A couple of phone calls from Vincent’s contact book quickly located where Radic’s minions were currently incarcerated. Nish and Vincent sat waiting patiently in a Transit van outside the rear entrance to the police station watching passively as Amsterdam’s police deposited an endless stream of drunks, pill-heads, and assorted human trash into the over-crowded cells. ‘How long you been staking this Radic guy out?’ Vincent asked.
‘Too long...’ Nish replied with a lazy exhaled sigh.
‘That’s not like you.’
Nish shrugged. ‘Busman’s holiday. I’ve been trying to take it easy. Chechnya is enough to knock the wind out of anyone’s sails.’
‘That bad?’
‘If you want a post-apocalypse vision of humanity, book a tour round Grozny. Still you have to hand it to the Ivans, they’re nothing if not efficient in dealing with the Islamic problem. Wouldn’t work for us of course.’
‘What will?’
‘That Hitler fella had some good ideas...’ Nish said with a shrug. Vincent looked at him with raised eyebrows before Nish broke into a grin and winked. ‘Here we go. Our customers.’ Nish nodded at the pair of Radic’s goons being thrown out of the back door of the police station. He turned round and knocked three times on the metal divider to the cargo compartment. ‘We’re on.’ Nish and Vincent got out of the van; Nish walked round and opened the side cargo door. Four of his men got out and walked towards the pair. Nish and Vincent observed as the lead member of Nish’s quartet approached one of Radic’s men and asked for a light, as he checked his pockets for his lighter the others sprung into action putting black hoods over their targets’ heads before quickly taking them down onto the floor and securing them with wrist ties. They smartly picked them up by their shoulders and dragged them to the waiting van before shoving them inside. Nish closed the door and got back in the driver’s cab followed by Vincent. They departed the police station car park and headed out onto the ring road towards the airport.
Radic’s men squinted at the bright incandescent light shining directly at their faces amidst the near black gloom of the deserted warehouse, trying to pick out the various figures moving in the shadows before their eyes fell on the clearly illuminated bench table with an assortment of tools laid neatly out in a row. One of the men smiled and nodded at the table, turned to his compatriot, spoke briefly in Serbian then laughed. ‘Something funny?’ Nish asked from the dark somewhere behind him.
The Serb shrugged. ‘You think this shit is intimidating; you want to do war in our country. Then you see what is best way to scare people.’
‘I’m a keen student of torture. Why don’t you educate me.’
‘Give me cigarette and I tell you.’ Nish appeared in the light. He took out a cigarette, placed it in the man’s mouth and lit it with a brass zippo. The man took a drag off it and inhaled it through his nostrils. ‘Once we had this guy, at home with his wife and children. We know he has information on where the Bosnians are hiding, so we take his baby and put it in oven. You know what happen to baby in oven at two-hundred degrees?’
‘Did he talk?’ Nish asked.
The man shrugged. ‘Turned out it was not his child.’
Nish pulled a chair around and placed it in line with the floor stand mounted floodlight. He sat down and stared at the man. ‘So what is the point of that little tale? You think that makes you hard as fuck? Sticking an infant in an oven. What is your name?’
‘Why I should tell you?’
‘Just your first name. Start on a polite footing.’
‘You can call me Marko.’
‘And your friend here?’
‘You don’t need to talk to him. What the fuck do you want?’
‘I want us to be friends.’
‘Why I be friends with you?’
‘I got you released.’
‘That was nothing, you think I could not get out of this problem without help?’
‘Well here’s the thing Marko, word is going to get back to your employer that you cut a deal to get out.’
‘He will not believe it. We go way back.’
‘Do you now? That’s interesting.’
‘Why is that interesting?’
‘I don’t mean it’s interesting.’
‘So why did you say it was interesting?’
‘Because that is what you say isn’t it, you say something, and then I say, ah that’s interesting, but really it isn’t.’
‘Maybe it is. What do you want with Radic?’
‘I want to do business with him.’
‘This is not how you do business with Radic.’
‘It is how I do business with Radic.’
‘And what business do you do?’
‘Take a wild fucking guess, Marko.’
Marko frowned at Nish and stared intently at him trying to squint past the bright light. ‘I recognise you. Where I know you from?’
‘I don’t know Marko. Where do you know me from?’ Nish got up and walked over to the table. ‘So what happened?’
‘With what?’
Nish surveyed the tools before settling on an electric cordless drill and selecting the smallest drill bit and putting it in the chuck. ‘The baby. In the oven. What happened?’
‘You maybe don’t want to know. If I tell you then you would not sleep so good thinking about it.’ Marko smiled. Nish walked calmly over and stood in front of Marko’s associate.
‘Do you know what the secret to a good night’s sleep is?’
‘What?’
‘No I’m asking you. Do you know what the secret to a good night’s sleep is.’
‘No, I don’t sleep good.’
‘Well maybe you should stop putting babies in ovens then you sick deranged fuck.’ Without pause Nish spun the drill up to full speed and aligned it with Marko’s accomplice just in front of his left lower torso. One of Nish’s men appeared from behind and gagged the man and held his head to face the drill. Nish carefully inserted it, the man tensed, eyes bulging as Nish drilled a straight hole right through him, dark black blood spurting out of his kidney as the drill bit pierced through his back. Nish reversed the drill motor and extracted it.
‘You think this will make us talk?’ Marko asked.
Nish shrugged. ‘I don’t care.’ He lined up the drill again and put a neat hole straight through his victim’s stomach. He withdrew the drill and stood back staring at his handiwork as his victim writhed in agony.
‘So what is the purpose of it?’
‘What’s the purpose of anything really? I suppose we’re all just wasting time idly fucking other people’s lives up. There’s no real purpose for anything when you think about it. Of course people make up all sorts of excuses and reasons for things. We’re going to war because blah blah blah, but in my experience it’s just to masquerade the truth of utter chaos.’
‘You think you are a philosopher?’
‘No. I’m more of a...modern realist.’
‘And what is that?’
‘It’s the acceptance that all the constructs humans have that are designed to make us feel superior to animals, are, somewhat ironically, just a different version of the same constructs that the animal kingdom uses to establish hierarchy. In that respect while our reasoning may seem more elaborate, there is no difference between what we do, and what animals do.’
‘And what is that?’
‘Dominate and procreate.’
‘Fighting and fucking.’
‘You get it. You put that infant in the oven for the same reason a lion kills another lion’s offspring. It threatens your own genetic survival, you raped her didn’t you?’
‘Who?’
‘The mother. I bet you fucking did. You cooked her kid and you fucking raped her. Because you are an animal.’
‘She was a Bosnian whore.’
‘She’s just a woman. No different than a Serb woman. You created that construct of her being from a different tribe to justify your actions to overcome the social norm imposed on you that it’s not acceptable to murder infants and rape their mothers, set all that aside and you are just acting on base instinct because you are an animal. An ill-educated animal.’
‘Fuck you! You think you are so smart with all your crazy shit talk, but you are no different from me drilling holes in people for no fucking reason. If I am animal what are you?’
‘I’m the Angel of Death’s little helper.’ Nish walked over and adjusted the drill to a slow speed. ‘I’m here to bring some order to this cosmic mess of Darwinian selection, removing the dysfunctional and backwards genetic mutations from the pool to ensure a more enlightened future for humanity.’ Nish slowly drilled a hole straight through Marko’s thigh deep into his femur. Marko gritted his teeth, reluctant to give Nish the satisfaction, but eventually his self-control gave way as the pain became unbearable and he screamed out.
‘Fuck you, I not tell you anything,’ Marko sobbed.
‘That’s fine. I don’t want you to. I don’t care what you have to say. This is not about information. This is something much more important.’
‘What the fuck...’
Nish put the drill back on the table and sat down on the chair, he took out a cigarette and lit it slowly, took a drag and stared at Marko. ‘You know what the basis of reincarnation is? It’s fascinating. All matter. Everything this entire planet is composed of is basically atomic particles constructed in various ways, and every living thing on the planet is recycled constantly into other things. All this blood skin and bones will organically break down and become something else. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. All that biblical shit. So what’s really important is that in this iteration, all this bad shit you did to other people, is visited back on you, and is imprinted so hard on your sentient being that when you eventually reform into something else, be it a fucking rabbit or god forbid another human being, you have this ingrained memory of pain and suffering so that you give pause to understand what you do to others, will be done unto you. Then perchance you’ll evolve into a more intelligent and more useful product rather than some bawbag scrote cooking infants, raping women, and committing sundry war atrocities.’ Nish stubbed out his cigarette and returned to his tools collection. ‘I’m merely the conduit by which you take the journey from this present to that future.’
‘I thought this was about catching Radic?’ Vincent asked as Nish walked into the small foreman’s office and sat down.
‘It is.’
‘Then what is this about? You haven’t asked him any questions.’
‘I don’t need to.’
‘So why?’
Nish stared out through the glass partition window at the two captives now slumped in their chairs. ‘They have to be made to answer for what they did. You think they give a fuck about being dragged into an air-conditioned court room full of lawyers in The Hague?’ Nish shook his head. ‘Women, kids, old people. They have no respect for life. When I send them down into Dante’s Inferno I want them to know there is far worse for them here if they ever come back...’
‘So what about Radic?’
Nish took out a mobile phone from his pocket. ‘Haven Twenty-Six, Rotterdam docks. He’ll be there between nine and eleven p.m. tonight to load a consignment of cars for export to the Ivory Coast.’
‘And what about them?’
‘They’ll bleed out in two or three days. Maybe five or seven with a saline drip.’ Nish stared at Vincent. ‘Don’t feel any compassion for them Vincent. These were normal men before the war, they chose that path, and they chose to do those things. Everything they did put them on this path to end up here in my hands.’
‘I neither condone nor condemn, it is merely a little Old Testament — even for my Catholic tastes.’
‘Stick to riding a desk Vincent.’
‘So what do you want to do about Radic?’
‘I want him alive.’ Nish wrote down a location and number on a piece of paper. ‘Meet us here at eight p.m. sharp. I need you to take him in for me.’
‘Can’t you do it?’
‘Let’s just say I’m persona-non-grata with certain jurisdiction agencies due to a disagreement over sundry human rights violations they feel I may have been responsible for. You take Radic in; I’ll get your message to Aleksei. We have a deal.’ Vincent and his assistant got up to leave. ‘And Vincent...’
‘Oui?’
‘This never happened. They were a victim of a disagreement with some Albanians.’
‘Of course.’
Vincent and his assistant headed out to the car. ‘That guy is a sociopath. And you say this Green guy is worse?’
‘Do you know what makes men such as this so dangerous?’ Vincent replied.
‘They’re psychotic?’
‘No, far from it. It’s that they have such moral certainty in what they are doing is right. They are like artists of death — the Monet’s and Cézanne’s of destruction. Grand Masters of violence where every operation is some masterpiece that would be something to marvel if it was not so chillingly brutal.’
‘You admire them?’
‘Not admire, but I do understand. When you are fighting as close to pure evil as it is possible to find it requires a certain type of mind to combat it. Sadly liberal ideas of redemption and forgiveness are lost on souls who have contempt for anything, in this respect Nish and his ilk are the only solution. They are the last resort when all other justice has failed.’ They got in the car and headed back towards the hotel. Vincent looked across at his colleague. ‘Something is troubling you?’
‘Do you think he enjoys it. All that torture? He said it himself; he had the intelligence. He didn’t need to do it. So why do it?’
‘Guilt perhaps.’
‘For what?’
‘Nish led the team in the Balkans hunting down Radic and his men. He was responsible for collating the evidence of the crimes they committed. Crimes against humanity the likes of which you would probably not want to know. I imagine he feels some guilt that what happened could have been prevented, and we collectively failed their victims.’
‘I do not see how torturing the perpetrators helps the dead.’
‘It doesn’t. But maybe it helps Nish feel better that they did not escape the fate they inflicted on others. I do not know. I have not seen through his eyes so cannot contemplate how bearing witness to such things would affect a man of such capabilities.’
‘I think he needs locking up for his own good.’
‘It would seem his employers agree with you...’ Vincent took a folded Europol arrest warrant with Nish’s photo on it out and handed it to his colleague. His colleague frowned.
‘So why aren’t we taking him in?’
‘Because friendship is more important, putting Nish in a padded cell with no sharp implements will not help Zara. And Zara needs people like Nish — and Alex Green.’
‘If those are her friends then god help her enemies...’
Vincent stared out the window. ‘They are far beyond god’s help now...’