Battling Brexit Read online

  “Um, yeah,” I say to the reporters’ microphones. “I think people like those who support Daesh are a real threat. However, I don’t think they’re a reason for the UK to try and leave the EU. That is why I am for the extra security, to help protect a likely target country.”

  Then I act on a whim, deciding that if no one will believe me, I may as well take my accusations straight to the enemy. “But there is something else.” I shrug off Sir Jonathan’s attempts to shepherd me away from the media. “Yesterday evening, I uncovered evidence that UKIP and Daesh are working together, at a secret rally held in Tour et Taxis. While a police investigation didn’t uncover anything, I know what I saw with my own eyes. With the help of my friends, I was able to identify the British politician I saw at the rally, talking to one of Daesh’s leaders. It was one of the leaders of UKIP, Nigel Farage. I know that may sound outlandish, especially in light of this bombing, but it is true. I hereby offer Mr. Farage the opportunity to respond to my accusations directly, at noon tomorrow in front of the European Parliament in Luxembourg Square.”

  The reporters go crazy with questions. Hristijan massages the bridge of his nose again. Sir Jonathan keeps standing there beside me and mutters. “My Lord, I can only imagine the Sun and the Mail’s front pages tomorrow: ‘Fury as East Euro dictator’s granddaughter accuses UKIP boss of bogus ties to terror group after UK Emb bombing.’ I am going to have a real mess to take care of tomorrow.”

  Eight:

  Showdown

  Elena

  “This is a terrible idea, Elena,” Hristijan says as he paces the living room.

  “I don’t care. I know what I saw and I’m going to confront Farage.”

  “This is multilateral diplomacy, not a war zone. Trying to argue or fight your way through it will only make things worse.”

  “Besides,” Lucija says from the kitchen table, where she’s seated in front of her laptop. “If what you say is true, your life could be in danger.”

  “Oh, so now you do believe me and you still won’t help me go after Farage?” I grouse at her.

  “No, I don’t believe you. It’s utterly ridiculous that hardline British nationalists would be supporting the same terror organization that bombed their embassy. But if it is true, I don’t want you putting yourself in a dangerous situation for nothing.”

  Hristijan heads for the door. “I don’t have any more time to stand here arguing. I have to see about fighting Watson’s increased opt-out for the UK’s Border Force screening European citizens, even though it looks like he’s finally going to get it placed on the EU Council’s agenda, due to your support.”

  Hristijan glares at me. I roll my eyes. He leaves and then Lucija leaves for work after about thirty minutes. I wait about two more hours. Then I take the elevator down to the ground floor. I’m skipping Decision- Making in the EU, down at the ULB’s Institute for European Studies, but that doesn’t matter. Confronting Farage is more important, anyway.

  I turn to the right on the sidewalk, intending to take bus ninety-five—one of the only two bus routes that Hristijan taught me to take because they go to the university neighborhood—to Luxembourg Square, from the Arts-Loi bus stop.

  I don’t even make it halfway to the bus when I’m bundled into a van with no windows in the back. There are a few men inside, their faces covered in masks. I try to fight them but there are too many; they have the element of surprise.

  “What are you doing to…?”

  One of them puts a gag over my mouth. The van drives around for what seems like about half an hour. Then it stops in front of this warehouse. I have no idea where I am. Hands tied behind my back, I’m led inside. It’s empty except for this gray-haired man in a suit, with beady eyes, a bulging nose and a bad comb-over. I recognize him from the beheading rally and the reception: Mr. Farage.

  “Well, if it isn’t Elena Marković, the so-called Maršal of Yugoslavia,” he says in an almost jovial manner.

  Someone removes the gag.

  “What are you going to do with me?” I can’t prevent a note of fear from creeping into my voice. Indeed, I feel afraid for the first time since coming to Brussels.

  “Relax, Elena. I am not going to have you killed. If I did kill you now, that would run the risk of making you a martyr for all those who support the sovereignty-sapping colonial project that is the EU. Except, wait.” He puts one finger up into the air, making a show of just remembering something. “Oh, that’s right. Even if I did kill you, the Americans would force it to be covered up. Don’t you understand? I am really not going to kill you because you’re not worth the trouble. You are powerless, irrelevant. You’re not enough of a threat to my plans. I am even willing to discuss them privately with you, if you want, away from prying eyes and television cameras.”

  I look around. All of the other men are wearing black face masks and gloves.

  “So, it is true, what I saw a couple of nights ago? You are working with Daesh?”

  He bats a hand through the air, looking every bit the caricature of a refined Englishman, even as he stands in abandoned warehouse with a bunch of terrorists.

  “Yes, I must admit that UKIP is making use of the Islamic State’s goals, aiding them with some funding we’ve arranged for them.”

  I shake my head. “What funding? From where?”

  “Ah, now that would be telling. Let us just say that both IS and UKIP have an unsung benefactor, whose record is beyond reproach.”

  “Why do this?” My voice sounds small, even as I try to make it sound indignant. “The people who support you think that the EU is already too unsafe. But they also will want you and probably all of UKIP’s leadership in prison once they know you’re doing this.”

  Farage nods. “That is precisely the point. As it is, if I help these extremists make Europe seem to be an even more dangerous thing to be a part of, the more chance there is that Britons will come to their senses and begin to feel fear and outrage toward the European Union. The more I can get that to happen, the more people will vote ‘Leave’ when we have the referendum. Far from enemies, at least for now, the IS and I are natural allies. The negative publicity about the embassy bombing, which I had to engineer after you saw me, was just icing on the cake.”

  I take in another fearful breath. “Why tell me all this? If you’re not going to kill me, why practically tell me your entire plan?”

  Farage smiles in a way that drives home that he has me under his thumb; for the first time I realize that he really could have me killed if he wanted to.

  “First of all, I never said that this was my entire plan. Second of all, telling you this is the beauty of it. Especially coming from you, my supporters won’t believe that I am doing this. You don’t have a shred of evidence; you are just one incompetent girl. Without evidence, and plenty of it, the fact that this alliance exists seems beyond ridiculous. Try to go public again and it will only give me more power. You, on the other hand, will be discredited even more; that is to the extent that the Americans will allow Europe to even acknowledge that you exist. I’m telling you this because, oddly enough, it is like declawing an already defenseless cat.”

  He walks toward the light at the end of the warehouse. “Goodbye for now, Elena. If you will forgive me, I must now go and appear to wait for you in Luxembourg Square. Tomorrow, the papers in Great Britain will report that you were the untrustworthy no-show.”

  There’s a pain in my neck. Then everything goes fuzzy; my legs give out.. I feel a rush of terror as I wonder if he has decided to have me killed after all.

  ***

  “Elena? Elena?”

  “Dad?” I wheeze, before I realize that it’s Hristijan. “Where am I?”

  “An abandoned warehouse on the far side of Tour et Taxis,” he explains. “Your friends Drago and Afrim found you like this. I came from the Committee as soon as I could. They went looking for you, when you didn’t show in front of the EU Parliament. They saw some suspicious activity here.”

  “
Hey, Elena, are you okay?” asks Afrim. Drago stands behind him and nods once.

  A few police officers are doing an inspection of the warehouse. Lucija is with them. She walks over to us.

  “So far nothing. Do you remember who did this to you?”

  “It was Nigel Farage. I thought he was going to have me killed, but I guess he just wanted to talk. He confirmed that he is working with the Daesh militants to destabilize Europe. He said that no one would believe me without any evidence and he seemed pretty confident, so I doubt you’ll find any.” I cough weakly.

  Hristijan sighs. “It sounds like he just wanted to toy with you. All things considered, you got lucky.”

  Lucija puts a finger up by her head. “Actually, Farage may have left one big piece of evidence. If he was here talking to you before noon, then he wasn’t somewhere else. I’ll ask the police to at least question him.”

  “I am sorry I doubted you, Elena,” Hristijan says. Then he goes on, almost muttering to himself, “If Farage does turn out to have an airtight alibi, the question is how to stop him and Daesh, when no one will believe that they are working together.”

  Hristijan helps me to my feet. Something overcomes me the second he touches me, like all the fear I had pent up inside me when I got kidnapped can’t be held in anymore.

  I start to sob. “No, Hristijan, I’m sorry I doubted you. I was so afraid when they had me. You were right. This whole time I’ve been way in over my head, and I just didn’t want to admit it, even to myself. I didn’t realize what I was getting into. I get it now. This isn’t a game. I’m so afraid and I don’t know what to do.”

  Hristijan hugs me, patting me on the back. “It’s all right, Elena. Let it out. Just take it slow. We’ll figure it out together.”

  Nine:

  The Cordon

  Elena

  I’m sitting in our apartment at the residence, on the couch that faces Brussels’ Royal Palace and what I’ve learned is the back of the Royal Academy of Science. My eyes are on the floor. Of course, it turned out that Farage did have an alibi. All of the British MEPs that he works with have the same persuasions as he does. They vouched for him, saying that he was at a private meeting at one of their homes. Farage even had the receipt from a lunch he claimed to have ordered, before going to the square to meet me.

  The intercom rings. I’m not expecting anyone. I get up and look on the screen by the elevator door. It’s Afrim, Drago and that girl I remember from the reception at the British embassy—Emilija, I think her name is.

  I press the button that will let them in the building.

  They enter the elevator. Its doors slide shut. I press another button, which will bring them up to the entry hall. I don’t wait for it to come. I go back to sitting on the couch and staring at my feet.

  “Hey, Elena.” Afrim walks in from the entry hall.

  “Hi, what are you guys doing here?” I keep looking down.

  I hear Afrim. “Is there something wrong with your friends wanting to see how you’re doing after a Brexiteer psycho kidnaps you?”

  “We noticed you were absent from class today at the IEE,” says Drago.

  I glance up at him, where he has his arm around Emilija. I resist a sudden urge to sic Rada on her.

  “Yeah,” I sigh. “I guess I just wasn’t feeling up to it.”

  Afrim walks up to me and puts a hand on my shoulder. “Is there something wrong?”

  I shake my head and look away. “Physically I’m okay. It’s just, Farage was right. I’m a powerless idiot who can’t get anything done. No one will even listen to me and they’re right not to. I’ve got no clue what I’m doing.”

  Afrim keeps his hand on me, bending down to look me in the eye. “I hope you know none of us sees you that way. Look at all you’ve done. You’ve uncovered a lot, just in the few months you’ve been here. Not to mention that you saved me from getting my head chopped off.”

  Drago steps up beside his brother. “Yeah, even if you are in over your head, you haven’t let that stop you. You can be crazy brave sometimes.”

  “So what? I was just fooling myself so I didn’t have to face the fact that my grandfather was one of the world’s great statesmen and my mom helped stop three wars. Compared to them, I’m just…me.”

  Emilija walks up to me. She extends her hand. I take it after a second.

  “I don’t think we’ve been properly introduced. Emilija Stanić. I think we should be friends; I just wanted you to know that based on what I’ve managed to find out about you I take you seriously and so do those two over there.” She points at Drago and Afrim.

  “Thanks,” I tell her half-heartedly, “but the truth is there isn’t any way I can accomplish the kinds of things my mom did, let alone my grandfather.”

  “Hold on a minute, you’re not being reasonable,” Afrim says. “Like you said, your mom helped stop the wars. But she did that within the former Yugoslavia, where your title still carries more power. You’re abroad now, and who you are has to be kept from public knowledge, so how can you be expected to do as much as she did? Besides, she had an inner circle of friends there to help her, so did Tito. You don’t have to try and do this alone. You can count on us.”

  “Yeah, sure thing,” says Drago, after a second of hesitation.

  “We have an idea for how to cheer you up,” Emilija offers. “From what Drago tells me, the police in this city are too diced up into different jurisdictions to know their butts from a hole in the ground. The Daesh members in the city have to be communicating somehow. I’ll bet I can get us into their system. If the police can’t ferret out what they’re doing, then maybe we can.”

  I hunch my shoulders, interested in spite of myself. “How?”

  Drago steps back up beside her. “Emilija is a computer programmer and a hacker. I’m sure she can get us a look.”

  She nods. “I can, but without my setup back in Gothenburg or my own laptop, I could be traced. It’s not a good idea to do it from the Croatian residence. It could become a target if I am traced. If we go to the ULB, they won’t know who to pin it on.”

  Afrim shakes his head. “Yeah, but the library is closed right now.”

  I nod at him once, again glad for something that’s more in the skill set my parents and the tutors they hired taught me. “Don’t worry about that. I can get us in. The only problem is that I don’t know how effective we can be trying to run after a bunch of terrorist cells with nothing but our feet, a dagger, my Šar Mountain Dog and our wits. At least my mom and her friends had an old military truck.”

  Emilija smirks. “I think I can do one better than your mom.” She walks over to the window and points. I have to stand to see where she parked her SUV down below the residence, on the sidewalk. “My wheels are at your service.”

  I stand up, having to admit that I like this plan, no matter who dreamed it up. “All right, guys. Let’s do this.”

  Drago

  Elena takes the ornate Bosnian dagger from its sheath. My brother, of course, goes crazy.

  “Oh my God, is that…?”

  “Yep,” Elena says. “This was my dad’s.”

  “That’s so cool.”

  “What’s the big deal?” I shrug nonchalantly.

  She glances over her shoulder at me. “In a minute, tough guy, you’re going to be glad I have it. Now, shhh, we have to be quiet.”

  It’s dusk on a Saturday. Nobody is around. She takes the knife to the door’s lock. In a few seconds there’s a clicking sound. The thick wood and glass door to the library swings open. We sneak in. Elena shuts the door.

  “Wow,” Emilija says. “Those locks are old school. If I had to get us in we would be screwed.”

  Elena hunches her shoulders. “I guess I’m just an old-school sort of girl.”

  We walk down the curving concrete steps and climb over the rotating bars meant to count how many people go in or out. We head over to one of the computers on the right-hand wall of the room where you can check books out of the
library.

  Emilija walks up to one of the computers and starts it. “This should be enough.” She sits down and begins typing. All these windows start appearing on the screen, some with internet pages and some with code that I do not understand. Her hands keep flying over the keyboard, causing her long brown hair to wave slightly.

  Then she gasps. “I found something all right, on a Daesh internal communications board. Ironically, it’s a warning to stay away from Tour et Taxis. The police are barricading off the entire part that’s still abandoned. Including…”

  She lets her voice trail off allowing the implication to hang in the air. I feel a sense of dread shoot up my spine.

  “The Gare Maritime,” I finish for her. The only place my brother and I have to stay.

  A hand grabs onto my shoulder. I jump and turn around. It’s Elena. “Don’t worry, Drago, I am going to solve this.” Her longish, still half-blue hair frames her face. She walks back toward the staircase.

  Emilija shuts down the computer. I follow Elena across the campus’s main street and up the steps to where Emilija parked her Porsche SUV next to our student guild’s container.

  We get in. Emilija starts the car. She stamps down on the gas pedal. I hear the tires screeching against the pavers. I’ve got to admit that Elena is way more capable and caring than she gives herself credit for. I wish she would realize that, almost as much as I wish that I didn’t have to admit it, at least to myself.

  Elena

  Emilija’s SUV skids around the corner onto the Rue du Port and then into the parking garage under the renovated part of the Tour et Taxis land port. I could already see the police cordon through the gates in front of the royal depot as we sped along the road. Emilija brings the car to a screeching halt. I jump out and run up the steps to ground level, Afrim and Drago on my heels. Emilija brings up the rear.