Mark Burnell - Gemini

They drove south-west in Mark’s fifteen-year-old slate grey Saab, reaching the Saracen Arms, a fifteenth-century manor house with a twenty-first-century interior.

Saturday was hot and still. They climbed at Uphill Quarry, a Site of Special Scientific Interest on account of its rare flora. A westerly crag set beneath a village church and a graveyard, Uphill’s challenges were technical rather than strength-orientated. Mark climbed smoothly, but Stephanie felt heavy-limbed and was frustrated to be stumped by A Lesser Evil on the Great Yellow Wall. Mark completed The Jimi Hendrix Experience – the route had recently been bolted – and then both of them completed Graveyard Gate, the arête furthest to the right of the Pedestal Wall.

In the evening they soaked for an hour in the giant freestanding bath in their bathroom, then ordered room service. They ate looking out to sea, as the bloody sun set. They drank a bottle of Mercurey and Stephanie expected they would make love. Instead, somehow, they fell asleep without either of them noticing. When Stephanie awoke she was face down on the bed, cocooned in a white dressing-gown, Mark beside her, snoring and sunburnt.

Sunday was hotter but with a breeze. They drove to Brean Down, a limestone peninsula protruding into the Bristol Channel, not far from Uphill Quarry. Boulder Cove was a five-minute walk across the beach from the car park. They warmed up on Coral Sea and then proceeded up Achtung Torpedo, through the face’s black bulge, before moving on to Chulilla, Casino Royale and Root of Inequity. Stephanie climbed effortlessly, the clumsiness of Saturday falling away from her as lightly as sweat. Mark finished with Anti-Missile Missile, a girdle traverse.

From Brean Down they drove straight back to London, simultaneously spent and energized. They were sitting in a traffic jam on the M4, not far from Heathrow, when Stephanie said, ‘I might have a new job lined up.’

‘Oh yeah?’

‘It might be longer term than usual.’

‘Longer than Uzbekistan?’

At three weeks, the journey from Ostend to Marrakech had been her longest contract since she’d started seeing Mark by more than a fortnight. Usually she was only away for two or three days. That made the deception a lot easier.

‘Could be. I don’t know yet.’

‘Where?’

‘I’m not sure.’

‘You don’t sound very happy about it.’

‘Well, to be honest, I’m considering a change of career.’

He gave her a quick glance. ‘Really?’

‘After this job, yes. Maybe.’

‘How long have you been thinking about this?’

‘Not long. That’s why I haven’t mentioned it.’

‘What will you do instead?’

Stephanie smiled. ‘That’s the good part. I have no idea.’

Magenta House was two different buildings that had been merged laterally. The building that overlooked Victoria Embankment Gardens had been erected by a wealthy sugar trader who had insisted on a large cellar. When Stephanie had first come to Magenta House the cellar had still housed wines, brandies, damp and dirt. It had been a smaller organization, then. No less venal, but more personal, it had been Alexander’s private fiefdom. Now it was growing and Alexander was more of an anonymous corporate chairman, while the wines in the cellar had made way for an expanded intelligence section.

The staircase had been removed. Section 3 could only be accessed by a lift, which required security clearance on entry and exit. Rosie led her through the main cellar, which was now an open-plan department with state-of-the-art work stations for its permanent staff of five, and into a vaulted sub-cellar made of brick. The original wooden doors had been replaced by sliding glass.

Stephanie sat at a swivel chair in front of a keyboard and three flat screens. ‘Have you seen any of this material?’

‘Just the basics,’ Rosie said. ‘It’s not pretty. I’ll leave you to it.’

The door whispered shut and Stephanie was cocooned in soundproofed silence. She stroked the keyboard and the central screen came to life. She typed in her security code, MARKET-EAST-1-1-6-4-R-P, and the other two screens illuminated. The one on her right subdivided into thirty-six boxed images, the one to her left into sixteen boxes containing text headlines. She started with a general profile.

Milan Savic was an only child. His father, Borisav, left home when Milan was six. A year later his mother committed suicide. Thereafter he lived with his maternal grandparents in Belgrade. A teenage thug, then a black-marketeer, by 1989 Savic was well known to the police in the Yugoslav capital, not only for his criminal activity, but also for the generous bribes he paid to them.

After January 1989 there was a gap in the files. A two-year blackout. When it was over, early in 1991, Savic was running a paramilitary unit in Croatia. The file claimed that in conjunction with the SDB, the Serb secret police, Savic was instrumental in preparing Serb communities within Croatia for insurrection. These activities were coordinated by Colonel Ratko Mladic, commander of the Knin garrison. Despite this Savic remained under the direct control of Franko Simatovic, known to everyone as Frenki, and Radovan Stojicic, known as Badza, numbers two and three at the SDB.

Frenki and Badza – pronounced Badger – were familiar names to her. They’d both known Zeljko Raznatovic, also known as Arkan. As Petra, Stephanie had known Arkan too, if only for a moment. On 15 January 2000 both of them had been in the lobby of the Hotel Inter-Continental in Belgrade. So had Dragica Maric. But Stephanie had only discovered that later, inside the derelict Somerset Hotel on West 54th Street, New York. It had been raining, she remembered, the downpour drowning the sound of Manhattan’s traffic. That was when Dragica Maric had told her that she was there too, watching, as Arkan walked towards Petra Reuter, unaware.

Arkan had founded the Serbian Volunteer Guard, later known as the Tigers, just as Savic had founded Inter Milan, his Internationals, a group of outsiders, hungry for violence and money. Between Arkan and Savic existed Frenki and Badza, on behalf of the SDB.

At first Savic worked in areas of the Krajina, stirring the ghosts of the Second World War, resurrecting the spectre of the dreaded fascist Ustashas. Arkan was doing similar work, as well as making arrangements to arm the local Serb population. Once the Serb Autonomous Region – the SAR – had been set up in the Krajina, Savic’s unit was instrumental in purging it of non-Serbs. This formed a behavioural template that was to last for eight years. In Croatia and Bosnia, then Kosovo, villages were attacked, cattle slaughtered, crops burnt, houses looted, innocents brutalized, then murdered.

From the screen to her left she picked another title: Inter Milan. There were photographs and brief biographies. She scanned them.

Savic’s right-hand man within Inter Milan was Vojislav Brankovic. His name was one of the nine on the list that Alexander had shown her. A native of the Krajina, Brankovic came from the small town of Titova Korenica, not far from the beautiful Plitvica National Park in Croatia. The son of a baker, he’d done military service with the JNA, the Yugoslav National Army, before returning home. In early 1991, when Savic went to the Krajina, Brankovic was apparently contented, working in the family business, living with his parents, surrounded by friends from childhood. His girlfriend, Maria, was a beautiful Croat whose parents lived in a house four doors away. The file did not disclose how Brankovic had been recruited by Savic. It only documented those activities accredited to him.

Brankovic was known as the Spoon because he wore a JNA army-issue canteen spoon on a chain around his neck for good luck. There was a picture to prove it, Brankovic in a tight-fitting olive T-shirt, the battered teaspoon worn like a set of dog-tags. He had a broad, agricultural face, a fuzz of fair hair, pale skin and a physique that radiated power through scale rather than menace. Here was a chopper of trees, Stephanie felt, rather than a baker of bread. Along with Savic, Brankovic had been one of those allegedly killed by the KLA outside Pristina on 13 February 1999.