THE PRICE OF FREEDOM

PART NINE:

The fine drizzle had finally stopped, the cloud thinning and lifting. The sun was even trying to struggle through. On a deserted forest track, Dushan sat in the jeep beside Micah, taking notes while Micah spoke with the American negotiator.

“His family are trying to find you more,” Dino was saying, “but this is another one hundred and twenty thousand… Terry’s family have found over eight hundred and thirty thousand Australian Dollars to offer you for his safe return…” he reminded. “Eight hundred and thirty-five thousand to be exact…”

Micah glanced across at Dushan as the younger man worked out the exchange rate on a calculator. He wrote the number down, underlining it, writing another number beneath and showing it to Micah.

Just over three hundred and fifty thousand British Pounds… which was over sixteen million Dinari…

Micah grinned. They had reached the magic number. Now they were on the home stretch. Next time they spoke to the American they would drop their demand to seven hundred and fifty thousand pounds, in the hope of getting over five hundred thousand… but that would be the next negotiation. He pressed the transmit switch, “That is nothing close to what we demand! You insult us! You insult his memory! Write that on his grave!”

“Terry’s family can’t hope to raise the amount you’re asking for,” the American replied, calmly. “Give me a number, a reasonable number and we will do what we can to get it!”

“You know what we ask!” Micah told him. “This conversation is over!”

Micah cut the transmission to the American negotiator and put the transceiver down. Looking at Dushan, he grinned. “The Boss is going to be pleased,” he commented.

Dushan nodded, “Don’t think we’ll have our guest much longer…”

“They’re already offering nearly as much as we got for the Dutchman,” Micah agreed, starting the jeep, turning it round and driving back down the track towards the main road. “I think we’ll be heading home soon…”

Dushan reached forward, switching on the radio, turning the volume up. Micah glanced at him then silently cursed himself for his stupidity. Dushan had no home to go back to. It had been burned to the ground, his family buried beside the blackened walls.

Micah opened his mouth to apologise then thought better of it, staying quiet and concentrating on driving instead.

Dushan, feet propped up on the dashboard, gazed out of the side window.

Home…

He hadn’t been back to the farm since the day he had hammered the crosses into the ground with the Boss and Bracic. Most of the time he could even convince himself that he had never had a family… but every now and then it would all come back to haunt him. An unguarded word from a friend, a doll or a dress in a shop window, and then it all swept back in him, twisting in his chest so hard that he couldn’t breathe, the grief constricting his throat…

He closed his eyes, brushing away the tears that spilled down his cheeks.

Get it together, idiot, he chided silently. Now was neither the time nor the place to be crying like a child…

He took a long, silent, calming breath, holding it for a moment before breathing out just as slowly, repeating the process twice: concentrating simply on the breathing.

The constriction in his chest and throat eased gradually and, finally composed, he opened his eyes, looking out at the passing view once more. The sun had broken through the clouds, shining brightly on the mountains in the distance.

Dushan looked away, cutting the mountains off, turning his attention back to the road ahead.

........................................... 

Dino put the radio transceiver down, switching off the tape-recorder, annotating the card on the tape box before taking the tape out, writing on the label and slipping it into the box. He was getting close now. Gut instinct told him that he was getting close.

“How much is it?” Miro asked softly, “What you offer…”

Dino glanced at him. “It works out at a few pounds over three hundred and fifty thousand,” he told the inspector, jotting down some notes on a pad, “About six hundred and ten thousand US dollars…”

Miro gave a low whistle of admiration, quipping, “Six hundred thousand dollar… I think I am in wrong business.”

Dino looked at him, giving him a slight smile, “And what would your little girl think of her Papa if she found out? Not to mention your wife?”

Miro laughed, admitting, “My wife would beat me with her soup pan!”

He put a fresh mug of coffee down in front of Dino, wandering over to the table, letting the American finish what he had to do. Finally Dino pushed himself to his feet, walking across to join him at the table.

“So,” Dino asked, “what information have you discovered? You look like the fox that got the pheasant!”

Miro grinned, “I cannot bring the informations here, unfortunately, you must come with me to station. But we have appointment later with Bukavecs’ Uncle, at his very nice house just outside city…”

“Her Uncle…” Dino considered.

Miro nodded, “What you suspect about Bukavecs being involved in trust funds was good… how you say… hunch? The Uncle is listed as trustee for two funds. He is Bukavecs’ mother’s Uncle, her grandmother’s brother…”

“So his name isn’t Bukavecs?” Dino clarified.

Miro grinned again, “No… His name is Gervaise Armande…”

“That,” Dino commented, “doesn’t sound like your typical Slavakrajinan name…”

“It is not…” Miro confirmed, “Again, some informations were lost during civil war, but Armande family have been in Slavakrajina since before Second World War. Family went into hiding during War. My Sergeant hears information that Uncle Armande was with partisans, maybe British SOE. Married fellow partisan from long-time army family before the end of the War, sons and grandsons join army…”

“And his great-niece…”

Miro nodded, “And Ljiljana, yes…”

Dino considered that for a moment, then asked, “So, this Armande, he’s French?”

Shaking his head, Miro told him, “No… Armande is Slavakrajinan… But his father? His father, we think, was Canadian... Maybe stayed in Europe after First World War…”

“If he was Swiss, not Canadian,” Dino considered, “we might have a link to other trust funds…”

Miro grinned again, “Perhaps… Perhaps we find out this afternoon when we have our meeting.”

.................................................................. 

Terry drifted awake, warm and comfortable. He lay for a few minutes, listening for sounds before opening his eyes and turning carefully over onto his back. His ribs and muscles protested and he winced, but it wasn’t as bad as he’d expected.

His hands were no longer bound, but his ankles were, with the same plastic ties that they had used on his wrists, or that’s what it felt like.

Pushing the covers off, he sat up slowly, investigating, to see if he could loosen the ties. As he had expected, the only way he was going to remove them was to cut them off.

He heard the sound of a key in the door.

Sinking back against the mattress again, he pulled the blankets back over himself, closing his eyes.

Ljiljana opened the door, letting Bracic through with the tray: then stood guard just inside the door, leaning up against the wall, the SLR held lightly in her hands. Bracic walked across the room, putting the tray on the bedside table, pulling off the robe that was slung across his shoulder and dropping it on the floor.

Terry opened his eyes, looking up at him.

Bracic grinned, “Good morning, Lieutenant. Sleep well?”

“Yes,” Terry told him, “Thanks…”

“Good. First we check your wrists, then you eat. Okay?”

“Okay…”

Terry lay still as Bracic gently removed the bandages and gauze from his wrists, inspecting the wounds. “They are healing well,” Bracic told him.

Terry nodded, but said nothing.

“Here,” Bracic said, turning, scooping the robe from the floor and dropping it on top of the blankets.

Terry sat up, lifting it. He shrugged it on, pulling it around him before pushing the blankets back and swinging his legs off the bed. Bracic handed him a plate of bread and cheese and mug of coffee.

Terry bit into the bread and cheese. The cheese was strong, crumbly but smooth, the bread soft and tasting of vaguely of pine nuts.

Bracic walked over, sitting down in the chair across the room. “Once you have eaten, you can shower…”

Nodding, taking another bite of sandwich, Terry looked at him, glancing across at Ljiljana. Swallowing, washing the bread and cheese down with the coffee, he asked, quietly, “Why are you doing this?”

Bracic quirked an eyebrow.

“I mean,” Terry went on, looking between his two captors, “why are you kidnapping people, holding them to ransom?”

When neither Bracic nor Ljiljana said anything, Terry pushed, “I thought at first it was political… that you wanted money to fund another army or something… but it’s not, is it?”

“And what makes you think that?” Bracic asked, his face unreadable.

“Because I’m a kidnap negotiator,” Terry told him, “This is what I do. I’m the one who’s usually on the other end of the radio… I get a feel for these things…”

He paused, but when neither of them offered anything, he went on, “You’re all passionate, but you’re not fanatical… You’re soldiers, not revolutionaries… and there’s a difference.”

To his surprise, Bracic started laughing. Terry frowned, glancing across at Ljiljana. She shrugged, explaining, “Our government would disagree…”

“Our government,” Bracic told him, laughter fading to chuckling, “hunt us down as revolutionaries and traitors.” The laughter faded and he shook his head, quirking his eyebrow, telling Terry, “For Treason we still have death penalty in Slavakrajina…”

Terry looked at him, saying nothing, mulling over that information. Treason… Not terrorism but Treason… Was it possible that they were trying to fund an insurgency after all? Had his instincts been completely that badly skewed?

“What,” Ljiljana asked him, finally, “is the biggest difference you have seen in Slavakrajina since you and I last met?”

Terry turned his head to look at her, considering the question for a long moment before offering, “Democracy… the communist regime has gone…”

“Slavakrajina was never communist country!” Bracic shot back, “Slavakrajina was socialist country. There was big difference! We did not need special travel papers to come and go. We did not have  secret police who disappeared people.  We did not have gulags to disappear people to…”

“It was benevolent dictatorship, Lieutenant,” Ljiljana put in, not moving from the door. “There were very few with no work; there were few with no homes; there was health care and schools for all… But… you think our people were not free then, that they are free now?” Ljiljana asked.

“Yes…” Terry tried.

“Freedom,” Bracic put in, “is relative…”

“Not for me…” Terry said softly.

He’d made the comment before he even realised he had spoken out loud. Cursing silently, swallowing, he looked down, dropping his head.

Bracic opened his mouth then closed it, leaning back in the chair, sighing, running a hand across his face.

“Okay, Lieutenant, then our people are free…” Ljiljana said, breaking the silence.  Terry lifted his head, looking at her as she went on, “Free to do what? Eat in MacDonalds? Wear Nike boots? Buy motorcars? Free to vote?”

She laughed, a soft, denigrating sound, then went on, “Vote for who? Jealous, selfish nobodies with delusions of grandeur who saw a chance to grab power and make themselves big men? Or zealous fanatics who give no thought to killing children simply because they are of a different religion?”

“Only those who have grown rich,” Bracic put in, “will tell you that things were better in Slavakrajina before the fall of socialist state.”

He shook his head, continuing, “Democracy is not wrong, it is not a bad thing. It was not democracy that destroyed our country. It was jealousy and greed. If democracy had come properly, gradually, then situation would be different now in Slavakrajina, but it was all too fast… And in the end? Civil war.”

There was silence for a moment, then Ljiljana said, “Your answer is wrong, Lieutenant.”

He frowned, tilting his head, quirking an eyebrow in question.

“Biggest difference in Slavakrajina since you and I last met,” she told him, “is empty houses…”

Not understanding her meaning, wondering if that was what she really meant or if it had been mistranslated into English, he asked, “Empty houses?”

Bracic laughed coldly, “Do not pretend you do not know our history, Lieutenant…”

“Whole villages wiped out,” Ljiljana supplied. “Mass graves in forests…”

Her meaning was suddenly clear. Terry’s effectiveness as a negotiator relied on in-depth knowledge of both the place where he would be working and the backgrounds of the people who might have kidnapped the man whose release he would be negotiating. That meant that he was au-fait with most of the accounts of the political, military and religious mayhem that had gripped Slavakrajina since the fall of the Berlin Wall, so he knew exactly what she was talking about.

She walked forward, “You ask why we take you, why we hold you hostage, why we keep you from your family? Simple answer, Lieutenant: books in schools…”

Terry wasn’t sure quite what he had been expecting her to say, but that wasn’t a notion he had ever entertained. It threw him completely. “Books in schools?” he repeated.

“Build schools… pay teachers… buy books… pay for…” She trailed off, turning to Bracic, saying something in her own language.

Terry understood what she was asking and supplied, “Clinics…” before Bracic could.

She looked at him, “Clinics for medicines, yes…”

Terry looked from her to Bracic, considered what she had said, letting the information sink in, trying to fit it in with everything he knew about Slavakrajina and now about them. The last time he had seen them they had been soldiers. Now they were kidnapping people and holding them for ransom to help the people who had suffered the most during and after the civil war. They were being hunted not as terrorists but as traitors…

“Were you on the wrong side of the failed coup?” he asked, softly.

A slow smile pulled at Ljiljana’s lips and she countered, “Will you tell me what British SAS were doing near Prasjeka in nineteen ninety-one?”

Terry laughed softly, looking down. Smiling, he lifted his head, commenting, “Touché.”

Outside, they heard a vehicle pull up. Bracic pushed himself to his feet.

“We have talked enough,” Ljiljana announced. Then she smiled, finishing, “For the moment…”

Bracic gathered up the plate and mug, offering Terry what was left of the sandwich. Terry took it then drained the proffered coffee, giving the empty mug back to Bracic.

Ljiljana had backed up and now stood at the door, waiting. Bracic put the crockery on the tray, lifting the bottle of water and handing it to Terry before turning back and lifting the tray.

“We will return soon,” he told the Lieutenant, “to let you shower…”

“Thank you,” Terry told them.

Bracic nodded, heading for the door, moving into the corridor and towards the stairs. Ljiljana closed and locked the door behind them. As they made their way downstairs, Dushan came in through the front door, followed by Micah.

Ljiljana waited until they had all gathered round the kitchen table then asked, “How did it go?”

“They’re offering more than three hundred and fifty thousand now,” Micah told her as Bracic dumped the plate and mug in the sink then poured coffee for everyone. “Dushan has the figures...”

As the younger man handed her the notepad, Bracic brought the coffee mugs to the table. Ljiljana looked at all the figures then handed the pad to Bracic, reaching for a coffee.

“The American is still saying that he’s negotiating for the family,” Micah told her. “And he asked again that we give him a reasonable number. I left that for next time.”

Ljiljana nodded, telling him, “Good…”

“Things are going well, then…” Bracic commented. “We may be able to get rid of the Lieutenant soon…”

“Do you still want to shoot for the seven-fifty mark?” Micah asked.

“Yes,” Ljiljana confirmed. “Ask for seven-fifty… With any luck they’ll come through with five or six hundred…”

“And then we move the Lieutenant to Prasjeka?” Bracic asked.

Ljiljana shook her head, “No… We move him before that…” She thought for a moment then went on, “Dushan, you and Micah grab something to eat then head up to the city to make sure everything’s set for us… And leave a message for Luca…”

“Sure thing, Boss,” Dushan confirmed. Then he grinned, “Does that mean I get to drive?”
......................................................

Terry put the pillow up against the headboard, sitting up against it and pulling the blankets back across his lap. He opened the water bottle and took a swig before setting it back on the bedside table and eating what was left of the bread and cheese.

Conflicting emotions roiled inside him.

He’d been snatched from a hotel, taken from his life, taken from his son!

He had a fair idea of what Henry would be going through right now. If he was anything like Jules, he’d be concentrating on his work, getting his head down and studying… but it would be late at night, when he was trying to sleep, or if a news report caught him off-guard, or when Jules rang him…

He would be trying to keep that stiff upper lip going… and inside he’d be scared and bloody lonely in that damned school. And yet, not taking him out of school would be the best thing, giving him at least some semblance of normality.

Normality…

Not having his Dad there was normality… Would he really be upset by the absence of a Dad who was hardly ever there anyway?

Terry swallowed down the restriction in his throat, pushing that train of thought away. He definitely wasn’t in the right place or the right state of mind to be second guessing himself or reflecting on his parenting skills.

Besides, Henry was safe… unlike the children who had died here in Slavakrajina.

Terry took a deep breath, turning his thoughts to everything Ljiljana and Bracic had just told him…

Instinct told him that they weren’t lying. They were doing this to try and help their people, to help the survivors of the civil war madness. And despite their evasion, he would lay bets that both Ljiljana and Bracic had been involved in the failed coup – a coup that had attempted to stop the killings and bring back some stability to the region…

He reached for the water bottle again and the muscles along his ribs twinged…

The pain startled him back to his senses.

They may be building schools but they had beaten and tortured him. They were holding him against his will. He had made an attempt to get away and they had punished him for it.

So why the hell did he feel safe with them? Why the hell was he so sure that they would let him go and not kill him? Why did he feel like a prisoner of war and not a hostage?

Bloody hell, mate… he chided silently. You’re losing it! Get your head together!

Pushing the blankets back, he slid to the floor, lying flat for a moment before slowly beginning press-ups, jaw clenched against the burn of his protesting muscles and the ache of his ribs, concentrating on the pain and on counting the press-ups, using it to bring focus back…

 ...............................................

The Captain turned then swung back, backhanding Terry across the face. Leaning close, she told him softly, “If there were eight on strike team then you were not observer, Lieutenant…”

“I…” He tasted blood in his mouth, “I meant eight… plus me…”

She drove her fist into his stomach then grabbed his hair, pulling his head back, “Do not LIE, Lieutenant! It only makes things worse for you!”

She let his hair go, slamming her fist back into his stomach. Indicating with a nod of her head that the soldiers holding him should let him go, she watched the Lieutenant collapsed onto his knees, holding his ribs, fighting for breath.

Turning, she advanced on the Sergeant, barking an order. The soldiers dragged him to his feet. Mac had had time to collect himself and stood calmly, not looking at her.

“Why was Australian Lieutenant with you as observer?” she asked, caressing his face with the back of her fingers.

“I don’t know,” he told her, keeping his attention focused on the far wall. “I wasn’t privy to that information…”

“There were no other Australians on strike team?”

“No…”

“There were no other observers?”

“No…”

“What callsign was assigned to strike team?”

“Sarek,” he told her.

“What was your mission?”

Mac hesitated. She slapped his face, stepping back, barking, “Look at me, Sergeant!”

Cheek stinging, he dropped his gaze, looking at her.

“Your mission! What was it?”

“Surveillance,” he admitted. “We were here on a fact finding surveillance sortie…”

She quirked an eyebrow, “And your target?”

Mac let his gaze slide away from her, focusing again on the far wall. The blow to his kidneys pushed him forward a step but he remained on his feet.

“Take him,” she ordered. The soldiers grabbed Mac, sending pain down his wounded arm. He clenched his jaw, not protesting as they manhandled him out of the room.

The Captain waited until the door had closed then she turned, walking round behind Terry, ordering, “Get up!”

Terry clambered shakily to his feet.

“I begin to lose patience,” she warned him. “We continue this conversation for half hour more… Then, if no answers, I start using drugs… Do you understand?”

Fighting for composure, Terry nodded.

It wasn’t enough. The woman grabbed his chin, forcing his head up, barking, “Do you understand?”

Terry swallowed. “I understand…”

ON TO PART 10

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