"Nah," Roselli said. "He's just shaking his head no, like he doesn't want a light."
Vlachos's reply was a shrill, muffled unintelligibility, but it was clear enough what he was trying to say. "Roselli," Murdock snapped. "The gag."
The gag came off and Vlachos launched into a torrent of words, sometimes in Greek, sometimes in Macedonian. Papagos stood beside Murdock, trying unsuccessfully to keep pace with a running translation.
"He says he and four of his friends with the Enomenai… ah, the United Macedonian Struggle… infiltrated the DEA… something, something… he's speaking Macedonian now. I don't… okay, the idea was to take the plane to Skopje. The plane… the crew, they're all at Skopje. The women… ah, the congresswoman and her people… they're taking them off some place. Ah can't catch that. 'Ohridsko Ezero Gorica Gora… Gorazamak.."
"That's Lake Ohrid," Stepano said. "Gorica is a village on the shores of Lake Ohrid. Gorazamak is an Ottoman fortress nearby."
"Thank you, Mister Travel Guide," Sterling said.
"He's still speaking Macedonian now," Papagos said. "I'm not getting this at all."
"It is Serbo-Croatian," Stepano said. "Not Macedonian, He's saying… he's saying the Congresswoman and her staff were supposed to be taken off the plane and transported to this castle."
"Taking the most important hostages off someplace safe," Roselli said. "Someplace where we or Delta Force can't get at them."
"There's no such place," Jaybird said.
Vlachos was continuing to talk, the words tumbling out so quickly the prisoner began to stutter, his eyes still fixed on that horrible yellow flame wavering atop Stepano's cigarette lighter.
"He says that there was list of demands, due to be delivered to the American embassy in Athens tomorrow… ah, later today, rather. We were to recognize Macedonia as including both Yugoslav and Greek Macedonia. Statement of principle, he says. We were to recognize EMA as the legitimate representatives of united Macedonia. This… this is crazy, Lieutenant. What he is saying, we would never do."
"Since when are terrorists considered sane? In any case, he's not telling us the whole story."
"Eh?"
Murdock locked eyes with the prisoner. "Mr. Vlachos here is not Macedonian. Or if he is, he's not working for Macedonian independence."
"What then, Boss?" Papagos asked.
"What's his word for 'Serbian'?"
"Srpska."
The prisoner jumped at that word as though he'd been jabbed. Eyes wide, he looked back and forth, from one SEAL's face to another.
"Tell him we know he's Srpska."
Stepano's words prompted another torrent from Vlachos, who was watching the cigarette lighter again as though his life depended on his fixed concentration. When he stopped talking, Stepano appeared to be considering what he'd said. Then he flicked his hand, snapping the lighter shut. The prisoner slumped back in the chair, eyes closed, sweat beading his forehead.
"I think you have found something, Lieutenant," Stepano said. "Something important. Our friend here is not EMA, but he has been working closely with EMA cells in both Macedonias for a long time. As you guessed, he is Serbian… a Bosnian Serb, actually. His real name is Vlacovic, not Greek Vlachos."
"How the hell did you know that, L-T?" Roselli asked.
"Our L-T's a mind reader," Sterling said.
"Nope. It was just a guess, but an educated one. Earlier, when we were talking to Nikki? She said that Vlachos called Muslims 'Turks' and indicated that he didn't care much for them. That sounded like something a Bosnian Serb would say, not a Macedonia Slav who's spent most of his life hating Serbs."
"That's stretching things a bit, ain't it, Skipper?" Papagos asked. "Lots of folks in this part of the world don't like Muslims. Especially Greeks. They hate the Turks."
"Exactly. Which means they tend to identify Turks specifically with Turkey nowadays, not with all Muslims. At least, that was my read on it. And when Stepano said he'd started speaking Serbo-Croatian…" He shrugged.
Stepano nodded. "You guess right, sir. He is a Serb. Says he's a potpukovnik — that's lieutenant colonel in Yugoslav Army."
"What the hell interest does Serbia have in Kingston?" Roselli asked.
"And why are the Serbs helping an outfit dedicated to Macedonia unity?" Sterling added. "I thought the Macedonians wanted rid of them."
"Politics and strange bedfellows, Jaybird," Murdock said folding his arms. "Actually, now that I think about it…"
"Whatcha thinking, Skipper?"
"Another guess, Nick." But Murdock was excited now. He was right. He had to be. "Okay. Here's the way I see it. The EMA has been working against Greece for some time now. They have independence for northern Macedonia. What they want now is to shake Greek Macedonia free from Greece. Right?"
"Affirmative," Roselli said. "You're thinking the EMA is trying to make trouble between the U.S. and Greece."
"That's part of it. More than that, though, what do you think we would do once we found out that our congresswoman's flight was hijacked to Skopje?"
"Hell," Sterling said. "Delta Force would go in and kick ass."
"Exactly. Whose ass?"
"Christ!" Papagos said. "The EMA isn't that large. They must have most of their best people guarding the aircraft!"
"Delta Force goes into Skopje. Typical aircraft hostage rescue, just like Entebbe. The EMA never knows what hits them and probably loses every shooter guarding the hostages. Delta also gets enough intel from prisoners or from captured records or from debriefs of the hostages that they're able to nail all or most of the EMA's top people, probably within a few months. Hell, Serbian intelligence might even lend a hand, pass on a few files, a few names, whatever is necessary."
"And when the dust settles, there is no more United Macedonian Struggle," Stepano said.
"Sheesh," Roselli said. "That's twisted!"
"Ever heard of Byzantine politics, Razor?" Papagos asked. "Welcome to the land that spawned it."
"Oh, it gets even twistier, I imagine," Murdock continued. "Imagine Delta's surprise when they take down that aircraft and find that Ms. Kingston and her staff aren't there? There are recriminations. There's that trouble between Washington and Athens you mentioned, Razor. We find out the hijackers were infiltrators in the elite DEA. Sloppy, sloppy. And after that… I wonder what would have been next." He eyed Vlachos speculatively. "Maybe the Serbians holding Kingston at this castle threaten to kill the hostages one by one unless we abandon our support for Macedonia? That seems kind of blunt. I doubt they'd be quite that crude. Maybe instead they play it real cute and 'find' Kingston and her staff. They could claim they pulled off the hostage rescue of the century. That would make our efforts look pretty dumb and encourage us not to meddle in Balkan politics. Maybe they would claim we owed them a big one, and win some concessions from us in Bosnia or in their unresolved claims to Macedonia at the UN. Or maybe they just figure it would make us look bad and them look good to the world community at large, a colossal public-relations ploy."
"I like the double-cross aspect," Papagos said. "The Serbs get what they want from us, while we wipe out the EMA for them and take the heat from the Greeks. Slick."
"Wait a minute," Jaybird said. "All of that assumes that we found out enough to be able to launch an assault on the Skopje airfield in the first place. They couldn't know we'd pick up enough intel to make a hostage rescue even a possibility."
"Sure they would," Murdock said cheerfully. "After Solomos and the DEA finally got around to picking up Eleni Trahanatzis and working him over in one of their basement cells."
"Fuck… me," Roselli said, the words soft.
"Why else would Trahanatzis's bank account be so obvious?" Murdock asked. "Kind of stupid, putting all that money in an account where Greek intelligence would spot it right off. I imagine Vlachos here, or Vlacovic, or whatever the hell his name is, has been playing Trahanatzis like a Stradivarius, setting him up for the fall. Solomos probably got the word from someone higher up 'Hands off until Vlachos is out of the way.' He only moved tonight because he thought we were going to screw things up."