24

Stratton, wearing a baseball jacket and cap, watched Skender’s new building complex from inside a small office-block entranceway across the street. For almost an hour he had studied the place from every angle, circling the block and observing the comings and goings of workers, especially Skender’s security team. Skender himself had arrived a few minutes after Stratton had begun his surveillance, turning up in his cavalcade surrounded by bodyguards like some visiting state dignitary, and Cano had come out of the building with yet more guards to escort his boss inside.

The surrounding security fence had been removed and the landscaping, a complex design of lawns, flower beds, trees and fountains, was almost complete. The entire block was ringed by new steel street lamps with added spotlights on top of each one to illuminate the building at night. The finishing touches to the curving drive that led from the boulevard to the entrance were being made. A crane was slowly positioning a large crate in the centre of the concourse, directly in front of the ornate entrance – some kind of statue, Stratton suspected – while a handful of helmeted engineers carefully supervised its touchdown, inch by inch.

The place was very much a fortress, with guards covering every entry point including a barrier to the underground parking. Adding up all the men Stratton had seen on duty on the first-floor balconies, at various windows and emergency exits, the main entrance, the garage and doing roving patrols – plus another dozen to allow for those he could not see – there were around fifty. Then, working on the assumption that they did three eight-hour shifts per day the total came to a hundred and fifty. Assuming one shift was on standby or stand-down inside the premises Stratton felt that a fair estimate of security manpower would be about a hundred men at any one time. Quite the small army.

Stratton reviewed his objectives in order of priority once again in the hope that doing so would help to inspire a so far uninspired plan. The final outcome obviously had to be getting Josh back to England alive. To achieve that Skender had to believe that his own life was at stake if he did not hand over Josh. To convince the Albanian of that was the hard part. A demonstration of intent could be useful but Stratton had no time to waste and he might get only one shot. Another option was to find something that Skender valued as much as his own life but unless Stratton could figure out what that was, or even if there was such a thing, he was still at the starting block. Meeting Skender face to face was an option but reaching him and then getting away after looked like too much of a risk.

Stratton told himself to step back and take a completely new look at matters. In the meantime he decided to use another essential tool in any operation of this nature: psy-ops.

A payphone hung on the wall of the lobby and Stratton walked over to it. He took his notebook from a pocket, flicked to a page of names and numbers, inserted some coins into the slot and dialled a number.

Cano was in the small kitchen on the top floor of Skender’s business centre pouring himself a coffee when his cellphone rang. He took it out of his pocket, hit the receive button and put it to his ear. ‘Yeah.’

‘Vleshek? This is Stratton.’

Cano was about to pour some milk into the cup and paused. ‘How’d you get this number?’

‘I’m full of surprises. I know a lot about you, for instance. Your real name is Dren Cano.’

Cano put down the carton of milk. He struggled to contain his shock at hearing his real name on the lips of another man besides his boss for the first time in ten years.

‘I could give that information to the police and you’d end up in a cell in the Hague waiting for your war-crimes trial, but I’m not going to,’ Stratton went on. ‘I’ll tell you what the deal is, Cano. You hand the boy over to the police or take him back to the child-protection centre and I’ll leave you alive. If you don’t it’s war.’

‘That right? You need an army to go to war.’

‘I work alone. The kind of war I have in mind, you’re already outnumbered.’

Cano closed the kitchen door and kept his voice low although the anger in it was plain to hear. ‘Now you listen to me, you piece a’ shit. You can take your threats and shove ’em up your ass. I’ll tell you what the deal is. Your life for the kid’s. It’s as simple as that. I’m gonna give you a couple days to get your things in order, say your goodbyes, and then you call me. If I don’t hear from you, you can say goodbye to the boy. I’ll personally slit his throat and sell his organs. And that bitch you were with the other night – I’ll fuck her too. There’s no negotiation. Oh, and one more thing. If anything happens to me, the kid dies anyway. The next time I hear from you, you better be letting me know where I can send the boys to pick you up. Now get lost.’

Cano disconnected from the call and screwed his solitary eye shut. The empty socket of the lost one was beginning to throb beneath its silk patch. He reached for his painkillers and popped several in his mouth. But Cano had worries apart from his physical pain. The first was what would happen if the Englishman did not take the deal. The hits on Bufi and Cano’s brother had been the best that Cano had ever seen and the guy had escaped his clutches twice now. Hobart was looking for Stratton, which might play in Cano’s favour but the bottom line was that Cano wanted Stratton dead. Cano held the ace, of course – the kid – but he had no plan. What bothered him was that Stratton had to make the next move and Cano strongly doubted that he would simply hand himself over. Nor did Cano know if Stratton was willing to sacrifice himself or even the boy to get even.

Cano wondered if he should approach Skender with the problem. But there were greater dangers for Cano in that direction, the most obvious one being that Skender did not know that Cano had kidnapped the boy and would be none too pleased if he found out. Cano remained hopeful that he could wind up this business without Skender discovering what his henchman had done.

Cano was treading a fine line and was feeling dangerously rattled.

Stratton replaced the phone and walked back to the window to look up at the top of the pyramid. He did not know whether he had gotten to Cano and he was not entirely confident that he had. But at least it set the goalposts firmly in place, for now at least. Stratton either turned himself in, whereupon both he and Josh would be executed and possibly Vicky too, or he went on the offensive. With the police now probably looking for him and with no idea yet what he was going to do this was beginning to look like an impossible task. But that was because he didn’t know enough about his enemy. The more he could learn, the better the chances were of finding a chink in Skender’s armour.

As Stratton stepped out of the building, pulling his baseball cap low over his eyes, he saw a man walking from one of the site contractors’ portable cabins on the edge of the square as a crane moved into position, getting ready to lift it onto the back of a truck. The man, who was wearing a shiny white hard hat, was carrying several large tubes and rolls of paper. He placed them inside a car parked on the street and went back to the portable cabin.

Stratton didn’t waste a second. He crossed the road, went to the car and looked inside. As he suspected, the rolls of paper were construction blueprints. After a quick glance to make sure that the man had gone back into the cabin, Stratton opened the car door, removed them and walked briskly away without looking back.