Abby folded up the note and stuck it in her pocket. It begged fifty questions, but she wasn’t going to think about them now. She went to the bedroom and found her car keys in the drawer where she’d left them a month earlier. The car was where she’d left it, too, parked around the corner outside a minimart. She went inside the shop and pretended to leaf through a rack of magazines, watching the street for the eyes that were surely looking for her, until she could almost convince herself that they weren’t there.
On a proper highway, Ferizaj would have been fifteen minutes’ drive from Pristina. On the E65 road south, it took the best part of an hour. It might have afforded Abby time to think, except that most of the time she was too busy trying to stay alive. The two-lane road was Kosovo’s main corridor to the outside world, crammed every hour of the day with lorries, buses, cars and even the occasional horse-drawn cart. Traffic crawled along, and if a gap appeared it was immediately plugged by a vehicle attempting some kamikaze overtaking move. On the bridges, yellow signs gave speed restrictions for tanks, a reminder that this was still occupied territory.
Camp Bondsteel, the largest US base in the Balkans, stood in rolling hills below the pointed spire of Mount Ljuboten, better known to the soldiers as Mount Duke. Abby left her car in the parking lot and walked up a narrow path between a chain-link fence and high concrete blast barriers. To her left a high earthwork stretched around the perimeter, and it occurred to her that the basic design for a military camp hadn’t changed in millennia.
The gatehouse was a windowless, corrugated-iron warehouse with red-painted walls and X-ray machines. The moment she walked in, a Hispanic man in a brown uniform accosted her. FORCE PROTECTION, said the badge on his sleeve. She wondered why the world’s most powerful army needed protecting, and from whom. He asked for her badge and looked disconcerted when she couldn’t produce one.
‘I’m with the EULEX mission,’ she said. ‘I need to meet with one of your soldiers, Specialist Anthony Sanchez.’
More consternation. A tall black sergeant strode over. ‘Is there a problem, ma’am?’
It was going wrong far faster than she’d expected. She found herself beginning to stutter. ‘No problem – just – I need to speak to one of the soldiers here. Specialist Anthony Sanchez.’
‘She’s from the Justice Department,’ the guard contributed.
‘Is he in trouble?’
‘Not at all.’
‘Do you want to make a report for his commanding officer?’
‘That’s not –’
‘Do you have security clearance?’
‘I –’
‘Perhaps you should come back another time, ma’am,’ said the sergeant firmly. He scribbled a number on a piece of paper and gave it to her. ‘Here’s the number for the Public Affairs Office if you want to make a complaint.’
‘Thank you.’
She trudged back down the path, among a gaggle of local cleaners and contractors finishing for the day. She couldn’t face the drive back straight away: she went to the café across the road and nursed a coffee, while she watched the clouds gather in the valley. This part of the world had more than its fair share of storms.
Michael would never have let this stop him, she thought. Michael would have charmed a pass out of the guard, or talked his way in with a joke and a bottle of whisky. She replayed the conversation in her head and winced. How had she become such a wretched failure? She stared out the windows at the concrete walls and watchtowers. It wasn’t the sort of place you broke into.
She finished her coffee and made her decision. The café had a payphone: she used it to dial the number on Jessop’s note. He answered almost at once.
‘Good to hear from you.’
‘What are you doing in Kosovo?’
‘I could ask you the same question.’ He wasn’t angry, or menacing. If anything, he sounded sympathetic. Abby fought back the urge to reciprocate.
‘Is Mark here?’
‘Stuck in London.’ Jessop didn’t sound too troubled by it.
‘I need to see you.’
‘Then that makes two of us.’
They met in Bar Ninety-One. Michael used to joke it was EULEX in miniature: a cross between a French café and an English pub, squatting in a Yugoslav building whose upper windows were still blown out from the war. It was warm and busy, but Abby would have preferred somewhere less obvious. This was Pristina’s answer to Rick’s Place in Casablanca: every diplomat, bureaucrat, journalist and spy passed through here sooner or later. She recognised three German judges, deep in conversation with the police chief; at another table the EULEX Chief of Staff laid bets on a Premier League football match with someone from the press office.
Jessop was sitting in a corner watching the football, a Peja beer and a pint of Guinness untouched in front of him. He waved when he saw her, as if their meeting was the most natural thing in the world, and pushed the beer towards her.
She remembered the entry in Michael’s diary. Jessop, 91. ‘Do you come here often?’
‘When I’m in town.’
‘You know, there’s a rumour the CIA has bugs in the light fittings.’
He took the voice recorder out of his jacket pocket and looked at it mock-wistfully. ‘I won’t need this, then.’
Abby put her bag on the table and pulled it open. ‘I’ll save you some more trouble. Help yourself to whatever you want to steal.’
Jessop ignored it. ‘You’re supposed to be on sick leave. Why did you come back to Kosovo?’
‘Trying to get away from people like you.’
‘And how’s that working out for you?’ He stared at her face. The wound from Dragović’s pistol cut a thin crimson ribbon down her chin; the bruising around it was in full flower. Abby looked back defiantly and said nothing. Jessop took a long sip of his drink.
‘We showed your necklace to some boffin at the British Museum. He authenticated it as genuine fourth-century Roman, the real McCoy.’
‘Can I have it back, then?’
‘It’s in London. If you tell me the truth about how you came by it, maybe I’ll ask them to FedEx it.’
She stared into his face, the hard lines and no-nonsense haircut. There wasn’t much to trust there.
‘I told you the truth in London. Michael gave it to me. He didn’t say where he got it.’
‘Did you know he was an obtainer of rare antiquities?’
But she wasn’t interested in that line of conversation. ‘My turn,’ she countered. ‘Why did you meet Michael here the week before he died?’
Jessop was too professional to look surprised. ‘Did he mention it?’
‘I found a note in his diary.’
He drank his Guinness and wiped foam off his upper lip. ‘Nice to get a decent pint, in this part of the world.’
She didn’t smile. ‘Why did you meet him?’
‘OK – since we seem to be getting on so well being honest with each other. I’m on the anti-trafficking taskforce. I met with Michael to discuss arms smuggling.’
‘He was working with you?’
‘He thought I was representing a Russian businessman who wanted to import Ukrainian-made AK-47s to Italy.’ He held her gaze, waiting for the penny to drop. ‘He was going to help me.’
The bar erupted in cheers. Up on the TV screens the home team had grabbed an equaliser. Abby just stared at Jessop. She wished the noise could change what he’d said, sweep it back and drown it. She drank a deep gulp of beer, bitter liquid sour in her mouth. Nothing changed.
The game restarted, more urgent now.
‘Do you have proof?’ Abby asked. ‘You were pretending, so you could trap him. Maybe he was, too.’