Zagreb Cowboy (15 page)

“You can’t sleep here,” said a half-bear, half-man.

“I just did.”

“Well, you can’t.”

“Why? Was I snoring?”

“It’s not allowed.”

“Because?”

“Because it’s the rule.”

“Whose rule?”

“The people-who-run-the-petrol-station’s rule.”

“Who’s that then?”

“That would be me. And I don’t want people breaking my rules when I come on my shift.”

“What’s the time?”

“Five o’clock.”

“You mean it’s tomorrow already?”

“If you don’t get a move on pretty quickly, I’ll send you back into yesterday. Understand?”

“Understood. And thanks for the hospitality.”

“Gypsy bum.”

Della Torre decided it was just as well he pushed off. The fog had mostly lifted, though a few wisps clung to the trees or swept across the road where there were clearings. He’d stop for a coffee once he’d got to Rijeka, a large port city on a wide gulf situated in the inner elbow between the top of the Dalmatian coast and Istria.

Once past Rijeka, he decided to follow the coastal road rather than go through the Ucka tunnel. It would add about an hour to the drive, but there was often a police roadblock at the tunnel entrance.

The sun rose behind him, sharp and clear, casting a bruised pink light across the Adriatic Sea in front of him. Down at the bottom of the cliffs, night had clung on.

Eventually he cut inland and drove through the heart of Istria. As he travelled north he grew tempted to call in at his father’s for breakfast and a chat, but he knew that would be fatally stupid. The
UDBA
would be waiting for him.

Instead, he stopped for a few minutes by the side of the road a few fields away from the house and smoked a cigarette. From a distance in the morning light, the house looked pristine, though he knew all its little imperfections. The cracked stone lintel over the main door. The temporary, now semi-permanent wooden cover over the wellhead on which was inscribed “della Torre 1877” — the house had been built by another branch of the family. The rusting iron frame holding up a massive spread of vines that kept the big cellar and a broad first-floor terrace shaded. The conical pile of builder’s sand at one end of the front courtyard. The silt of papers and books and oddments that clogged the lives of single men.

Then again, there were some imperfections he wouldn’t want to change. The slight asymmetry of one of the oval windows under the roofline. Or the blocks of stone in the house’s façade that had been splintered by German machine-gun bullets. It was funny how every memory in this part of the world eventually ambled into a war.

Della Torre headed back north by northeast towards Italy, where his mother’s family had come from. None of them were left, or no one close; all were either dead or scattered into the winds. But he knew the countryside well. He stayed off the main roads, following a small track into the Slovene part of Istria. Since the vote, the Slovene police had taken to stopping cars at the border, almost as if it were an international boundary, and the Croats were beginning to reciprocate.

There was only a narrow corridor of Slovenian Istria separating Croatian Istria from Italy’s Trieste. Once in Slovenia, he stopped for breakfast and made a phone call.

“Anzulović?”

“Gringo, is that you? Where are you?”

“Umm, I think I’d rather not say, though you’ll know soon enough.”

“Feel like explaining yourself? Seems you neglected to mention a teeny, tiny little thing to me yesterday.”

“You mean about Strumbić?”

“Something like that.”

“I didn’t want to burden you with details.”

“So generous of you. If you’d rather tell it to Messar instead . . .”

“Not really. Listen, I know you’re an upstanding Communist, but would you do me a little favour — would you pray for me?”

“Anything for you. Where?”

“How about at the cathedral. Nine o’clock. Wait for the bell to chime and maybe you’ll answer my call.”

“I think the spirit may move me.”

Della Torre hung up. Anzulović had understood. Everybody’s telephone calls, including Anzulović’s, were recorded. The only line that escaped being monitored was the fax line to their secretary’s office, which for some unfathomable reason caused the
UDBA
’s recording devices to develop the mechanical equivalent of epilepsy.

These prodigiously strange phenomena were fairly usual in Yugoslavia. Some things never worked, however much effort was made to mend them. Some things only worked in certain circumstances. And some things worked perfectly. And then didn’t.

Della Torre thought he’d use the
UDBA
’s phone tapping to his advantage. They’d be watching for him at the borders. He was less than ten kilometres from the Italian crossing at Trieste, the most obvious route out of the country. It was also manned by the federal border police and therefore under
UDBA
control. He’d make it easy for them. He called his father.

“Dad.”

“Marko? What are you doing? Some people were here looking for you this morning.”

“Never mind them. I haven’t got long to talk —”

“I said you were in Zagreb,” his father said. “To try you there. Have I told you about the researcher?”

“What?”

“An American. There’s an American researcher who’s taken an interest in my work. Not the work I do now, but linguistic research. We’ve developed a lively correspondence. She says she might be doing a doctorate on my comparative language analysis. She said she’d be coming this summer probably, if not sooner.”

“That’s great, Dad, but I really can’t talk.”

“It’s been a while. I mean, my work is solid but it’s no longer cutting edge. But she seems interested anyway. Maybe I’ll go to Zagreb to catch up with developments of the past few years. I shouldn’t have dropped out of academics so completely, but the political writing has been so much more rewarding.”

“Listen, Dad, I’ve got to go now. I just wanted to say I’ll have to stay out of touch for a while. I’m on a case.”

“Let me know when you get back. Maybe I’ll call Irena to say I’ll be spending some time at the apartment. She never minds. It’d be nice to see her. I miss her coming to Istria.”

“You do that, Dad. Bye.” It was as long as he’d dared to stay on the phone. They’d spoken in English. It had always been their secret language in this country, but the
UDBA
would have had an English-speaker on hand to listen in. They’d have also immediately traced the call.

From where he was, the most obvious route was along the main road and on to the Trieste highway, little more than ten minutes to the border. But instead he went cross-country, along the little roads where a rusty Renault 4 would be as unobtrusive as a peach tree in an Istrian orchard. Rather than head towards Trieste, he made his way towards Piran, the northernmost of Yugoslavia’s pretty Venetian coastal towns.

As a tourist town, Piran had regular passenger ferry services to Venice and Trieste, even out of season. National pride demanded that the boats run continuously, despite the heavy subsidy that entailed. But because few people took the ferries in the winter — generally only locals with relatives on the Italian side — there was hardly any passport control. It was left to the municipal police to monitor the few people who came and went until the summer hordes arrived and the federal border guards took up their officious places again.

It took him less than half an hour to reach Piran. He parked the car on the main square. He checked his notebook for the number of the telephone box in front of Zagreb’s cathedral.

“Hello.” It was clearly not Anzulović. It sounded like an old woman.

“Madam, I’m calling for someone else.”

“Well, I’m the only person here.”

“Is there a man waiting there? About fifty-five, black-and-white hair, shrubs growing out of his nose and ears?”

“What?”

“I’m calling for someone else. Is there a man there waiting for the phone?”

“No. Just me.”

“Lady, can you do me a favour? Can you see if there’s someone waiting by the phones on the other side of the cathedral?”

“I can’t see that far.”

“Listen, if you go over there, you’ll see a man who’s waiting by the phones. Tell him to come to these phones in ten minutes’ time and he’ll give you fifty dinars. I promise. Just tell him I promised you fifty dinars.”

“A hundred.”

“Alright.”

“He’d better give me the money.”

“I promise, lady.”

Della Torre called again ten minutes later.

“Hello?”

“Anzulović?”

“That you, Gringo?”

“Did you pay the old lady?”

“Three hundred dinars that cost me.”

“Should have been standing by the right phones. Anyway, I owe you.”

“You owe me more than that. Why didn’t you tell me about shooting Strumbić?”

“Didn’t I?”

“I think it’s something I’d have remembered. Shall I describe the shitshow that came down when Strumbić showed up in hospital yesterday morning? You’ve left me with a migraine bigger than my wife’s ass.”

“Sorry. I didn’t want to complicate things.”

“Complicate things? Gringo, you knew very well that shooting Strumbić wouldn’t make things easier. It’s hard enough for me to give you protection without having the regular cops after you as well as everybody else.”

“It was an accident.”

“I’m sure it was. And you used a crap gun. A slingshot would have been more effective. But the fact of the matter is that you shot and imprisoned a Zagreb detective. That immediately called for an
UDBA
investigation. The Zagreb cops — well, do you remember that Kubrick movie
2001
?” Anzulović asked. Della Torre vaguely knew about the film, though he wasn’t sure he’d ever seen it.

“Yes,” he said.

“You remember at the start when all those apes see the big black stone, the monolith, and start freaking out? Well, the Zagreb cops made them look like they were on sedatives. Can you imagine how happy they’d be to get an
UDBA
scalp? We’re taking over the case slowly, but it’s not a lot of fun.”

“How’s Strumbić?”

“Angrier than a bull that’s having its balls cut off. He’s in my office right now being self-righteous.”

“What story has he told you?”

“Originally, that you were trying to sell him state secrets, and when he turned you down — shock, horror — you and your Bosnian gang tried to kill him. He’s also got you down for stealing his car. And three cartons of Lucky Strikes. But with a bit of help his memory’s starting to improve.”

“I took his leather coat too.”

“Well, he seems not to have noticed. I’ll mention it to him, shall I?”

“Didn’t fit.”

“Well, that’s a crying shame.”

“What happens now?” della Torre asked.

“Officially I’m hunting you down like I’m the whole bloody Mossad and you’re Eichmann. Messar’s on the case, and everybody trusts him to do the job properly. Which he will. My worry is that the minute he’s got a hold of you, whoever your friends are in Belgrade will ask for you to be handed over to the
UDBA
headquarters, after which you’ll never be seen again. If you end up with the Zagreb cops, either they’ll do the Bosnians’ job for them or somebody else will pay for the privilege. I suggest you disappear until Belgrade no longer has any say whatsoever in Zagreb. I’ll see if we can’t get some dancing fairies into Strumbić’s story. By the way, you haven’t heard any of this from me.”

“Thanks.”

“I don’t know why I’m doing this for you.”

“Maybe I’m the son you never had.”

“Every day I look at my daughters, I thank God I didn’t have boys too. There’s only so much disappointment a man can handle in one lifetime. I’m doing it for your wife; Lord knows you don’t deserve her.”

“I know. I’m a disappointment to her as well. Will you keep an eye on her?”

“Yes. She ought to go away for a little bit too. I’ll make sure that if she does, nobody bothers her too much.”

“Thanks. So now I disappear?”

“You disappear until Messar finds you or until we start playing cowboys and Indians with the Serbs. I wish I didn’t have the feeling we’ll end up as the Indians. Apart from Custer, they didn’t do so well. Anyway, we’ll be needing you here then.”

“What about the
UDBA
?”

“We are the
UDBA
.”

“No, I mean the people who kill people.”

“The wetworks? What about them?”

“Won’t they be after me if they find out I’ve run away? They don’t have much of a record of forgiving defectors from their ranks. And they’re not known for missing their targets.”

“Messar has people on you, but I’ve made sure Belgrade isn’t getting too interested. The Zagreb police don’t talk to the federal agencies, and as far as I’m concerned you’re officially on a sabbatical and there’s just a little logistical problem keeping you from coming back in to explain yourself.”

“Thanks, boss.”

“I’ll tell you what. Maybe you can put those brains of yours towards staying alive for a couple of months or so. And if everything goes tits up over here, don’t worry, you’ll get plenty of chances to pay me back by getting me out of the country too. But you’d better get moving. Messar has people looking for you in Istria. He’s very persistent. And smart.”

“My luck to have the only honest secret policeman south of Vienna on my case.”

“You think they’re honest in Vienna?”

“Did they find the Bosnians in the ravine, by the way?”

“Just a Merc welded to a tree.”

“Any bodies?”

“No. Bit of blood but no corpses. On the other hand, some poor farmer from the village had his car stolen from him. The cops found him squatting in a stream with his trousers over his head. It’d be funny if he hadn’t had to be hospitalized for hypothermia. Barely got a statement from him, his teeth were hammering so hard. It seems your Bosnian friends hijacked him. You’d better get going.”

“You’re a friend, Anzulović.”

“Maybe one day the favours will stop flowing in one direction. You make my life more difficult than all the women in my household put together.”