"So once Vlachos is out of the way, Solomos and his Keystone Cops move in," Sterling said. "They take Trahanatzis apart a piece at a time until he tells them that the EMA is holding the American congressperson at Skopje. They pass that to Delta, and Delta moves in. Yeah, it fits. God help me, it fits!"
"You know, this is a pretty big, pretty complicated plan," Roselli said. He grabbed Vlachos by his hair and pulled his head back. "I don't think lover-boy here came up with it on his own, do you?"
"Ask him who he's working for," Murdock said.
Stepano barked a question. The prisoner sagged farther down against the ropes. Once he'd been broken, all of the fight appeared to have drained from him.
"Da," the man said. "Brigadni Djeneral Vuk Mihajlovic."
"Well, well," Roselli said. "Our friend from TV."
"Ask him how far the JNA is involved in this," Murdock said. "I want to know just what we're up against, and you can tell him that if he doesn't tell us the precise truth, he can kiss his balls good-bye."
The added threat didn't seem to make much of an impression. Vlachos's reply was a barely intelligible mumble.
"He says there are some Serb 'volunteers' helping the EMA. Sounds like ten or twelve shooters, max, guarding the plane at Skopje, some army regulars, some EMA freedom fighters. That castle on lake Ohrid used to be some kind of a tourist attraction, but it's been closed for quite a while. Even the caretakers are gone. He's not sure how many men are up there, but he thinks it's supposed to be ten, maybe twenty, all regular JNA."
"You know," Roselli said, "Mihajlovic might be running things on the Serb side of the border, but he wouldn't have any pull with the Greeks. We must have two higher-ups, Mihajlovic to handle the Serbs, and somebody else with the Greeks… someone who helped plant those EMA infiltrators in the Dimona, someone to protect this bastard until they're ready to sacrifice Trahanatzis. Who would that be anyway?"
"I don't know," Murdock said. "I doubt that this guy knows. Frankly, that's one for the Greeks to worry about. We can pass all of this on to them, but our problem is finding Ms. Kingston."
They questioned Vlachos for another hour, checking answers, digging for inconsistencies, looking for signs that he might be lying about anything, even the smallest detail. Toward the end of the session, he became stubborn again, refusing to say more. Stepano flicked the lighter into flame, spat a Slavic curse, and dropped his hand toward Vlachos's groin.
Vlachos burst into another flood of begging, pleading, desperately ingratiating words as tears streamed down his face. By the time he was through answering the last of the SEALs' questions, Murdock was certain that they'd gotten everything out of him that there was to get.
"God, Stepano," Murdock said quietly after the big SEAL again closed the lighter. "I'm glad you're on our side."
"In this land," Stepano said quietly, "so very much depends on a man's manliness. Like the machismo of Latin America. I did not want to have to threaten him like that."
"Would you have set him on fire?" Roselli asked. "No, don't answer that, Steponit. I don't think I want to know."
"There were moments," Stepano said, staring at the cigarette lighter still clutched in his hand, "when I thought I might. Bog! Mi pomotchi!…"
Tears were running down his face, as well as that of the prisoner. Stepano was trembling, shaking as his rigidly held inner control began to slip. His fists clenched, the muscles in his arms and back bulging as he struggled with what he'd just done.
God, what did Stepano just put himself through? Murdock wondered. He slipped an arm around the Serb's shoulders and squeezed. "It's okay, Stepano. You did good. We got what we needed, right?"
"Y-yes. But I hate this-"
"Me too, my friend."
"This guy," Roselli said, slapping the back of Vlachos's head, "is a thorough-going bastard. Don't worry yourself over a scumbag like him."
"Believe me, Steponit," Papagos said. "What you did to him tonight is nothing compared to what the government security forces would have done. He got off light."
"Greek security'll still get a crack at him," Murdock said.
"We're turning him over to them?" Sterling asked, nodding toward the sobbing, utterly broken man still tied to the chair.
"We can't take him with us," Murdock decided. "We'll leave him tied up and gagged just like he is, and put out a do-not-disturb sign on the door. We can telephone Solomos from the consulate and tell him where he can come pick him UP."
"The consulate?" Roselli asked.
"I have a feeling they'll be able to put us in touch with Captain Beasley," Murdock said. "And we're going to need Delta's help for this one."
"Not to mention a good lawyer," Sterling said. "I'm not sure Solomos is going to let us out of the country after the way we put his tits through the ringer at the waterfront."
"Well," Murdock said, "some of what we picked up here tonight might serve as a peace offering. Look at it this way. We got the information without Solomos's interrogators having to mop up all that blood in their basement. Nice and neat. And if he's smart, he can use it to find the Greek Mr. Big in this plot."
"Shit," Roselli said. "What if Solomos is part of it?"
"I don't think he's that smart, Razor. Come on. Let's get our shit together and get the hell out of Dodge."
Minutes later, as they stepped out of the room, Papagos leaned back in and barked something at Vlachos in Greek. Murdock heard only the muffled groan of a reply.
"What'd you tell him?" Murdock asked.
"Apagoretai to kapeisma," Papagos said, grinning wickedly. "That's 'No smoking.' Until somebody comes in and cleans him up, smoking just might be hazardous to his sex life."
14
The structure was small as Ottoman fortresses went, but it offered a commanding view of the lake from its cliff-side eyrie. Once it had protected a mountain road winding up through the Plachenska Mountains from the rug-making center at Korc to the crossroads town of Uskup, later known as Skopje, 140 kilometers to the north.
That road had been closed for a long time now. The Albanian border lay just eighteen kilometers south at the tiny village of Ljubanista, and that tiny country had been shut off from the rest of the world since the end of World War II.
The lake itself was well known to geologists as the deepest in Europe, one of the oldest lakes in the world. At an altitude of 695 meters, nestled into the forested landscape between the Galicica Mountains to the east and the southern arm of the Jablanica Mountains to the west, Lake Ohrid itself formed part of the border between Albania and The Former Yugoslav Macedonia. Approximately a third of the lake, the southwest corner from just south of Ljubanista to the border crossing at Cafasan, belonged to Albania.
As his car wound south past the town of Gorica on a narrow and poorly maintained road hugging the sheer, forested cliffs rising from the lake, Brigadni Djeneral Vuk Mihajlovic reflected that a more remote and private spot could scarcely be imagined. Struga Airport — which included a military air base, of course — offered access, but this narrow road and the forbidding terrain above and below it guaranteed the privacy of the force now holding Gorazamak Fortress. In recent years, the city of Ohrid had become something of a tourist center for this corner of Macedonia, and Gorazamak was one of some thirty so-called "cultural monuments" in the region. With civil war in Yugoslavia, however, and with the rise both of local terror groups like the EMA and of the threat of Serb-Yugoslav intervention in a state that clearly could not survive on its own, the tourists had vanished, taking their foreign currency elsewhere. So sharp had the economic collapse of the past couple of years been that many of the villages in the area were deserted now.