Thriller (38 page)

In 1993, Hamilton was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship to

teach journalism in Macedonia. The Bosnian war was in full

swing, and she went with the full knowledge that if the fighting spread to her part of the Balkans, she’d go overnight from

college professor to war correspondent. But Macedonia never

blew up and Hamilton widely toured the South Balkans and

fell in love with the small, quirky nation of Albania, which

at that time was just emerging from fifty years of communist

isolation. As Hamilton writes in
At the Drop of a Hat
, there

were few ways in and out of Albania but she managed to

hitchhike into Tirana with some Albanian journalists she

met at a conference on beautiful Lake Ohrid, at the Macedonia-Albania border.

Hamilton hadn’t been planning such a trip and had only

two hundred dollars and one change of clothes in her back-
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pack. But she knew a good offer when she heard it, and being

an adventurous sort, arrived in downtown Tirana in the late

afternoon and immediately began calling U.S. Fulbright

scholars in Albania, hoping to find somebody with a spare

couch where she could crash. Luckily, she reached another

Fulbrighter before dark and he took her to eat at what was

then Tirana’s only French restaurant, where they met the proprietor, a handsome and cultured Albanian man.

The restaurateur eventually offered Hamilton a ride back

in his Mercedes to Skopje, where he often traveled for business. Due to scheduling conflicts she never took him up on

his offer, and it wasn’t until much later that she learned the

full story of this man’s life. In
At the Drop of a Hat
, Hamilton

uses that knowledge and takes readers on a thrill ride of

Balkan intrigue, providing along the way a taste for the sights,

smells, textures and landscape that few Westerners have seen.

A tale from one who lived it.

Jane looked out the passenger window and told herself that

everything was fine. Bashkim was driving, the Mercedes hurtling

along the Albanian highway at a hundred kilometers an hour.

The air inside the car felt tight and crackly. Outside, greenhouses stood in untilled fields, their shattered windows gaping

empty. A black-clad woman followed a herd of goats up a rockstrewn hillside, spinning wool on a hand spindle. Anything

could happen out here, Jane thought, and no one would ever

know. The wind would shred her clothes and rain would bleach

her bones and when spring came, the goats would crop the earth

around her.

This has to stop, Jane scolded herself. She was a sensible girl, not

one of those high-strung ones that fell apart at the drop of a hat.

She just needed to rekindle the excitement she had felt last night.

She and Paul had been in their favorite Tirana restaurant, arguing because he refused to tap his diplomatic contacts to get

her a ride across the border to the former Yugoslav republic of

Macedonia. A conference on Balkan literature was taking place

in the capital and she really wanted to attend.

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“What’s the big deal?” Jane had protested. “Your embassy

courier does the Tirana-Skopje run twice a week.”

But Paul had suddenly grown engrossed in photos of the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triomphe and the French Alps that decorated the walls. Over the sound system, Edith Piaf sobbed about

love and betrayal.
Omelettes
and
salades niçoises
sailed out of the

kitchen. This had been their sanctuary, a little piece of Paris that

shut out the chaos outside that was Albania. But now Albania

had followed them inside.

“I can’t put a civilian on that route, it’s strictly for consular

business,” Paul said at last.

Since when am I just a civilian? she fumed, recalling other,

more fevered words he had whispered in the three weeks they’d

been together. He was a low-level attaché at the U.S. embassy and

she was a Fulbright scholar. They’d met at an embassy reception

her first week in Tirana, bonded over too much Albanian merlot and hadn’t been apart since, though in her weaker moments

she wondered if it was just an expat thing.

“What do you want me to do, hitchhike? There aren’t a lot of

options going east.”

There weren’t a lot of options because the delusional Commie

who had ruled Albania for almost fifty years had torn up the rail

lines and sealed the border out of fear that the Yugoslavs, America
and
NATO planned to attack his backward and impoverished

nation. Years after Enver Hoxha’s death, it was still a logistical

nightmare to get in and out. No trains or regional buses. The only

planes went to Western Europe, then you had to double back.

Taxis were cheaper, but she was a student and didn’t have a hundred and fifty dollars to spare.

“Excuse me,” said a low, melodic voice. “I don’t mean to eavesdrop, but your voices…perhaps I can be of help.”

The proprietor, Bashkim, stood before them, sleek in an Italian

suit, hands clasped deferentially. He had toiled for years in Parisian

restaurants, then come home to show the natives the glories of

French cuisine. Except that Albanians, at their salaries, couldn’t

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afford even one
frite
, though the brasserie had caught on immediately with the expense-account NGO and diplomatic crowd.

Paul fixed the restaurateur with a pensive gaze. “Really?” he

said, a strange light flaring, then banking behind his eyes.

Bashkim gave a modest smile and bowed in Jane’s direction. “I

must go to Skopje on business tomorrow,” he said. “I would be

honored if you would accompany me. There is plenty of room.”

“I’m not so sure that’s a good idea,” Paul said slowly.

But Jane had seen the shiny blue Mercedes out back and was

already imagining the smooth ride, the lively discussion as first

the countryside, then the desolate mountain passes, soared by.

Bashkim had exquisite manners, spoke five languages, understood civil society. His wife, a beautiful Albanian with green

eyes, kept the restaurant books while their little girl, immaculate in frilly dresses, played with dolls in the back. Jane could

tell they were in love. Unlike many of the men who stared with

hungry, medieval eyes, Bashkim never gave her a second glance.

She’d seen how the expat community embraced him. She’d be

safe. Plus, it would end the dreary row, her nagging suspicion that

Paul didn’t care enough to pull this embassy string for her.

Feeling a sudden need to assert herself, Jane said. “I
am
sure.

I’m going.”

Paul threw up his hands in mock horror, winked at Bashkim.

“These Western women, they have minds of their own.”

She had kicked him under the table, but later that night, they’d

fallen into bed with their usual frenzy, all the sweeter for her impending absence. Afterward, Jane was touched that he shoved

his cell phone into her backpack and insisted she keep it on until

reaching Skopje, at which point she was to call and announce

her safe arrival.

And so it was that Jane had set off from Paul’s apartment this

morning. The streets smelled of wet earth and sewers. Deformed

Gypsy children writhed on cardboard, begging from passersby.

Housewives leaned over balconies, beating carpets with redfaced fury. Four stories up, a cow mooed indignantly. The sight

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of livestock in apartments had startled her initially, but Jane

soon learned you couldn’t leave a cow out overnight in Tirana

any more than you could a car.

Bashkim was tossing a suitcase into the back seat when she

arrived. The Mercedes seemed low to the ground, like it was carrying a heavy load, but Jane thought that unlikely. Albania exported little but its own people.

Standing in the clear Adriatic light, she sensed Bashkim checking out her hiking boots and Levi’s, the fleece-lined vest she’d

thrown over a red ribbed turtleneck, and felt something shift. A

flicker of apprehension went through her. Had she misjudged

him? Then, he broke into a familiar smile and her misgivings

evaporated.

“You ready?”

She climbed in. As the apartment blocks, then the dismal

shanties on Tirana’s outskirts gave way to farmland, they chatted about Albanian literature and culture. Then talk turned to

the present day.

“It’s wonderful, what you’re building here. There’s so much opportunity.”

“There was more opportunity in France,” Bashkim said. “But

I couldn’t get residency.”

“But the West is so sterile. Everyone’s obsessed with money, getting ahead. There’s no sense of family, of what’s really important.”

“You think people here aren’t obsessed with money?” he said,

jabbing the gas. After that they sat in silence. The Mercedes jostled with donkey carts and tractors, passing so close that Jane

could have plucked wisps of straw from a farmer’s hair. An olivegreen truck of Soviet vintage emblazoned with the letters STALIN

passed them, stuffed with young Albanian men who hooted and

hollered. But other vehicles fell into line behind them, content

to let the Mercedes lead.

Bashkim punched in a CD and the strains of Mozart wafted

through the car. The pleasant odor of his cologne hung in the air.

“I’m really lucky you were going to Skopje this week,” Jane

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said, trying to recapture their earlier ease. “How often do you

make the trip?”

A smile curled around the edge of his mouth. “Whenever

business requires it.”

She studied him. He was blond, with blue eyes. This, too, had

surprised her. He could have been a surfer from her college back

home, if not for his pallid skin and something ineluctable in his

profile that, framed against the raw landscape and crumbling

stone buildings, she suddenly saw as quintessentially Balkan.

“Do you go to Skopje for restaurant supplies?” she asked.

There was a pause, an intake of breath. Then, “You are very

curious.”

Jane shrugged. “Just wondering.”

“Sometimes it’s best not to wonder too much.” He let the

words hang in the air and she felt it building again, an odd pressure in her head, the tingling of individual hairs on her nape. For

a long time, she studied the scrubby landscape, bereft even of

litter.

“Look,” he said after a time, pointing to a fortress atop a hill,

and she knew he was trying to make nice. “Skanderbeg’s castle.

Our national hero. He was a janissary, a viceroy in the sultan’s

army. But he rebelled in 1569 and led an uprising of the Albanian people against the Ottomans. He was never captured.”

At the turnoff, a crowd of ragged boys appeared, bunching

their hands in front of open mouths.

“They’re hungry,” Jane cried, reaching into her backpack for

dried fruit, nuts.

Bashkim pressed harder on the accelerator.

“They have become accustomed to begging,” he said tersely.

“The foreign-aid workers throw out sweets and they scrabble

after them like dogs.”

The lack of sympathy struck Jane as harsh. When Bashkim got

off the highway in Elbassan, a town dominated by a hulking factory that belched out black smoke, delicate tendrils of unease

bloomed inside her.

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“Why are we stopping?”

Bashkim’s voice was light, nonchalant.

“To drop some medicine off with a friend.” He grew apologetic.

“It’s for his sick mother.”

He braked for a herd of sheep and something slid from under

her seat, hitting her heel. She looked down and saw the barrel

of a machine gun. Bashkim saw it, too. He lunged between her

legs, grabbed it. His arm slid against her inner thigh. Then he

shoved the gun firmly under his own seat.

“Sorry about that,” he said, his voice thick.

Jane gripped the leather edge of the Mercedes seat, her palms

slick with moisture. She wanted to scream. Had she only imagined that his arm had lingered? And what if the gun had gone off?

When he tapped her, she jumped.

“It’s to protect us,” he said. “Just in case.”

She tried to still the thudding of her heart against her rib cage,

convince herself it made sense. This was still a land of brigands.

As for the other, it was just a clumsy accident.

Bashkim wheeled the car into a driveway and the gate to a

compound swung open. Jane’s unease spiked higher. Why hadn’t

he told her earlier about the stop? What if it was all a ruse? A

trap? The car moved forward. She thought about turning the

door handle and hopping out. But then what? The streets were

filled with tough-looking, idle young men. And she’d be stranded

with little money and no way back. She’d heard whispers about

what happened to women found alone after dark, especially outside the capital. The gate clanged behind them and three men

with hawk faces materialized. This was where it would happen,

she thought.

“I’ll wait in the car,” she said.

“You should use the facilities,” Bashkim said firmly. “There

will be no other opportunity.”

Then a door to the house burst open and a plump lady waddled out. When Bashkim pulled out a container of pills and

handed them to the woman, Jane could have cried with relief.

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The woman came around to Jane’s door, grabbed her arm and