The Small Boat of Great Sorrows (8 page)

“I've come to see Haris,” he said. “Tell him it's Vlado. Vlado Petric.”

His name seemed to flip a switch, and a smile flickered slowly to life, although it was hard to recall any smile more mirthless.

“Then I know why you must be here,” she said, not budging from the door. “What do you want with him?”

“To speak with him. Only a minute or two. Is he home?”

“Yes, he is home.” That glint in her eyes again. “Home in Bosnia. He and Huso both. They should have come and killed you instead, but Haris said no, he'd had enough of killing. So they went back a few days ago. And now I am here by myself, alone, because I won't go back. He has deserted me, thanks to what you made him do.”

“Well,” he said, feeling a need to redeem himself, to excuse his visit at this late hour. “I just wanted to make sure that he was safely out of things. To make sure the authorities hadn't caught up to him. But I suppose they haven't.”

“There was one,” she said, with a questioning look that slowly turned to a smile as she watched Vlado's alarmed reaction.

“One?”

“One man. Only three days ago. The day after Haris left. He came looking for him.” She paused. “He asked about Popovic, too. The devil himself.”

“Who was he, this man? Where was he from?”

“He didn't say.”

“The war crimes tribunal?”

“He didn't say. I told you.”

By now her smile was full. She probably hadn't enjoyed anything this much in ages.

“Was he German? In a uniform?”

“No. Not in a uniform. And not German. Not Bosnian either. A foreigner.”

“American?”

“I don't know. He spoke our language. A few words of it, anyway, and not like a German would. But he spoke it. Enough to tell me he wanted to see Haris. To ask him about Popovic.”

“What else did he say?”

“Nothing. When I told him Haris was gone, he left.”

“Was he tall? Short? Fat? Thin? Old or young?”

“About your age, but maybe not. It was dark. Taller than you, but maybe only a little. And he wore a big coat, so I can't say if he was thin.”

So it might be Pine and it might not be. Vlado had no idea if Pine spoke any Bosnian. He must have picked up a little if he'd been traveling there for five years.

“What else did he want to know?”

“If Haris was coming back. Where he could find him. If I'd seen Popovic.”

“And?”

“I told him I knew nothing about any of that. I said that Haris had gone back because he was homesick. That he had been in love but that his girlfriend's husband had returned.” Her smile widened. “But that was all, and he didn't ask any more.”

“Did he leave his name, give you a contact number? A business card, maybe?”

“None of that. He just left. And I haven't seen him since.”

And I hope to God I haven't, either, Vlado thought as she shut the door, the dead bolt sliding with a great heavy click.

CHAPTER FOUR

In the gray light of morning, Vlado's fears seemed unfounded. He awakened in a swelter of dry heat. The apartment building's furnaces had run full throttle through the night, and the air smelled of baking metal. Vlado sat up in bed, mouth dry, eyelids glued, hair poking stiffly in all directions. Jasmina's side of the bed was empty, with the sheets thrown back. He got up to crank open a window. Cool air flowed in like a balm, pooling around his bare feet, though it tweaked his nose with the smell of burning coal. The sun was up, and he knew by the light that he was already at least an hour late for work. Jasmina stepped into the doorway.

“I decided to let you sleep,” she said. “You'll need your strength for the trip.”

So it would be that easy. He met her at the foot of the bed, sliding his arms around her waist, pulling her closer. Her hair smelled like shampoo, her breath like coffee.

“Just promise me two things,” she said. He nodded, chin brushing the top of her head. “That you won't do anything stupid. And by that I mean dangerous, or anything as dangerous as it was for you before, in Sarajevo.”

“Okay. That should be easy enough.”

“That's what you always say. And what makes it worse, I think you really believe it.”

“Relax. He did his last fighting before we were even born. He's an old man.”

“And a war criminal. People who learn to kill when they're young don't forget just because they're going senile. It's like learning to swim, or ride a bike. It's part of their muscle memory.”

Vlado laughed. It was her typical alarmist attitude. “Fair enough. I promise not to turn my back on him, especially when he's just had his prune juice. So what's the second promise?”

Jasmina shook her head but moved on. “That you won't make up your mind about moving before we talk.” She looked up, straight into his eyes. “Don't get swept off your feet by the hills and a few old friends. By a few glasses of
rakija
or a few bites of
cevapi
. Give us a chance to talk it out rationally, thinking of everything. While you're here, not there.”

He nodded again. “Okay. I promise.”

She smiled, shaking her head lightly. “Sure you do. I can already see it in your eyes. All that eagerness to go back.” Her eyes shone. “I wish I could, too. I woke up in the middle of the night, just aching to be home. I wanted to look out the window this morning and see everything I used to see, then take Sonja around her old city to meet her new playmates, and be able to talk to her without feeling like we were speaking some special language that only the three of us know, like it's some family code. That's the way she thinks of it, you know. Like it's our private tongue, nothing to do with anybody's country or anyone but us.”

“I know. She told me. She heard a boy on the U-Bahn speaking Bosnian one morning and said, ‘Listen, Daddy. He's talking
our
language.' She didn't like it. I guess she figured the boy had broken into our house and stolen all the words.”

“Hi, Daddy.” Now Sonja was at the door, clutching her
Sandmann
doll with his peaked red cap and his wisp of a beard. His confident little girl who rode the subway with the bored authority of an old commuter, knowing all the tricks for handling crowds and grabbing the best seats. Knew the best stands for wurst and
döner kebap,
too. It was true. She was a little German, comfortable here. He beckoned to her, and they all climbed into bed for half an hour, chatty and cozy, with the draft from the window coiling atop them like a cool velvet snake. Down in his chest he felt the excitement of the journey building.

Jasmina looked in his eyes, seeing the faraway fires, and said, “Go. Get up and call him before he leaves or changes his mind.”

Vlado stepped barefoot across the floor to telephone Pine from the kitchen, suddenly needing reassurance that the night before had even existed, all those hours now mixed in a swirl of ghosts—spirits from the dank bunker, dreams of Haris and the body in the trunk. Just the thought of that was a dead weight sinking through the lightness of the morning. He wondered how long it would haunt him. Forever, perhaps. He had a fleeting vision of Haris's sister from only eight hours ago—could that be possible?—her doorstep still darkened by the shadow of whoever had visited a few days ago.

But if Pine knew about any of those events, he wasn't saying so this morning. And his voice on the phone seemed real enough, bubbling with excitement when Vlado accepted the job. Within an hour he was back at Vlado's door, holding a train ticket, again wearing his puppy-dog face and talking a mile a minute. He handed over a small stuffed envelope.

“Maps and directions,” he said. “Nothing in here you'll have to eat or burn afterward. But remember, don't speak about the details with anyone before you leave. I'll be heading back to The Hague in an hour. You'll follow later this morning. I know that's short notice, but it's six hours by train, which will barely leave us enough time to get you up to speed before leaving for Bosnia tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow?”

“Yes. It's moving fast, I know. But they put this together in a hurry. Apparently there isn't a big window for action, especially on the Serb general, Andric. He's the French army's problem, not ours. But their operation impacts our timing, and they seem to be worried he'll head off to Kosovo soon. A lot of reports on troop buildups, so you never know. Sorry I can't book you a flight, but that's our budget. I'd hate to tell you how many trips into the field I've canceled or cut short. That's what happens when your bean counters are across the ocean and your crime scene's a thousand miles away.

“You'll arrive late afternoon. Take the number seven tram to Churchillplein. You're staying at the Hotel Dorint. It's right next-door to the tribunal, so just walk on over when you've checked in. Security will be expecting you. Then we can get started with the backgrounders. And I'm sure Contreras will want to meet you.”

“Contreras?”

“The new head man at the tribunal, although his official title is chief prosecutor. Took over last month. A judge from Peru. Made his name putting drug lords in jail. Survived two car bombings and got his house burned out. Big hero down there. After dealing with the Shining Path, he figures Bosnians are little lambs, so he can't understand why we don't just go out and haul everybody in. NATO's already sick of hearing from him. They figure he's threatening to upset the status quo just as things are coming to a boil in Kosovo.”

“What does Kosovo have to do with us? If they start bombing, I mean. Do we cancel?”

“If a war starts there, we'll be the last things on anyone's mind, so we just keep going like nothing happened. It might complicate the Andric case, though. With the French as cozy as they are with the Serbs, maybe they won't still feel like cooperating if the Americans are bombing Belgrade. But we're supposed to act like that doesn't matter, like there's no connection at all. Either way, our guy will still be in business, and we'll have an offer he can't refuse. Contreras is a full-speed-ahead kind of guy, so far anyway. He's also as political as they come. Always seems to have a few diplomatic types over at the office, touring them around. So we're a little on edge these days, wondering who'll be the first to screw up under his ‘new aggressiveness' mandate.”

“Like us, you mean.”

“Only if we find some way to become an embarrassment. But you need to be ready to roll as soon as you arrive. If our man is going to do business with us, we'll know pretty soon.”

“And if he decides not to?”

“Then we go to Plan B.”

“Which is?”

“Classified.” He smiled, patting Vlado's shoulder, then reached into his pocket for a business card. Pine's name and title were embossed above a blue UN globe and the tribunal's long official title.

“My phone number, just in case. Plus the address of the tribunal. If you end up on the wrong tram, just hail a cab and show him this. Most of the cabbies speak English. Don't try any Bosnian on them. The Dutch aren't too thrilled with refugees these days. Even less than the Germans, in their own repressed little way.”

He held out his hand for a shake. “Welcome aboard, Vlado. It's a strong team we've got. Definitely the underdogs, but we play hard.”

All this American slang was going to take some getting used to, but Vlado took Pine's hand firmly—“sealing the deal,” he did know that one—while searching Pine's beaming face. The man's enthusiasm was infectious.

“It should be fun,” Pine said before throttling back a notch, his smile turning almost sheepish. “Or interesting, anyway. Oh, and hang on to your receipts if you ever want to get reimbursed. Contreras is just as tight with the dollar as his predecessors.”

Vlado smiled. Some things about police work were the same no matter who you worked for.

The train was the perfect decompression chamber for traveling from one life to another. By the time they'd crawled through Berlin into the pines of the countryside, Vlado felt as if old circuits were springing to life after years of idleness. He bought a Coke and a bag of chips from a vendor pushing a cart down the rocking corridor, then dozed for half an hour, awakening refreshed and thinking of his family. Jasmina had been excited for him, and a little jealous. It was Sonja who'd remained dead set against the whole thing, tugging at his coat as he stepped out the door. The memory cooled his elation. It was still too easy to recall the emptiness of his two years alone, the time and energy he'd spent mending fences. Now he was bolting off on his own again, leaving them behind for who knew how many days, even weeks. But when it was over they'd have new possibilities. Easy, he warned himself. Don't start making up your mind. Just enjoy the adventure.

He stood to stretch in the corridor, swaying with the motion of the train as the bleached November landscape passed at 120 miles per hour. He wondered for a moment what Tomas must be up to about now, piloting the backhoe through the clay and rubble.

In the afternoon they crossed the border into the Netherlands, and the view gradually changed. Canals separated fields, with boats seemingly parked in the middle of nowhere until you realized that the water led everywhere. There were even a few windmills. Vlado stood at the window, elbows propped against the glass. Phalanxes of schoolkids on bicycles waited at rail crossings, headed home. Rainwater pooled in low spots and creases. That plus the canals left the impression of a countryside afloat like an earthen raft, which the slightest shift might send sliding beneath the waves.

The Hague was a typical European act of concealment—a medieval village wrapped inside centuries of construction. You could chart the rapid pace of recent development in the chockablock outermost suburbs, and even toward the center a new section built of steel and glass loomed above old parks and canals.

But the aging heart of the city still hunched together on narrow cobbled lanes of low brick buildings. Statues of grave old Dutchmen stared from manicured parks. Orderly columns of black bicycles dominated the traffic. The air carried the damp, briny touch of the North Sea, with a raw cold that crept into your skin as if prepared to linger until spring.

A brief tram ride took Vlado to tribunal headquarters, a curving four-story building of steel and glass that looked like the insurance office it had once been. Out front a collection of abstract sculptures sprawled from a concrete pond, hulks of metal like wreckage dropped from a helicopter.

Vlado spotted his first Bosnian while security men scanned his trousers with a metal detector. It was a woman, bustling past as she spoke his native tongue to a guard, who answered in kind. The guards directed Vlado to the second-floor canteen to wait for Pine. Men and women sat at small tables behind a low partition, hunched over coffee cups and full ashtrays, voices buzzing in English, Bosnian, German, French. Being foreign was just part of the scenery here, not something to hide. A man strolled by with the dark hair and narrow-set eyes that could only come from home, and Vlado was tempted to hail him with a familiar greeting. Then Pine burst through a nearby set of doors, walking at double time.

“Welcome to the big cop shop,” he said. “Trip go okay?”

“Sure. Everything was fine.”

“Hope you're rested and ready to work. Let's go upstairs, and I'll start introducing you.”

They rode to the third floor, strolling down blue-carpeted hallways to a partitioned cluster of cubicles where several men sat at desks, each of them on the telephone.

“This is my team of investigators,” Pine said. “A little crowded as you can see, about a dozen in all when everybody's here. Let's see if Benny's got a minute. Hey, you'd probably like some coffee, wouldn't you?”

“That would be great.”

“I'll run downstairs. Take your coat off and get comfortable. Looks like everybody's on the phone now, anyway. Don't worry, none of them bite.”

Vlado draped his overcoat across a seat at the closest desk. Three of the nearby cubicles were occupied. A man with a buzz cut and a stylish shirt in electric blue spoke what sounded like Italian as he scribbled in a small notebook. Opposite him was a spidery bald fellow who loomed well above his desktop, dark brown skin drawn tight around a narrow head, giving his forehead the hardened look of a coffee bean. He spoke a language Vlado couldn't place, like the sound of running water, then he slipped suddenly into English without missing a beat.

Closest to Vlado was the one Pine had called Benny, the noisiest in the bunch. He was an American, much shorter than Pine, belly spilling over his belt, tie askew. He leaned back in his chair while talking on the phone, feet propped on a messy desk. A torn newspaper photo of Madonna was tacked in a corner of his partition, next to a bumper sticker in Cyrillic lettering that said FUCK SFOR. The back of the chair groaned as the man shifted. The phone cord was twisted and knotted in a dozen places, and he'd jammed his left foot against his phone to keep it from sliding off the desk. He was muttering, nodding quickly, and seemed to be growing impatient with whoever was at the other end. The man glanced toward Vlado, rolling his eyes. Then the show began.