Killing for the Company

Andy Dell had the stuck-up tones of a Sandhurst officer, but as Ruperts went he was all right. ‘This is your man,’ he had announced. ‘Born 1957, made Chief of Police in Bosanski Samac, north-eastern Bosnia and Herzegovina, April 1992. Lasted eight months in the job, during which time twelve men — all Bosnian Muslims — died in his custody: seven from beatings, five from causes unknown. Six Bosnian males have independently testified that he forced them to perform sex acts on each other just to humiliate them.’

‘Sex acts?’ Chet had interrupted.

‘Blow jobs, since you ask. Three women have accused him of rape. One of them was fifteen years old; another ended up face down in the river after she spoke out.’

‘And we get to slot this cunt, right?’ Luke had asked.

‘Do me a favour, Luke, and shut the fuck up till I’ve finished.’ Luke, who had been brought up by his dad on a council estate in Lewisham, always had something to say, and it didn’t always endear him to the Ruperts. ‘Ivanovic is on the run. He left his post as Chief as Police in ’93, after which he was a leading figure in the ethnic cleansing of Bosnian Muslims. Our boys tried to get their hands on him during the siege of Sarajevo. Too slippery. He’s been underground since the end of the Bosnian war. Only he’s just stuck his head above the parapet. The Firm have definite intel on his location, and the war-crimes tribunal at the Hague want him in the dock for persecution on political, racial and religious grounds.’

It all made sense. Chet had been around long enough to know that it wasn’t just the ragheads who could be religious nuts. When it came to ethnic cleansing, some of those Serbs were pure Domestos.

Turning their attention to a map of the region, Dell had pointed at the FOB, situated just west of the Serb border. ‘You’re to insert into Serbia by vehicle in the guise of UN peacekeepers. They’re a common sight, so you shouldn’t attract too much attention. Our intel suggests that Ivanovic is hiding out in Prizkovo, a one-horse town twenty miles south of Belgrade. We have the imagery for you to study. When you get to the area you’ll need to ditch the UN gear. That part of Serbia is a nationalist hotbed. The peacekeepers know that the best way to preserve the peace is to keep away.’

‘Good job we’re not there to keep the peace, then,’ Luke had murmured.

The ops officer had ignored him. ‘We have reports that Ivanovic is surrounded by at least four heavies,’ he continued. ‘They’re dispensable, but Ivanovic needs to be alive. You’ve been given temporary powers of arrest. These probably won’t stand up in an international court of law, and Ivanovic will most likely know that. He’s not going to come quietly.’

Quiet. Noisy. It made no difference to Chet. He was just looking forward to getting his hands on this bastard. And it wouldn’t be long now.

He picked up a dinar from the sticky table and flicked it in the air.

‘Tails,’ said Luke. He looked like he wanted a response, but he wasn’t going to get one from Chet, who just scowled and continued to flip the coin.

Flick, catch.

Flick, catch.

‘You going to do that all night, buddy?’ Luke asked. ‘’Cos I don’t mind telling you, it’s getting on my wick.’

Flick, catch. Flick, catch.

The TV behind the bar was grainy and flickered every few seconds. To Chet’s relief, the music came to an end and an image caught his attention. The British Prime Minister, Alistair Stratton, his boyish face earnest and open, his suit well cut and his red tie perfectly neat, was sitting in an anodyne studio being interviewed by some bird Chet recognised but couldn’t name. What the fuck Stratton was doing on Serbian TV, Chet didn’t know. Certainly the punters in the bar paid as little attention to him as they had to Boyzone.

‘Always the fucking way,’ Luke drawled. ‘You come on holiday to get away from it all…’

Chet glanced back up at the screen. ‘Stratton’s all right,’ he said.

‘Stratton,’ Luke replied, ‘is a politician. Therefore Stratton is a wanker. End of.’

Chet shrugged. He wasn’t going to argue. But he had enough friends in the regular green army to know that in the year since Stratton had come to power, things for them had improved. Better kit, better conditions. It was no secret in the military that the government was gearing up to move into Kosovo if Milosevic carried on giving the Albanians the Stalin treatment, but really Chet knew very little about the politics. That wasn’t his business. All he knew was that anyone who supplied his mates with the gear and the weapons they needed to do their jobs was OK by him. As Luke would say: end of.

Still, it was odd to come across Stratton’s voice in this back end of nowhere, miles from home and translated into impenetrable Serbian by the subtitles at the bottom of the screen. The PM’s earnest tones reached Chet’s ears.