Chapter Nine
There were a few people out and about as I hurried through the early evening toward my destination. Traffic was light, almost non-existent on the neighborhood streets. I made it to the park in record time, not drawing attention to myself but just looking like a guy with somewhere to be and late to be there. Dressing like a local helped, walking like one, even in a rush also meant that at a quick glance in the dark I wasn’t easy to identify as someone from outside Kosovo. I didn’t expect the bad guys to be trolling the city looking for me anyway. That would be too ineffective and manpower intensive, especially if they were merely curious. It was likely that they expected to be able to reacquire me at the Grand Hotel eventually. I just wanted to keep a low profile out of habit and to lessen the possibility of incidental compromise should one of them just happen to be visiting Granny and drive past me. I avoided the main streets and primary feeder streets as a matter of course and reached the top of the park a little before ten.
Naim was sitting on a rock just inside the grassy area where the street curved, smoking one of his ever present cigarettes. We exchanged handshakes and greetings before walking through the length of the park to enter a small restaurant near the park entrance which catered to locals and internationals. Taking a table in the back we ordered dinner and then got down to business.
“OK, Naim,” I said, taking a sip of the Warsteiner the waiter had thoughtfully supplied while we waited for our food. “What have you found so far?”
“Not a lot but some things. You said be careful and not tip anyone off to your interest so I haven’t pushed at all. This is all, what do you call it…RUMINT and GOSINT.”
Naim and I shared a chuckle over the semi-serious mostly silly designations used for information gleaned from rumor and gossip. If the sources were good, such info could often provide context and even insight to enable a clearer picture of an environment, target or issue but to rely on it overmuch was asking for trouble. Since I merely wanted background, something to confirm that the picture I’d been briefed was accurate in its significant details, this would suffice. And it could bring some clarity to relationships and activities which were not obvious from the briefing materials. This type of low level inquiry would not ping any radars or seem like anything more than gossipy curiosity, something that happens with humans everywhere.
“First of all, Luli Gashi. He was part of Thaci’s group, on the fringes but getting a good name and becoming relied upon as a messenger and, I think you call it, a utility player. He was close friends with several of the old UCK who were with Thaci back in the day. They took him under their wing, made him a part of their group and used him for low level errands. He had a good job in UNMIK as an aide and translator. They used that to gain access to people and information they wouldn’t have otherwise. Gashi was seen as trustworthy and loyal. No one believes that Thaci or his people are responsible for his murder. They all feel he must have been mistaken for someone else or was killed because of something personal not political.
On the personal front, I checked and he had a lot of girls he dated but no one special. He wasn’t known to be seeing anyone’s wife or girlfriend so that motive doesn’t seem likely as a reason for his murder. His parents still live in Pristina as does his older sister. She is one of the main girls of a serious mafia boss, Enver Saddiqi. Gashi probably knew Saddiqi through her but there aren’t any rumors of his being involved with the mafia aside from maybe acting as a go between for the Ministry of the Interior. He didn’t have any bad habits, at least not ones we don’t have too.”
I returned Naim’s grin and saluted him with my beer glass. He meant that while Gashi drank, liked pretty girls and generally acted like a red blooded Albanian male, he wasn’t connected by gossip to drugs, boys, gambling or anything which might have put him in a bad place and gotten him killed. That was consistent with what I’d been briefed. This was good as it meant HANNA’s basic information on his source was accurate although he hadn’t learned that his source wasn’t the primary but a sub-source. Still, that can happen and a suspicion that it was happening would explain why HANNA had so many face to face meets with Gashi. That would permit better questioning and assessment which may have been what he was doing if Gashi had been evasive or lacked detail which he should have had on information he provided. A large part of source handling is making as sure as one can that they are not playing you. Sources invent information, withhold it and distort it for their own purposes. If a source says that so and so is going to be doing such and such at this particular place and time but cannot provide detail that would logically be known in order to know the information he has passed, it is a good idea to question him a bit in order to determine what is behind the suspicious information gap. Being able to speak with a source directly makes the work of evaluating their candor much more effective.
“Anything else?”
“No, I was just making conversation with a few people connected to the Thaci administration and some others I know who are Gashi’s age and partied where he did. Everyone thinks there was something up with the American, HANNA, and that Gashi was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. And when I looked into that Serbian chick, Billjana Popovic, I found a few things that make it look as if that might be right.”
Now that piqued my interest. We paused as the waiter brought our orders, fish for Naim and a local version of pizza for me. I hadn’t gotten used to seeing soft boiled eggs and a few other interesting additions to toppings on my pizza when I was here before but had decided to try it again on the grounds that Nietzsche was probably right. And everything goes better with a cold Warsteiner.
I topped off my beer and waited until Naim swallowed a mouthful of perch.
“OK, don’t be a tease. What makes you think HANNA was the reason for the hit?”
“He was dating one of Saddiqi’s girls. Actually had moved in with her. And while Saddiqi wasn’t seeing her much anymore still it would make him look less of a man if someone else was with her and he had not publically tossed her out.”
Ah hah. Now this made a certain amount of sense. The particular version of machismo that permeates the Balkans is much given to perceiving insult where women are concerned and if Enver had begun to lose interest in Billi but hadn’t made it a point to make it known he was through with her then having someone else take up with her would indeed make him look less of a man to certain mindsets. Since these were the mindsets he ran with, Naim was perhaps onto something. Personally I found the whole viewpoint juvenile and silly but that didn’t mean others wouldn’t act on it.
“So HANNA was living with one of Saddiqi’s girls? How long had this been going on and why hadn’t Saddiqi done anything before now? Was he seeing so many girls he couldn’t keep track?”
“Well, like most of those guys he’s always got a few girls around. Most of them are whores, plain and simple but he likes to pretend he is something classy so he has a few women he sees who are more than just temporary pussy brought in from Moldova or Ukraine. This Billjana was one, a Serb sure but also sexy as hell. Having her showed that Saddiqi had power, could have whatever type of girl he wanted and no one would touch her for fear of him. I guess that got old or whatever because he’s been with Gashi’s sister for almost a year. She’s older, maybe thirty and very beautiful. Also the kind of high class woman guys like Saddiqi want but can never get. He still has a few others around, it’s part of the image to have many women but for anything important, a celebration or appearance, he took Gashi’s sister. It made him look like a more important man if he could have such a sophisticated girlfriend and one who would still put up with him having other women. It made him look like a real stud as you call it.”
“OK. What’s Gashi’s sister’s name?”
“Aferdita Gashi. She goes by Dita mostly. Other than her connection with Saddiqi she isn’t well known and most people avoid her because of her boyfriend. I didn’t ask about her though. Do you want me to?”
“No, not really, just curious abo
ut why a grown ass woman with class and options would hang with a thug like Saddiqi. Maybe she liked the lifestyle or got a thrill out of being around gangsters.”
Naim shrugged a very Albanian shrug, arms rising from the sides, palms down. “With women, who can know? Certainly not us men.”
I couldn’t fault that and nodded agreement. Of course, I did know or at least had a reasonable explanation which fit the known facts and was consistent with context but Naim wasn’t privy to that insight. I went with the typical male confusion in the face of female decision making as it fit and wouldn’t cause him to later remember any significance to my interest in Aferdita.
“So…it looks like maybe Saddiqi had HANNA killed to preserve his own reputation and Gashi just happened to be there and get hit too? Is there any way to check on this and see if the word on the street backs this up?”
“I thought of that,” Naim replied. “It fits except for one strange thing. Billi was often around Saddiqi and his crew. She still hung out now and then at clubs with them and was in and out of his house regularly. Even when living with HANNA. Maybe that was it but she wasn’t hiding the affair with HANNA and was still in tight with Saddiqi. Unless she did something to piss him off or someone began to make fun of him for it, it doesn’t make sense. It’s almost like he approved of her being with HANNA.”
I have no claim to enlightenment and thus have never experienced satori. Likewise the occasional moments when things become clear to me are, in my mind, less than epiphanic. Still, this was a singular moment when several things swirling in the soup of my brain coalesced into a coherent and interesting whole. The nature of the relationship between Enver Saddiqi and both Billi and Aferdita, the nagging thought I’d never quite gotten ahold of, the ambush and Billi’s reaction to HANNA’s death, all came together in a unified theory of everything that I needed to examine in private and at some length. I made quick mental notes and moved the conversation with Naim onto safer ground.
“Hmmm, could be he just didn’t give a shit and then changed his mind. No big deal yet I guess. Can you please give me Saddiqi’s address and any places he hangs out regularly?”
Naim nodded and glanced about before tearing a page from a notebook and passing it casually to me. Trying to be sneaky tends to attract attention, acting natural does not. I took the page, folded it and slipped it into my pocket. The place was filling up but still not full and no one appeared to be interested in us. A fair number of the customers were internationals, cops with the European mission, staff from UNMIK or one of the numerous NGOs. We fit in and were not obvious foreigners, actually we looked more local than not and as such were of little interest to the other patrons and restaurant staff. I always thought the Norse God of Mischief had gotten away with so much simply by being low key. Sad pun or not it was a strategy which worked well and appeared to be doing so now.
Naim and I finished our dinner, going over a few more details. We set up a failsafe to provide a warning to Steve if anything happened to me. While I would be using my Hushmail to keep him apprised of my status, it would be good to have a backup plan to provide some heads up if I was taken out of play. Naim would function as that back up. If he didn’t hear from me once a day, he would wait until midnight and then contact InSol at an email address I gave him. The address appeared to be a personal one and wasn’t linked to InSol but would be monitored by Steve for this purpose. I needed a way to let InSol know if I got taken out of play by the opposition and this was the best method I could devise on the spot.
KISS principle and all that.
I paid the bill and we separated before leaving by the simple expedient of me taking a detour to the men’s room while Naim left. Ten minutes later I exited and headed downhill toward the Grand. The night was colder than the last few had been and people were hurrying to get to their destinations. I did my usual sweep for surveillance and found nothing en route. There were a number of people walking, hanging around seeing and being seen near the Grand, which given its location at the end of the pedestrian boulevard of Mother Teresa, was pretty normal. Any of them could have been watching for me but none stood out. I slipped inside, checked the desk for messages and dropped the comment that the trip to the border was exhausting when asked how my day was. I wanted the comment to get back to whoever was behind the surveillance as it would fit with my being headed where I was when they lost me as well as my having been unobtainable all day and returning in the evening. There were no messages but the concierge apologized for the need to dismantle my alarm. According to him, the cleaning woman had accidently bumped my case and the alarm had fallen to the floor and began to go off. Being unable to figure out how to shut it off, they had opened the back and removed the batteries. He apologized and handed me the disassembled alarm. I couldn’t see any signs of duplicity but then again he wasn’t likely to show any. I’d proceed on the assumption that someone had entered my room to search it and the maid had, through payment, coercion or both, taken the blame.
It looked like I’d need to do some checking before I could begin to work my way through the insight I’d gained.
My room looked undisturbed when I opened the door. I wasn’t really expecting anyone to be inside or even waiting in a nearby room. I’d elected to return since the surveillance had seemed to be amateur hour and if my counter surveillance effort had succeeded, the opposition would not know I had detected them. Coming back from a day long trip was within my cover and not coming back would indicate they were onto something. If they were already wise to me then the surveillance would most likely have had a different feel, more like setting a trigger than just keeping a watch. It was possible that I was wrong and the Serbian mafia was more than capable of mounting a direct action operation in a hotel but I was gambling that this was a probe made in conjunction with the surveillance and meant to provide information with which to evaluate my cover. I needed to see how far they had gone and what they might have learned. This being the case, I pushed open the door and walked in like an unsuspecting journalist returning from a long day.
I shut and locked the door before checking the room and bath for any lurkers. Finding none I checked my case next. It had been moved but the locks were intact and showed no signs of anyone trying to defeat them. Employing basic precautions against tampering and theft meant that I had secured the case with a titanium lock and then put the whole thing on the luggage rest next to the closet with a travel tilt alarm carefully balanced behind it. If the case was moved the alarm would begin sending out a very loud noise. It wouldn’t keep a thief from running from the room, case in hand; the bicycle lock and chain securing it to the luggage rest would do that. A thief could easily carry the weight of the case and the rack but it would be conspicuous as hell and he’d be unlikely to make it to the lobby. While the entire set up was not noticeable unless you moved the case, it would deter casual theft and not raise any suspicions if discovered by a too curious maid. The fact that I had chained the case to the rack would be taken as what it was, simple precautions against theft, something that the hotel might be a tad offended by but equally something it would not find odd as many frequent travelers take small precautions with their possessions in hotel rooms. I figured the default response of any low level hood searching my room would be to leave it as found and report that I took precautions against theft that fit with being an experienced traveler to questionable places.
The rest of the room was as I’d left it. Clothing in the drawers and closet were slightly disturbed from where they had been but as there was nothing to find I wasn’t concerned. I unlocked the case and checked the contents including my real documents hidden in a concealed section of the liner I’d had installed. Any serious search would find them but casual checking would not. This mission had been too short fused to permit me to acquire mission specific false documentation so I was using the set I’d had for the Greek mission. Since we hadn’t been sure if the surveillance would require the crossing of borders, we’d been provided with excellent do
cuments which would stand inspection at such crossings. They also permitted the rental of vehicles, like the BMW I was driving, with international insurance and the other stamps and assurances required if one is to take a foreign registered vehicle across a border outside of the Schengen countries. I’d taken the precaution of putting all my documents in the case since breaking into the car to obtain the registration and insurance papers was a basic move easily anticipated. Not having rental forms etc. in the vehicle was not unusual for anyone experienced in travelling and wishing to avoid identity theft.
Overall, it looked as if the opposition had sent someone who had a maid let them in, did a basic search and when the alarm went off, they bugged out to avoid attention. I’d check the BMW later but would bet it had also been entered. This was fine as everything they’d found would point to a journalist with good personal security but nothing indicative of hyper vigilance or security training.
I was going to need a new base pretty soon, one not known to the opposition. That would have to be top on the list tomorrow, right after determining if I was still under surveillance which would also tell me something about the opposition. For now I needed to sit down and do some serious thinking about the information I’d gained and the picture it created. Then send an updated report to Steve and get some direction on our options.
First I needed some uninterrupted thinking cap time so I shoved the chair which partnered with the room’s small desk in front of the door where it would both warn me and slow up anyone making a fast entry. Then I stretched out on the bed, hands behind my head and M57 near to hand, and began to work my way through the newly connected facts. First up was the connection between Billi and Enver. This was apparently ongoing and open although somewhat different in nature once she moved in with HANNA. It helped explain a number of things which had heretofore been mysteries. I now had an explanation for why and how the opposition, the Serbian mafia, had known who to look for and why this had happened shortly after my talking with Billi. If she was still in Enver’s good graces or trying to return there then she could have found the arrival of a stranger who was interested in HANNA to be something Enver would wish to know about. More likely she was instructed by Enver to watch for just this sort of thing. And when I turned up with my cover of being a Canadian journalist there to report on the border troubles, Billi passed this and my description on to Enver who sent folks out to all the likely hotels. A simple description and a few Euros would suffice to find out where I was staying. If I wasn’t in a hotel then that might mean something significant. But being where I was made sense with the cover story and sending a few guys to watch and see what I did and who I did it with was a logical next step. My counter surveillance actions were designed to be easily explained by the environment and my subsequent return to the Grand Hotel, where I would be easily located, would lend credibility to the idea that losing me was an accident rather than deliberate action. A room search also had turned up nothing inconsistent so I could work with the theory that the opposition had been set on me by Billi but had so far found nothing to confirm that I was anything other than what I’d told her. That wouldn’t mean they would now accept it and give up but it did mean the likelihood of direct action was lessened as it was always risky and would not be used unless they were reasonably sure it was justified. My tradecraft thus far ought to have kept them uncertain enough to preclude direct action as an immediate option.
If my assumption of Billi being tasked by Enver was correct then it also had a number of other implications. First of all it explained the fact that HANNA had been driving her vehicle the night of the hit and that according to her it had been at her insistence. Knowing what vehicle he would be in would make following him easier and a simple action like drilling a small hole in a tail light would make her vehicle identifiable at night even with the large number of similar vehicles on the road. It also meant that the hit team had only to locate the correct vehicle in an area which permitted action and they could do their thing without worrying about anything else. Basically, I was beginning to suspect that Billi had set HANNA up to be killed and that she had done so at Enver’s direction. I wasn’t too sure if she had known what was happening or if she was simply following orders and then learned later what had occurred. This last seemed most likely as she didn’t strike me as a good enough actress to fake her hopes for a future with HANNA or her sorrow at losing that and her shock at his death. I was tending toward a theory of her being planted on HANNA by Enver with directions to keep Enver informed about HANNA’s actions, lifestyle and contacts. This made sense if a member of Enver’s circle was developing an unlikely close friendship with someone who worked for the US Embassy. Enver would want to know if the new buddy was just a guy or if he was what he had in fact been, an operator for a hostile organization. I also suspected that she had been led to believe that she’d be able to escape to America with HANNA if she just kept Enver happy now. Finding out that she’d been used would have been upsetting, devastating even but she would be under no illusions as to what kind of man she’d been associating with and her most realistic option would be to continue to maintain ties with him simply to survive.
That also gave me an opening. If she had truly been planning on escape with HANNA, it might mean she was open to recruitment based upon both revenge for his callous use of her as well as the promise of freedom and a fresh start in the US. I wasn’t sure this was the case; she could be an extremely skillful actress who’d played her part of grieving and disappointed girlfriend well but it was perhaps worth exploring. If for no other reason than that an approach which was reported to Enver would provide security for our real source, Aferdita, as it would indicate we had lost our only source and were looking for entry. This was assuming that the killing had been a counterintelligence move, not an act of macho face saving. I’d need to formulate a thoughtful approach and obtain permission from Steve before trying it on but the benefits were considerable in any case. I’d just have to survive the blow back if she was truly working for Enver and reported the pitch. Recruiting Billi would also require DIA to keep compartmentalization between Billi and Aferdita which, in the confined terrain, both human and urban, might mean two handlers, something they would have to evaluate against the likely return. That wasn’t my call either which meant Steve would pass on my information and we’d wait for direction from the client.
In addition to the clarity with Billi, Naim’s information had helped confirm most of Aferdita’s story. It fit the known facts and matched her explanation which was perhaps to be expected if she was a dangle but seemed a bit too much effort for the situation. It was much more likely that Enver had killed HANNA either for professional or personal reasons and that Gashi had perhaps been collateral damage. His being with HANNA in Germia at that time would be hard to explain as something other than a meet which would have caused Enver’s professional paranoia to kick in but that then accounted for Billi being tasked to watch for anyone connected to HANNA. And the immediate reaction to her information about the Canadian journalist asking about HANNA, assuming for the sake of argument that she had informed Enver, supported this theory more than one which required Enver to behave in a more Byzantine fashion for which he had neither the background nor training. Occam’s Razor suggested that the simplest explanation was the correct one.
I needed to put my thoughts together in a coherent fashion, design and explain several courses of action and provide my recommendations as to which were preferable and why. This would take a while but I had the time. I spent the next three hours writing up my report and including my evaluation of Aferdita as a source. I also included the fact that I had my local support network on standby to email at midnight of any day where they had not heard from me. Finally, I encoded the report and tucked the M57 under a sweater for the trip to the business center. It was closed at this time of night but a quick discussion with the concierge about my urgent need to file copy with my office now, aided by a modest donation to his entertainment fund,
got me in with no real problem. I used my thumb drive to clean the computer and give me a firewall behind which I could access Hushmail. I uploaded my report to InSol and requested direction on how to proceed. I made a point of recommending that Aferdita be used merely to obtain current information and then extracted with a recruitment attempt with Billi providing both distraction and possible continued access. Once the report was transmitted, I wiped the computer again and headed back to my room. The extra computer security would be a potential indicator of my true role if anyone checked. It wasn’t something I could avoid, however, and going out while under scrutiny by the opposition would simply mean the check happened somewhere else. It also ran the risk of making someone curious as to why I didn’t simply use the business center to contact my office. Using internet cafes now and then while wandering around town was normal, doing so late at night when an adequate solution was at hand would not be. I simply had to chance it and hope for the best.
There would be little for me to do now until I had a reply. That would most likely take a couple days. I would spend the time doing things consistent with my cover and trying to bore the bad guys stupid. I put the chair back in front of the door though and kept the M57 out and on the nightstand. There were a number of possibilities at play and I wasn’t going to simply accept my own interpretation and act accordingly. I would continue to operate as if there were threats and opportunities of which I was unaware. This had the advantage of being true even if my theories were correct.
Despite the long day and late hour, I had trouble dropping off to sleep. I finally drifted into a troubled sleep in the early hours of the morning. My dreams were dark and full of foreboding and I woke feeling less than refreshed.