The Small Boat of Great Sorrows (18 page)

“Yes, sir.”

Matek didn't need to add that his instructions were an order. Orders were the only way Matek dealt with people, and it was well known that disobedience was often followed closely by terribly unfortunate accidents.

“If you're successful, your bar tab will be paid up for a week. Just have Selak add it to my tab. Azudin will deduct the amount next time he comes round to collect. Got it?”

“Sure.”

“Good. Get to work.”

Osman was better than his word. The staff of the Hotel Orijent was always an easy mark, and a few phone calls did the rest. By 5 p.m. he was thirsty and back on the phone, bursting with information.

Matek was outdoors when the call came, returning from another walk, having been too stirred up to get much work done. This time he'd walked a mile, straight up the goat path toward the summit, motivated by the day's events to check on a place he hadn't visited in years. But now he heard the phone ringing, and Azudin appeared at the front door, out of breath.

“The telephone, sir.” It was still ringing.

“Well, then answer it, idiot!”

“I just thought that now that you had returned that . . . yes, sir.”

He disappeared down the hall while Matek knocked mud from his boots, recalling his first walk up that hill so long ago, on a summer night of fireflies and the distant barking of farm dogs. It was 1961. The house had only been a single story then, and he'd made the journey at midnight, barefoot in the dew and a little drunk, serenaded by crickets as his trousers rasped in the high grass. It had been an easy walk then, even for someone foolish enough to be traversing a stony hillside without shoes. Too much drinking alone in those days, too much time going through his papers and his passports, wondering where to keep them all, knowing they were a sort of dynamite but also a sort of insurance, a retirement plan, even.

So he'd resolved the matter by climbing the hill with a shovel in one hand and a box in the other, and inside the box was an oiled leather pouch. By now, perhaps, the leather was mildewed and stiff, but perhaps he would know for sure soon enough, depending on what Osman had to say.

He reached his office, shouting down the hallway to Azudin. “I'll take the call in here. You go home early today. I'll take care of any loose ends.”

Then he picked up the receiver, listening closely for a few moments, saying little. The news was unexpected, but he tried not to betray his shock to Osman. No sense letting the village drunk know he was disturbed, or soon everyone would know it. So he kept his voice even and thanked the man as always. But as he quietly replaced the receiver Matek realized that his hands were shaking. It was partly out of anger, perhaps, partly out of fear as well—fear of the unknown. Because for the first time in more years than Matek cared to remember, his future was in doubt, and this time none of the usual remedies would work. Extraordinary measures were called for. But which ones? And on this point he foundered, again uncertain, until it dawned on him that the answer might be as nearby as another walk up the hill, back to that place where he'd buried an unspoken shred of his life. If the road to your future was blocked, he mused, who was to say you couldn't flee instead into the past? After carefully disposing of a few impediments, of course. But that would be the easy part. That sort of business always was.

CHAPTER TWELVE

On another hillside some two hundred miles to the east, another soldier answered a ringing telephone. He was a general, a Serb in a bunker. He, too, had just been for a walk, and was about to go on another. He instantly recognized the caller, who spoke accented Bosnian with a habitual conspiratorial tone. This time, at least, the tone was warranted.

Andric answered in a low voice. He always kept a window open, and you never knew how close one of the sentries might be. A bored man can be a dangerous eavesdropper.

“It begins tomorrow,” the caller said.

“So. They really mean to do it.”

“Yes. And it will be early.”

“How early?”

“Six. Maybe six-thirty. About an hour before sunrise. You still have your plans?”

“Of course. And you're certain of the route?”

“Yes. Just avoid the village. No good-bye fucks with the barmaid. Not even tonight. And don't move too soon. They have to practically be at your door. Risky, I know, but don't panic.”

“I'm not the type.”

“Yes.” The caller chuckled lightly. “I'm quite sure of that.”

“And you're sure of the time?”

“Positive. Any changes and you'll be notified. Just don't forget our terms. Or our schedule.”

“As discussed. But there could be delays. This isn't the sort of work I'm used to.”

“Understood. But I've allowed plenty of time. And you remember the name of the place, of course.”

“Of course.”

Both knew not to utter any names, not with the possibility that others might either intercept or overhear their conversation.

“Good. As long as I'll know where to find you, neither of us should have any problems. Good luck.”

“Yes. For both of us.”

They hung up without a further word. Andric checked out the window. The sentry was twenty feet away, seated on a barrel, blowing smoke rings and reading a porn magazine. The poor stupid bastard should have stayed in the army, but Andric paid on time, and with hard currency. Not that he got much for his money. What a waste of time and expense this had all been, three years of wages for these ignorant boys who talked of nothing but sports, women, and booze. Nothing else left to talk about in this ruined land that produced only cigarettes, bread, and whatever you could grow with your hands.

He checked his closet for what must have been the twentieth time that week. Everything was in place. The small backpack with a change of clothes. A compass. A filled canteen. Knife. Flashlight. Holstered pistol, loaded, plus a box of extra rounds. He didn't think he would need it tomorrow, but he would kill if he had to. Then, or any other time in the days to come. There were two maps, one of this country and one of another. Last, the most valuable item of all, the small pouch with passports and visas, plus the packet of the privileged information that had nearly cost him his job to obtain, and inside it, a tiny key, in the old style, such as you might have used to open a door long ago. Perhaps it would finally prove its worth.

There was still mud on the pouch, the slightest bit at the edges. He had dug it up late last week at the first word of possible trouble, trudging through the grove of plum trees and over the rail fence, down the path and past the stump, next to the field where, years ago, old Jelisic had grown his pumpkins. Two feet deep, but just as he'd left it. Now he'd see how far it could take him, how good the man's word had been, all those years ago.

There was a pile of old clothes on his closet floor. They were part of the plan, too, because if you rummaged beneath them you soon found a handle that pulled up a small door. The door opened onto an air shaft, with ladder rungs down the side; it dropped fifteen feet to a tunnel, an old route from Tito's darkest days of paranoia as he prepared to repel a Red Army invasion that never came.

Thank goodness for that paranoia, Andric thought, and he felt like celebrating with a drink, driving into the village for a final toast to his good fortune. But he was not the type for unnecessary risks. You never knew when some young French officer might decide to jump the gun.

He reviewed the route in his head. A hundred yards beneath the forest floor to the back of the hillside, then up out of the ground through another lost and forgotten door that opened into a tangle of weeds. Then down the hill through the trees to a farm, where a truck sat parked in the underbrush, looking abandoned and worthless, but he knew better. He'd rechecked the engine and the ignition three days ago. New battery and cables. Fresh gas in the tank and two full jerry cans in the back. A new set of plates in the glove compartment, plus a Croatian pair for farther down the road. Even at that he'd have to move fast, quietly, without fear. But he had no doubt he could pull it off. He hadn't been boasting to the caller when he'd said he wouldn't panic.

He simply wasn't the type.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

The phone was ringing, muffled, seemingly a thousand miles away. But when Vlado opened his eyes he realized the sound was coming through the wall from Pine's room. It was seven o'clock, so he figured he might as well get moving. They'd be closing the deal with Matek today; just thinking about it made him nervous.

Pine knocked at the door before he was even dressed, and the news wasn't good. “Spratt just called.” He looked flustered, hair in every direction and shirt unbuttoned. “The raid was a disaster. Andric got away.”

“From a hundred soldiers? What happened?”

“Who knows. His sentries—the ones who survived, the damn French killed three of them—said he'd been asleep in his bunker. They were sure of it. But when they checked there wasn't a soul inside.”

Vlado's heart sank. All the planning, deception, and revelations about his past had supposedly been part of the larger, higher motive of bringing Andric to justice. All that remained was the chore of arresting the old man, if that was even still part of the tribunal's plans.

“Where does that leave us?” he asked.

“Spratt said to go ahead. For the moment Matek is the only thing in the pipeline, and we could use a little face-saving. Our sponsors apparently want it, too.”

“Sponsors?”

“Harkness and LeBlanc. It's probably all tied in with budget stuff. The tribunal needs a win, in other words, and we're it. So let's get it over with. Pick up the old bastard, let Harkness and LeBlanc have the debriefing we promised, then turn him over to the Croatians and get the hell out of here.”

Vlado was too stunned to speak.

“Jesus!” Pine exclaimed angrily. “We finally get the French to make a move, and this happens. Now they'll never lift a finger again. Never. And the press will kill us. SFOR or no SFOR, the tribunal will get the blame.”

Pine sat down on the bed. He seemed to realize for the first time that he was barefoot, and in need of a shave. “I better get dressed,” he said, collecting himself. “And I could use some coffee. We need to go over everything again before we head out. Make sure we don't fuck it up.”

They arrived at the Skorpio ten minutes ahead of schedule, just to be on the safe side, which meant they'd be sitting at their table for forty minutes before Matek was due. The place was virtually empty. Only the bartender and a single customer sipping coffee toward the back. A Humvee and an APC were parked about thirty yards around the corner, in the opposite direction from which Matek would presumably approach. The vehicles were a fairly common sight around the valley, and had been since the Dayton Accords, so no one was likely to be alarmed.

When Matek arrived, Pine was supposed to make sure he wasn't accompanied by bodyguards. Neither Pine nor Vlado was carrying weapons or a radio, in case Matek had a notion to search them, which Pine didn't expect. As soon as everything seemed in order, Pine would excuse himself to the men's room, where he would call the SFOR unit from a cell phone and retrieve a .45-caliber pistol from a towel box.

Vlado thought the entire setup was full of holes. What if bodyguards arrived first? What if Matek himself had a gun? Would anyone else in the bar be armed? They were counting on the shock value of a few M-16s to keep matters in hand.

The door to the bar swung open, and Vlado looked up. It was just some drunk, squinting into the dimness, getting his bearings. He glanced at their table and seemed to smile. He looked vaguely familiar from the day before in the hotel, but Vlado found it hard to imagine the man had been a guest. Probably an employee. Then the man strolled to the bar, where he rapped the counter once with his right hand. The bartender produced a bottle and a glass without a word, and the man began to drink.

“Local character,” Pine muttered. “Shouldn't be a problem.”

Vlado checked his watch. Matek was five minutes late. The delay stretched to ten minutes. Then fifteen.

“He's not coming,” Pine said.

“He's probably just on Bosnian time,” Vlado said, wanting to believe it. “Or he's just making us wait. Relax.”

“No. He's not coming. This whole operation has been fucked from the start, and this is the perfect finish. He's a no-show.”

Ten more minutes passed, and Vlado was convinced Pine was right. He saw Pine looking at him and didn't like the expression.

“What did you tell him?” Pine asked, not accusingly or sharply but not in a friendly way either.

“Nothing,” Vlado said with some heat. “You think I warned him off? Told him this was all a big trap? As a favor to an old friend of the family?”

“Of course not. But what did you ask him about your father? What did you talk about? Something must have tipped him. Something you said or did. Your body language. Your embarrassment. Hell, what did you say to him?”

Vlado might have been angrier if he hadn't just been wondering the same thing. Matek had seemed eager to meet again, so what the hell had gone wrong?

“I don't know,” Vlado said at last. “I really don't.”

“We're screwed. And there are twenty soldiers outside to break the news to. Their CO will leak it across the chain of command, and within a couple of days we'll be right there in the headlines with Andric.” He shook his head. “A flying start for Contreras and the ‘new aggressiveness.' He'll end up as tame as any of them now, and God knows what will become of our budget.”

They decided to wait until Matek was an hour late, but both knew it was an empty gesture. At noon Pine went the washroom to retrieve the .45. Then he dropped some bills on the table and turned to leave.

“C'mon,” he said wearily. “Let's find the officer in charge. Who knows. Maybe they'll give us an armed escort up the mountain to Matek's compound. Stranger things have happened.”

The soldiers were loitering around the Humvee, a few of them stamping their feet in the cold. Pine was directed to a tall American lieutenant with the name Hundley on his uniform.

“We've had a change in plans,” Pine began optimistically, explaining the plan to head up the mountain. The officer saw right through it.

“What you're saying is that the operation's a bust. Which means we'll be pulling out. Our orders pertained to the town only. Nobody said anything about going up a mountain road that we haven't scouted or reconned. It could still be mined for all I know.”

“This man was just up there yesterday,” Pine said, nodding toward Vlado. “All by himself. So it's not mined. There's only one guard at the gate. Maybe two more inside, plus a suspect who's seventy-five. There's your recon.”

“Sorry, sir,” the lieutenant said, with no change in inflection. “No go. But you're welcome to speak to my colonel.” He offered Pine a radio handset.

“He'd tell me more of the same, wouldn't he?”

“Can't speak for my colonel, sir. But that would be my guess. Unless he offers to let you speak to
his
CO.”

“I could spend the whole day climbing the chain of command. Think I could reach the Oval Office by sundown?”

This finally got a smile out of Hundley, but nothing else.

“Yeah, I know,” Pine said. “Just following orders. Have a nice day, Lieutenant.”

“Will do, sir,” the officer deadpanned. “Let's move out, men.”

And with a rumble of engines and a wintry swirl of dust, the soldiers left, stranding Pine and Vlado at the curb like hosts of a failed dinner party.

After four cups of the Skorpio's coffee, Vlado was edgy and irritated. He had half a mind to drive the white Volvo up the hill to find out for himself. Maybe Matek was testing them, playing hard to get. But he doubted it.

“What we need is backup,” Pine said, “at least enough to go take a look. Didn't Benny say he'd be in Vitez?”

“For the rest of the week.”

“Worth a try, then. That's only twenty miles. And if anybody would enjoy mixing it up after an SFOR bail, it's Benny.”

Pine punched in a number on his cell phone and waited, then spoke. “Benny? Calvin Pine. We've just had a major fuckup, and if you're anywhere near Travnik, we could sure use some help. Yeah? Perfect.”

Pine filled him in on their morning, and Vlado could hear nearly every word of Benny's requisite tirade on the impotence of SFOR. He had an interview to finish, then he'd meet them at the hotel in an hour.

“He's the only one with the balls for something like this,” Pine said.

Benny's other advantage was that he regularly carried a gun. It was against tribunal policy—Pine's borrowed .45 had been sanctioned only for the occasion of the arrest and he had already handed it back to the SFOR troops—but just about everyone below Spratt at The Hague knew that Benny's local interpreter kept a Beretta pistol for him, hidden in his cellar.

“You think one gun is enough?” Vlado asked. To him the operation was degenerating from half-assed to harebrained.

“It's not like we're going to storm the place. I just want a peek at the front gate.”

“He'll see us approaching. From up in his house.”

“Which is why I want Benny along. He's got that street-cop mentality from Brooklyn.”

“The Bronx.”

“Whatever. We can get the lay of the land, see if Matek's taking visitors. Maybe we'll even get lucky and bump into him on his way down the hill.”

“If he's still around.”

“Yeah.” Pine frowned. “There's that possibility, too.”

Benny arrived every bit as eager and gung-ho as he had been at his desk, which made Vlado wary. Still jittery from the caffeine, he envisioned barreling up the mountain into a phalanx of bodyguards with orders to fire on any EU car. A pistol wouldn't be much good against a few Kalashnikovs.

“Have you ever used it?” Vlado asked.

“Only once. Waved it at a nasty checkpoint a few years ago. Drunken Croats who wanted a ‘toll' and maybe my car. Changed their tune in a hurry when they saw the barrel. Tried to act like it had all been a big joke. But that was years ago, right after Dayton. Now you never really need to be armed unless you're going after somebody like Andric. Who escaped this morning, by the way. It's all over the radio. But I guess you guys already knew that, huh?”

Pine nodded.

“So it really was a two-for-one, then?”

“Only now it's a none-for-two. Unless we get lucky.”

“Fuckin' French.” Benny shook his head. “Wonder who the loose lip was on this one. LeBlanc, maybe? I never thought this deal would go through from the moment I heard about it.”

“You weren't supposed to hear about it at all.”

“The names were making the rounds the day before Vlado showed up.”

“Great.”

“What do you expect when you let Harkness and LeBlanc call the shots? Lie down with dogs, get up with fleas.”

Pine explained the likely setup awaiting them on the mountain. They agreed to err on the side of caution, vowing to reverse tracks at the first sign of a hostile reception.

The trip seemed longer to Vlado than it had the day before, but with Pine driving he was able to watch the view ahead. They got their first glimpse of the house about fifteen minutes after the turnoff. Benny pulled out a small pair of binoculars.

“Here. Somebody else take a look. Seems quiet to me, but I've never been there.”

Vlado focused on the big upstairs window in the back, looking down the mountain from Matek's bedroom. Below was his office. The curtains were drawn on both.

“He's either not expecting us or doesn't care,” Vlado said, not sure whether to feel relieved or disappointed. The place looked dead. Not even the goats were out.

Nosing around the final curve, they slowed to a crawl as they approached the guardhouse. A door was open on the side. The bar across the driveway was raised, and a dust-covered BMW was parked on the shoulder. Inside the guardhouse someone stood, as if he'd been hunched over looking for something. Benny pulled the Beretta from a shoulder holster.

“Know him?” he asked.

Vlado saw sunlight glinting off glasses. The man didn't seem to be armed. “Yes. It's Azudin. His assistant.”

Azudin stepped outside, squinting into the pale sunlight. He looked helpless, out of place. He wasn't even wearing an overcoat.

“It's okay,” Vlado said. “This one doesn't bite.”

“They all bite,” Benny said.

“And something's wrong if he's on guard duty. The others must have gone.”

Azudin strolled uncertainly toward the car as Vlado rolled down a window.

“He's gone,” Azudin said in the plaintive bleat of a lost lamb.

Vlado translated for Pine, who shut off the engine. The three of them climbed from the car while Azudin stood at the edge of the lane barely paying attention, as if pondering what to do next.

“Where's everyone else?” Vlado asked.

“I paid them for the month and sent them home.”

“What about Matek?”

“He left last night. He sent me home around five, so it could have been anytime after that. When I got here this morning he'd cleared out. The overnight sentry must have been asleep, because he didn't see a thing.”

“Is that his car?” Vlado pointed to the BMW.

Azudin shook his head. “Mine. His is gone. So are his guns, and most of his money. He left this.”

Azudin held out a scrap of paper. Stepping closer, Vlado saw that Azudin was pale and drawn, clearly shaken. Vlado gently took the note from his hand.

“What's he saying?” Pine asked.

“Matek took off last night. I'm translating the note he left.” Vlado squinted at the cramped handwriting of a man used to bashing a keyboard. Once he had the gist, he read aloud the English version to Pine and Benny. “ ‘Edin, there was always a possibility this day would come, and now I must go. All of the keys are in my upper desk drawer. The combination to the safe follows. I have signed the necessary documents, which you will also find on the desk. Sendic will notarize them in town. My businesses now belong to you. My bank accounts do not. There is enough cash in this envelope to pay the staff for a month. The rest is up to you. You will not be able to reach me, so do not try. When the son of Enver Petric comes calling, give him and his American friend from The Hague my best. They should be able to answer the rest of your questions. Good luck. Pero.' ”