"What did you discover?"
"When I got back? Well, he had arrived at the compound, let himself in, taken a Landcruiser, 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?"
"Ibrahim said they drove north. That is, straight into central Travnik. 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 winter, when the leaves fall, I think someone will spot the wreckage down below among the rocks."
The Tracker went back to Travnik, 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 his 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 Landcruiser, drive south to Belgrade in Serbia, sell it, 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 Landcruiser 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 Landcruiser on the market would be spotted.
Three, they ran into person or persons unknown and were murdered for the same trophies. Among the out-of-control freelance killers wandering the landscape were a few groups of Mujehadin, 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 gas.
But way out on top of the range of probabilities was John Slack's theory. The Tracker had taken 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 tire marks, crumbled edges, skid lines, crushed vegetation, wheel-flattened grass. Three times, with a rope tied to the Lada offroad, he went down into ravines where a clump of vegetation might hide a crushed Landcruiser. Nothing.
With binoculars he sat on road edges and scanned the valleys below for a glint of metal or glass. Nothing. By the end of an exhausting ten days he had become convinced that Slack was wrong. If a vehicle of 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 big-enough reward for information 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. Destination unknown. Heading 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 that 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 commanding colonel on the basis of what he was, ex-Special Services.
The colonel had a brother in the elite Parachute Regiment of the British army. 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 lookout, 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 over the mountains and ravines for more than an hour. Not a sign.
"I think you're going to have to look at foul play," said the colonel over dinner.
"Mujehadin?"
"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 15th? 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 sit-reps. Pretty useless stuff, but I've got a stack in the office. Should cover May 15th."
The European Community Monitoring Mission (ECMM) was the attempt of the European Union based in Brussels to horn in on an act they could influence in no way at all. Bosnia was a UN affair until finally, in exasperation, taken over and resolved by the Americans. But Brussels wanted a role, so a team of observers was created to give them one. This was the ECMM. The Tracker went through the stack of reports the next day.
The EU monitors were mainly armed forces officers loaned by the EU defence ministries with nothing better to do. They were scattered throughout Bosnia, where they each had an office, a flat, a car, and a living allowance. Some of the situation reports, or sit-reps, read more like a social diary. The Tracker concentrated on anything filed May 15th or the three days following. There was one from Banja Luka dated May 16th that caught his eye.
Banja Luka was a fiercely Serbian stronghold well to the north of Travnik and across the Vlasic mountain chain. The ECMM officer there was a Danish major, Lasse Bjerregaard. He had written that the previous evening, i.e., May 15th, he had been taking a drink in the bar of the Bosna Hotel when he witnessed a blazing row between two Serbs in camouflage. One had clearly been in a rage at the other and was screaming abuse at him in Serbian. He slapped the face of the junior man several times, but the offending party did not answer back, indicating the clear superiority of the slapper.
When it was over the major tried to seek an explanation from the barman, who spoke halting English, which the Dane spoke fluently; but the barman shrugged and walked away in a very rude manner, which was unlike him. The next morning the uniformed men were gone, and the major never saw them again.
The Tracker thought it was the longest shot of his life, but he called the ECMM office in Banja Luka. Another change of posting; a Greek came on the line. Yes, the Dane had returned home the previous week. The Tracker called London suggesting they ask the Danish Defence Ministry. London came back in three hours. Fortunately, the name was not so common. Jensen would have been a problem. Major Bjerregaard was on furlough, and his number was in Odense.
The Tracker caught him that evening when he returned from a day on the water with his family in the summer heatwave. Major Bjerregaard was as helpful as he could be. He remembered the evening of May 15th quite clearly. There was, after all, precious little for a Dane to do in Banja Luka; it had been a very lonely and boring posting.