‘The Bufi-Cano hit?’ Hobart asked. ‘Your report was interesting mainly because of its economy of detail, namely you said nothing.’
‘I didn’t e-mail the report because I wanted to talk to you about it first,’ Phil said, his voice remaining low. ‘Let’s go for a walk.’
Hobart shrugged his okay. He had nothing too pressing at that moment and, even though Phil was eccentric, he wasn’t known for being melodramatic.
Hobart walked to the door and went outside into the empty corridor. Phil followed and Hobart turned to face him, folding his arms across his chest, ready to hear what his friend had to say. An agent left an office down the corridor and walked towards them.
‘Let’s go outside,’ Phil said as the agent passed them to enter another office.
Whatever Phil had to say was obviously too sensitive to reveal in the hallway and although this was turning into more of a chore than Hobart had anticipated he knew better than to argue with Phil’s paranoia. If he wanted to hear what Phil had to say he was going to have to go through the pantomime. Hobart sighed inwardly and headed for the emergency exit.
‘I’ll meet you down in the lobby if you’re going to take the stairs. I don’t do exercise.’
Hobart stopped before opening the door to the emergency stairs, turned on his heel and headed down the corridor alongside Phil to the elevators.
A couple of minutes later they were walking out of the front of the building, past the complex array of security sensors and the armed guards checking all who entered. They stepped through the glass doors into the bright warm sunlight, the air filled with the noise and fumes from the crowded six-lane boulevard a stone’s throw away.
Phil did not say a word as he led Hobart around the side of the building, into the vast parking lot and across to an area that had few cars and was empty of people. He stopped at a location that he deemed suitable for his revelation, looked all around to check that no one was paying any special attention to them, and faced Hobart.
‘We’ve got something pretty interesting here, Nate,’ Phil said calmly.
‘I guess,’ Hobart replied, glancing around the parking lot.
‘ Dark interesting,’ Phil emphasised.
‘Dark?’ Hobart asked.
‘Can you level with me? I’m talking about Bufi and Cano.’
‘Level with you?’
‘Will you stop repeating everything I say? I’m being deadly serious here.’
‘Phil, I’m always serious and I don’t know what you’re talking about. Level with you about what?’
‘Okay. I’ll get to the point,’ Phil said, then paused to stare into Hobart’s eyes and double-check something. ‘You sure there’s nothing you can’t tell me about those guys and why they were hit?’
‘Nothing I can’t tell you?’
‘Yeah. Can’t. I ain’t asking you what it is. I’m just asking you if there is something. If you can’t tell me just say so.’
‘Come on, Phil. If there’s ever anything I can’t tell you about anything then I can’t say if I can or I can’t, can I?’
Phil studied his old friend for a moment. ‘They were both former KLA, am I right?’
‘Yeah. They were ex-KLA. So what?’
‘And there’s nothing about them that’s special, no red flags, no involvement in anything against the government, our government – just tell me that much.’ Phil jumped in as Hobart was about to answer. ‘I wanna know if they were involved in anything against our government. It’s an important question.’
‘As far as I know they had nothing to do with anything against our government,’ Hobart said with an audible sigh. Phil was not privy to the connection between the two Albanians and the killing of the Englishwoman since it was highly confidential and Hobart would not tell him. But otherwise he could see no reason for Phil’s heightened concern.
‘Okay,’ Phil said, lowering his shoulders in a vain effort to relax his neck while taking another quick look around. ‘There’s no doubt that Bufi and Cano were killed by the same people or the same organisation,’ Phil stated.
Hobart nodded. That seemed obvious enough.
‘Question is who, right?’
Hobart nodded again. Phil was dragging this out like some kind of soap-opera sleuth but Hobart remained outwardly patient. He knew that Phil would eventually get to his point and the quickest way was to let him do it in his own time.
‘Nate. Those guys weren’t taken out by any ordinary hitter. In both cases the method was ingenious but there’s a lot more to it than that. I’m talking about the explosive material used. It was identical in each case. It was an RDX-governed compound with a tetryl booster and some of the most purified nitrates I’ve come across. It was plastic explosive, like C4, but twice as concentrated. The closest match I found on file was super-cyclo-tetryl -trimethylene-trinitramine 7, an experimental military compound that NASA refined for their ejection-escape capsules, but this stuff is a grade higher than that. My point is, you can’t get this stuff on the street. There are probably only a handful of countries sophisticated enough to manufacture such a compound. It’s highly specialised. And something else. Explosives are measured by the speed at which they burn. Basic C4 is around 24,000 feet per second, for instance. You need a detonator of similar power to ignite it, or if not, you need a primer to cover the middle ground between the explosive speed of the det and that of the actual explosive material. An ordinary C4 detonator would not have been powerful enough to initiate that type of SX. It would have just blown it away like it was cake. The detonator used to initiate those hits was of the same high-grade material but not only that, they were micro dets. Micro-super-X dets. You hear what I’m saying, Nate?’
‘I hear what you’re saying,’ Hobart said.
‘A micro-SX det is Star Wars, Nate. The people who use that kind of explosive get a government pay cheque and work out of an office that’s a long elevator ride underground.’
Hobart did not outwardly respond but Phil had his full attention. The revelation was more than just fascinating. Hobart did not for a second doubt Phil’s evaluation of the specialised explosive and its non-availability on the street. The inference was the explosive was either given by a person in government to someone to use or was used by a person who themself had direct access to it – and that, as Phil was saying, implied that the hit was carried out by a government organisation. But then, when the quality of the targets was considered there was an instant erosion of that notion’s credibility since Ardian and Leka were essentially nobodies.
‘Are you sure about this?’ Hobart asked. ‘I mean, I’m not questioning your analysis of the explosive, but what about its availability? What about the Chinese, or the Russians? If they have this stuff then it’s possible it could have found its way into the marketplace.’
Phil was shaking his head in frustration well before Hobart had finished his sentence. ‘That would be like Microsoft’s latest software leaking onto the street. Yeah, there’s a million-to-one chance that it’s possible, but there’s something else that throws up a red flag here. The technique. The hitter used it to perfection, like he had training. It was surgery, Nate. That coin through the back of Bufi’s head was genius. Ask yourself this. In all your years in the business, how many IED hits worldwide have you even heard of anywhere near as sophisticated as this? I haven’t, and I’m in the goddamned business.’
Hobart was slowly becoming convinced and with that came a growing anger. The question, then, was not if Leka and Ardian could be a target of a government agency but why? And if it was true, someone from government, his own or someone else’s, had made a hit on his turf. Skender and his organisation were exclusively Hobart’s to control and monitor and anyone, no matter who they were, from the President down, had to go through him about anything to do with the Albanian syndicate in Los Angeles.