Читать книгу Kara’s Game - Gordon Stevens - Страница 11

The unmarked police Audi, two men in the front and one in the rear, was parked where it was always parked at this time of night: near one of the cab ranks on the edge of the Gare du Midi. Sometime tonight they’d score; sometime in the next hours the man in the rear would slip out, arrange to buy some dope – what sort didn’t matter, but headquarters was heavy on crack at the moment – then they’d make the bust.

On the edge of the Gare du Nord, close to the predominantly immigrant quarter, the pimps and hookers went about their business.

On the other side of the city, in the haute de la ville, the Upper Town, the industrialists, the bankers, the diplomats and the Eurocrats attended their functions and passed the evening over cocktails and secret deals.

Brussels.

Eleven at night.

Rue Léopold, one of several named after the nineteenth-century Belgian king, appeared empty, and the night above was black. The road and pavements, with their occasional discreet but expensive boutiques, had just been swept, and the windows of the apartment blocks were curtained. In the past minutes snow had fallen – not heavily, but enough for the first white to have settled on the tarmac of the road and the grey of the pavements.

The lookout was sunk like a shadow in the recess of a doorway fifty metres down the road in the direction from which the car would approach.

The car turned up the street, its Mercedes engine a low rumble – driver and one other in the front, and a third man in the back. The man in the doorway tensed slightly and swept the street. The Mercedes turned right, into the car park below the apartments, the three men glancing round as they descended the ramp. The sound now was different, almost hollow, and the lighting was subdued. The lift was in the far corner, on the left. The driver swung in a circle so that when he stopped by it the Mercedes was facing out, towards his exit point. The door of the lift opened and the next two men appeared. The front passenger and the man in the rear seat left the car and stepped into the lift.

‘Secure,’ the first man whispered in the motorola. The chip of the set had been replaced, the frequency pre-set to one not used in Belgium.

The second Mercedes slipped out of the night and up the street – same model, same colour, same registration number.

Everyone played their games, Abu Sharaf had long known. The Israelis, with their snatch teams or platter bombs or rocket launchers opposite flats or suites where they knew their enemies were plotting against them. The British and the French and the Americans. Plus those who were supposed to be on one’s own side. Even the three men he would meet that night, though in the end they would agree. Because unless they had already decided to agree there would have been no meeting.

He left the car, stepped the two paces to the lift, and was whisked to the third floor.

The politician and the secret policeman were waiting, relaxed and comfortable in the soft luxury of the suite, both smiling and both smartly dressed Western-style. Only the holy man to come, Sharaf thought, but the holy men had kept the world waiting from the time the first man had thought of the first religion.

He shook their hands, accepted the sweet thick coffee an aide offered him, and sat down. The suite had been electronically swept for bugs, and when the meeting began the advisers and minders would leave the room.

‘He’ll be here soon.’ The secret policeman was in his early fifties, the same age as the politician but some ten years older than Sharaf. His suit was smartly cut, and the fold of the lids gave his eyes a slightly hooded appearance.

‘Insh’allah.’ Sharaf sat down. ‘God willing.’

The door opened and the holy man entered, the man Sharaf knew to be his closest adviser on his right, and his minder on his left. Two of the newcomers – the holy man and his adviser – were dressed traditionally, but the minder was wearing a suit.

The holy man was the same age as the politician and the secret policeman. He greeted them, nodded to the aide and minder to leave, then took his place in one of the chairs.

‘The world is once again at an interesting time and place.’ The holy man sat forward slightly and summed up the starting point of their previous discussions, the others allowing him the chairmanship, perhaps because it was his by right, perhaps because he represented the religious rather than the secular, and without the religious the secular which they represented could not develop, or not so easily.

Therefore they allowed him the moment: the politician who played the intrigues of the region with the experience of a juggler, the secret policeman who ruled it with a rod of fear, and the man whom the West would describe as the terrorist mastermind, the new Carlos, the new Abu Nidal.

Of course Sharaf had not always held such importance. Nor was his name generally known to the great public of the East and the West, though he was under no illusions that their intelligence services had him on their computers, and that when the time was right they would try to turn him, or take him out, depending on the secret dealings and hidden agendas of the Middle East. For that reason Sharaf was always careful, even when meeting those he considered his allies. Perhaps especially when meeting those who called themselves his friends.

‘The fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet empire … the agreement between Israel and the Palestinians … the Iran-Iraq conflict and the Gulf War.’

The holy man’s eyes were small and sharp.

‘The new situation in South Africa … the talk of peace in Northern Ireland … the decision by certain states to abandon a certain line of struggle.’

To cease support for what the West called terrorism.

So the world appeared to be at peace. Yet at the same time the world was closer to war than it had ever been.

He sat back and indicated with a wave of his right hand that perhaps it was the politician who would best lead the discussion from that point.

The politician talked for less than thirty seconds then passed the chairmanship to Sharaf. It was the way their meetings always progressed, wreathed in formalities and allusions, just as the smoke from their cigarettes was wreathed above the table.

‘The armed struggle has seen a number of developments over the past decades.’ Another couple of minutes and they would know whether they were in agreement, whether the forces they represented had concurred. ‘In the sixties and seventies the struggle was global. In the eighties it was confined, in the main, to the Middle East.’ Killings and kidnappings, and mainly against the West in the Lebanon. Excluding the Irish, of course, but the Irish were a separate concern anyway. ‘It was therefore agreed at our previous meetings that the time might now be approaching where we should prepare to make that struggle international again.’

He sat back.

The holy man stroked his beard, as if considering what had just been said. To his left the adviser waited, to his left the secret policeman said nothing. ‘So what are you suggesting?’ he asked at last.

‘The setting up of a new organization, its members recruited and trained in line with the new criteria of the present and future.’

Which we all understand, but we also understand we have to endure the formalities.

‘Why new members?’ It was the secret policeman. ‘Why new criteria?’

‘Because other people are already planning using old members.’ Bomb attacks in New York, the killing of Jews in Argentina and the bombing of Jewish targets in London. ‘But they’ll be using Muslims, so in future the West will be looking for Muslims. In future the West will be looking for people whom they think look and act like Muslims.’

‘And where will you find Muslims who don’t look and act in the manner the Great Satan thinks they should?’ It was the holy man.

‘And who have the same motivation of those who fought for us in the past?’ It was the politician.

‘Bosnia.’ Sharaf looked at each of them in turn. ‘Among the dispossessed who have been driven from their homes by ethnic cleansing. Among those who have lost everything and therefore have nothing more to lose and everything to fight for.’

‘And this is in motion?’

‘The plans are laid and the first steps taken.’

But that is all, because that was all I was required to do. Because it was agreed that each of us should fulfil his task before the plan could be finalized. Again it was wrapped in formality and politeness.

‘The religious leaders have agreed,’ the holy man told the meeting. Not all the religious leaders, he had no need to say, simply those who would support the plan anyway.

‘Our leaders as well.’ The politician did not specify which leaders.

‘My people are also prepared.’ The secret policeman played with his Rolex as if it was a set of worry beads.

‘Therefore we should proceed,’ the holy man resumed the chair. ‘Insh’allah,’ he added.

The politician leaned forward, lifted the handset of the telephone, punched the number, waited ten seconds, then spoke.

‘The transfer of funds is approved. Do it now.’

The monies already held on deposit, now about to be transferred electronically to the accounts specified in Switzerland.

He terminated the call and handed the telephone to Sharaf.

He should have anticipated it, Sharaf thought; should have planned for it. But perhaps, on the other hand, it was a symbol of the moment, a sealing of their trust in each other, the first step on the road ahead. Even though such a call was a security risk. Never link one thing to another, he insisted to his aides and operatives; never do or leave anything which might connect one part of one section to another.

He took the telephone and keyed the number in Istanbul.

‘You’re on the morning flight,’ he told Keefer.

When Wolfgang Keefer passed through immigration at Rome’s Leonardo da Vinci Airport five hours later, the passport he carried was in the name of Mulhardt. When he left on the Croatia Airlines flight to Split six hours after that, the passport he used was in the name of Lacroix. Contained in the false lining of the Zenith briefcase which was his only luggage, and which he hand-carried on both flights, was the range of press, political and military accreditation which he might need in the weeks he would spend in the war zone of Bosnia-Herzegovina.

It was the way he had led the past fourteen of his thirty-nine years.

Wolfgang Keefer was the second son of a nurse and a lathe operator from the former East German city of Leipzig. Neither at school nor in the Free German Youth had Keefer distinguished himself. It was only during his national service in the Frontier Troops, manning what the East called the Anti-Fascist Barrier and the West referred to as the Berlin Wall, that he had appeared to find a vocation and an inner drive. He had been decorated three times and promoted twice, graduating with distinction at the GMK training school before being recruited into the MfS, the Ministry for State Security, also known as the Stasi. At the MfS headquarters on Normannenstrasse, and in other MfS establishments throughout both East Germany and the other satellite states of the then Communist bloc, he had fulfilled the promise he had demonstrated in the Frontier Troops, before making his final transfer to the unit dealing with the training and support of those whom the East called freedom fighters and the West termed terrorists.

By the time the Berlin Wall fell in November 1989, he had attained the rank of colonel. On the actual night the Wall was breached he had been in the Beqa’a valley in the Lebanon; the actual moment he had heard the news he had been squatting at a camp fire, Sharaf at his side. In the weeks that followed, while many of his contemporaries were looking east to the KGB in Moscow, to the people whom they had called the Brothers, Keefer had transferred his loyalty. Not for reasons of ideology or religion, especially not from political commitment, but for the simple reason that this was the life he had grown to love, that that life was now finished in East Germany, and that if a man found a job he liked and at which he excelled, then he should stick with it.

He had returned to his old haunts, of course – except that the city he loved was now called simply Berlin. Had made contact with old friends and colleagues, especially the people he and his new masters might need in the future. Occasionally the men and women from the front line, but more often the technicians, with their specialist skills and equipment.

The 737 dropped out of the cloud and he saw the lights of the airport at Split. The land was grey and washed with snow, and the night had already settled. The terminal was low and long, and the Air Croatia planes parked in front were outnumbered by the helicopters and transports painted with the stark black initials of the United Nations.

Bergmann was waiting for him in the terminal, two Nikons on his shoulder, a false press ID tag round his neck, and the word PRESS on the sides, bonnet and roof of the dilapidated Range Rover outside. Standard appearance for standard photographer in a war zone. To the right a TV crew loaded their silver metal boxes into an armour-plated jeep.

‘Welcome to the war.’ Bergmann shook his hand, tightened the hood of his anorak against the cold, and led Keefer to the Range Rover. ‘Where you heading?’ he asked one of the TV crew. Sarejevo or Travnik, the man replied, possibly Vitez. His face was pinched, either with cold or apprehension. ‘Got some good stuff in Vitez couple of days ago,’ Bergmann told him. ‘We’re back up tomorrow.’

Stasi training was always the best, Keefer thought. Best covers in the world, best men. He slammed the door and Bergmann started the engine. As they left the airport two Sea King helicopters landed in the British army base five hundred yards away.

‘How is it up-country?’

‘Cold with the occasional hot spot.’ Bergmann laughed.

They skirted Split, the hills to their left, the islands of Brac and Hvar on their right already lost in the night, and the snow and a UN convoy in front of them. Everywhere – Zagreb and Split – there seemed to be UN and UNPROFOR. War’s business, Keefer had no need to remind himself.

‘Any hassles?’

‘Press are still getting some.’

‘So it’s better to go as UNPROFOR?’

Bergmann swerved to avoid a pothole. ‘Probably. That way also explains the communication set-up we’ll be carrying.’

‘Any friends around, any Brothers?’

‘Not that I’ve seen.’

The house was on the south side of Split, on the beach and looking west across the bay. The white long-wheelbase Toyota Landcruiser in the garage bore the markings and flags of the UN and UNPROFOR, and jerry cans of fuel, the satcom unit and the metal tins of self-heating food, plus other ration packs, were already loaded.

For an hour that evening, over stew and beer, and looking across the snow-flecked grey of the Adriatic, the two men ran through their itinerary and target areas. The map on the table was an HQ Britfor current situation map, dated the day before. The legend at the bottom showed the main supply routes, the international border of Bosnia-Herzegovina was marked in thick black, and areas of Serbian, Croatian and Muslim activity in red, black and green respectively.

‘So where do we start?’ Keefer asked, as he had asked the last time he had been here, when he and Bergmann had set up the safe house.

‘Any special requirements?’ Bergmann fetched two more beers from the fridge and placed them unopened on the table. ‘You name it, it’s there.’

‘Somewhere where the Muj are involved.’

Because recruitment in areas where the Mujihadeen were fighting would please those in the Middle East who controlled the political and financial purse strings.

‘In that case, Travnik.’ Bergmann indicated the town on the map. ‘There are some Muj in Zenica, but most of them are near Travnik.’