Specter (22 page)

“What then, Boss?” Papagos asked.

“What's his word for ‘Serbian'?”

“Srpska.”

The prisoner jumped at that word as though he'd been jabbed. Eyes wide, he looked back and forth, from one SEAL's face to another.

“Tell him we know he's Srpska.”

Stepano's words prompted another torrent from Vlachos, who was watching the cigarette lighter again as though his life depended on his fixed concentration. When he stopped talking, Stepano appeared to be considering what he'd said. Then he flicked his hand, snapping the lighter shut. The prisoner slumped back in the chair, eyes closed, sweat beading his forehead.

“I think you have found something, Lieutenant,” Stepano said. “Something important. Our friend here is not EMA, but he has been working closely with EMA cells in both Mace-donias for a long time. As you guessed, he is Serbian ... a Bosnian Serb, actually. His real name is Vlacovic, not Greek Vlachos.”

“How the hell did you know
that
, L-T?” Roselli asked.

“Our L-T's a mind reader,” Sterling said.

“Nope. It was just a guess, but an educated one. Earlier, when we were talking to Nikki? She said that Vlachos called Muslims ‘Turks' and indicated that he didn't care much for them. That sounded like something a Bosnian Serb would say, not a Macedonia Slav who's spent most of his life hating Serbs.”

“That's stretching things a bit, ain't it, Skipper?” Papagos asked. “Lots of folks in this part of the world don't like Muslims. Especially Greeks. They hate the Turks.”

“Exactly. Which means they tend to identify Turks specifically with Turkey nowadays, not with all Muslims. At least, that was my read on it. And when Stepano said he'd started speaking Serbo-Croatian ...” He shrugged.

Stepano nodded. “You guess right, sir. He is a Serb. Says he's a
potpukovnik
—that's lieutenant colonel—in Yugoslav Army.”

“What the hell interest does Serbia have in Kingston?” Roselli asked.

“And why are the Serbs helping an outfit dedicated to Macedonia unity?” Sterling added. “I thought the Macedonians wanted rid of them.”

“Politics and strange bedfellows, Jaybird,” Murdock said, folding his arms. “Actually, now that I think about it ...”

“Whatcha thinking, Skipper?”

“Another guess, Nick.” But Murdock was excited now. He was right. He
had
to be. “Okay. Here's the way I see it. The EMA has been working against Greece for some time now. They have independence for northern Macedonia. What they want now is to shake Greek Macedonia free from Greece. Right?”

“Affirmative,” Roselli said. “You're thinking the EMA is trying to make trouble between the U.S. and Greece.”

“That's part of it. More than that, though, what do you think we would do once we found out that our congresswoman's flight was hijacked to Skopje?”

“Hell,” Sterling said. “Delta Force would go in and kick ass.”

“Exactly. Whose ass?”

“Christ!” Papagos said. “The EMA isn't that large. They must have most of their best people guarding the aircraft!”

“Delta Force goes into Skopje. Typical aircraft hostage rescue, just like Entebbe. The EMA never knows what hits them and probably loses every shooter guarding the hostages. Delta also gets enough intel from prisoners or from captured records or from debriefs of the hostages that they're able to nail all or most of the EMA's top people, probably within a few months. Hell, Serbian intelligence might even lend a hand, pass on a few files, a few names, whatever is necessary.”

“And when the dust settles, there is no more United Macedonian Struggle,” Stepano said.

“Sheesh,” Roselli said. “That's twisted!”

“Ever heard of Byzantine politics, Razor?” Papagos asked. “Welcome to the land that spawned it.”

“Oh, it gets even twistier, I imagine,” Murdock continued. “Imagine Delta's surprise when they take down that aircraft and find that Ms. Kingston and her staff aren't there? There are recriminations. There's that trouble between Washington and Athens you mentioned, Razor. We find out the hijackers were infiltrators in the elite DEA. Sloppy, sloppy. And after that ... I wonder what would have been next.” He eyed Vlachos speculatively. “Maybe the Serbians holding Kingston at this castle threaten to kill the hostages one by one unless we abandon our support for Macedonia? That seems kind of blunt. I doubt they'd be quite that crude. Maybe instead they play it real cute and ‘find' Kingston and her staff. They could claim they pulled off the hostage rescue of the century. That would make our efforts look pretty dumb and encourage us not to meddle in Balkan politics. Maybe they would claim we owed them a big one, and win some concessions from us in Bosnia or in their unresolved claims to Macedonia at the UN. Or maybe they just figure it would make us look bad and them look good to the world community at large, a colossal public-relations ploy.”

“I like the double-cross aspect,” Papagos said. “The Serbs get what they want from us, while we wipe out the EMA for them and take the heat from the Greeks. Slick.”

“Wait a minute,” Jaybird said. “All of that assumes that we found out enough to be able to launch an assault on the Skopje airfield in the first place. They couldn't know we'd pick up enough intel to make a hostage rescue even a possibility.”

“Sure they would,” Murdock said cheerfully. “After Solomos and the DEA finally got around to picking up Eleni Trahanatzis and working him over in one of their basement cells.”

“Fuck ... me,” Roselli said, the words soft.

“Why else would Trahanatzis's bank account be so obvious?” Murdock asked. “Kind of stupid, putting all that money in an account where Greek intelligence would spot it right off. I imagine Vlachos here, or Vlacovic, or whatever the hell his name is, has been playing Trahanatzis like a Stradivarius, setting him up for the fall. Solomos probably got the word from someone higher up: ‘Hands off until Vlachos is out of the way.' He only moved tonight because he thought we were going to screw things up.”

“So once Vlachos is out of the way, Solomos and his Keystone Cops move in,” Sterling said. “They take Trahanatzis apart a piece at a time until he tells them that the EMA is holding the American congressperson at Skopje. They pass that to Delta, and Delta moves in. Yeah, it fits. God help me, it fits!”

“You know, this is a pretty big, pretty complicated plan,” Roselli said. He grabbed Vlachos by his hair and pulled his head back. “I don't think lover-boy here came up with it on his own, do you?”

“Ask him who he's working for,” Murdock said.

Stepano barked a question. The prisoner sagged farther down against the ropes. Once he'd been broken, all of the fight appeared to have drained from him.

“Da,
” the man said. “
Brigadni Djeneral
Vuk Mihajlovic.”

“Well, well,” Roselli said. “Our friend from TV.”

“Ask him how far the JNA is involved in this,” Murdock said. “I want to know just what we're up against, and you can tell him that if he doesn't tell us the precise truth, he can kiss his balls good-bye.”

The added threat didn't seem to make much of an impression. Vlachos's reply was a barely intelligible mumble.

“He says there are some Serb ‘volunteers' helping the EMA. Sounds like ten or twelve shooters, max, guarding the plane at Skopje, some army regulars, some EMA freedom fighters. That castle on lake used to be some kind of a tourist attraction, but it's been closed for quite a while. Even the caretakers are gone. He's not sure how many men are up there, but he thinks it's supposed to be ten, maybe twenty, all regular JNA.”

“You know,” Roselli said, “Mihajlovic might be running things on the Serb side of the border, but he wouldn't have any pull with the Greeks. We must have two higher-ups, Mihajlovic to handle the Serbs, and somebody else with the Greeks . . . someone who helped plant those EMA infiltrators in the Dimona, someone to protect this bastard until they're ready to sacrifice Trahanatzis. Who would that be anyway?”

“I don't know,” Murdock said. “I doubt that this guy knows. Frankly, that's one for the Greeks to worry about. We can pass all of this on to them, but our problem is finding Ms. Kingston.”

They questioned Vlachos for another hour, checking answers, digging for inconsistencies, looking for signs that he might be lying about anything, even the smallest detail. Toward the end of the session, he became stubborn again, refusing to say more. Stepano flicked the lighter into flame, spat a Slavic curse, and dropped his hand toward Vlachos's groin.

Vlachos burst into another flood of begging, pleading, desperately ingratiating words as tears streamed down his face. By the time he was through answering the last of the SEALs' questions, Murdock was certain that they'd gotten everything out of him that there was to get.

“God, Stepano,” Murdock said quietly after the big SEAL again closed the lighter. “I'm glad you're on our side.”

“In this land,” Stepano said quietly, “so very much depends on a man's ... manliness. Like the
machismo
of Latin America. I ... did not want to have to threaten him like that ...”

“Would you have set him on fire?” Roselli asked. “No, don't answer that, Steponit. I don't think I want to know.”

“There were moments,” Stepano said, staring at the cigarette lighter still clutched in his hand, “when I thought I might.
Bog! Mi pomotchi!
... ”

Tears were running down his face, as well as that of the prisoner. Stepano was trembling, shaking as his rigidly held inner control began to slip. His fists clenched, the muscles in his arms and back bulging as he struggled with what he'd just done.

God, what did Stepano just put himself through?
Murdock wondered. He slipped an arm around the Serb's shoulders and squeezed. “It's okay, Stepano. You did good. We got what we needed, right?”

“Y-yes. But I
hate
this. . . .”

“Me too, my friend.”

“This guy,” Roselli said, slapping the back of Vlachos's head, “is a thorough-going bastard. Don't worry yourself over a scumbag like him.”

“Believe me, Steponit,” Papagos said. “What you did to him tonight is
nothing
compared to what the government security forces would have done. He got off light.”

“Greek security'll still get a crack at him,” Murdock said.

“We're turning him over to them?” Sterling asked, nodding toward the sobbing, utterly broken man still tied to the chair.

“We can't take him with us,” Murdock decided. “We'll leave him tied up and gagged just like he is, and put out a do-not-disturb sign on the door. We can telephone Solomos from the consulate and tell him where he can come pick him up.”

“The consulate?” Roselli asked.

“I have a feeling they'll be able to put us in touch with Captain Beasley,” Murdock said. “And we're going to need Delta's help for this one.”

“Not to mention a good lawyer,” Sterling said. “I'm not sure Solomos is going to let us out of the country after the way we put his tits through the ringer at the waterfront.”

“Well,” Murdock said, “some of what we picked up here tonight might serve as a peace offering. Look at it this way. We got the information without Solomos's interrogators having to mop up all that blood in their basement. Nice and neat. And if he's smart, he can use it to find the Greek Mr. Big in this plot.”

“Shit,” Roselli said. “What if Solomos is part of it?”

“I don't think he's
that
smart, Razor. Come on. Let's get our shit together and get the hell out of Dodge.”

Minutes later, as they stepped out of the room, Papagos leaned back in and barked something at Vlachos in Greek. Murdock heard only the muffled groan of a reply.

“What'd you tell him?” Murdock asked.

“
Apagoretai to kapeisma,
” Papagos said, grinning wickedly. “That's ‘No smoking.' Until somebody comes in and cleans him up, smoking just might be hazardous to his sex life.”

The structure was small as Ottoman fortresses went, but it offered a commanding view of the lake from its cliff-side eyrie. Once it had protected a mountain road winding up through the Plachenska Mountains from the rug-making center at Korcë to the crossroads town of Uskup, later known as Skopje, 140 kilometers to the north.

That road had been closed for a long time now. The Albanian border lay just eighteen kilometers south at the tiny village of Ljubanista, and that tiny country had been shut off from the rest of the world since the end of World War II.

The lake itself was well known to geologists as the deepest in Europe, one of the oldest lakes in the world. At an altitude of 695 meters, nestled into the forested landscape between the Galicica Mountains to the east and the southern arm of the Jablanica Mountains to the west, Lake Ohrid itself formed part of the border between Albania and The Former Yugoslav Macedonia. Approximately a third of the lake, the southwest corner from just south of Ljubanista to the border crossing at Cafasan, belonged to Albania.

As his car wound south past the town of Gorica on a narrow and poorly maintained road hugging the sheer, forested cliffs rising from the lake,
Brigadni Djeneral
Vuk Mihajlovic reflected that a more remote and private spot could scarcely be imagined. Struga Airport—which included a military air base, of course—offered access, but this narrow road and the forbidding terrain above and below it guaranteed the privacy of the force now holding Gorazamak Fortress. In recent years, the city of Ohrid had become something of a tourist center for this corner of Macedonia, and Gorazamak was one of some thirty so-called “cultural monuments” in the region. With civil war in Yugoslavia, however, and with the rise both of local terror groups like the EMA and of the threat of Serb-Yugoslav intervention in a state that clearly could not survive on its own, the tourists had vanished, taking their foreign currency elsewhere. So sharp had the economic collapse of the past couple of years been that many of the villages in the area were deserted now.