Killing Pilgrim (11 page)

That night it was placid under the wall of clouds, which hung over the Serbian side, brooding and purple. They had warned of a storm to come even before he arrived in Osijek. Della Torre wondered when they’d break.

It
might have been a shitty day, but at least it was over as far as della Torre was concerned. His meeting with Horvat wasn’t due until the following afternoon. He was to stick around his hotel after lunch, and Horvat would come round and say hello. That’s how his people had put it. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad. He’d get his meeting with Rejkart over with in the morning, come back to Vukovar for the requisite chat and rigor mortis smile with Horvat, and then be the hell out of this dead end and back to Zagreb by dinnertime. And this free evening he’d use to catch up on his drinking with a mindlessly trashy novel — both of them lifting him out of this world, this existence, for an hour or two. He was looking forward to it.

He stood at the bar of a café that was empty except for a couple of old men playing cards at an outdoor table. Vukovar was a pretty Austro-Hungarian town with low architecture dominated by rusticated stucco buildings and pavements sheltered by stone and brick arcades, a remnant of the empire at its greatest bloom.

A solid young woman in a blue waitress uniform and white apron stood in the corner by the bar. She appeared to be wiping the counter without putting any effort into it. Della Torre looked her over, wondering whether she’d noticed him. She wore a pair of white wedge-soled sandals with ankle straps. They were the sort of shoes that just about every shopgirl in the country seemed to wear, and looked like something designed by a social realist with a foot fetish.

He rapped on the bar.

“Excuse me, can I order a drink?”

She looked at him with utter indifference.

The Yugoslav government had regulations for the oddest things; anyone who wanted to wait on tables had to enrol in a special high school course and be awarded a special diploma before they could serve drinks. It might have been better if the students had been taught something useful, like how to smile. And be polite. But maybe there were regulations forbidding that too.

“A beer and a coffee, please. Short coffee, long beer,” he said.

He was relieved to find the espresso drinkable. She waited for him to pay before getting him the beer, and then came back slowly with the change. Maybe she’d heard foreigners tipped. People from Zagreb were considered foreign here. He massaged his sore arm after pocketing the change and then lit a Lucky Strike. The old woman who ran the kiosk at one end of Zagreb’s main square kept a few untaxed packets under the counter for favoured customers. And made them pay through the nose.

Della Torre was only halfway through the bottle of Karlovačka when he saw the man in the tight black T-shirt and combat trousers from the Osijek police station.

Outside, by the door, he could see another couple of men, similarly dressed, though looking less like bodybuilders than ex-bodybuilders. Their arms bulged, but so did their guts.

The man came over to him and prodded a thumb behind him towards the door. “This way,” he said.

Della Torre looked up, tired, shaken, and now irritated. “The door? Sure. You might want to use it.”

“If you got a gun, you’ll want to give it to me,” the man said, holding out his hand.

He had neatly combed dirty-blond hair. Della Torre couldn’t remember the last time he’d combed his own hair. His wedding day, he figured. The man had the sleepy eyes of somebody used to getting his way.

“I’d love to give it to you,” della Torre said. “I’ve got to remember to carry one. Just for times like these.”

“Let’s go, then.”

“I didn’t realize the café was shutting.”

“Boss wants to see you.”

“Does he, now? And which boss might that be?”

“Gentleman you’re here to see. Otherwise you’ve wasted a trip from Zagreb.”

“I’m afraid my appointment is for tomorrow.”

“Was. Isn’t now. Now it’s now.”

It took della Torre a moment to process what the man had just said. He stubbed out his cigarette and followed him out the door. It looked like his date with a bottle of slivovitz would have to wait.

The bodybuilder headed away from the river. The two men loitering at the door followed behind.

“I thought the Hotel Danube was in that direction,” della Torre said, pointing back towards the river.

“It is,” said the man.

“My meeting’s meant to be at the Danube. Tomorrow.”

“Maybe it was. Isn’t now.”

“So would you mind telling me where we’re going instead?” he asked, straining to stay polite.

“Ribar.”

“And that’s a restaurant, I take it.” Della Torre found himself slightly out of breath, trying to keep pace with the man. Any quicker and they’d be jogging. “So there was no point in setting up the appointment. How did you find me, by the way, or did you follow me all the way from Osijek?”

“The gentleman stays well informed. And he doesn’t like to be predictable. Doesn’t want to make it easy for the Serbs,” the man said.

Della Torre could understand why. Especially around these parts. Horvat had been agitating against Serbs living in Croatia ever since he’d come back to the country, about a year before. He was a hero to the nationalists in the Croat government. Not least because he was rich, having built up a pizza empire in Canada.

A few months earlier, Horvat had taken a more direct approach to local politics, after growing tired of the local police’s efforts at keeping peace between the two nationalities. Together with a couple of like-minded friends, he’d fired a clutch of rocket-propelled grenades into a Serb village on the outskirts of Vukovar. They’d damaged a garden wall and, it was claimed, slaughtered a coop full of chickens. But, more importantly, Horvat had made plain his political intentions. For him, nothing short of war would do, and he was doing a fine job of paving the way.

In a part of the country where Serbs and Croats were so heavily integrated, neighbour turned against neighbour. Enmity and fear replaced the accommodations of everyday life. But rather than being prosecuted for the assault, Horvat had been feted by Croatia’s ruling party. Before, he’d had the leadership’s ear. Afterwards, it was said, Horvat had them by the balls.

The Ribar was in the vaulted ground-level cellar of a thick-walled nineteenth-century farmhouse located in Vukovar’s suburbs. The restaurant smelled of cooking cabbage, damp, and saltpetre. The walls were panelled in dark wood. Somebody had made an effort at lifting the atmosphere with amateur copies of Old Master landscapes done in pastel, together with a soft-focus tropical beach print, which showed a setting sun lighting up a religious sky. It made della Torre think of bloodstains.

Horvat was standing at the bar in amiable conversation with what looked to be the owner. Other than a few paramilitary types like della Torre’s newly acquired friend, the restaurant was empty. Horvat spotted him, said something to the man behind the bar, and they both laughed.

“Ah, the gentleman from Zagreb who’s come all this way just to have dinner with an old, insignificant guy,” Horvat said with a show of bonhomie. Della Torre affected the most insincere smile he could without being outright rude.

Horvat was based in Zagreb. He could have seen della Torre there any minute of any day of the week. But by demanding that della Torre drive to the far end of the country for the meeting, Horvat was making a point. What the point was or why he was making it, della Torre had no idea. Maybe he was sending a message to the rest of military intelligence.

“Marko della Torre,” he introduced himself, taking Horvat’s hand.

Horvat was a little above average height for a Croat, and they tended to be tall. He was thin, with the wrinkled, yellowy face of a heavy smoker. He had white hair, dark eyebrows, and a mouth that was permanently turned down in one corner — the residual effects of a stroke from years before — giving his speech a slight slur.

“What will you have to drink?”

“A Karlovačka,” della Torre said, naming the pale beer he always drank.

“A Karlovačka it is, then,” said Horvat, holding a pack of Sobranies towards della Torre. Della Torre declined the pastel-coloured cigarettes, the only brand he couldn’t bring himself to smoke. Horvat shrugged and lit one for himself. He held the cigarette between the index and middle fingers of his right hand, between the palm and the knuckle, so that when he came to draw on it, his hand covered the bottom of his face.

“So you’ve quit since this afternoon?” Horvat asked. It seemed his spies had briefed him well.

“I’m trying to cut back. Figure I might live longer.”

Horvat laughed. “My boy, it’s not smoking that’s going to kill you,” he said, pointing at the fresh scar on della Torre’s arm.

“I can only hope I’ve changed my ways early enough,” della Torre said, surprised that Horvat seemed to know about his wound. He wondered if Horvat’s mercenaries were very different from the hired assassins who’d almost done away with him.

“Here, let’s sit,” Horvat said. They moved to a table lit by a faint spotlight near the opposite wall. He didn’t introduce della Torre to any of the paramilitaries, nor did any join them.

“We can speak English,” Horvat said with a strong accent. “Twenty years in Winnipeg. The language is good for something: nobody else speaks it around here.”

That was true. Yugoslavs learned German or Russian at school. Only academics and people who worked in the tourist industry, mostly on the coast, spoke English.

“Fine,” della Torre replied.

“We can order some food. Or is it too early for you?” Horvat asked.

“I could eat now,” della Torre said. “Think their baking is any good here?”

“Sure,” Horvat said, uncertain as to why della Torre had asked.

“Then I’ll have one of those . . . what’s it called? You know, the flat bread with tomato sauce and cheese sprinkled on top, cooked in an oven?” della Torre said.

Horvat looked at him for a long moment before allowing a little smile to break on the working half of his mouth.

“You like pizza. I had pizzerias all over Manitoba and Saskatchewan, some in Alberta, Ontario; one even in Montreal. Excellent pizza,” Horvat said.

He was mocked among the anti-nationalist intellectuals in Zagreb, who called him the pizza man. But if it bothered Horvat, he never showed it. Pizza had made him rich.

“They don’t do pizza at Ribar,” Horvat said, calling their host over with a look and a flick of the fingers. “I will order for both of us, something traditional.”

He got quick revenge by ordering cabbage leaves stuffed with pork in a heavy sauce for della Torre. Traditional winter food. Horvat chose grilled fish for himself.

“So, maybe I should explain why I asked to meet you. Or maybe not. You are investigator. It will give you mystery to solve.” Horvat laughed a granular smoker’s laugh, punctuated with a cough. “You are very interesting man for me, very interesting,” he said, dropping articles the way Yugoslavs who learned English later in life usually did. Even ones who’d lived in English-speaking countries for twenty years. “I know you were investigator for
UDBA
. When I was in Canada, I had to move to Winnipeg because of
UDBA
. We political activists were always in danger.”

Della Torre nodded. The
UDBA
had been notorious for its attacks on dissidents and whoever the government called terrorists. Their assassins had struck in almost every western European country, as well as the U.S., Canada, Australia, and even South Africa and South America. Della Torre had never heard about any attempts on Horvat. Then again, he wouldn’t have unless they’d been successful.

The dishes arrived promptly. Horvat’s whole fish had been grilled and covered with an oily sauce of garlic and parsley and was served with boiled, cubed potatoes and chard. It looked edible. Nice, even. Della Torre’s was two fist-sized lumps of ground meat wrapped in boiled cabbage leaves and covered in an anemic cream sauce that tasted of stock cubes. For a while he vacillated between hunger and apathy. He tried to console himself with beer and slices of chewy white bread. But hunger eventually won. The food went down like rubble.

“Before
UDBA
you were lawyer,” Horvat said.

“You’re well informed.”

“Ah, I like interesting people. Before you were lawyer you were commando, no?”

“Yes.”

“Tell me about commandos.”

“What’s there to tell? After university I did my national service, and while I was in basic training, I got pulled out because some people heard that I spoke American English.”

“Yes, you speak English like American.”

“I guess the years I grew up there were formative enough for me to keep my accent.”

“Your father writes very good English. I don’t like . . . always what he writes, but he writes well. He writes Italian too. You speak it?” Horvat said with a curious smile.

“Yes, I guess most Istrians speak it. Italian TV is more entertaining than the local offering. Frankly, it’s amazing any of them speak Serbo-Croat,” della Torre said.

He was slow to notice the change in Horvat. The older man’s expression went from benign to closed, and was filled with fury in the space of four syllables.

“Serbo-Croat? These are two different languages,” Horvat said, switching back to Croatian, his voice rising so that it stilled whatever other conversation there was in the restaurant. “It is a subversion created by the Communists to destroy our Croatian language. And it is an affectation of Istrians to speak Italian. They are as Croatian as I am.”