payment-and Muhammad and the Palestinian people be damned."
The Arab started to flare but then noted the circle of grim Slavic faces drawing in around the pool of flashlight. Sullenly he took a fat manila envelope from inside his jacket, tossing it down atop the open case of explosives.
Kretek caught up the envelope. Opening it, he counted the neat strapped bundles of euros, verifying the denominations. "It is good," he said finally. "Load it."
The ton and a half of high explosives went aboard the transport plane, the Dornier's crew balancing and tying down the lethal cargo. In a matter of minutes the last case was stowed and the Arab payoff man scrambled after it without a parting word or a look back. The fuselage doors slammed shut, and the plane's propellers revved to taxiing power, blasting the arms smugglers with its sand-loaded slipstream.
Again the Dornier raced down the faint flare path. Lifting into the black sky, it executed a climbing turn out over the Adriatic, its engines growing fainter with distance.
Kretek's men dispersed once more to collect the glow sticks. In an hour or two, all evidence of the landing would be erased by the incoming tide.
Kretek and his lieutenant trudged back to the Range Rover.
"I'm not sure if I like this, Anton," Mikhail Vlahovitch said, slinging his Agram over his shoulder. Squatter and balder than Kretek, the pan-featured ex-Serbian Army officer was one of a very elite cadre within the Kretek Group permitted to call the arms dealer by his first name. "You play a risky game with these people."
Vlahovitch was also one of an even smaller cadre who had the ultimate privilege of questioning one of Anton Kretek's command decisions without being killed for it.
"What's to be concerned about, Mikhail?" Kretek chuckled fatly, slapping his second in command on his free shoulder. "We've met their airplane. We've delivered the merchandise as we promised. We received the payment agreed upon, and they flew away. We have fulfilled our contract completely. As for what happens afterward? Who can say?"
"But this will be their second shipment lost. The Arabs are bound to be suspicious!"
"Pish, pish, pish, the Arabs are always suspicious. They are always certain everyone is out to persecute them. This can be a good thing. We can make use of this."
Kretek paused beside the passenger door of the Range Rover. Reaching in through the lowered window, he popped open the glove compartment. "When we negotiate our next series of arms sales to the Jihad, we will simply place the blame where it properly belongs. We will tell them that Israeli Mossad agents are operating in the Balkans and are attempting to interfere with the flow of armaments bound for the Mideast. Beyond hating everyone else, Arabs love to hate the Jews. They will be happy to blame them for the loss of their munitions."
Kretek straightened, holding a gray metal box the size of a carton of cigarettes. He extended a telescoping aerial from the top of the box and flicked on a power switch, a green check light glowing in response.
"You will tell them about the Jews, Anton?" Vlahovitch questioned skeptically.
"Why shouldn't I? It's the truth, isn't it? The Jews are responsible. Our terrorist friends are excellent clients. They pay us good money in exchange for the weapons and explosives we sell to them. They deserve to know the truth..." Kretek flipped a safety guard up and off the central key on the transmitter. "...just not quite all of it. There's no need to mention all of the good money the Mossad is paying to see that those weapons and explosives never arrive."
Kretek pressed with a calloused thumb. Out in the night a receiver-detonator carefully grafted inside a doctored block of Semtex reacted to the electronic impulse.
There was a flash like ruddy heat lightning over the Adriatic, and the distant thud of a massive explosion as the Dornier and its crew vaporized.
"This is the secret of doing good business, Mikhail," Kretek said with satisfaction. "You must always do your best to please as many clients as possible."
The ancient stone-walled farmhouse had been built before the birth of Napoleon and had been occupied by successive generations of the same family for almost three centuries.
In the United States this would have made it a historic landmark. In Albania this made it just another weary, overused building in an overused land.
For the past fifty-odd years, a variety of governments had promised the occupants of the farm electricity "soon," but only now had it