Adrian Magson - Retribution

Top of the pile was the bad news; a report from Archie Lubeszki, Deane’s field security officer in Pristina. It confirmed that the rumours about a young girl murdered in 1999 were gathering pace, and with enough detail to make them worrying. She was found, it was being claimed, lying in long grass immediately adjacent to a UN container compound near Mitrovica. She had gone missing one night, according to her young brother, while looking for food inside the compound. He had been found wandering, traumatized and sick, along a nearby mountain track the following day. Some hours later, a local woman helping with the search had stumbled across the girl’s body right outside the perimeter fence. According to locals, a doctor from Medecins Sans Frontieres had made an examination, and claimed she had been raped then suffocated, her breathing cut off by the pressure of a thumb or forefinger pinching her windpipe.

She was just fourteen.

The news had been slow in emerging at the time due to a spate of ethnic killings, and the absence of any clear infrastructure to investigate the reports. Nobody had been able to trace the doctor who had made the initial examination, and Medecins Sans Frontieres had no records of a medic operating in that immediate area, although they couldn’t discount the possibility.

The story had gradually faded and died, due possibly to the lack of anyone able to keep it alive. Rape, in any case, for them was the final insult in a land which had seen too many horrors inflicted in the name of religious cleansing. Why defile her further by broadcasting to the world the details of her ignominious end?

Eventually, however, on the heels of UN Special Envoy Anton Kleeman’s announcement that the man responsible would be punished, the story had finally been teased out by the relentless probing of reporters desperate for some kind of truth. What they had not included, however, was a verbal addendum by Lubeszki over a scrambled telephone line ten minutes ago.

‘I’ve talked to a woman who knew the girl,’ Lubeszki had said, during a follow-up phone call. He sounded tired and angry, the distortion on the line unable to conceal the emotion he was feeling. ‘When they found her, she’d been gagged to stop her crying out.’

‘Gagged how?’

‘The woman who found her says she’d had some cloth jammed into her mouth. Part of a UN beret.’

‘Give me strength.’ Deane felt a wave of despair. So it was true — they had something.

‘The killer must have tried to remove it,’ Lubeszki continued, ‘but the girl’s teeth had clamped around it and it tore off in her mouth. From the position of the body, it looks like she was dumped over from the inside.’

‘He threw her over?’ It was just as Harry Tate had suggested. He kicked a drawer shut in frustration. The last thing the UN needed was confirmation of this kind of news. Overstretched already, the agency was struggling to retain credibility in its day-to-day operations. It didn’t need the world to know that one of its number, chosen to give help to the needy, had sunk to the lowest of atrocities.

He thought about the discovery of a fragment of a beret at the scene of the killing in Venice Beach. It tied in with what Lubeszki was saying. But was it the same fragment? If so, who had it belonged to?

‘Do they still have the cloth?’ He almost didn’t want to ask the question.

‘No. It disappeared. When the translator pressed the woman, the shutters came down.’

‘Why didn’t the locals complain to the authorities when they found the girl?’

‘Maybe they did. It’s not easy getting anything out of these people. The translator asked about the brother of the dead girl, but he disappeared shortly afterwards. He was most likely taken by the Serbs.’

‘I hear you. Christ, what a mess.’ He sighed. ‘Are you ready for Kleeman’s visit?’

Lubeszki gave a disgruntled snort. ‘About the same as if my mother-in-law was coming to stay. Hasn’t someone told him this might not be a good idea right now?’

Deane didn’t want to get into that. Lubeszki was right, though; Special Envoy or not, Kleeman was poking his toe into a tender spot by returning to Kosovo. What they didn’t need was another high-profile desk-jockey turning up on a white charger promising the world just so he could score some media points — especially if it became known that he had been in the compound the night of the murder.

After telling Lubeszki he’d be in touch again, he called Bob Dosario of the FBI.

The special agent confirmed that the fragment of cloth found at the crime scene was on its way to be analysed at the LAPD forensics laboratory. ‘What are you looking for, exactly?’

‘Blood,’ said Deane. ‘Blood and saliva. .’

On second shift the following morning, in a ground-floor washroom of Terminal 1 at Los Angeles International Airport, Norm Perrell, the deputy shift superintendent, was cursing roundly and emptying overflowing trash cans. Two members of the cleaning staff had failed to turn up for work and he was having to fill in while a replacement was found. By Christ, he’d have something to say to them if they ever bothered to haul their asses in, the lazy sonzabitches!

He upended the last can and shook his head at the things people threw out when they visited the washrooms in LA International. A pair of boxers? And what looked like a bedroom slipper? Jesus. . why come to an airport to dump their crap?

He frowned as the last few items floated down into the reinforced garbage bag. Looked like a passport photo. He bent and retrieved it and saw it was indeed attached to a page from a torn passport. Further down was another page and the pasteboard cover. Hey — what kind of idiot throws away a passport?

Seconds later Norm was scuttling along the corridor towards the airport security office, his chest buzzing with excitement. He’d found a driver’s licence as well, and knew some of the security guys might be interested in this stuff. Could be from a mugging, of course, but who knew? The owner’s name was weird, though. Haxhi. Zef Haxhi. What kinda name was that? Sounded like a Klingon. Sure as hell wasn’t American, he’d bet his last paycheck on that . .

Harry was collecting his stuff together from the bathroom when the phone rang. He went through to the bedroom and picked it up.

It was Bob Dosario calling from FBI headquarters on Wilshire.

‘Don’t you ever sleep?’ Harry asked politely.

‘No. They hang me in a closet each night,’ Dosario muttered. ‘Looks like your man Kassim-stroke-Haxhi got out through LAX this morning.’

Harry swore silently. Still one step ahead of them. ‘Do we know the flight?’

‘Not yet, but we’re on it. A cleaning supervisor found a torn passport in a trash can this morning, in the name of Haxhi. A driver’s licence went with it, complete with photos. Both were good but false. It’ll take time to check all the passenger lists, but I’m putting extra people on it. Since we don’t know what name he’s using, we can’t tell which flight he took. I’ve got some of my team checking security cameras in case they can spot him.’

‘He might have stayed somewhere local last night. Could you get the photos shown around the hotels? I doubt he’d have wanted to risk hanging round the airport all night.’

‘We’re on to that too, but with the shift changeovers, it’s going to take time. It’s an odd thing, trashing the photos. He must know they could’ve been found. You think he’s had a change of face?’

Harry felt a flutter of certainty growing in him. What had been an unthinkable possibility the previous evening was now solidifying. It was as if the game was being played out to its end, and was about to spin off into another dimension. Now, with the discarding of Kassim’s Haxhi documents, there seemed no other reasonable option to consider. ‘I don’t think it’s that complicated. Kassim knows it doesn’t matter any more.’