She shook off the unpleasant memories and walked to the address Vysotsky had given her. The apartment building was on Miroslav Krieza Street, blocks away from Alexander Square. She entered the building and found the apartment she was looking for on the third floor. She knocked on the door. Footsteps sounded on the other side.
"Yes."
"I am looking for Vlad."
"Who sent you?"
"A mutual friend in Moscow. You have something for me."
She heard a chain rattle on the other side. The door opened part way.
"What is your name?"
"Valentina."
The door opened all the way. "Come in."
The man was about fifty. He had a large mustache stained yellow with nicotine. She wrinkled her nose against the smell of stale garlic, body odor and tobacco that hung around him in a noxious cloud. He was shorter than Valentina and walked with a limp. He closed the door after her.
"Follow me."
He led her down a narrow hall that smelled of cabbage to the back of the apartment. A television played in one of the rooms to the side of the hall. A long box from a florist shop lay on the kitchen table, wrapped with a red ribbon and bow. Vlad slipped the ribbon off the box and opened the lid. Inside was a rifle in pieces, a short barreled Dragunov SVU. The specialized bull pup Spetsnaz variation was designed for quick takedown and concealment. Next to the barrel lay a Pritsel Snaipersky Optichesky, a PSO-1 sniper scope. The pieces fitted nicely in gray foam lining within the innocent looking box.
Valentina gave a small sound of approval. She picked up the barrel and held it to the light and looked down the bore, at the shining steel and the rifling spiraling away to the muzzle. She set the barrel down and examined the receiver. The weapon was clean.
"It will do," she said.
Vlad snorted. "You know how to assemble it? It is very powerful. Have you fired one before?"
Vlad looked into Valentina's eyes and felt a sudden chill. He looked away.
"There is no need to return the weapon when you are finished with it. It cannot be traced."
"I don't intend to."
Valentina packed the pieces back into the box, closed the lid and replaced the ribbon. Except for the weight, it easily passed for a box of flowers.
"I was never here," she said. "You are clear about this?"
"Yes, of course. Never here."
Valentina nodded, once. She picked up the box.
"Thank you," she said.
Vlad looked surprised by the politeness. Valentina stifled an urge to laugh.
She was careful to close the door behind her as she left.
CHAPTER 16
"How much farther?" Nick asked.
They had been driving for about ten minutes and had reached the edge of the town. The houses here were older, rundown. They passed a wooden cart being pulled by a donkey along the side of the road.
"Just a few minutes now," Viktor said. "It's up there, around that curve."
The road climbed ahead of them and curved off behind an old church that was in tumbled ruins. They came around the turn. Two cars placed in a V blocked the road ahead. From somewhere behind the abandoned church, two more cars appeared. They came up fast behind the VW and boxed it in. Men got out of all four cars. They wore black balaclavas.
"Shit," Lamont said.
"I would advise not doing anything stupid," Viktor said.
There was a gun in his hand, an ugly Makarov. He held it to Selena's head.
The men from the other cars pulled open the doors. Two of them carried Kalashnikov assault rifles, the ever-popular AK-47. The leader had a pistol.
"Get out," the leader said.
"Do as he says," Nick said to the others.
The leader was a big man, bigger than Nick. He wore a thick leather jacket, a knitted scarf and a woolen cap. His hands were raw and red from the cold. The cold didn't seem to affect his grip on the pistol he pointed at Nick. He gestured with it.
"Hands behind your back. You will come with us."
"We're an accredited news team," Nick said. "You are making a mistake."
"Shut up," the leader said. "Tie their hands. Put the hoods on them."
Harsh hands pulled Nick's arms behind his back and cinched a plastic tie around his wrists. Then a rough sack of burlap was pulled down over his head. It stank of cow dung and ammonia. Hands went through his pockets and took the satellite phone and his wallet. He was pushed forward and stumbled to his knees in the snow. Someone yanked him upright and shoved him into the back of a car.
Nick couldn't see what was happening with the others. He heard car doors slam. The engine started and the car began moving. Under the sack he could see nothing. He could hardly breathe through the choking fumes of the burlap.
I guess we found our terrorists, he thought.
After what he estimated was half an hour, the car slowed and turned. They bumped over a rough road for several minutes and came to a stop. Work hardened hands pulled him from the car. Someone took his arm and pulled him along. His boots crunched in snow. He heard the others stumbling along behind.
A door opened and he was pulled into a warm space. Someone pushed him down onto a hard chair and yanked off the burlap hood. He blinked at the sudden light and looked around.
The room was large, the walls made of wood. Overhead, exposed wooden joists held up a steep, peaked roof. A stone fireplace took up one end of the room, radiating heat from a roaring fire. Mounted animal heads hung on the walls, dusty trophies of hunts long past. The windows were covered so that no one could see in or out. They were in a hunting lodge somewhere in the mountains. For all Nick knew, they could be in Macedonia or Albania.
Ronnie, Lamont and Selena sat on a hard wooden bench nearby. Nick's hands were still cinched tight behind his back. He couldn't feel his fingers.
A thin man wearing a black leather jacket and a black leather cap came into the room from the back of the building. He wasn't wearing a ski mask. Pale blue eyes studied Nick from under heavy, black eyebrows. His face was sallow and tired looking, unsmiling, with bloodless lips tightly compressed under a thin, black mustache. He wore a large pistol in a military style holster on his belt. The man looked as though he'd stepped from a photograph taken during the days of the Russian Revolution.
"You are the leader?" he said to Nick. He spoke English well, with an American accent.
Probably educated in the states, Nick thought. Up north somewhere.
"I am," Nick said. "Who are you? What do you want?"
"My name is Josef."
Josef pulled up a chair and sat down across from Nick.
"As to what we want, it is more about what you want. You were asking questions in the market about what happened in the capital. About who people thought was responsible, who set off the bomb. Is this not true?"
"Sure it's true. That's our job, to ask questions. The bombing is big news. Everybody wants to know more about what happened and who's behind it."
"We are the Macedonian Patriotic Front. You have heard of us?" Josef asked.
Another damned terrorist group, Nick thought.
"No."
"Our goal is the removal of the current regime by any means necessary."
"Are you the ones behind the bombing?"
"No. That is one of the reasons we decided to invite you here."
Nick laughed. "Some invitation. Why didn't you just ask?"
"Because you need to understand the seriousness of the invitation," Josef said, "and because we want to make sure someone listens to our demands."