“If you’re right about this,” Len Barber said, “what’s the end game?”
In answer, Oaken pulled a sheet of paper from his briefcase. “I came across this in passing last week. After I heard back from Bob, I remembered it. It’s a wire story from Reuters.” He handed the sheet to Dutcher, who scanned it then read aloud:
“ ‘Balkan Delegates Meet in Trieste.’ Delegates from Kosovo, Slovenia, Croatia, and Albania rounded up a week of talks in the resort city of Trieste, Italy, today. Sponsored by Serbia and Montenegro, who last year signed a historic accord binding them into a single entity, the conference is to be the first step in restructuring Yugoslavia into a federation of semi-independent republics. Absent from the conference were representatives from the government of Bosnia-Herzegovina, which issued a statement condemning Serbia for continuing to wage a ‘covert war of genocide against the Bosnian and Herzegovinian people.’”
Dutcher handed the sheet to Sylvia, who scanned it then passed it to Coates and Barber, who read it then looked up. “And?”
“The story behind the story is that Bosnia didn’t attend the conference because Serbia pressured its neighbors to hold back the invitation,” Oaken said. “Belgrade’s goal is the same as its always been: to put the Balkans back under Serbian control. It’s what started the war in 1990 and they’ve never wavered from it — diplomatic niceties or not. Bosnia, on the other hand, can see the handwriting on the wall. Today it’s a ‘coalition of republics,’ tomorrow a Serbian-controlled nation-state.
“So what’s Belgrade up to? It needs an excuse; it needs leverage; it needs Bosnia surrounded by a sea of angry neighbors that won’t put up a fuss when Serbia marches in and starts carving it up.”
“Enter Litzman,” Dutcher said, picking up Oaken’s line of thought. “He’s going to give them their excuse: a Bosnian-backed terrorist attack against a gathering of delegates from every government except Bosnia.”
“So, let’s put it together,” Sylvia said. “Svetic is meticulous; we know that. Months ago, maybe longer, he begins planning the kidnapping of Amelia Root. What he wants is Kestrel, but he gives his team another reason — money, whatever. He lays out the whens and wheres and hows of the operation, which Grebo then forwards on to the Serbian SDB.” She glanced at Oaken. “Right so far?”
“Yes.”
“The SDB mulls over the information, realizes Svetic’s arrival in Trieste is going to coincide with the conference dates—”
“Either that or they manufactured the conference itself,” Dutcher said.
“Right. And they decide to use it. They hire Litzman to lay the trail leading to Bosnia’s doorstep and arrange an incident.”
“Which is?” asked George Coates.
Oaken replied, “The delegates are all traveling home the same way: a ferry named the Aurasina. I’m guessing it’s meant as a show of unity — a week-long conference followed by a slow boat ride home with everyone standing arm-in-arm at the railing. From Trieste, the Aurasina will be heading down the Adriatic coast, making stops in Zadar, Sibenek, Split, Dubrovnik, and Durres.”
“And this is Litzman’s target?” Sylvia asked.
“Just a guess,” Oaken admitted. “Most of the pieces fit. And don’t forget: Litzman’s ex-Spetsnaz. Sinking ships is one of their specialties. The Aurasina goes down, dozens of diplomats die, hundreds of innocent citizens are killed, and a Bosnian pops up as the chief suspect.”
“Would they do that?” Barber said. “Would the Serbians really—”
“We’re talking about the SDB bosses and a few hardliners in the government. That’s all it would take. To answer your question: Hell yes they would. A chance to put the whole region back under Belgrade’s thumb? They wouldn’t hesitate.”
Sylvia said, “Walt, if you’re right about this, we’ve got the worst damned coincidence in history. Svetic is trying to get his hands on the deadliest biological weapon the world has ever seen, Litzman is trying to pin a bloodbath on him, and neither one knows what the other is up to.”
Oaken gave a shrug. “Timing is everything. There is good news, however.”
“Please,” said Coates.
“The Aurasina isn’t scheduled to leave until tomorrow morning. We’ve got time.”
“Thank God for that,” Sylvia said, then turned to Coates. “Get the State Department on the phone. We need to alert the delegate countries—”
“One last thing,” Oaken interrupted.
“What?”
“After I heard Root’s story about his grandfather’s patrol, the bunker, finding Kestrel … I got curious, so I did a little research. I wanted to find out what happened to the rest of the original Dark Watch members after they split up.
“The Hungarian, Frenec, was killed in action during World War Two; Pappas, the Greek, died of cancer in Athens in 1955; the Frenchman, Villejohn, died of influenza in 1918 at Camp Funston in Kansas.”
Barber said, “Walt, that’s interesting, but—”
Dutcher held up a hand, silencing him. He leaned forward, his eyes narrowed. “Go on, Walt.”
“Villejohn was the team’s medic. He’d been transferred to Funston to train U.S. Army medics heading over to France.” Oaken looked from Sylvia, to Coates, to Barber. “Funston was part of Fort Riley. Do those names ring a bell?”
Sylvia shook her head. “No, should they?”
“Maybe not. The influenza epidemic of 1918 killed anywhere between forty and sixty million people. Somewhere along the line it got named the ‘Spanish Flu.’ The name is misleading. It didn’t originate in Spain, but most likely came from a waterfowl virus in China. The second wave of the epidemic — the one that went back to Europe with American replacement troops then went on to kill another twenty million people — started here. Most historians agree about where exactly it started: the base hospital in Camp Funston.”
“Good Christ,” said Coates.
Sylvia said, “Say it Walt.”
Oaken nodded. “I think there’s a good chance Villejohn got infected with Kestrel while he was in that bunker, then brought it to the U.S. with him. I think Kestrel may have been the cause for the second wave of the Spanish Flu.”
Five thousand miles away, the weather was about to erase whatever extra time on which Oaken and the others were counting.
On the Aurasina’s bridge, her captain, Ettore Bartoli, was sitting in his chair sifting through predeparture reports when his first officer trotted up the ladder well and walked over. “Captain, a bulletin from NAVTEX,” he said, referring to the primary weather reporting station for the Gulf of Venice and the Adriatic coast.
Bartoli took the report and scanned it. He frowned. “The devil’s come to call,” he murmured.
An old hand at Adriatic sailing, Bartoli knew well the vagaries of local weather. While generally predictable in spring and early summer, there were occasions when Mother Nature tried to fool you. This was one of those times.
The bulletin warned of something Bartoli had seen only four times in his twenty-year career. In the Adriatic, cold and dry northeasterly winds known as bora sweep down from the Dinaric Alps, blow through Croatia and then out to sea, producing abrupt squalls. Conversely, the jugo is a warm, humid southeast wind that boils its way north up the Adriatic, producing dense clouds and heavy rains. If these were the only conditions, Bartoli wouldn’t have been concerned. The bora and jugo often cancel one another out, leaving the sea lanes clear, if slightly choppy. It was the last paragraph of the bulletin that worried him.