‘Any sign of the money belt?’
‘Now that was stupid. I warned him. It was too much either to leave behind or carry around. But I don’t think Fadil would kill him for that.’
‘Where were you, John?’
‘That’s the point. If I had been there it would never have happened. I’d have vetoed the idea, whatever it was. But I was on a mountain road in south Croatia trying to get a truck with a solid engine block towed to the nearest town. Dumb Swede. Can you imagine driving a truck with an empty oil sump and not noticing?’
‘What did you discover?’
‘When I got back? Well, he had arrived at the compound, let himself in, taken a Land Cruiser and driven off. One of the other Bosnians, Ibrahim, saw them both, but they didn’t speak. That was four days before I returned. I kept trying his mobile but there was no answer. I went apeshit. I figured they’d gone partying. At first I was more angry than worried.’
‘Any idea which direction?’
‘Uhuh. Ibrahim said they drove off north. That is, straight into central Travnik town. From the town centre the roads lead all over. No one in town remembers a thing.’
‘You got any ideas, John?’
‘Yep. I reckon he took a call. Or more likely Fadil took a call and told Ricky. He was very compassion-driven. If he had taken a call about some medical emergency in one of the villages high in the backcountry, he’d have driven off to try and help. Too impulsive to leave a message.
‘You seen that country, pal? You ever driven through it? Mountains and valleys and rivers. I figure they went over a precipice and crashed into a valley. Come the winter when the leaves fall, I think someone will spot the wreckage down below among the rocks. Look, I have to go. Good luck, eh? He was a nice kid.’
The Tracker went back to Travn
ik, set up a small office-cum-living quarters and recruited a happy-to-be-employed Ibrahim as his guide and interpreter.
He carried a satphone with several spare batteries and a scrambler device to keep communications covert. It was just for keeping in touch with head office in London. They had facilities he did not.
He believed there were four possibilities ranging from dumb via possible to likely. The dumbest of the four was that Ricky Colenso had decided to steal the Land Cruiser, drive south to Belgrade in Serbia, sell it off, abandon all his previous life and live like a bum. He rejected it. It simply was not Ricky Colenso and why would he steal a Land Cruiser if his grandpa could buy the factory?
Next up was that Sulejman had persuaded Ricky to take him for a drive, then murdered the young American for his money belt and the vehicle. Possible. But as a Bosnian Muslim without a passport, Fadil would not get far in Croatia or Serbia, both hostile territory for him, and a new Land Cruiser on the market would be spotted.
Three, they had run into person or persons unknown and been murdered for the same trophies. Among the out-of-control freelance killers wandering the landscape were a few groups of Mujahedin, Muslim fanatics from the Middle East, come to ‘help’ their persecuted fellow Muslims in Bosnia. It was known they had already killed two European mercenaries, even though they were supposed to be on the same side, plus one relief worker and one Muslim garage owner who declined to donate petrol.
But way out top of the range of probabilities was John Slack’s theory. The Tracker took Ibrahim and, day by day, followed every road out of Travnik for miles into the backcountry. While the Bosnian drove slowly behind him, the Tracker scoured the road edges over every possible steep slope into the valleys below.
He was doing what he did best. Slowly, patiently, missing nothing, he looked for tyre marks, crumbled edges, skid lines, crushed vegetation, wheel-flattened grass. Three times, with a rope tied to the Lada off-road, he went down into ravines where a clump of vegetation might hide a crushed Land Cruiser. Nothing.
With binoculars he sat on road edges and scanned the valleys below for a glint of metal or glass down there. Nothing. By the end of an exhausting ten days he had become convinced Slack was wrong. If an off-road that size had swerved off the road and over the edge, it would have left a trace, however small, even forty days later. And he would have seen that trace. There was no crashed vehicle lying in those valleys around Travnik.
He offered a reward for information big enough to make the mouth water. Word about the prize spread in the refugee community and hopefuls came forward. But the best he got was that the car had been seen driving through town that day. Destination unknown. Route taken, unknown.
After two weeks he closed his operation down and moved to Vitez, headquarters of the newly resident British Army contingent.
He found a billet at the school which had been converted into a sort of hostel for the mainly British Press. It was on a street known as TV Alley, just outside the army compound but safe enough if things turned nasty.
Knowing what most army men think of the Press, he did not bother with his ‘freelance journalist’ cover story, but sought a meeting with the colonel commanding on the basis of what he was, ex-Special Services.
The colonel had a brother in the Paras. Common background, common interests. Not a problem, anything he could do to help?
Yes, he had heard about the missing American boy. Bad show. His patrols had kept a look out, but nothing. He listened to the Tracker’s offer of a substantial donation to the Army Benevolent Fund. A reconnaissance exercise was mounted, a light aircraft from the Artillery people. The Tracker went with the pilot. They flew the mountains and ravines for over an hour. Not a sign.
‘I think you’re going to have to look at foul play,’ said the colonel over dinner.
‘Mujahedin?’
‘Possibly. Weird swine, you know. They will kill you as soon as look at you if you’re not a Muslim, or even if you are but not fundamentalist enough. May fifteenth? We’d only been here for two weeks. Still getting the hang of the terrain. But I’ve checked the Incident Log. There were none in the area. You could try the ECMM sitreps. Pretty useless stuff, but I’ve got a stack in the office. Should cover May fifteenth.’
The European Community Monitoring Mission was the attempt of the European Union based in Brussels to horn in on an act that they could influence in no way at all. Bosnia was a UN affair until finally, in exasperation, taken over and resolved by the USA. But Brussels wanted a role, so a team of observers was created to given them one. This was the ECMM. The Tracker went through the stack of reports the next day.