’s security system and party
apparat
. Such were the subtle but influential workings of the old boys’ network.

The passports were relatively new but showed signs of normal wear and tear. He signed them in two different hands. Kravtjov had come up with good sound names: Carsten Petersen in the Danish passport and John Thatcher in the British one. It could be that Kravtjov still had access to forgery departments in Moscow, or perhaps he had been far-sighted enough to pocket a bundle of passports when the system collapsed? Or did the Russian Mafia have such enormous clout that it could in fact ask favours of the new Russian security service? Vuk knew that these two passports would be fine for travelling within the EU. Airport computer systems were always a problem, but he wasn’t planning on flying to Denmark anyway. Kravtjov had promised that they were clean and not reported missing, and Vuk had no choice but to trust him. With all boundaries within the EU now open, he was expecting any checks to be of the most cursory nature. Vuk didn’t like playing with too many blind cards, but he had nothing against taking a well-calculated risk.

Vuk stuffed his old rucksack into Kravtjov’s suitcase and returned to the Central Station. On the way there he threw the suitcase into a rubbish skip on a building site. After long and careful scrutiny of the railway timetable he bought a second-class single on the early morning train to Hamburg, paying with cash. This done, he settled down in his room to watch a football match on TV. Afterwards, he ran his six miles around the Tiergarten, then showered and went out to a restaurant where he ordered his usual steak and baked potato. He drank the lion’s share of a bottle of wine with his steak. He wanted to get a good night’s sleep. Back at the hotel he packed his old clothes, the leather jacket, trainers and most of the money into his new suitcase. Then he sat back in the armchair and watched CNN until the stream of news reports and endlessly repeated advertisements was just a blur and he felt that he could sleep.

He woke rested the next morning. He felt fighting fit, felt nothing could touch him, though he knew that would not make him any the less cautious. He did twenty-five quick push-ups before showering and putting on the pale-blue shirt, the navy suit and the red and purple patterned tie. He slipped his feet into a pair of new, black lace-up shoes and picked up his suitcase. He paid for the hotel room in cash with Deutschmarks and thanked the receptionist in English for a pleasant stay. He had enough marks to cover any last outgoings, so he wouldn’t need to exchange any dollars or Danish kroner.

Vuk hailed a taxi on the Ku’damm and took it to the Central Station where he settled himself in a café with a cup of coffee and the
Herald Tribune
until it was time for his train.

The rush hour was more or less over when the train pulled slowly out of Berlin, bound for Hamburg. Vuk had a compartment to himself. He gazed out of the window, watched the city give way to suburbs, then open country. There were building sites and construction cranes everywhere, and when the train ran alongside the autobahn he saw dense streams of traffic flowing in both directions. The old GDR was falling apart before his very eyes. In a few years the Wall would be nothing but a memory, and all other traces of a divided Germany would have been erased. Vuk remembered how, back in 1989, they had cried ‘We are one people’. He had been just a kid then, and like other young people he had regarded the collapse of the Eastern Bloc as a just punishment for the old men. Their regimes had fallen like so many houses of cards, and they had not lifted a finger. He still did not understand how the Soviet leaders could have given up without a fight. They had taken power by force, they hung on to it by dint of terror tactics and oppression, then willingly relinquished it. How come? He had no idea. He just didn’t get it. He had believed that the fall of the Wall heralded a new beginning. But that conviction had been short-lived. We are one people, they had cried in the East. So are we, had been the speedy response from the West when the collapse of the old order began to tug at the purse-strings of wealthy Western Europe, which had grown affluent at the other side’s expense. The people had brought about the revolution. But their new leaders had soon taken it for their own.

The German Federal Railway train had departed on the dot and arrived in Hamburg bang on time. Vuk paid cash again for a single to Århus on the
new German regional service. He just had time to eat a hotdog and buy a couple of German newspapers before the train left for Denmark at 12.30 pm. It was the middle of the week, so there weren’t very many people on the train: a German businessman and a young Danish couple talking softly to one another; a good-looking woman with her teenage son, who was playing his Walkman so loudly that the hiss of it penetrated the railway carriage. She asked him in Danish to turn it down: it was bad for his ears. He grumbled but did as she asked. Vuk sat behind his newspaper, listening to the lilt of the Danish. The German ticket inspector checked his ticket without looking at him twice. His eyes were on the ticket, not the man. Vuk thanked him with a
danke
and put down his paper. The flat north-German countryside slipped past the window. The houses looked well kept, the fields had been harvested, and the sky was clear over the woods in the background. He was filled with a sense of expectation, a feeling of being on holiday, of rediscovering a normality that he had left behind long ago. Did he not also feel a kind of inverted homesickness? Because, although the country that lay ahead was not his native land, it was a country which he had once found it natural to called home. Home sweet home:
hyggeligt hjemme
– the Danish words ran through his mind, strange and yet so familiar.