Authors: Dan Fesperman
Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #United States, #Mystery; Thriller & Suspense, #Mystery, #Thrillers & Suspense, #Spies & Politics, #Espionage, #Suspense, #Contemporary Fiction, #Thrillers
Lie in the Dark (13 page)
He sighed, then asked in a weary but pleasant tone, “You can at least disclose the next link up from you. Your supplier. One name only.”
Hrnic said nothing.
“So this is our fine network of undercover men,” Vlado said. “Tell me, having met two of you so far today, are all of you so reluctant to ask questions of your sources, so timid about repeating names of anyone except the recently dead? Are you always rewarded for finding out so little so late?”
“The only way to learn things is to stay quiet,” Hrnic said sternly. “To not ask questions. That’s when things begin to spill out, only when they think you couldn’t care less.”
“And I guess it’s only when they want to grumble about something trivial like the chief of the Interior police being marked for death when they decide to tell you and everyone else about it.”
Hrnic set his mouth in a hard, firm line. Vlado snapped up the white bundle of meat from the counter and dropped it into his zippered briefcase.
“Thanks for the meat,” he said breezily, then strolled away.
He’d walked about thirty feet when the butcher called out.
“Wait,” Hrnic shouted.
Vlado stopped, turning slowly. Perhaps Hrnic was going to ask for the meat back, but Vlado would be damned if he’d return it. There had to be some price for insolence to the police. Besides, he was hungry.
But Hrnic seemed anything but angry. He was grinning, almost wildly, a leering banner of malicious joy.
“You wish to be introduced to the next step up in my ‘chain of command?’ Very well, then. You shall meet him.” He pulled off his grimy apron and tossed it onto a scale. “Mind the counter,” he snapped to his daughter; then he strode past Vlado with the resolve of a man on a mission.
“Follow me,” he said, not turning his head as he passed. “You’ll have your meeting, all right.”
They walked two blocks up a steep hill at a brisk pace, Hrnic panting like an old steam engine that had suddenly found its rhythm after years of disuse. Then they headed down a narrow side street where three young boys kicked a scuffed soccer ball across the cobbles through melting patches of ice. A toothless beggar kneeling in a doorway rose uncertainly to his feet. Seeming to recognize Hrnic, he held out a hand beseechingly.
Hrnic ignored him, striding briskly on without a word until they reached a dented steel doorway halfway up the block. “Wait here,” he said over his shoulder before disappearing inside.
A few moments later he reappeared, calmer now, almost smug in the way he looked Vlado squarely in the eye, as if daring him to turn back now, as if he’d had this scene dreamed up from the very beginning.
“He will see you now,” Hrnic announced with the flourish of a concierge.
Vlado followed him through the door, where a raw, elemental stench nearly knocked him to the floor. This must be their slaughterhouse, for the air reeked of fresh blood. It was the smell of life draining away by the drop, of fluids already rotting as they fall, the essence of animal panic lingering in the air like a ghost. This must be what made the animals bleat before they even saw the glint of a blade, or felt the first jab of metal sliding into their flesh.
They climbed two flights of stairs in the dark, the smell growing stronger as they rose. Then Hrnic shoved Vlado through an open doorway, where two bearded men in faded camouflage jackets frisked him roughly.
“Sit behind the desk and turn your chair to the wall,” one ordered gruffly, and when Vlado hesitated the man picked up a Kalashnikov from a chair and poked it in Vlado’s side.
“Get moving.”
Vlado sat in a creaking office chair, swiveling himself around to face the wall. What had this place once been? A hole for bureaucrats? The business office of some sweatshop? The whole scene seemed mildly absurd, given what he’d seen so far of the two so-called undercover men. He felt more like an errant schoolboy awaiting punishment than someone in trouble with the mob. He wondered just how far they would choose to push their authority with a policeman. Perhaps even they’d be angrier at Hrnic, for bringing him here at all.
Vlado looked over his shoulder, trying to get a better feel for the room.
“You are not to turn your head unless told to do so,” the man with the gun said. Vlado did as he was told without replying, and for a minute or so everyone was still, obviously waiting for someone to arrive. Vlado didn’t know whether Hrnic had left or not, but as the seconds passed he grew fidgety, already impatient with this low-budget attempt at intimidation.
Then, a scuffling of feet as men rose to attention, and the approach of a heavy-booted tread from the hallway. A stern but controlled voice announced, “So this is our Mr. Petric?”
The tone awakened Vlado. This was not the uncertain voice of an amateur. The steps crossed the floor, stopping just behind Vlado.
“And if you please, Mr. Petric, you will not turn your head throughout our conversation unless you wish to end up on the heap with the goats and sheep down the hall.”
A gun barrel shoved firmly into Vlado’s neck, an uncomfortable prod of cool metal. Vlado could hear a crackle of static from a handheld phone—a Motorola, everyone called them—the membership badge of any ranking mob functionary. The phones worked no better than any other part of the local phone system. Their value was for status as much as for communication. In a café it was amazing how quickly the service of a sullen waiter improved when a customer pulled a Motorola from his bag.
From the other side of the wall facing Vlado there was suddenly a wild thrashing, a long, high squeal, then the clatter and drumming of hooves before the squeal abruptly turned ragged and guttural, drowning on itself. Gradually it subsided, followed by the noise of a bulky load being heaved upon the floor. Then the muffled scrape and glide of blades easing beneath fur and flesh, or so it sounded to Vlado.
“An unplanned but worthy object lesson,” the voice behind Vlado said. “Perhaps you will keep it in mind throughout our little chat. I am told that you wished to meet me.” The voice took on a trace of amusement. “That you might even be eager to ask me a few questions.”
Vlado said nothing.
“Well, do you or don’t you?”
“Yes, I do.”
“The questions you can forget. All of them. Because I’ll tell you the only answer you need to hear. Especially if you’ve come to ask about Esmir Vitas. And when I’m finished, your path up the chain of command will be at an end as well, unless you wish to feel more of this,” he shoved the gun barrel a little deeper into Vlado’s neck, “only with more of a bite next time.”
Vlado keenly felt his frailness, his recent loss of weight, as if his spine might bend and break with an ounce more of pressure.
“Vitas was scum, do you understand me? A self-righteous little prick who fancied himself a competitor. But he was unworthy competition. So, ultimately, a far worthier competitor killed him. Not me, you understand. Not that I couldn’t have managed it, if I’d wanted. Which should tell you how much help you’ll get from your ministry if you choose to pursue the question of my indentity or my whereabouts any further beyond this meeting. Understood?”
He again pressed forward with the barrel of the gun. Vlado wet his lips to speak, but he was too slow.
“So you understand the way things will work from now on, yes?”
“Yes.”
Let’s get this over with, he thought. These people had long ago stopped being amusing. Hrnic could have his damn meat back as well. Just deliver him from this stench, this pressure at the base of his neck.
“Then you will be moving on now, with your eyes closed and your hands behind your head until you are out of this building. And if anyone in this room ever sees you on this street again, they will kill you on the spot, then flay you to pieces for the rats. Understood?”
“Understood.”
“Very well.”
The pressure of the gun barrel eased, and Vlado felt his entire body relax. He made a tentative motion to stand, but a strong hand fell immediately upon his right shoulder. The gun barrel shoved back into place, and the voice spoke again.
“Don’t be in such a hurry. First you must enjoy a few moments of our hospitality. With our business concluded we can talk as men, as keepers of our families, as fellow patriots. Yes?”
“Yes.”
“We must talk of our wives. Yours, for instance. Jasmina, she is called?”
Vlado didn’t like where this was headed, hinting at resources and connections stretching to God-knows-where.
“She is, I understand, working as a clerk for an architect in Berlin, yes? Some kind of designer. And if I am not mistaken, she is technically an illegal employee, working without the benefit of the proper papers from the German government, which I suppose is all right as long as the authorities don’t find out.”
It was all true. Vlado had gone looking for a secret portal, but now felt instead as if he had tumbled through a trap door, into a pit where all those goats lay below, gutted and sticky with their own fluids, black with flies. What was it Kasic had said? There would be no turning back. Vlado had been glad at the time, excited. It seemed scant comfort now.
The voice continued: “Which reminds me, we should let you go soon or you’ll be late for this month’s phone call. Imagine the unnecessary worry if you failed to call. What would your little daughter think? Sonja, is it?”
Vlado struggled to answer, managing only a dry crackle, barely audible over the static of the Motorola: “Yes. Sonja.”
“A lovely name. So go and make your call. And keep your eyes closed, please, all the way down the stairs, provided those weak legs of yours can still carry you. Eat your meat when you’re home. It will make you stronger. See how even we are doing our part to keep our policemen healthy? Even your friend Mr. Hrnic is a patriot? You do see that now, don’t you Mr. Petric?”
“ Yes.”
“Good. Off with you, then.”
The gun barrel raised him upward like a hook, and Vlado clenched his eyes shut, seeing an apartment in Germany with his wife and daughter, with their circle of friends, other Bosnian refugees mostly, some who they knew, some they didn’t. He began to see how, even here, the influence of a few unsavory people could extend not only across a line of battle but a border. These were not people he cared to know any better. Not for the moment, anyway.
CHAPTER 7
I
t was at least three blocks before he was fully aware of his surroundings. Hrnic had gone, presumably back to the market, off without a further word to tend his business. Vlado was practically stumbling on the cobbles, making his way down the hill, somehow headed in the right direction toward the bridge that would take him toward the Jewish Community Center.
t was at least three blocks before he was fully aware of his surroundings. Hrnic had gone, presumably back to the market, off without a further word to tend his business. Vlado was practically stumbling on the cobbles, making his way down the hill, somehow headed in the right direction toward the bridge that would take him toward the Jewish Community Center.
What he needed most right now was a drink, a jolt of something to stop the wild gyrations of his imagination. He’d heard stories about being shaken down like that, of course. Heard the ways they found out information and used it against you. The techniques had always sounded cheap and easy, like card tricks, easy to master, no more difficult than the way the gypsies told your fortune after peeking into your wallet. But it had worked its unsettling magic on him nonetheless. No matter how hard he tried to convince himself that the threats were empty, that the show of force had been illusory, he couldn’t escape the sensation that the stakes of the investigation had suddenly been raised. The trouble was, he had no idea who had raised them, or who would decide if he had run afoul of these new, uncertain rules, by crossing some unseen boundary in the dark.
Whatever the case, the encounter hadn’t lasted nearly as long as Vlado had assumed. He found that he still had a few minutes to spare in making his appointment for the monthly call to Jasmina, although right now that seemed a mixed blessing. As much as he always looked forward to speaking to her, their conversations were invariably full of difficult moments, either from the pain of separation or the distance which seemed greater with every call. And now, when he most needed someone to confide in, to tell of his fears and his dread, he would instead have to keep every hint of fear out of his voice. Everyone who made these calls knew that the line was anything but secure. For all Vlado knew, his tormenters had gotten every bit of their information from his earlier calls. Ham radio calls from any part of town were likely intercepted by the army on both sides, listened to by soldiers in headsets.
Vlado made the calls from the Jewish Community Center, at the old synagogue a few blocks away from police headquarters on the far side of the river. It had become a nerve center of sorts during the siege. Not only was it one of the strongest remaining links to the outside world, it was the only one not directly controlled by the government.
The center’s long-distance telephone service was a work of ingenuity. All lines leading out of the city had long since been cut, so a ham radio operator made the connection to the phone network in Zagreb, the capital city of neighboring Croatia, which then patched through calls to anywhere except Serbia or other parts of Bosnia. Serbia was taboo because it was still Croatia’s enemy. Bosnia was off limits simply because too many phone lines had been cut. You could call clear around the globe, but you couldn’t phone a few miles up the road to a town like Kiseljak or Pale.
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