I called Colonel d’Arcy from the airside at Tirana International Airport Nënë Tereza, once I was sure we were going to get on the plane.
That’s never a given when you’ve left six dead bodies on a mountain.
Well, we didn’t actually kill them, but we did act as the magnet that brought them to the spot where the men standing above us with AKs could mow them down, like skittles all in a row. Those guys up there on the bluff must have realised where the roadblock would be and taken advantage of our situation to improvise a little score-settling of their own.
Our saviours didn’t say anything to us. The three men from the café were there; the ones I thought might be the Sigurimi. I doubted that now. They waved their smoking barrels from their vantage point, indicating we should get out of there.
They allowed us to take one of the vans – the Dacia now only good for use as a pepper pot – and drive off. We had been caught in the crossfire of a turf war between the black car/white van guys who wanted Adam and a group who didn’t care about us, just wanted to take out their rivals. Whatever the truth of the matter, I certainly didn’t want to hang around while the victors wondered whether it was wise to let three witnesses leave the scene of the crime. Especially as we didn’t know whether this incident was a case of good guys vs bad guys, or, the more likely scenario, bad guys vs more bad guys.
‘Colonel?’ I asked when someone picked up without identifying themselves. ‘It’s Sam, Sam Wylde.’
‘Sam,’ he said in his strange pan-European accent. ‘Where are you?’
‘Albania.’
‘Albania? I’m hearing some strange things coming out of Albania. Anything to do with you, Sam?’
The old bastard was still able to pull rabbits out of the hat. How did he know there had been trouble? ‘It’s possible. But why would you care? I thought you’d retired.’
‘My hearing is still good, though.’ He gave his dry-leaves-rustling laugh. ‘Can’t turn that off.’
Colonel d’Arcy had been at the epicentre of the personal protection racket in Europe for decades. He trained me in the basics, sent me to Slovakia to get firearms training from Pavol and found me my early assignments looking after pop stars and princesses.
He had given me a job when I needed one to fund my search for Jess. It wasn’t his fault that the latter went sour. It was his son’s. And when that son took a leap/was pushed off a high building – delete as you think most likely: even the cops couldn’t decide – the Colonel jacked it all in. But I knew he still kept those jug-handle ears of his close to the ground.
‘Nothing to see here, Colonel. Move along.’
Another chortle. ‘I miss you, Sam. Miss all of you; my boys and girls.’ It wasn’t like the Colonel to be sentimental. All he cared about was whether the wind was going to blow him some hard cash. Maybe retirement had made him soft. That or losing a son, I added to myself with a pang of guilt.
‘You can always go back into the game,’ I said. ‘Pick up where you left off.’ Even at one hundred and fifty, or however old the man was. Maybe you had to count the wrinkles on his face, like the rings on a tree, to be certain of his age. It would take quite a while.
‘I can’t go back, Sam. Sold all my files and contacts to someone forty years younger.’
‘What, some pensioner?’
‘Don’t be cheeky.’
I looked across the cramped waiting area in front of the airport gates. Adam was on his feet, shaking hands with Freddie. We had all cleaned up at the Tirana International Hotel, which wasn’t fussy enough to object to three apparent tin miners fresh off shift, still covered in tailings, asking for a day room and directions to the nearest clothes shops. From the room, I had called Hertz to report the Dacia stolen. They weren’t happy. I suspected I’d be hearing a lot more from them.
‘You sold all your files?’ I asked, surprised. Shame, because they might have been useful to me.
‘Most of them. I hung on to a few.’ This was good. It meant he’d kept those most valuable; the ones he felt someone forty years his junior didn’t deserve.
Adam was heading for me. I made various hand signals that tried to convey: Just wait. I won’t be long. He pointed to the Departures display and the flashing ‘boarding’ sign next to his flight to London and did his own hand-dance to convey I’d better be quick.
Could I trust this man at the other end of the phone? I ran through my options and came to the conclusion that I had no choice. I took a breath. ‘Colonel, I need to know how I can get a police document saying I reported a vehicle stolen, dated yesterday.’ As well as bodyguards and information, the Colonel once offered a comprehensive service in fine forgeries.
‘Stolen where?’
‘A town called Pulana here in Albania.’ It was a jumble of buildings we had driven through after the ambush, so small it couldn’t afford the one horse that would put it on the map. But I didn’t want anyone to trace us to that mountain if I could help it. The story had to be it was stolen and then, unbeknown to us, used as a shield in a gun battle between rival trafficking gangs. It was almost the truth.
‘Send me the full details. Same email as ever. I’ll see what I can do. No promises.’
‘Of course not.’ But I could sense a little frisson in his voice, like an old racehorse being taken out on the gallops one more time, just to stretch its legs.
‘And?’
I stepped away out of Adam’s earshot and gabbled what I had in mind. There was silence on the line and for a second I thought he had hung up on me. ‘Colonel?’
‘I can send you a scenario or two for that.’
‘OK.’ He meant ways of solving my problem. Solutions might be a better word, but the Colonel had always dealt in ‘scenarios’. They varied from a single paragraph to a full-blown dossier complete with PowerPoint presentation. I was inclining towards the former. It would be cheaper, for one thing.
‘How much money do you have?’ Now that’s more like it, I thought. It’s just business to him, sentimentality be damned.
‘I’m good for a few scenarios.’
‘No, you’ll need more than that. A lot more.’
‘What for, exactly?’
‘You can’t face Leka without suitable provision.’
That sounded expensive. I opened my virtual wallet. ‘What do you suggest?’
‘Oktane.’
There was a sound in my head like water going down a drain. I think it was actually cash flowing out of my bank account. Oktane did not come cheap.
As soon as I ended the call, Adam came up and gingerly put his arms around me. I could smell the faint aroma of cheap cement on him. It’ll never catch on as an aftershave. He squeaked a little as he squeezed me.
‘You get those ribs checked as soon as you get home,’ I said.
‘Yes, Nurse Ratched.’
I could talk. I still had what I hoped was just a pulled muscle in my shoulder from my table-flinging practice and yanking the wheel of the Dacia.
He pecked me on the cheek and released me from his grip. ‘I don’t know how to thank you. If you hadn’t been there . . .’
‘But we were.’ Who knew, if he hadn’t been there, I might not have met Saban and got my leverage. ‘Maybe it was all meant to be,’ I said.
He looked surprised. ‘You believe in that sort of thing? Kismet?’
‘No.’ But sometimes I am tempted to give it just a little credence. As in: sometimes life is just fucking weird. ‘And don’t worry about the Sayonara stuff. As I said, Freddie has a vivid imagination. I think you might have tipped someone off in Tirana that you were doing more than just researching that actor of yours.’
‘Or I was just unlucky. Mistaken identity.’
‘There’s always that.’ I wasn’t convinced. If I were Adam Bryant I wouldn’t head back to Albania in a hurry. If at all.
As we spoke, he pulled out his passport and a business card fluttered to the floor. He scooped it up and slotted it away. ‘Hold on,’ I said.
I logged on to the airport Wi-Fi and googled his full name.
‘I’ve got to—’
‘Hold your horses.’ The page loaded. ‘You wrote a book called The Shame Road?’
‘I did, yes.’
‘About sex slaves.’
‘Sex trafficking, yes.’
‘And that article about sex workers in Romania. It was a finalist in the Features Journalism section of the British Journalism Awards?’
‘Yes, but—’
I held up the screen to show him. ‘Someone just had to do a search on you. Someone you gave your card to, perhaps. And once they had seen the top two entries in this list, they’d begin to think that maybe you were interested in more than Anthony whatsit.’
‘Quayle.’
‘Whatever. You see what I mean, though? Isn’t there someone’s razor that deals with this sort of thing?’
‘Occam’s razor,’ he said. ‘The simplest solution is usually the right one.’
‘There you go. You were rumbled somewhere along the line and some calls were made to let people know that a nosy journalist with an interest in people-trafficking was coming up the mountain.’
He looked a little disappointed that it could be something so prosaic. ‘I guess so. But the people I gave my cards to were harmless old men.’
‘No such thing,’ I said. ‘You should know that.’
‘I should. Look, I’d better . . .’
‘Yup, off you go. Take it easy, eh? And good luck with your story. And remember: no names.’
‘I remember. No names, no pack drill, whatever that means. Or you’ll hunt me down and hurt me.’
‘Not me. Freddie.’
‘Sold.’ He mimed zipping his mouth. ‘Look, if there’s anything I can ever do. To repay you.’ He fished in his pocket and passed me the card that had fallen on the floor. I handled it gingerly. I’d had a bad time with business cards of late. Not all are what they seem. ‘Although, I can’t imagine what that might be.’
‘You never know,’ I said. I held out my hand and we shook.
‘I still don’t fully understand what you are up to next.’
I wasn’t sure either. But with Oktane in the picture, it wasn’t going to be pretty. Or legal.
‘Best it stays that way. See you, Adam.’
‘Good luck. And thanks again,’ he said as he hurried off, raising a hand to Freddie.
She came over as he had his passport checked once more and disappeared through the gate.
‘Would you?’ Freddie asked.
‘What?’
‘Fuck him.’
‘Adam?’
‘No, the guy at the gate who looks like the love child of Joseph Stalin and Rosa Klebb. Of course, Adam. He has a pretty decent-sized cock.’
Despite myself, I let her draw me into her sordid little world. ‘Freddie, how the hell do you know that?’
‘I walked in on him in the shower while you were blabbing to the car-hire people. How was I to know the screen was transparent?’
‘I don’t know, probably because you scoped it out first.’
‘No, I didn’t. It was a pure accident.’
‘But you didn’t avert your eyes.’
‘How could I? It came at me like some fuckin’ anaconda. I had to pay full attention.’
I never really knew if Freddie was as horny as a promiscuous old goat most of the time, or she just liked winding my prudish – in her eyes – arse up. A mixture of the two, I suspected. ‘In your dreams.’
She gave an impish grin. ‘And I am very much looking forward to dreaming that one again. Coffee?’
I knew that even by the execrable standards of airport coffee, the little stall’s effort was going to be vile sludge. But I said, ‘Yes. Why not?’
As we waited for the girl to push the buttons on the machine, I sent Colonel d’Arcy a rough outline of our car ‘theft’, as it should appear on an official document.
Freddie asked, ‘What did the Colonel say when you spoke to him?’
‘He’s going to lay out some options,’ I said.
‘OK. Options we could do with.’
I sensed a weariness in her voice. I was still running on adrenaline from the mountain but Freddie’s shoulders had dropped, as if her tank was empty. It would happen to Adam, too. The moment he buckled up on that plane he would start feeling cold and hollow.
And then he’d remember what dead men looked like up close.
What a hail of 9mm bullets does to a human being.
Freddie and me, we’d seen a lot of that in our time, patched up plenty of broken bodies. We just added those new ones to the library of images we’d rather forget. Adam didn’t have that luxury. He didn’t have a library. I didn’t envy him for the nightmares he had to come.
‘Look, Freddie, you can butt out of all this now if you wish. Jesus, I wouldn’t blame you.’
‘Butt out?’ She took the coffees and we stepped away from the cart. I sipped something black and tar-like. ‘Why the hell would I do that?’
‘Because I nearly got you killed up some godforsaken mountain.’
‘I think we were pretty much at the bottom when it looked like we were going to die.’
I ignored that. ‘And the next part is mine. Neutralising Leka and going after Jess.’
‘That’s fine talk coming from my friend and partner.’
‘Friend, yes. Partner in what? Crime, you mean?’
‘No, the agency.’ Before I could ask what agency? she ploughed on. ‘Your suspension from the SIA, that’s up soon, right?’
I nodded. The protection industry’s professional body had canned me for kidnapping and threatening my old boss. Misdemeanours, really. ‘Two months and I can re-apply.’
‘Right, I was going to mention this anyway at some point. There was a piece in The Times—’
‘Wait, you’ve started reading The Times?’
‘No, I can’t actually read, I have a social worker who reads it out to me every day. Don’t be such a snob, just because some broadsheet journalist fancies you.’
‘Adam? Me?’ I felt myself blush for no good reason.
‘He hugged you. Not me. Gave you a smacker on the cheek. Not me. I got the limp handshake.’
‘Maybe it’s because I didn’t burst into the bathroom and start measuring his cock. Perhaps he was worried what the next step would be if he were to move any closer.’
‘Possibly,’ she conceded. ‘I might not have been able to resist finding out if my eyes had been deceiving me . . .’
‘The Times?’ I prompted, before she got out of hand.
‘Yes, The Times said that rich Americans are hiring bodyguards for their tours of Europe. In case of further terrorist outrages. It said female close protection is much in demand, a demand that agencies are struggling to fill.’
It wasn’t really news, except for the nationality of the clients. We London-based PPOs got a lot from the Middle East, especially in summer, with Asia and Russia coming up on the rails. The USA, not so much. But with plenty of bad press about the situation in Europe, it was probably a comfort blanket for those who could afford it. If a waste of money. Foiling kidnap and robbery attempts we were good at. But there was no way an unarmed PPO was going to help against a rucksack bomb or a van mounting a pavement, unless you got lucky. I think a lot of vacationers would bristle at the restrictions needed to protect a client absolutely. Then again, a PPO team might be the new must-have accessory for any well-heeled American tourist: Darling, we had the most divine bodyguard . . .
Which might mean there was good money to be had while it lasted. But I kept quiet; Freddie obviously wasn’t finished.
‘So what if we set up an all-female agency? Nothing but women PPOs. Maybe we name it after a Greek goddess. Like Callipygos.’
‘Who’s she?’
‘I’m not sure, but it means “beautiful arse”, so count me in.’
‘Really? Is that the image an all-female agency wants to project? The receptionist picks up the phone and goes: “Beautiful Arse. How can I help you?” ’
She laughed at that. ‘OK. Maybe not. I did some research. Eos, the Morning Star, or Nemea, who breast-fed some monster—’
‘Or Wylde and Winter?’ I suggested, before she started reciting The Odyssey. Winter was Freddie’s married name, which she no longer used, having ditched the husband, but I quite liked the combo. ‘Or Winter and Wylde if you prefer.’
She moved her head from side to side, like a Bollywood dancer, thinking. ‘Well, we could toss for the order, but what about—’
She hadn’t finished before the crackly tannoy interrupted us. The accent was thicker than the coffee in my paper cup, but I got the message. ‘Would Miss Sam Wylde, Miss Sam Wylde, travelling on the Transavia flight to Paris, please return to passport control.’