JF05 - The Valkyrie Song Read Free Page B

you but make no copies. The status of each of these young women will be that of a UC, an Unofficial Cooperator like many of your freelance operatives. At the end of the week I want the filereturned. All personal files on your students will be destroyed on completion of the training. There is to be no surviving record of the preparation and deployment of these operatives.’
    Drescher stood up. ‘Very well, but surely that is unnecessary … no outsider is ever going to set eyes on the files of the Stasi …’

 
iv.
Off the coast of Jutland, Denmark
August 2002
    Goran Vujai ć watched the blonde girl stretch languidly on the steamer chair at the stern of the yacht. Her limbs were long and lithe but she didn’t have the skinny, boyish narrowness across the hips that the other girl had. Vujai ć liked his women to look like women. He sipped his beer, appreciating its chill on the hot day. And it
was
hot. Vujai ć hadn’t expected it to be just as warm as it was. He was no great lover of the northern European climate: he belonged in the humid Mediterranean heat of the Adriatic or under the baking sun of a Balkan summer. But today the weather was good, and he could watch the girls dive from the rear of the boat into the North Sea. He would have the blonde one. That would be part of the deal, a goodwill gesture of trade: that he would get to fuck the blonde one. After all, that was what women were for. That, and being deck ornaments.
    ‘This little rowboat of yours must have cost you,’ he said to Knudsen, running his hand over the red leather and varnished teak of the recessed deck sofa. Vujai ć the Bosnian Serb spoke to Knudsen the Dane in English: the international language of business. And of organised crime.
    ‘It’s worth about five million euros. But I managed to get it cost,’ said Knudsen wryly. ‘I came to an agreement with the owner. Sure you don’t want champagne?’
    ‘I’m fine with the beer just now,’ said Vujai ć , glancing over his shoulder again at the girls. ‘But maybe later …’
    ‘Yes,’ said Knudsen. ‘Later you can let your hair down a little, huh, Goran? After everything is taken care of.’
    Vujai ć smiled. He felt relaxed. But not relaxed enough not to have brought Zlatko along with him. Zlatko stood mutely behind them, unsheltered from the sun and sweating menacingly into his Hawaiian shirt. It amused Vujai ć to think that he now had a Croat watching his back. How times had changed.
    Knudsen, a tall, tough-looking Dane, sat with Vujai ć in a plush recessed area of the deck at the stern of the motor yacht. Uniformed crew members stood in the shade of the awning, far enough away not to hear the conversation, waiting to serve lunch. Vujai ć breathed in deeply, as if inhaling the yacht’s odour of wealth.
    ‘You know, Peter,’ he said, ‘this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship. And do you know why? Because we complement each other. Supply and demand. What you need, I can deliver. This little operation of ours will become the main trading route for major drugs into Scandinavia and Northern Germany. You and I, my friend, are about to become very, very rich. Or in your case richer. Maybe I’ll get a yacht like this – if you can find another one going at cost.’ Vujai ć grinned at the blonde girl. ‘And maybe some of the fixtures too …’
    ‘Tell me, Goran,’ said Knudsen. ‘Are you sure you’ve got everything tied up at your end? I mean on the distribution side. I heard that you had problems with some of your competitors.’
    ‘Not any more. Any problems there had been were all dealt with before we first talked. I told you at our first meeting that I was totally in control of the distribution network. And I still am. I had to arrange for a few people to retire from the business. Permanently. Unfortunately I had to be morediscreet than usual, so it all proved a little more expensive than expected.’
    ‘You hired an outsider?’ asked Knudsen.
    Vujai ć