Deep Black - Andy McNab [10]
I crawled back into the hide and checked the viewfinder. The LTD had a clear line of sight once again on to the target.
The exertion had warmed me a little, but now I was static again the cold renewed its attack. I picked up the binos.
The last girl was being dragged into the building. Mladic stood in the doorway, his ugly fat face creased in a grin. I longed to plant a high-velocity round right in the middle of his greasy forehead. After a while he turned and went back inside. Maybe it was time to push his way to the front of the queue.
There was nothing I could do but wait as the girls’ screams and sobs rattled around the building. What the fuck was happening? Where the fuck was that platform?
I checked the viewfinder once more, but I had a sinking feeling deep in my guts. Who was I trying to kid? The strike wasn’t going to happen. Mladic and the rest of his bastards were going to get away with this. And they were going to live to do it another day.
Zina’s eyes stared back at me. They were no longer clear and bright, just vacant and drab like everything else around her.
Fuck the Firm, fuck Mladic. I should have called in the Paveway as soon as she’d turned up.
11
Washington DC
Thursday, 2 October 2003
‘Fuck it, that was over nine years ago. It’s all history now.’
Ezra sat back in his chair and studied me with one of those serious yet deeply understanding looks they probably teach at shrink school.
I shifted slightly in my own chair and the leather squeaked. I let my gaze wander along the wood-panelled walls, past the pictures and framed certificates. Ezra would probably say this was me looking for a way out, but I knew there wouldn’t be one for another twenty minutes at least. I ended up staring through the window at the Arlington Memorial Bridge, fifteen floors down and a couple of blocks away.
‘Was that the first time you felt betrayed?’
I looked at him across the low coffee-table. There was nothing on it but a box of tissues. In case I ever wanted to burst out crying, I supposed.
Ezra was maybe seventy, seventy-five, something like that. His hair was like a steel-grey helmet, and although the rest of his face had aged, his eyes sparkled as much as they probably had when he was thirty and knocking women shrinks senseless at conferences in Vienna. For all I knew he still was.
Why was he still working? Why hadn’t he retired? I’d wanted to ask him that ever since I started with him nine months ago, but these sessions were strictly about me. He’d never tell me anything about himself. All I knew about him was that he was the one who got lumbered with the fruits who worked for George and needed sorting out.
He raised an eyebrow to prompt my answer. I was well used to his repertoire of body signals by now.
‘Betrayed? No. Shit happens. It was more a turning point in how I thought about them. So many deaths, so many of them kids. Especially Zina. It’s just, well . . .’ I paused and looked back out towards the bridge. ‘It doesn’t matter now, does it?’
He didn’t believe me and I heard myself filling the silence. ‘Three hours I waited there. All that time, calling on the net, trying to find out what the fuck was happening. Meanwhile, Mladic filled his face, had his afters and left. And all that time his boys were upstairs with the girls. When I finally got back to Sarajevo I didn’t even get told why the job was cancelled. Just to wind my neck in and hang around the hotel for the next one. Which never happened.’
Ezra just sat and waited.
‘Who knows? Maybe if Zina had held on and not done a runner she’d still be alive. Maybe if I’d called in the Paveway earlier she would have lived, or I would have put her and the others out of their misery. Fuck it – who cares? It’s all in the past.’
Ezra tilted his head a little to one side. Even through the double-glazing I could hear an aircraft coming out of Ronald Reagan airport just the other side of the Potomac. I watched it lift into the sky, probably rattling the windows