Adrian Magson: Retribution

‘Damn,’ he breathed, ‘I’m off hunky men this week.’

‘That’s a relief.’ She leaned away from him. ‘You’re going somewhere, aren’t you?’ The widow of an army officer, she knew all about sudden absences and goodbyes and not asking where.

‘A few days. Week at most. Can you struggle on without me?’

She shrugged. ‘If I need company I can always hang around the gate at Wellington Barracks. They keep a spot especially for me whenever you’re away.’ She pulled him close and said softly, ‘Stay safe for me, Harry Tate, or I’ll be really cross.’

He nodded. ‘Always do.’ Their relationship was what she referred to jokingly as ‘occasional’, but they both knew it was a bit more than that, although neither wanted to say it. It worked fine as it was.

In Brussels, the smell of cooking woke Kassim and set his stomach growling. It was a reminder that he had not eaten for many hours. He knew he could not risk going for much longer without food, since the successful outcome of his mission depended on his strength as well as his skills. To compromise that by not eating would be unforgivable.

He was tucked into a shop doorway not far from the Midi station. The night had been chill and damp, but nothing he couldn’t cope with; he’d existed for weeks at a time in far worse conditions in the mountains of Afghanistan and elsewhere. He checked the money he’d taken from Orti’s wallet. He already had some, but it had been an opportunity to add to his reserves. He stood up and stretched the kinks out of his limbs, then walked until he found a backstreet cafe where he ordered a simple meal of lamb, rice and vegetables washed down with plain tea. He was one of several men, each ignoring the others, focussing on their food. Over his meal he checked the pocket binder for his next target. The address was just beyond the city centre and it would probably take no more than half an hour to walk there.

He put the binder away, retaining a mental image of the next man on his list.

Arne Broms. Another soldier.

High in the United Nations headquarters building overlooking First Avenue in New York, UN Special Envoy Anton Kleeman rocked back on his heels and bit down on a growing feeling of irritation. He was facing a group of select, influential media reporters and beginning to wish he had listened to his advisors. The briefing had been his idea, timed to set the pace for a series of meetings with key people in the permanent member states of the UN Security Council. He had been biding his time for long enough; in this world, if you didn’t embrace opportunity when it presented itself, you were fated to be just another name on a wall, soon ignored amid the masses. And if there was something Kleeman found distasteful, it was the idea of being ignored.

It was part of his plan to elevate his own position within the organization at a time when other envoys and special delegates were busy catching the eye of news channels and scoring points in the media and PR battle. His plan had been to brief on reports coming out of Africa about alleged atrocities by UN troops against women, and the older reports about brutalities in Kosovo which were currently making the news and growing day by day. Now he was beginning to wonder if this had been such a good idea. Kosovo’s grim past was still too vivid for many, especially with war crimes tribunals involving Serb and other warlords running their course. With any new allegations threatening to send the UN itself into a scandal-ridden spin, the occasion could have been better timed. And he’d forgotten how much of a squalid rabble these media wretches could be. Yet instinct told him there was no other way to hit the headlines.

‘Is it true, Mr Kleeman,’ opened a man from the Washington Post , ‘that not all the Kosovar refugees who have returned to their homeland are satisfied with the peacekeeping force out there — with KFOR? Isn’t this causing the UN some PR problems?’

Kleeman smiled to disguise his dismay, surprised that it had gone this way so soon. He’d expected to get a few of his own shots in first before things got to this stage. ‘I think you’ll find it’s called UNMIK now — the UN Mission in Kosovo,’ he said dismissively. ‘As you know, under UN mandate twelve forty-four, NATO-led forces entered Kosovo in June 1999 and-’

‘But isn’t that the problem?’ the man interrupted Kleeman’s flow. ‘In the minds of the refugees in the region, the two are indivisibly linked. The personnel come from the same countries in most cases.’

‘Well, that’s a difficult quest-’

‘What about the stories we’re hearing?’ A shrill voice cut across his words, and he felt his blood pressure rising. The voice belonged to Dorrie Henson from The Times , a regular pain in the ass of the UN and a confirmed radical. ‘Stories about alleged brutalities by UN-attached military personnel in Kosovo, going back several years?’

Kleeman felt a sudden tightness around his eyes as a buzz rose around the room, and glared at the woman. He had not been prepared for this. Henson smiled triumphantly back at him as her words unleashed a volley of questions on the subject, and he wondered if it were possible to get the damned woman banned from the building altogether. See how her editor liked those cookies. With luck she’d be out of a job within days and permanently out of his hair.

He held up an imperious hand and was about to speak when Karen Walters, a long-time aide, standing in his line of vision at the back of the room, shot him a warning look. It said quite clearly, don’t go there!

He pretended not to have seen her and held up a hand. He’d suddenly seen a way out of this dilemma; a way that would enhance his own reputation and standing and lay the matter to rest — at least, for now. It came from his early days in Wall Street, when he had used his father’s fortune to make an even bigger one. Back then, the general motto was, when your back’s to the wall, come out fighting.

The hubbub died down, and he addressed the woman from The Times. ‘ Mz Henson,’ he said with deliberate emphasis, his handsome face set in a smile, ‘I’m not sure where you get your information from, but there have been no confirmed “brutalities” by any KFOR personnel in Kosovo. The “rumours” as you so correctly call them, are unfounded and unsubstantiated, based on enmity towards the UN and NATO in general. There may have been some incidents by untrained NATO personnel, but-’

‘You don’t call bar-fights and the shooting dead of an unarmed civilian brutal?’ called another voice from the back of the room. ‘That was in Gornji Livoc.’

‘And the young men beaten up outside a bar in Lausa by so-called NATO Special Forces?’

‘What about the shooting of two medical workers by UN peacekeepers in Mitrovica?’

The volley of voices grew as the reporters sensed blood in the air, citing stories of serious behaviour by, among others, Russian, African, Pakistani and Polish troops, and a British soldier sent home in disgrace.

Karen Walters moved swiftly from her position at the back of the room, her arm raised in an attempt to draw attention away from Kleeman, who looked like a rabbit caught in the headlights. Suddenly Dorrie Henson’s voice cut through the room with the precision of a surgeon’s knife.

‘What about the rape and murder of a young Muslim girl by a KFOR soldier at a UN compound in 1999, Mr Special Envoy? That seems pretty darned brutal to me!’

For several seconds there was stunned silence. Then the room erupted in frantic questioning, some of it directed at Henson by press colleagues desperate to share what she knew.