5. Chapter Five
Chapter five
Noble picked up the manila envelope. It was slightly bulky, with something inside, not just paper. His brow furrowed. “What’s this?”
Burke shrugged and motioned to the envelope in a way that said, Open it and find out.
An obnoxiously loud group from New York, or maybe Jersey, crammed themselves into a nearby booth.
Their accents and sunburns confirmed their tourist status.
One of the only drawbacks to living in Florida is the tourists.
Canadians were bad, driving five miles under the speed limit, even in a twenty-five mile an hour zone. New Yorkers were worse.
Noble ignored the Brooklyn accent, eyed his old mentor, and thumbed open the flap on the envelop. He shook the contents onto the table and found a travel toothbrush and toothpaste, along with a small bottle of baby aspirin. Noble’s frown deepened.
“That’s our company medical and dental plan,” Burke told him with a grin. “Welcome aboard.”
Noble chuckled and picked up the baby aspirin. “A real classy operation you’ve got.”
“We spare no expense,” Burke said, then turned serious. “I’ve got something I’d like you to look into for me. Probably nothing, but I want to be sure.”
“This a paying gig,” Noble asked. “Or a favor?”
“Both.”
“Lay it on me.”
The Birchwood started filling up with the early lunch crowd.
Sunbaked vacationers, who’d been in the sand since early morning, were now looking for someplace to escape the heat.
They piled into the restaurants and bars.
They’d all be passed out in their hotel rooms by two.
Emerging again from their slumber around four or five, they would eat and be back on the beach to watch the sun slowly sink into the water.
One of the magical things about Saint Petersburg, Florida, it’s one of the few places on the mainland where you can watch the sun rise from the water in the east, and return to the waves in the west.
Burke brought out a phone and pulled up a photo. He passed the device across the table.
“What am I looking at?” Noble asked. He turned the phone sideways to reorient the image. It was a photo of two people, a man and a woman, both middle aged, somewhere in eastern Europe judging by architecture and street signs.
“Bill Handley and his wife Milena Kova?,” Burke said.
“Handley? Do I know that name?”
“You and he probably crossed paths,” Burke explained. “Handley was a Company man. Retired a couple months ago. Worked the Bosnia, Serbia desk during the Kosovo war, then spent some time in the Middle East station. He worked for the DI.”
DI was Directorate of Intelligence. Noble had worked with the Directorate of Operations, but one hand washes the other. It meant Handley had been one of the people passing intel to Noble and his team. He nodded. “Yeah, okay, I think I remember him now.”
Handley was in his late fifties, maybe early sixties. He looked like a guy who’d tried to take care of himself with tennis or biking, but slowly lost the battle to long hours driving a desk at Langley. He had grey in his beard and extra stomach rolling over his belt.
The wife was another matter entirely. She had dark hair and just enough years on the face to give her a mature beauty, with a slender figure. Noble whistled. “Married a little out of his league, didn’t he?”
“Yes, he did.” Burke chuckled. “Milena Kova? is a journalist. You may have read some of her stuff, if you read news on Eastern Europe. They met during the Kosovo war.”
“I probably haven’t read any of her stuff,” Noble said. “So what’s the problem?”
Burke shrugged. “I don’t know that there is a problem. He retired and they went on a second honeymoon. I got that picture of them almost two weeks ago and haven’t heard from them since.”
Noble sat back and favored Burke with a patronizing look. He tapped the woman in the photograph. “Have you seen her? Handley probably has a load of little blue pills and is hold up in a hotel room somewhere with this little honey. I would be.”
“You and me both,” Burke admitted. “But they aren’t returning calls or texts. And there’s this.” He took the phone, zoomed in on a corner of the photograph and passed it back.
Noble examined a slightly fuzzy image of a man in the background wearing a blue windbreaker and denims.
“I can’t be sure, but I think that’s an Albanian Captain named Valmir Zeqiri.”
“Give me a break, Matt.” Noble put the phone down on the table. “That photo doesn’t have resolution to be sure of anything. That could be the Pillsbury Dough Boy back there.”
“My gut is telling me it’s Zeqiri.”
“And this Zeqiri fought for the Albanians during the war?”
“He was a captain back then, running covert operations against the Serbians.”
“Let’s say you’re right.” Noble shrugged. “So what? America backed the Albanians. Let’s say he is this Zeqiri fellow. He’s KLA. Why would he have a grudge against Handley? A better question is; would he even remember Handley?”
Burke leaned forward, pulled his drink close, and cradled it in both hands. “Not all of us backed the Albanians.”
“I thought America went to bat for the KLA.”
“Officially, yes,” Burke told him. “But there were several of us, Bill included, who felt we were backing the wrong side in that war. The Serbs were no saints, but the Albanians were, some would argue, far worse. And Bill’s wife, Milena, she’s Serbian.
She wrote about the atrocities committed by the Albanians, even went to Washington a few times, and tried to petition congress, make the politicians in America see they were backing the wrong side in the war. Some of us listened.”
It was all before Noble’s time. “You were one of those people?”
Burke nodded. “Bill, too. That’s how he and Milena met. After the war, Milena’s journalism was instrumental in sending some high ranking Albanian military leaders to jail for war crimes.”
Noble re-examined the photograph. So Milena Kova? was a muckraker and her husband was a CIA officer who’d bucked the official narrative.
That rebalanced the equation. Still, it didn’t add up to foul play.
Noble shook his head. “I dunno, Matt. I still think you might be worried about nothing. You’ll probably get a text in another week or two and find out they’ve been on a sailboat rekindling the romance. ”
“I hope you’re right.”
“But you still want me to go over there?”
Burke nodded.
“Where would I even begin?”
Burke gave him the address of a hotel in Belgrade. Noble took another look at the picture and clicked his tongue. “Okay, when do I leave?”
“ASAP.”
Noble held up the phone. “Can I send this image to myself?”
“That’s your phone,” Burke told him. “It’s got a tracker, just in case you get in trouble. Keep it with you. And keep me updated.”