Gemini

‘It doesn’t really matter what you think.’

He pressed a button on the console in front of him. The overhead lights dimmed and the wall-screen to her left flickered to life.

Alexander said, ‘Our arrangement has always been a hideous thing, I’m sure you’ll agree. Then again, we’re hideous people. Ever since New York, you and I have coexisted under the terms of an uneasy truce. As you know, the contract on Komarov was never rescinded. It was merely suspended. Consequently, we left our file on him open, amending it from time to time, when S3 came into possession of relevant material. Such as this …’

An unfamiliar black-and-white face formed on the wall: puffy cheeks, clipped hair, a neat goatee beard, rectangular glasses.

‘This is David Pearson. One of ours, Section 5, Support. In January, under S3 guidance, he went to Turkmenistan to make preparations for an Ether Division contract on Yuri Paskin, a Russian smuggler whose network is particularly strong through Central Asia. For the right fee Paskin will transport anything. Guns, drugs, prostitutes. Or Islamic terrorists. Out of Afghanistan, for instance. Which was what brought him to our attention and earned him a well-deserved contract. Based in Ashgabat, he runs a network that stretches in the east from Pakistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan to the western shore of the Caspian Sea. And from Iran and Afghanistan in the south, up through Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan into Russia in the north. In the international scheme of things Paskin’s a nobody. Regionally he’s a giant. Which was why I took the decision to retire him discreetly, rather than the blunter approach.’

‘You mean, someone like me.’

‘Precisely. Anyway, Pearson went to Ashgabat. Paskin’s a heavy smoker and drinker – not to mention casual cocaine user – so we’d decided an induced heart attack would be best. Nobody who knew him would have been surprised. We had an Ether Division unit standing by in Baku, ready to cross the Caspian. But at the last minute Paskin was tipped off. He fled to Irkutsk, and Pearson was shot twice in the head in his room at the Hotel Oktyabrskaya. That crucial piece of information came from Komarov.’

Don’t say a word. Not now.

Alexander looked strangely weary, almost resigned. ‘I’ll be frank with you, Stephanie: in the past I’ve activated contracts for less, and I make no apology for it. My choices are based on hard, factual analysis. It can’t be any other way. Which is why Komarov should be dead. Twice, in fact. Once in New York, and once for Pearson.’

‘Killing him for Pearson would be revenge. That’s emotional.’

‘Not true. Revenge is an instrument. It sends a message: kill one of ours and we’ll kill one of yours. Take my word for it, as a policy it works.’

She opened her mouth to speak but he raised his hand to silence her. In the past she would have ignored such a gesture. But not now.

Alexander said, ‘I’m considering closing the file on Komarov.’

For a moment, she didn’t understand. Closing the file – it sounded terminal. But it wasn’t. On the contrary. Like a Caesar, Alexander was granting life. Gradually Stephanie realized what was happening. His tone made sense, the anecdote made sense: it was the carrot and the stick. And so far it had all been carrot.

She chose to probe a little. ‘If that’s true, there’s no reason for me to stay. Not under the terms of our agreement.’

‘I said “considering”. I didn’t say it was done.’

A succession of images filled the screen. Komarov was coming out of the Turkmenistan Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Magtumguly Prospekt. The date, 5 January, the time, 17:43. Next he was with a shorter man. They were only visible from the shoulders up, their bodies blocked by a black Mercedes. The caption read: Y. Paskin and K. Komarov outside Ak-Altyn Plaza Hotel, 7 January, 19:57. There were two more shots of Komarov in Ashgabat, one walking past the Azadi mosque, the other getting out of a dusty Toyota outside the Russian Embassy on Saparamurat Turkmenbashi Prospekt. The final image of the sequence saw both men either side of a stunning blonde in a sable coat. K. Komarov, L. Ivanova and Y. Paskin, leaving the Lancaster hotel, rue de Berri, Paris, 19 March, 17:08.

‘Technically you’re right, of course,’ Alexander was saying. ‘Without the threat to Komarov, what’s to keep you here?’

Mark filled her mind. ‘I’m sure you could find something.’

‘I’m sure I could. But I’m not inclined to. In fact, quite the opposite. I’m inclined to let you leave Magenta House.’

She wasn’t sure she’d heard correctly. ‘Leave?’

‘That’s right.’

There would be a condition. ‘But?’

‘But first, Savic’

‘That’s it? Then I walk?’

‘Yes.’

‘And the threat to Komarov is lifted?’

‘After Savic, yes.’

‘What aren’t you telling me?’

‘I don’t want you to kill Savic. I want you to get close to him.’

‘Why?’

‘Because of this.’

From his folder he took a crumpled piece of paper and pushed it across the table. Stephanie had to get up to retrieve it. She sat back down and smoothed the creases with her palm.

The paper had been torn from a notebook. Some of the blue ink had run. There were two dark splashes on the top left-hand corner. It was a list. There were nine names before the rip, which severed the tenth. Six of the names appeared to be from the Balkans. The other three were French, English and German.

‘Recovered by Pearson three days before he died.’

‘What is it?’

‘Before his death in Kosovo, Savic was rumoured to be running an exit pipeline for war criminals. Four of the names on that list have International War Crimes Tribunal declared indictments against them, two have sealed indictments against them and the other two are on the third list. None of them have been seen since 1999.’

‘Savic spirited them away?’

‘It’s possible. One thing’s for certain: they’re not on this list by coincidence.’

‘What am I supposed to do?’

‘Locate Savic and find out if this so-called pipeline ever really existed.’

‘Savic is definitely alive, then?’

‘Yes.’

‘Where is he now?’

‘The Far East. We’re still collating. You’ll be fully briefed when we’re ready.’

‘Why me?’

‘Because you have a way in.’

‘Marrakech?’

‘Correct. You were looking for Mostovoi. They know each other. You can make that work to your advantage.’

Stephanie shook her head. ‘This isn’t what I do. You know that. I’m S7, an in-and-out girl. This is something for S3.’

Section 3 was the intelligence section. Section 7 was Operations (Primary), one of two assassination sections. In total, Magenta House had ten sections, including Control, Archive, Resources, Support, Finance, Security (Internal), Security (External), Operations (Invisible).

‘S3 is fully stretched supporting the Ether Division. Besides, this will require an external presence.’

‘There must be somebody else.’

Still staring at her, Alexander said, ‘I’m not asking you.’

The carrot and the stick – it didn’t matter which Alexander used. In the end they came to the same thing. A choice with no alternatives.

I don’t bother picking the fight. In the past I would have. And Alexander would have expected me to. But we’re beyond that now. These days I know what I am and I don’t bother to deny it. I’ve accepted myself. I’m a professional woman of twenty-nine, trying to balance my work with my private life. On the Underground, in the supermarket, at home or in the office, most of my concerns are the same as everyone else’s. It’s only the nature of my work that marks me out.

Upstairs, on the ground floor, I run into Rosie Chaudhuri. I haven’t seen her since she came to Maclise Road after Marrakech. The fact that we’re friends is strange because we’re so different. She truly believes in Magenta House. She heads S10, Operations (Invisible), the newest section, which was established after the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001. S10 leaves no traces. Its victims die from natural causes, or accidents, or they simply vanish, ensuring they don’t become martyrs. Initially it only targeted Islamic extremists. Not a politically correct remit, to be sure, but then Magenta House has never been too concerned with political correctness. Now S10 targets anyone who merits their talents. Among Magenta House staff, S10 is always referred to as the Ether Division.

‘Hey, Steph. I didn’t know you were due in today.’

‘Nor did I.’

‘Something new?’

‘He wants me to chase a ghost.’

‘Savic?’

‘You knew?’

‘He mentioned it. I wasn’t sure how far he‘d take it.’

‘Apparently your lot are soaking up everyone in S3.’

‘You don’t sound thrilled.’

‘I feel like a three-star Michelin chef who’s been asked to scrub dishes.’

We take the lift to the top floor to Rosie’s new office with its view of the Adelphi Building. When I was first recruited Rosie was a member of the support staff with limited security clearance. It was her talent for analysis that won her promotion. With promotion came full clearance. I’ve never discovered Rosie’s flaw, but I know there is one. Somewhere, lurking in a file, she has a weakness that’s been documented. We all do. Magenta House insist upon it. Personally I have too many to count so it’s never bothered me the way it bothers others. Rosie has never mentioned hers to me. It is, perhaps, the only taboo subject between us.

In her early thirties, Rosie could be the picture of a successful modern woman. Before she started up S10 she spent a spell in S7 with me. That was when she lost weight and toned up. Like me, she was reincarnated.

She moves behind her kidney-shaped desk and settles into her Herman Miller chair. ‘What kind of tea would you like?’

‘Green, if you have it.’

She pushes a button on the phone base. ‘Adam, two teas, when you‘re ready. One green, one lemon and ginger.’

‘What do you know about Savic?’

‘Not much. He hasn’t strayed across my desk. But I’ve heard the rumours, naturally. There’ve been alleged sightings of him in Germany, Belgium and Holland. Some say he runs a chain of call-girls in Prague and Budapest.’

‘How original.’

‘Others say he’s gun-running down to Maputo. Or was it Harare?’

‘That sounds more like Mostovoi’s line of work.’

‘There have been reports of him in Pyongyang, Osaka and Shanghai.’

‘How long can it be before he’s spotted working with Elvis in a fish-and-chip shop in Scarborough? Anything concrete?’

‘Not until you landed Lars Andersen. By the way, I’m sorry about S3. I’ll get somebody to put some stuff together for you. Give me a couple of days.’

‘Thanks.’

‘How’s Mark?’

‘He’s well. We’re starting to plan a big climbing trip for next summer.’

‘Where?’

‘El Capitan.’

‘Never heard of it.’

‘It’s in California. What about you? How was your date with that architect? You never said. Did he have any designs on you?’

Rosie winces. ‘Oh Steph, that’s really lame. Even for you.’

‘Couldn’t resist it.’

‘Put it this way. He made me go halves at dinner and then wanted to go the whole way afterwards.’

I laugh loudly. As gorgeous as she is, Rosie has little luck with men. I suspect it’s because she intimidates most of them. She wants to be dazzled and so assumes they do too. If she was more like me she’d understand that most men don’t want a competitor in a woman, or even an equal.

‘Are you taking precautions?’ she asks me.

‘God, you sound like my mother.’

‘You know what I mean.’

I tell her I am. The door opens and Adam, Rosie’s assistant, enters the room carrying two steaming mugs. He’s older than she is, in his mid-forties, perhaps. Stereotypically, it would be easy to imagine that he was Rosie’s boss. But then there’s nothing conventional here.

Rosie’s parents are first-generation immigrants. Both are doctors, both still practising; her mother is a GP, her father is a chest specialist. They live in north London and have three other children, all boys. Two work in the City, one shoots commercials. None of them have any idea what she does. Like me, she lies. Like me, she’s so good at it, it’s as natural to her as telling the truth. They believe she’s a security analyst at the Centre for Defence Studies at King’s College, London. Elsewhere it might seem strange that a young second-generation Indian woman is heading an outfit like the Ether Division. But in our world it seems perfectly normal because we can be anybody we need to be at any given moment.

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.

She looked at some of the internationals. Barry Ferguson, British, from Gateshead, ex-SAS, ex-husband to a battered wife, ex-father of three, ex-inmate of Durham Prison. Troy Carter from Maine – unlike Ferguson, he’d never made the grade as a professional soldier. He’d gone to the Balkans to prove himself. And had failed again. Within a fortnight a landmine had scattered him over his colleagues. Fabrice Blanc, a native of Marseille, had deserted the French Foreign Legion specifically to go to the Balkans.

‘I need to fight to live,’ he’d claimed.

It was a phrase with resonance among the Inter Milan hard core. How did mild-mannered Vojislav Brankovic, the baker’s son, become a vicious murderer? How did a boy with a beautiful Croat girlfriend end up stabbing other Croats in the face simply for being Croat? Stephanie knew part of the answer: in war, some men found themselves.

There was a picture of Harald Gross kicking a severed Bosniak head into a makeshift goal with spent shell cases for posts. In the background there were several blurred onlookers, their grins smudged. The rest of the mercenaries were European apart from a Canadian, two Australians and a South African. At any given moment the internationals accounted for between thirty and forty per cent of the Inter Milan force. Mercenaries they might have been, but one thing was clear: they were there for the fighting, not for the money.

On the screen to her right Stephanie touched a box with a woman’s face. She came to life, her expression as harrowed in motion as it had been frozen. A box of text in the right-hand corner informed Stephanie that the woman was from a small village close to Foca, in eastern Bosnia, a town that had been ethnically cleansed in 1992. Over her testimony, another woman translated into English.

‘They came in the morning. They beat up anybody who got in their way. One of them shot a farmer in front of his wife and children. When the wife attacked the gunman, another one intervened and cut her throat. The children were hysterical. Their mother was in a pool of blood in the dirt. Other men took the children away. The leader told us we were to be transported to Foca, where we would join the people of the town, and then we would all leave the district together. They said we had one hour to make our preparations. We went home. An hour later we gathered in the market square. I had a bag, packed with … I don’t know what … anything … I couldn’t think. My husband carried a sack with bread and clothes. Then there was a delay, a lot of confusion. They made us sit down in the square. It was very hot. We were there for some hours.’