The Heart of Hell (25 page)

“Old people are always being burgled because old people’s places are usually easy to break into,” Strumbić continued. “No matter how many locks they have on their doors.”

They stepped into the apartment’s long, high central corridor. Strumbić shut the front door behind him as quietly as he’d opened it. Rooms led off along both sides of the hall. The floor was a polished parquet with a long Persian runner, and on the walls were coat hooks and a shoe rack, followed by gilt-framed mirrors and a couple of dark paintings. One of a pair of double doors immediately to the right was open a fraction. Strumbić, gun in hand, pulled it wider and sidled in. He stepped back out, shaking his head. The door on the opposite side was to a storeroom. They walked along the corridor slowly. The following door was open, showing a dated but well-furnished kitchen with a big window overlooking the internal courtyard, a row of potted plants covering its sill.

The next room was connected to the first one Strumbić had looked into, and to the following one as well. A sitting room opening onto a formal dining room. They were both furnished with massive, overstuffed Biedermeier bookcases in bird’s-eye maple, a matching table, and 1930s sofas and chairs. Both were also unoccupied.

They found Dragomanov in the room after that. The old man turned, startled, when della Torre opened the door.

“YOU — BUT
YOU’RE
not to come until this afternoon. How did you get in?” the old man said.

It took some effort for della Torre to recognize Dragomanov, the man at Tito’s side in photographs, in the background of Tito’s meetings with foreign leaders, in the glossy centre pages of books about the war and about the foundation of the Yugoslav socialist paradise. Only a shadow of that once famous Dragomanov remained in the frail shell before them.

He rose, stooped, leaning back against his grand desk. His thinning hair was as white and wispy as spun sugar. The man was gaunt, his skin and eyes yellow, and his arms so thin that the bones of his wrists protruded awkwardly below the loose cuffs of his flannel shirt. Against that fragile skeleton, the round, distended belly looked absurd. His hold on life seemed as tenuous as a withered autumn leaf’s. The wind wouldn’t blow hard or long before it carried him away.

Yet his voice and manner still conveyed authority. “You’ve no right to be here so early,” he said again as Strumbić followed della Torre into the room.

“Please sit down, Mr. Dragomanov,” della Torre said.The old man looked confused. “They said an American was coming.”

“That’s me.”

“But I was led to believe you didn’t speak Serbo-Croat.”

“Well, I do,” della Torre said. “This is Mr. Smirnoff.”

“Russian? Bulgarian?”

“Neither.”

“And your name is?”

“We’d like to ask you a few questions, Mr. Dragomanov.”

“I would like to see some identification,” Dragomanov said, frail but unyielding. Slowly, glacially, he retreated behind his desk, putting the massive piece of furniture between himself and the men.

“Mr. Dragomanov, we don’t have time —” Della Torre stopped short as Strumbić moved to intercept the old man.

“Will this do?” Strumbić asked, halting Dragomanov’s progress with his Beretta. “Do you mind moving out from behind the desk? Wouldn’t want you accidentally treading on an alarm button or just happening to find a gun in a drawer. Too many temptations.”

“You’ve come to threaten me?”

“Only a little,” della Torre said. “We’ve also come to warn you. There are men who we suspect would like you dead.”

“Mr. . . . whoever you are, there have always been men who want me dead. And as far as I can tell, you do too. Who are you?”

“My name is della Torre. Does that ring any bells?”

Dragomanov went momentarily rigid and then settled heavily in the nearest armchair. His breath caught in his throat.

“So you know who I am,” della Torre said, taking an overstuffed club chair opposite the old man. Strumbić continued to make a slow circuit of the room, taking an interest in objects on the shelves and papers on the broad desk, like a curious child in the presence of a dull adult conversation.

Dragomanov said nothing. His jaundiced, hollow eyes were wide, expressing something between fear and wonder.

“I’ve not come to kill you,” della Torre said. “Only to ask you some questions.”

“How did you get in here? Where did you get the key?”

“That’s not relevant.”

The old man’s eyes narrowed. “Everyone’s for sale these days, eh? Was it the nurse?”

“We don’t have much time. Other people are coming. What is it about the Pilgrim file that the Americans don’t want us to know?”

Dragomanov barked a short laugh and then coughed until his eyes were wet with tears.

“Would you like some water?” della Torre asked.

“I’ll be fine,” he said, his breathing settling into short, quick gasps. “I don’t know which of my diseases will get me first.” Slowly, he caught his breath. “Pilgrim, eh?”

“Pilgrim,” della Torre started again. “It’s the file that made you set those Bosnian killers on me. You know they were amateurs, don’t you?”

“They were . . . available. The people I once knew are retired or dead.”

“They were as expendable as I was. And after they’d killed me, who would you have hired to eliminate them in turn?”

The old man shrugged.

It both bemused and horrified della Torre to be discussing his own assassination attempt so dispassionately with the man who’d arranged it. His sore elbow twinged. His left arm would always be weak. For the rest of his life, he was told, he’d have problems fully extending it.

“Why?”

“Why?” Dragomanov shrugged silently.

“What is Pilgrim about?”

Dragomanov remained silent.

“I’ll help you,” della Torre said. “Pilgrim was your code name for Olof Palme. You sent the Montenegrin to kill him. His murder had something to do with nuclear centrifuges that were sold to Belgrade and then shipped on. That much I know. I can guess why you wouldn’t want me to know about it; after all, the Palme murder is still a mystery. It’s never been connected to
UDBA
or Yugoslavia. So you want to keep it secret. But why did you order the killing? And why do the Americans care so much about the Pilgrim file?”

Dragomanov watched della Torre with hooded eyes, his fingers nervously skittering over a belly pregnant with disease.

“Mr. Dragomanov, what I told you were facts. The Americans are going to come here this afternoon, for what you think is an interview or a conversation or maybe just to pay you off. But they’re going to kill you. They sent a team to kill the Montenegrin during the summer, and when that failed they sent another, bigger, more professional team. They are hunting us all down. And when they’ve bagged those of us at the periphery, they’ll set their sights on the only person who knows the whole story. Tell.”

“Foolish boy,” the old man said, his voice gathered from deep within him, carrying surprising strength. “You know nothing of my relationship with the Americans. Your suppositions about Pilgrim are meaningless.”

Strumbić spoke up from a corner of the room. In his hand he had a large syringe and a needle in its sterile packaging.

“Cirrhosis?” he asked.

Dragomanov shrugged.

“This for the nurses who come?” Strumbić continued. “How often? Once or twice a day?”

“Mornings and evenings,” Dragomanov said.

“I guess they must take good care of a high-ranking member of the Party. Even though the Party’s dying. Bar’s shut, everyone who’s got a warm woman is already gone, and the only ones left are the sad fucks who are too drunk to find their way home and can’t afford the hookers. It was a ball while it lasted, though. So long as you were invited and didn’t have to be carried out prematurely, feet first. How many of your long-ago friends did you sacrifice for the good of the nation?”

Dragomanov gave Strumbić a supercilious smile.

“Sorry, one should never talk politics when one is threatening people. Waters down the message. I’ll get back to my point.” Strumbić made a show of removing the needle from its package. “Actually, the point is water. Do they use these to drain your belly? I bet those nurses of yours would never think to piss in a syringe. Terrible for a cirrhosis patient if he were accidentally injected with it. Piss, that is. Especially when he’s already retaining so much water. And then of course making the already weak kidneys and liver work extra hard. Probably wouldn’t be very comfortable. Agonizing, really. Wouldn’t take much to trigger organ failure. They can keep you alive for a while on dialysis. Not so sure what they do when the liver finally packs it up.”

The nature of Strumbić’s threat dawned on both della Torre and Dragomanov at the same time.

“I’m sure much worse has been done in the name of the state. But I’m no hypocrite,” Strumbić continued. “I won’t pretend to have higher ideals when I torture an old man. I propose to do it not in the interest of creating a universal socialist utopia but for my own benefit.” Strumbić looked at him coolly. “You will answer my colleague, and you will do so as efficiently and thoroughly as he demands, or you will die in great discomfort. But before you do, there’ll be plenty of time for you to beg to tell us what we need to know.”

Strumbić spoke almost jocularly, the way another man might tease a colleague over how badly his soccer team had done over the weekend. But Dragomanov knew the threat was real. And the horror on his face came from knowing he’d met someone exactly like himself.

He raised a handkerchief to his lips, coughing again. The crumpled, yellowed square of fine cotton trembled as he lowered it to his lap.

“You are correct about Pilgrim.”

“Why was he killed?” della Torre said.

“Because he was about to put a stop to the centrifuge exports. The parts were built across Europe, in the Netherlands, Germany, and Sweden, and they were assembled by a Swedish firm. A German manufacturer found out where they were going; he’d been asked by the ultimate recipient to make some alterations. He met Palme at a dinner celebrating Swedish-German industrial cooperation and told him about what was happening to the centrifuges, and Palme got in touch with our embassy to demand an explanation.”

“What was happening? What’s important about the centrifuges?”

“They were nuclear centrifuges, shipped to Yugoslavia supposedly for our civilian nuclear program. To build our power plants and some for research. The Swedes had agreed to the deal under American pressure. The Americans said that it was important for us to develop our nuclear industry so as not to be dependent on Russian gas. We only needed a few hundred, but we were getting thousands. So the rest we shipped on for American goodwill and a bit of profit. Anyway, the Swedes should have known that they weren’t just for nuclear power. We ordered far too many. But the money was good, their businesses were happy, and the Americans were encouraging. Yugoslavia, after all, was non-aligned. And even if we were building the bomb, it would be to protect us from the Soviets, so no one complained.

“But the German industrialist found out that the centrifuges were going to Pakistan. The stupid Pakistanis may have thought they could assemble their own centrifuges from components at a smaller cost, so they started asking the German manufacturer for specifications and tolerances and other details. But the German went to Palme and told him, and Palme came to us and threatened to end the supply agreement. We stalled until we could make the Palme problem go away. The industrialist was killed the same night as Palme, though no one noticed. The perennial problem of dying on the same day as someone more famous.”

As he spoke, Dragomanov watched Strumbić prowl around the room, fingers flexing with agitation. Age had withered his self-control. In his prime he’d been famous for his sang-froid. In negotiations he’d faced down both the Nazis during the war and Stalin after it. But now, as death approached, even without Strumbić’s help, he feared for every lost moment.

“So we were shipping centrifuges to Pakistan to help them build the bomb?” della Torre asked.

“Yes.”

“But where do the Americans fit in?”

“The Americans? But that’s why we were doing it. They requested our assistance in the matter. The Soviets had invaded Afghanistan. The Americans were encouraging the Pakistanis to help with the guerrilla warfare. The Pakistanis didn’t want the Soviets on their border but led the Americans to believe that they would tilt in the Soviets’ favour. India already had the bomb. Pakistan wanted one. But they needed vast amounts of technology they couldn’t develop or build at home, and which international non-proliferation agreements prevented them from buying directly. So they negotiated. And the Americans thought, well, if they have the bomb, they can at least defend themselves from further Russian encroachment. The Americans bought the right to send equipment and advisors to the Afghani mujahideen across Pakistani territory by allowing the Pakistanis to build the bomb.”

“And you helped the Americans.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“It is always good to have powerful friends,” Dragomanov said. “That is perhaps something you have learned by now.”

“There were rumours you’d been a spy for the Americans.”

“A spy? Stupid stories. I didn’t need to spy for anyone. I was Tito’s conduit. How do you think Tito survived the break with Stalin? How do you think Yugoslavia was richer and better off than Hungary or Romania or Bulgaria? I won’t even mention that benighted Albania. We made deals, we negotiated, we were . . . flexible with some of our ideals. For the greater good.”

Della Torre inadvertently looked towards Strumbić. Yes, flexibility, adaptability, fluid morality, malleable ethics, pragmatism — those were the secrets of Yugoslavia’s putative success. An evolutionary response that eventually became instilled in its people. It was funny to think of Strumbić as representing the pinnacle of Yugoslav humanity, but maybe that’s what he was.

“I helped to arrange things for our American friends.”

Della Torre digested the implications. Dragomanov had secured the purchase of highly restricted technology by Yugoslavia and had then arranged its secret transfer to Pakistan as a favour to the presidency’s — or was it Dragomanov’s own? — American friends. And when Palme had threatened to halt the shipment of centrifuges, Dragomanov had offered the Americans a solution.

“Including assassinating the Swedish prime minister,” della Torre said.