92
Kurt Vermulen bore no physical wounds. To his shame, he had been taken without firing a shot. So now he sat in the back of what had been his Land Cruiser, appropriated by the man who had so expertly defeated him, a man who introduced himself as Dusan Darko.
“We have a meeting,” Darko said, looking up from the front passenger seat and watching Vermulen in the rearview mirror as he spoke. “A friend of yours, Mr. McCabe. He is paying me twenty million, U.S., to deliver the suitcase to him. Perhaps you can pay me more. I am always interested in making a better deal. It is not too late.”
Vermulen said nothing.
“I guess not,” said Darko. “In that case, I will have to deliver you to Mr. McCabe. He will decide what to do with you then. I am sorry about your men, that they had to die. Please understand-it is just business. I have no bad feelings against you. I love America, great country. You do not want to talk-I understand. You have much to think about. Cigarette?”
Darko lit up. His driver was already smoking. Vermulen could see the orange glow of burning cigarettes in the truck ahead of him. No one in Serbia seemed too bothered by the risk of lung cancer or heart attacks. But then, men at war rarely did. They assumed they wouldn’t live long enough to catch a disease.
Vermulen was trying to work out how he had allowed himself to fall for the trap McCabe had set for him. The old man had played him right from the start, drawing him into plans that seemed insane to him now. Spending months chasing after nuclear bombs, hiring thieves, leading men into mortal danger-what had he been thinking? Maybe they’d been right, back in Washington, the people who’d tried to tell him, as politely as they could, that the grief of losing Amy had driven him off the rails.
Yet he hadn’t been wrong about the things that really mattered. He still believed, as passionately now as ever before, that his country and its allies were ignoring a terrible danger, refusing to recognize enemies who worshipped death, hated freedom, and happily sacrificed their own lives for the sake of killing others. Next to that malignant insanity, his own actions had seemed entirely rational. He had at least tried to raise the alarm.
And he’d been right about Natalia, too. Part of him, the old intelligence agent, had always wondered whether her arrival had been too good to be true. Poor Mary Lou had died, then this vision had appeared on his doorstep: Looking back, he knew it was too pat, too convenient. But even accepting that, he had no doubt that Natalia’s love for him was genuine. Countless times he’d asked himself whether he was just an old fool, letting himself be seduced by a beautiful young woman. Perhaps it had been that way at the start. Perhaps she had been pretending then. But not now. With every day that had passed, his certainty had grown. He was, at the very least, right to trust in her.
Only one aspect of the whole disaster still remained a mystery to him. He couldn’t see why McCabe had double-crossed him. He must have had something in mind all along, a purpose for his treachery. But Vermulen could not comprehend what that might be. And if he found out, what difference did it make? He’d been a professional soldier long enough to know defeat when he tasted it.