Braco (13 page)

WEDNESDAY:
ATIF STAVIC

ATIF MOVED THROUGH
the crowd in a fog.

Everything is going too fast, he thought. But it must be okay. Mama wouldn't let me go if she didn't think I would be safer in the woods.

Now he understood why so many boys had turned off the main road with their fathers and brothers the day before. They didn't trust the Dutch to protect them.

Walking between Jac and Maarten, Atif watched the Serbs move among the refugees. Few gave them a second glance. The carriers blocking the end of the road came into view. Jac, Maarten, and Atif passed between them and turned right onto a street parallel to the Jaglici road.

The street was lined with homes, their lawns covered with garbage. A man stepped from a house carrying a sack over his shoulder. He stopped and stared at the peacekeepers. Atif looked back over his shoulder. The man had moved on to the next house. When they got near the end of the street, Jac glanced behind him. Then he pointed at the last house on the left. Maarten posted himself in front of the house and Atif followed Jac into the trees behind it.

Atif's head began to spin and he slowed.

This is a dream.
He touched a tree. The sap came back sticky.

“Can I sit down for a minute?”

Jac looked back at him and nodded.

“Yeah, this should be close enough.”

Atif dropped to the ground. A bottle of water appeared in front of him.

“You're flushed. You okay?”

Atif drank some water and returned the bottle to Jac.

“I don't know if I can do this,
Korporaal
Jac.”

The peacekeeper sat down next to him and pulled his field pad from his side pocket. He took out a pen and a folded map.

“Do you want to go back with your mother?”

Atif felt a sudden sharp jab in the pit of his stomach.

“Maybe.”

But he couldn't go back. He was too tall and the bit of fuzz on his chin that he was so proud of only made him look older. When he'd tried to join the army, he made the mistake of telling them his age. If he had lied, they would have believed he was sixteen.

Now I might really have to fight, he thought, fidgeting with his sticky fingers.

“I wouldn't have suggested this to your mother if I didn't think you were capable,” Jac said, opening up the map. “I know you are. As far as I'm concerned, you could out-soldier some of our own guys.”

“Yeah?”

“No doubt in my mind. Look what you've put up with for the last three years. Constant shelling and sniping, starvation, your father.” Jac paused. “You still function like any teenage boy I know.” He tapped Atif on the head. “You're strong. Up there. That's what will get you to Tuzla.”

Jac tore away a section of the map with Susnjari at the bottom and the outskirts of Tuzla at the top. He drew a few lines on it.

“You've been up in the hills with your father, so you know about some of the minefields.”

Atif nodded, his mind flashing back a year.

“You can come,” his father had said. He'd dropped a packed bag at Atif's feet. “I'll take you as far as the minefields and lead the others into Kravica. I'll bring the food to you and go back for more.”

“Why now?” Atif had replied.

“You're bigger now. You can handle the walk and the load.”

Then why didn't you take me with you last month, he'd thought. What has changed?

His father had looked at Atif as though he were reading his mind.

“I think it's important that you get to know the woods.”

Know the woods.

His father had foreseen the end of the safe area. Just as he had foreseen everything else.

Mama is right. I have to leave.

“The men will have made a path through the minefields.”

Jac's words brought Atif back to the present.

“They shouldn't be hard to follow,” the peacekeeper said. “Thousands of footsteps will have left you a clear path across.”

Atif turned his attention to the map. Jac pointed out the road that ran north from Bratunac then west. It encircled the area Atif had to walk through like a horseshoe.

“This road is going to be the biggest hurdle,” Jac said. “My guess is they'll start to patrol it very soon. You'll have to cross it at night. But I have no doubt you'll catch up with the men long before that. Once you're across the road, you need to keep going north by northwest and you'll eventually cross the front lines. You'll probably do most of your travelling at night.”

“What if I don't catch up to them? How will I know which way to go at night?”

Jac licked his lips and stared straight ahead for a few moments.

“The moon,” he said with a quick smile. “There's a full moon tonight. It's in the southern sky. It rises in the southeast and sets in the southwest. It should be visible for the next few nights. You just have to keep it at your back.”

“That easy?”

“Yeah. I wish I had a compass or pocket knife to give you, but I lost it all at the observation post.” He raised a finger. “Don't forget that a full moon can light up the countryside. It'll be easy to see movement.”

Atif nodded. He had rations, clothes, water, directions, and now a hint of confidence.

Jac wrote something on the back of the map, folded it, and poked it in the outside pocket of Atif's pack.

“I wrote my address on the map. I'm not sure how much longer we'll be here or where they'll send us, so I may not be in Tuzla when you get there. I'd like it if you would send me a postcard.”

“Yeah. I'll do that. I promise.”

“Last night the men moved through Jaglici to Susnjari. They're going to wait there for a while before proceeding. Now, the Serbs can see part of the road, so you might want to hug the treeline and rivers between here and Susnjari. I'm guessing you know which parts are safe.”

Atif nodded.

“You're going to come across others walking back. They'll try to convince you to turn around. But whatever you do, keep going. You know what's waiting for you here.”

“I won't come back.”

“Keep a steady pace. Watch where you put your feet. The last thing you need is a broken ankle.”

“I'll be careful.”

“I know you will.”

Atif sensed that Jac didn't want to let him go. The peacekeeper's eyes moved back and forth as though he were looking for something else to say.

“I guess I should go then.”

“Yeah.” Jac stood up and helped Atif pull on the pack.

“You'll keep an eye on my mother and sister?”

“You know I will.”

“Thank you,
Korporaal
Jac. For everything.”

Jac looked at his feet. The toes of his boots kicked at the dirt.

“Just send me the postcard. That's all the thanks I need.”

Jac offered Atif his hand. Atif ignored it. He wrapped his arms around the peacekeeper and hugged him. Jac returned the hug then released Atif and stepped back.

“Don't forget. A steady pace.”

Atif smiled at Jac and then turned away. He started to move off into the trees.

“Atif?”

He looked back. Jac's eyes were fixed on a point somewhere past him.

“I just wanted to say....” The peacekeeper swallowed, then began again. “I just wanted to say I'm sorry.”

“About what?”

“About all this. We were supposed to take care of you, protect you, and we let you down. I feel like we're abandoning you.”

Atif shrugged. His father had said the peacekeeping mission would fail unless the Americans got involved. Until then, the Serbs would continue to do as they pleased against the lightly armed peacekeepers.

“You didn't let us down,
Korporaal
Jac. I know what you've had to deal with. The Chetniks didn't let your men back in after their vacations. They stopped a lot of your convoys. You don't have a lot of ammunition. No big guns. No tanks. And the Chetniks know how to lie and be believed. I think,
Korporaal
Jac, we were both abandoned.”

“Yeah.”

“Can you do one thing for me,
Korporaal
Jac?”

“Name it.”

“Make sure they all know what happened here. Make sure the world knows. Make sure they know the truth.”

“You have my word,” Jac said.

“Good.”

That's all I needed.
Atif turned away and stared at the trees and the Jaglici road beyond them.

“Remember,” Jac said. “Walk away from the moon.”

Atif glanced back at the peacekeeper, wondering if he would ever see him again. He took the first steps. When he got to the edge of the treeline, he looked up and down the road. A woman with two young children was trudging towards Potocari. The rest of the road was deserted.

Atif looked back at the house.

Jac was gone.

WEDNESDAY:
MICHAEL SAKIC

MIKE HESITATED OUTSIDE
Brendan's room and glanced at his watch.

Two o'clock. Do I wake them?

He raised his fist to the door then paused. Their convoy had arrived at six and it had taken another two hours to settle into the hotel. Mike had managed a few hours of sleep on the mountain, but Brendan had stayed awake. He hated sleeping in the truck.

Mike dropped his fist and walked away. He took a set of narrow stairs into a small dining room which served as a bar in the evenings. The hotel owner, Sabir, was sitting behind the bar smoking a pipe and reading a paper. His wife was wiping off the three empty tables.

“Would you like something to eat?” she asked in Bosnian.

“Sure. Whatever you have.”

She nodded and limped behind the bar. Shrapnel wound from early in the war, Sabir had told Mike the first time he had stayed in the five-room hotel.

He sat down at the bar and watched Sabir's wife crack two eggs against the side of a frying pan. The yolk plopped inside the pan followed by the mucus-like whites.

Eggs?
The thought made his stomach tighten.

“Scramble them, please,” he said, making a circular motion with his finger. “Well done.”

The woman gave him a sideways glance and kept cooking. The wall behind the bar was lined with empty shelves. They kept the plum brandy and vodka in the cupboards below and the food in the back room.

“Got any Coke, Sabir?”

The man laid down the paper and reached under the bar. He put a can of warm Coke and an empty glass in front of Mike. The woman placed the eggs next to it, scrambled and brown. Mike pulled out a pouch of ketchup he had stolen from McDonald's on his way out of Toronto and squeezed it over the eggs.

“You won't get into Srebrenica,” Sabir said. “My cousin should have been here hours ago with the eggs. If he can't get through the checkpoints, they won't let you through.”

“It's probably just temporary.” Mike shovelled the eggs into his mouth and swallowed before they could leave a taste. “There might be more air strikes.”

Sabir snorted. “The planes are not going back.”

“They did for Sarajevo.”

“Yes, for Sarajevo.” Smoke poured from Sabir's nose. “They won't go back for Srebrenica.”

Mike scooped up the last spoonful of eggs and chased them with a mouthful of Coke.

“Do you know anyone there?”

“I have many friends there.” Sabir's eyes wandered. “Good friends. They're in the woods now.”

“What do you mean in the woods?”

“The men can't stay with the women. Chetniks won't bother the women too much, but they will kill the men. So they are going to the woods and walking.”

“Walking where?”

“To Zepa most likely. Or Serbia.”

Mike straightened up. He knew getting into Zepa would be harder than getting into Srebrenica.
But Serbia?

“Would they go to Serbia if they thought that Zepa had fallen?”

“But it hasn't,” Sabir said, inhaling on his pipe.

“They may think it has if they're listening to Serb radio.”

“Then I think most would come here rather than go to Serbia.”

“You think the Serbs will let them through?”

Sabir leaned forward on the counter and pointed his pipe at Mike.

“My friend, Sakic,” he said, smoke puffing from his mouth between the words. “You have a Croat name, but you still don't understand. Chetniks will not let a single man cross the lines. They will hunt them like deer and slit every throat.”

“But most of them will be civilians.”

“The Chetniks don't care what you wear. If your last name is Muslim, you are a threat to a Greater Serbia.”

“There could be twenty thousand men in the woods. They can't possibly kill that many men and think they can get away with it. Look at what happened last year. They killed sixty-eight in that Sarajevo marketplace and NATO pushed them off the mountains.”

“And a few months later, the Chetniks were right back on those mountains. The world has a short memory, my friend.”

“They'd be insane to kill that many men.”

“And war is sane?”

“Do I smell eggs?” Robert pulled up a stool. “Can I get a couple?”

“I think I had the last ones,” Mike said. “He can make you a sandwich. Beef, I think.”

“Sure. One for Brendan too.”

Mike translated the order and Sabir moved off into the kitchen area.

“Nice place,” Robert said, glancing around. “Sleep well?”

“I don't sleep.”

“You slept till four yesterday.”

“I wasn't asleep. I was passed out.”

“Oh.”

“Let me guess. You've never been drunk.”

“Never felt the need to drink.”

“Stay here a while. That'll change.”

He reached for his Coke and grasped empty air and spun around on his stool. Brendan was holding the glass to his nose.

“Christ, man. I'm not drinking.”

“Just screwing with you,” Brendan said, handing the drink to Mike.

“Keep screwing with me and I'll stop doing your job.”

“No shit. The briefing isn't until four. Where'd you go?”

“Nowhere.”

Mike told them everything Sabir had said.

Brendan was shaking his head. “It wouldn't be insane. It'd be stupid. The American satellites are reading licence plates for God's sake. No way can they expect to get away with killing twenty thousand men.”

“So what are they going to do with them?” Robert looked at Brendan then Mike. “Put them in a prison?”

“They won't get away with concentration camps again,” Mike replied.

“Maybe they'll funnel them into Serbia,” Brendan said. “Make the Serbian government relocate them to other countries.”

Sabir laid the sandwiches on the counter.

“They don't believe you either,” Mike told Sabir. “A few hundred, maybe, but we can't see them killing thousands. Not in this day and age.”

“Believe me, don't believe me.” Sabir stuffed tobacco into his pipe. “In a few days, you will see. We have long memories.”