Almost Home: A Novel

  “I mean that I don’t have any information about the night Jared died. I assumed that’s why you wanted to see me. Like I told Chris…”

  “Chris Bannister?” I cannot keep the surprise out of my voice. “You spoke with him?”

  “Oh, I thought you knew.” Duncan’s eyes widen. “He called me about a week ago. Said he thought there was something off about Jared’s death and asked me what I remembered. He said that you and he were trying to get some answers.” My mind races. Chris didn’t mention that he contacted Duncan. And he spoke with Duncan a week ago, before he even saw me, before I agreed to help.

  I take a deep breath. Concentrate. Get the information you came for and deal with Chris later. “Actually, I didn’t come here to talk about Jared. I need to ask you about something else.”

  He frowns. “I don’t understand.”

  “Duncan, I’m not sure if you’re aware of this or not, but I work for the State Department. I’m part of an investigation team…”

  “Investigation?”

  I pause, careful not to say too much. “It has to do with organized crime syndicates and the contraband they traffic into the U.K. and the States.”

  His eyes widen once more. “I can’t imagine what I might know about anything like that.”

  “You’re finance director at Infodyne, aren’t you?”

  “Acting finance director,” he corrects, his voice rising slightly. “But we’re the eleventh-largest company in Britain. We’re hardly a—what did you say? An organized crime syndicate?”

  “I know, I didn’t mean to imply…” I take a breath, regrouping. “We’re concerned that a British company could be somehow involved, laundering money maybe. Not necessarily Infodyne, but the company does have significant Albanian interests.” I pause, studying Duncan’s face. His expression remains impassive, except for a slight twitch in the corner of his left eye. “It wouldn’t likely be the whole company,” I continue, “but it could be some part, a few players. Small, repeated transactions that can’t otherwise be accounted for to unfamiliar entities. With a company so large, it would be possible someone could be doing things without your knowledge.”

  “I’m familiar with how laundering works,” he replies, a second too quickly. “And I can assure you there’s nothing improper going on at Infodyne. I’m sorry. It just seems so preposterous.”

  He’s lying. I take a deep breath. “Duncan, do you know something about the Albanians? Because it’s critical that you tell me if you do. We have reason to believe—”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” His voice is calm, but beneath his freckles his face has paled a shade further. “I’m sorry I can’t help you with what you’re looking for. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have an eleven o’clock meeting with one of our brokerage houses in the city.” He pushes back from the table and stands up.

  “Duncan, wait.” I leap to my feet, placing my hand atop his. “Maybe you could do some checking, let me know if you find anything.”

  “I’m afraid that’s impossible.” He pulls away, shaking off my hand.

  “Duncan, please…if it’s a question of security, I’m cleared. I can get you my credentials. If Infodyne is somehow involved…”

  He cuts me off. “Such wild accusations do nobody any good. None of us.”

  He’s afraid, I realize, a chill passing through me. I wonder who the “us” is he’s referring to. “Duncan, if it’s a question of security, we can help, offer protection…” But even as I speak I know that it won’t make a difference.

  “I have to go.” He starts from the table, then turns back. “Take care of yourself, Jordan.” And before I can speak further, he walks quickly out of the café.

  chapter NINE

  DUNCAN, WAIT!” I cry, taking a step forward. Then I stop. I cannot match his pace without running and I do not want to make a scene. He’s not going to say more anyway.

  That went well. I sink back down in my chair, staring at Duncan’s nearly untouched cappuccino, then reach for my own drink, replaying the conversation in my mind. Duncan knows something about the Albanians, that much is certain. He looked like he’d seen a ghost when I mentioned them. If only I’d gone about things differently, asked the right questions, maybe he would have confided in me. But what are those questions?

  I pull my cell phone from my bag, as well as the card Mo gave me with the team’s phone numbers. I hesitate, considering the names. I need information. Sophie is useless, Mo too busy. I hate to ask Sebastian for anything, but he seems to be the only choice. I dial his mobile.

  “Hallo,” a sleepy-sounding voice on the other end says a moment later.

  An image of Sebastian, shirtless in bed, pops unbidden into my mind. “It’s Jordan Weiss,” I say, feeling silly for using my last name. “I hope I didn’t wake you.”

  “I’m not much of a morning person.” He does not sound surprised to hear from me.

  “It’s almost eleven,” I point out, pushing down my annoyance. “Late-night assignment?”

  He yawns, then stretches audibly. “Something like that. What can I do for you?”

  “I need some background for the investigation. I was wondering if you can help.”

  “Certainly. There’s a file an inch thick in the vault. Just ask Amelia…”

  I shake my head. I don’t have two days to spend reading up on the subject. “I thought maybe you could give me the short version over coffee. I’m buying.”

  “Then make it breakfast. Where are you now?”

  “Near Trafalgar Square.”

  “I’ll meet you at the benches in front of Westminster Abbey in half an hour.”

  Twenty-five minutes later, I make my way across Parliament Square, juggling two hot dogs and cans of soda I purchased from a street vendor, as well as my umbrella and the one Duncan abandoned at the front of the café. The rain has stopped, though, and bits of sunshine peek through the clouds behind Big Ben to my left.

  I am surprised to see Sebastian waiting for me on a park bench by the grassy strip that runs along the side of Westminster Abbey, set back a few feet from the crowds of tourists that fill the pavement. His hair is still damp, his jeans and white t-shirt rumpled. A worn tan leather briefcase sits by his feet. He is completely unprofessional and, I decide instantly, even better looking than I remembered.

  “What’s this?” he asks as I near. His eyes flick from my twin set to my legs, then back again.

  I hand him one of the hot dogs, trying not to notice the warmth as his hand brushes against mine. “Breakfast.”

  He grimaces, taking a can of soda from me. “Not exactly what I had in mind. I was hoping for fried eggs, some toast.” He shakes his head. “You Americans and your hot dogs.”

  “It was the best I could do on short notice. You seemed to like them well enough at the Ambassador’s reception.”

  “I was trying to impress you.”

  “Whatever.” I wipe the still-damp bench with a napkin, then sit down, ignoring his obvious attempt to flirt. “So I just met with Duncan Lauder.”

  Sebastian cracks open his soda, reaches into his pocket, and pulls out two aspirin, blowing on them to remove the lint, then downing them with a mouthful of soda. “And?”

  “He didn’t exactly give me the keys to the kingdom,” I continue, unwrapping the foil around one end of the hot dog and taking a bite. “But my questions provoked quite a reaction. He seemed terrified at the mention of the Albanians.” I pause. “Sebastian, I need more information.”

  He does not respond, but looks across the grass at two squirrels playing by the base of a tree. As I study him out of the corner of my eye, a shiver runs through me. Enough, I think, but it is too late. My mind reels back to another bench, the night of the Ambassador’s reception, Sebastian’s lips on mine.

  He turns to me abruptly and I look away, staring hard at the pavement. “And you’re asking me for background, not Maureen.”

  I hesitate, trying to answer the question buried in his stat
ement. “Maureen is one of my closest friends.” It strikes me then that other than Maureen and Sarah, I do not really have any friends at all. “And I trust her implicitly. But she’s deputy chief of mission now.”

  “A lot of politics and red tape at that level,” he observes.

  “Right. She’s not an operative like you and me anymore…” I pause, caught off guard by a sudden sneeze.

  “Bless you,” Sebastian says, producing a somewhat clean-looking tissue from inside his coat.

  I sniffle and wipe my nose. “It’s the dampness. I always get a bit of a cold the first few days here.” Then I look up at him once more. “So tell me about the investigation, Sebastian. Tell me what I really need to know.”

  He looks up and holds out his palm. “It’s going to rain again any second now.” He tilts his head toward Westminster Abbey. “Want to go in?” Not waiting for an answer, he stands and picks up his briefcase, then starts for the door. I follow, finishing off my hot dog and throwing the foil and soda can in a bin before slipping a piece of gum from my pocket and popping it in my mouth. Walking a few feet behind Sebastian, I notice the slight lilt to his gait, the flash of lower back that is revealed as his t-shirt pulls away from his jeans with each step.

  Inside, I stop, gazing upward in awe as Sebastian pays our admission. I have only been in the massive church once during a sightseeing trip to London during my first weeks at Cambridge. I forgot the scale of the flying buttresses, the opulent stained-glass windows. The smell of damp stone seeps heavily from the floor.

  Sebastian leads me away from the tourists who pack the main sanctuary and over to one of the side crypts, illuminated only by a dozen or so small candles flickering at the front of the knave. I watch as he lights a candle and then crosses himself. “Are you religious?” he asks when he has finished.

  I am surprised by his question. I was raised with the typical upbringing of an East Coast reformed Jew: enough Hebrew school to get through a bat mitzvah, then services twice a year on the High Holidays. During my first assignment in Warsaw, I sought out the synagogue and the surviving Jewish community most Friday nights, in part because I was lonely and in part because observing as a Jew there seemed an act of defiance against the Nazis, a sign that they failed to wipe us out. But after I left, I reverted to my secular ways and I haven’t been inside a synagogue in years. “Not really.”

  “It’s amazing what people have done to each other over their religious beliefs. The Crusades, the Inquisition, the Holocaust.”

  “True,” I say, struggling to keep the impatience out of my voice. It was something Jared loved to discuss, too, putting his research of war criminals into a larger historical context. But I was never good at theoretical debates. And I need to know about the Albanian mob, not the history of world religious intolerance.

  “How much do you know about the Balkan conflict?” Sebastian asks, looking up at the stained glass above the candles.

  I hesitate. The topic seems closer to the Albanians, at least geographically, but I am still not sure where he is going. “I know about it,” I reply curtly, not wanting to send him into a long-winded discourse on the subject. In truth, not as much as I should. I know that Yugoslavia was created by the Allies after the war, forcing various ethnic groups with centuries of animosity to coexist as one country. That after the fall of communism, some republics, like Croatia and Slovenia, successfully pulled away. But in other places, most notably Bosnia, ethnic conflict escalated to civil war. But the timelines are hazy to me, the events and players a jumble I can never keep straight.

  “I was there, in Sarajevo, as a peacekeeper, so-called,” Sebastian says, a somber note creeping into his voice. “In fact, there was very little we could do except stand by while the various groups killed each other. Imagine it, Jordan.” He turns and looks levelly at me. “Sarajevo had been an international city of arts and culture, the site of the 1984 Winter Olympics. Less than ten years later, it was reduced to rubble. There were bodies in the street and the people were killing their neighbors, putting each other in camps. It was like Berlin or Munich in the late thirties. But this was the 1990s. We had CNN, television.”

  Thirteen years ago in Bosnia, I think, thirteen minutes ago in Darfur. I saw the footage of what happened in Rwanda, glimpsed the violence myself in Liberia. Time hasn’t changed the visceral hatred among people, the groups into which we choose to divide ourselves. And despite the awareness brought on by technology, we seem no more willing or able to stop the violence.

  Sebastian continues, “So after the Dayton Accords, the fighting for the most part eventually stopped in Bosnia. But there was another problem: Kosovo.”

  “Kosovo just declared independence,” I offer, recalling what I learned from the newspaper on the train.

  He nods. “Kosovo has always been a key piece in the Balkan chess game. It’s a province within Serbia, which was one of the Yugoslav republics. But the population is mostly ethnic Albanian with a strong Serb minority.”

  Albanians, finally. Now we’re getting somewhere. “During the communist years, Tito suppressed the Serbs because he thought a weaker Serbia meant a stronger Yugoslavia and that empowered the Kosovar Albanians,” he adds. “But then in the late eighties, Milosevic stirred up the Kosovar Serbs as part of his campaign for power.”

  “Interesting,” I say, not entirely meaning it. I sink to the bench in front of the candles, the stone cool beneath my palms. “But I’m not sure how this ties into our investigation.”

  “Have you heard of the Kosovo Liberation Army?”

  I shake my head. “Vaguely.”

  “The KLA was a guerrilla movement in Kosovo, ethnic Albanian insurgents who fought against Serbian control. Originally, it was just a bunch of disorganized rebels scattered throughout the country. But with the chaos in Bosnia and the fall of the communist regime in Albania, they were able to consolidate their operations and amass a fairly staggering cache of weapons.” I follow his movements as he paces in front of me, willing him to get to the point. Reading the file in the vault, I realize, might have been quicker. “Then in the mid-nineties they made their move, launching an attack on the Serb minority, trying to seize power and gain autonomy for Kosovo. It was another brutal war, thousands of civilians killed.”

  “Kind of a second Bosnia,” I observe.

  “Exactly.” He stops, turning to me. “Don’t get me wrong: the Serbs fought back and they slaughtered many innocent people, too. No one’s hands were clean. But the KLA benefited from NATO air strikes against Serbia, and a considerable amount of support from Washington.”

  “I don’t understand? Why would we…?”

  “Forge a relationship with ruthless killers?” he finishes for me. “Come on, Jordan, don’t be naive.” He’s right, I realize. We have a history of supporting questionable insurgent groups when it suits our aims. “I’m not another Brit beating up on American foreign policy,” he adds, sitting down beside me. “That would be cliché.” And easy, I think, especially these days. Iraq has made being an American diplomatic representative abroad tougher than ever. “But sometimes our governments choose the least bad ally and after Bosnia, the West wasn’t eager to empower the Serbs, so we forged relationships with the KLA.”

  “So then what happened?” I ask, trying to move the story forward.

  “After the U.N. came in and settled things down, the KLA effectively ceased its military operations. But many of its members found places in the police forces and provisional administration.” His voice is a low growl now and there is an angry burning in his eyes that makes him even more attractive. “And the organization itself still had other business enterprises. During the nineties, the KLA had become deeply involved in the black market as a means of raising money for arms: narcotics, human trafficking. Profits from heroin alone financed most of their arms supply. With the war over, they were able to devote all of their resources to these activities.”

  Suddenly the connection is clear. “So the Albanian mob grew out o
f the KLA?”

  He nods. “Effectively the Vastis of the world are just rebel fighters who graduated to running crime syndicates. The same feudal clans that raised insurgent armies are now sparring over drug turf in Manchester.”

  “How did they get to England?” I ask.

  He pauses as there is a shuffling sound behind us. A group of older women, their white sneakers and fanny packs screamingly American, fill the entrance to the crypt. A minute later, when they have moved on, he continues, “They started by achieving dominance over the black market in the Balkans, then spread up through Europe. They largely edged La Cosa Nostra out of the heroin trade in Italy, which is pretty remarkable. Even the Russians are afraid to go up against them for the most part.”

  “Why?”

  “Because they’re ruthless. The Albanian mobsters live by the kanon, or code of loyalty, that comes from feudal times. They won’t hesitate to kill anyone—mobster, police officer, prosecutor…”

  “Government informant,” I add, remembering the photo Mo showed us in the Bubble.

  “Even their own family members, if they betray the code. Anyone who gets in their way. So now they control almost all of the illegal transit in Europe and the U.K. Pretty much anything bad that comes into Europe comes through the Albanians. And it goes much further than drugs—weapons, humans—”

  “Human trafficking? Here?” I interrupt. I know about slave labor of course. But in my mind that is a problem in the less developed world, workers from impoverished Asian nations taken advantage of as they seek a better life.

  He nods. “With the expansion of the European Union, it’s become easier than ever to transit sex workers and other forced labor. They’ve got operations in Brussels, Amsterdam, London, New York…”

  “Why haven’t we done more to stop them?” I interrupt, fearing another lecture.

  “In the nineties, everyone was focused on getting the cease-fires in place, bringing the Bosnian war criminals to justice. And then since 9/11…” He shrugs, not needing to finish the sentence. Since 9/11, it has been all about Iraq and Afghanistan. “There’s always been a suspected connection between the Albanian mob and some Muslim terrorist groups, money sent back to the Balkans to help various causes. But in recent months, we’ve picked up chatter that indicates that money from the Albanians is going directly to support al-Qaeda and other major terrorist organizations. Finally, our governments woke up and realized that something had to be done and that is how this task force got funded.”