Old Enemies by Michael Dobbs Read Free Book Online Page B

Not just with these teenagers but with his father, with Julia for going and getting herself killed, with Terri, but most of all with himself. He was normally a man renowned for his self-control but today wasn’t normal, and suddenly a gear inside him slipped and he was shouting, threatening, making a stupid scene. In response the kids began laughing, mocking, gave him the finger before melting away, moving past him like a current around a stone, kicking over his suitcase as they disappeared.
    He’d spent years listening to any number of psychologists and sociologists, let alone fellow politicians, offering explanations for kids like these who turned into a rat pack, but right now he wasn’t big on mitigation. He was burning, he hated them. For making a fool of him, and for enabling him to make a fool of himself.
    The owner of the minimarket was out on the pavement now, rescuing his wife, comforting his bewildered child, looking at Harry with suspicion as though he was to blame. And at that moment Harry came to the conclusion that he was, after all, a lucky man not to have a family, not to be a father, not to be forced to put up with this sort of shit.
    To hell with the sodding milk, he’d pour beer over his cornflakes. Harry kicked the pavement in fury as he picked up his suitcase, shouldered his anger and continued trudging home.

    It was called the Karst, or Kras or Carso, depending on which of the locals you spoke to, a vast, thinly populated plateau that stretched back from the Italian port of Trieste and marked the boundary between Old Europe and the Balkans, the place where Latin met Slav, a spot where many passed through but few stopped. It was a place easy to overlook. That’s why the kidnappers had chosen it. The dense oak trees that had given this area its character had long ago been ripped out by medieval foresters to provide wood for the trading fleets of Venice, just seventy miles along the coast, leaving scrub pine in their place. This was high limestone country, a landscape that seemed to be at war with itself, riddled with caverns and sinkholes gouged out by the underground streams that made the ground disappear beneath the feet, a place of neglected paintwork and crumbling stone walls where scattered rural communities struggled to eke out a living on thin soils. Such hard conditions bred independence and self-reliance, and a distrust of the many monarchs who had tried to bend it to their ways. It was a region of meagre rewards and hardy souls, and of the Bora, a savage northerly wind that generated extraordinary ferocity as it descended upon the Adriatic, like a hooligan who molested you before running off, only to return just when you thought it safe to come out again. The Carso was a place with its own laws, its own way of doing things. Policemen and officials sent up here had sometimes simply disappeared, as though they had been dropped down a hole in the ground, which in all probability they had. And that was another reason why the kidnappers had come.
    It was dark when they arrived at the isolated two-storey farmhouse, darker than any place Ruari could remember. A dim glow from behind drawn curtains was the only light he could see in any direction. They heaved him from the car, dragged him inside, his legs still numb from the drug, his mind like treacle, and someone was trying to drive a chisel into his skull. A room, flagstones on the floor, with old wooden beams and rough plasterwork, and sparsely furnished – a table, a dresser, a mixture of ageing wooden chairs, little more. A wood fire was spitting in the corner. On the table Ruari could see dirty plates and empty beer bottles, along with a laptop computer. There were also several weapons, including an assault rifle. A smell of wood smoke and stale cooking fat hung in the air.
    He counted seven men in total, the three who had brought him here and four others. As he struggled to regain his senses he quickly became aware of the order of things;