is a rarity amid the deep racial, religious, political and tribal passions of Mittel Europa. He appears to be totally aracial, areligious, apolitical and atribal. As with the true criminal mentality, his own survival and well-being appear to be his sole concern. To date, in this endeavor, he has been eminently successful.
Kretek has boasted of starting his organization with a single car trunkload of rifle cartridges looted from a Yugoslavian Army depot. From this humble origin, over a period of fifteen years, he has built the Kretek Group into a multimillion-dollar criminal smuggling combine involved in the supplying and maintenance of every major and minor armed conflict in the Mideast and Mediterranean Basin.
The Kretek Group is amorphous, like an octopus that is continuously casting off and regrowing its tentacles. It is known that there is a definite head, a tight-knit trusted command cadre clustered around Kretek himself, and an ever-changing network of mercenaries, hirelings, and sub-gangs, drawn into the circle, utilized for a few operations, and then discarded.
The amorphous nature of the Kretek Group is a security measure. In addition, the liaison and contact men between these "subcontractors" and the Kretek core cadre have a striking history of violent death and sudden disappearance, rendering a court-viable chain of evidence between Kretek and his individual operations difficult if not impossible to establish.
There is also no known fixed headquarters for the Kretek Group. Like many despots before him, he has learned the survivability of mobility. His group headquarters are continuously on the move within the more loosely regulated and unstable of the Balkan states, never providing a sitting target. While still an essential blunt-force operator, Kretek has learned to appreciate and employ modern business telecommunications to keep a grip on his far-flung enterprises.
The corpse of his native Yugoslavia provided Kretek with profitable early pickings. In the Kosovo Province, Serbian militiamen and Albaniko guerrillas slaughtered each other with ordnance provided without prejudice by the Kretek Group, and Kretek was rumored to be the primary intermediary in the covert arms dealings between the dictatorships of Slobodan Milosevic and Saddam Hussein.
With Milosevic unseated and with NATO forcing peace down the throats of the various Balkan combatants, Kretek has expanded his range of endeavor, the combatants of the Sudanese civil war and the terrorist factions of the Mideast becoming his new primary clients.
A more critical and immediate concern are the indications that Kretek is no longer content with the profit margins to be made with conventional munitions. There are now indications the Kretek Group is seeking a market entry into the ABCs: atomic, biological and chemical arms. It is feared that Anton Kretek might make as great a success of this new field of operation as he has his other criminal enterprises.
A brief segment had been highlighted at the end of the brief.
Personal Notes to the Director:
A: In the opinion of the Executive Assistant, the Kretek Group is a prime example of the kind of organization that would view the Misha 124 as a golden opportunity. They are fluid, highly adaptive, risk taking and totally ruthless.
B: Beyond the perameters of the current Wednesday Island situation, it should be pointed out that the Kretek Group is currently very much a "one man" operation. The elimination of Anton Kretek would, in all probability, lead to the direct dissolution of the Kretek Group and an increase in stability within a number of U.S. spheres of concern. Again in the opinion of the EA, this makes Anton Kretek a valid subject for a sanctioning operation, should a lock on his position ever be established and should suitable wet assets be available.
Klein smiled grimly-the female of the species was deadlier than the male. Maggie Templeton was probably correct. This was the face of the potential enemy. Men like Anton Kretek would view two tons of loose anthrax as a glittering possibility.
And Maggie was probably correct about something else. The world would likely be a better place without its Anton Kreteks.
Chapter Nine
The Eastern Coast of the Adriatic
The tides were out, the seas were low, and stars glittered through a broken cloud cover above a broad strip of dark, hard-packed sand. Above the beach lay the dunes, anchored by a hog's hair-thin scattering of rank grasses and studded with a row of crudely made concrete pillboxes. Long left to the nesting seabirds, the abandoned fortifications were a physical manifestation of the paranoid delusions of the late and unlamented government of Enver Hoxha.
Beyond the dunes brooded the sullen, forested hills of Albania.