A soldier immediately saw the little boy but instead of shooting he raised his sword and ran at him. Skender scrambled to his feet and sprinted around the side of the building with all the strength he could muster. The soldier followed but Skender knew his own backyard and, being a fraction of his pursuer’s size, was able to dart through a hole in a wooden fence as the sword swung down. He rolled down the steep slope in between the houses. Skender was free from that pursuer but there were many more soldiers in the village and the sound of wholesale slaughter had risen to a frenzy.
Skender continued to run, not knowing where to go other than downhill since it gave him the greatest speed. He paused between two buildings to consider his options. The sounds of screams and shooting surrounded him and all he could think of was continu ing on to the bottom of the village, across the road and into the river.
A bullet hit a wall inches away from Skender, painfully splattering his cheek with plaster. He looked up to see a soldier aiming a rifle at him from a window. The next bullet hit the ground between his feet and he was off running again, ducking between houses and sheds, pushing through flimsy fences that corralled various livestock and on until he reached a road. He ran across it without a glance in either direction. As he leaped up onto a bank on the other side a hand grabbed him by the neck, twisted him round as if he was a doll, and raised him off the ground.
Skender could barely breathe. His vision blurred but he could see the huge grinning face of the communist soldier, a monster of a man with bad teeth and a beard. Skender pulled at the man’s gnarled fingers and kicked out with his shoeless feet in a vain effort to release himself. But the man just grinned, even as he removed a knife from its sheath and drew it slowly across Skender’s throat, cutting deeply into it. The man then walked a few yards, holding the boy at his side like a dead chicken, and unceremon -iously threw him into the swiftly flowing river that was full and freezing at that time of year. Skender plunged beneath the surface and was dragged and rolled along the gravel bed. He fought to reach the light and when he broke through to air he took in great gulps, unaware that much of it – as well as some water – was coming in through the slit in his throat. He had to fight not only to stay on the surface but also to keep his throat clear enough to take in precious air. He slammed into a boulder and managed to grab hold. Then, with a supreme effort, he pulled himself up onto it. While he gulped in air he could still feel fluid going down his throat and as he violently coughed and retched he could see that it was blood, not water. He gripped the wound and scrambled across some other boulders to the river bank, keeping a tight hold of his throat. He ran through a wood, not knowing where he was heading. Like a frightened, wounded animal he was desperate to find a cave or a hole to burrow into and hide.
Skender must have covered half a mile or so, stopping every now and then to cough up blood that had trickled into his lungs. As he pushed on through a clump of bushes he was suddenly grabbed, pulled to the ground and held down by his shoulders. When he looked into the eyes of his attacker he saw that the man was not in uniform and that the people with him were villagers like himself. They were two families with several children and they all looked as frightened as him.
Skender then started to choke uncontrollably and on seeing the blood gushing out of the slit in the boy’s throat the man quickly turned him over. Skender had been lucky. When the communist soldier had held him up to kill him he had pushed Skender’s head as far back as it could go, thereby forcing the carotid arteries behind the front of his windpipe. When the knife had been drawn across his neck the windpipe had been cut but the blade had not penetrated deeply enough to sever the two arteries either side. Had Skender’s head been bent forward he would have died in seconds.
As soon as Skender had recovered from his choking fit the man got him to his feet with warnings that they all had to get going. He forced Skender to keep his chin firmly pressed against his chest. One of the women placed a strip of cloth around his neck and after a while the bleeding subsided. Skender could now breathe without spitting up blood every few seconds.
For several days he remained with the family as they made their way through the mountains, holding on to the person in front of him while keeping his chin pressed against his chest to keep the wound closed. Eating the soup they gave him was almost intolerable – every swallow caused a searing pain – but he forced himself to eat, aware that it was a matter of pain or death. Skender did not say a word the whole time, unable to speak. It was not until they reached a small farm within sight of Lake Shkodra on the western coast that he was taken to a professional healer.
It was weeks before Skender could utter any kind of sound and more than half a year before he could form words again and talk loudly enough to be understood. People said his croaky little voice had a charm to it but that was only while he was young. As it began to break in his early teens it became deeper and more ominous, befitting the image of a man who’d clearly once had his throat slit.
The man who had helped him that day brought him into his family’s drug-trafficking business and Skender began his working life as a courier. As the business grew and became more sophisticated Skender displayed a high degree of intelligence and ingenuity and was given a greater control of operations. Then he came up with the idea of opening a travel agency as a cover for the movement of drugs, illegal immigrants, prostitutes and arms into Italy and the rest of Europe. This increased his power still more. By his late thirties Skender had offices in Milan and Paris, two of the main gateways into Europe.
With the death of his new father on Skender’s fortieth birthday he assumed control of a vast territory. By the mid-1980s the growth of his empire was being seriously impeded by his inability to launder the vast pile of cash and other undeclarable assets that he had amassed, thus preventing further investment. But then came the war in Kosovo.
Having taken control of many aspects of the KLA’s operations against the Serbs, Skender immediately saw a further opportunity when the Americans got involved. He set up shop as a building contractor and when the rebuilding of Kosovo and Serbia began, financed by America, he spent his drug money on local workers and building materials and deposited the legitimate payments for his construction work in banks all over Europe and America. It was amazingly simple and he became a legitimate dollar billion-aire practically overnight.
Despite being Muslim, a leader of an army as demonic and brutal as any SS outfit of World War Two and rumoured to have ties with the likes of Osama Bin Laden’s international terrorist network Skender’s overt anti-communism and pro-Americanism were credentials enough for him to be embraced by the Clinton administration. But better-informed critics warned that Skender was more like a phoenix rising from the ashes – and not necessarily on the side of the West.
By the time that Skender was ready to build a legitimate operation in the United States and leave his ongoing and expanding crime organisation in Albania in the care of a syndicate of Bajraks or families that he had control over, he had gained huge US governmental support and made personal friends with a dozen senators and high-ranking officials in the administration. His plans remained largely unhindered with the arrival of the Bush administration but his prospects took a turn for the worse after 9/11 due to his terrorist connections.