Lie in the Dark

CHAPTER 12

A huge explosion jarred him awake. He opened his eyes to a sunny morning and the tremors of an aftershock, something like the rumbling conclusion of a distant thunderclap. He felt for a moment as if someone had sat on his stomach, and he heard objects dropping to the ground outside.

A wave of cold air stole across him, and he saw why when he sat up and looked across the room. His last intact window had been blown in, and was now a pile of gleaming fragments on the living room floor. Several shards had been driven into the opposite wall. Others protruded in clusters from an old blue armchair, like the quills of a porcupine.

He got up to look for a spare roll of plastic stashed in a kitchen closet, and promptly cut his left foot on a shard by the kitchen door. He looked back at his bed and saw that a few pieces had landed across his blanket, but none with enough strength to pierce it. He checked in the bathroom mirror and plucked two or three slivers from his hair.

That’s the way it worked here, he told himself He’d gotten up in the middle of the night to shut down the gas, prodded awake by some deep, urgent fear of being consumed by either suffocation or explosion. Then an explosion had come along anyway from the outside, as if to remind him that precautions didn’t matter. It was all odds and luck, and there was no way to outmaneuver them.

Looking out the gaping window, his hands already numb and his teeth chattering, he surveyed the damage out front as he taped up a sheet of plastic. A neighbor’s apartment was torn open. It had been vacant until the week before, when a family of six had moved in, another wandering band of refugees from some small, overrun town in the hills.

From the damage to the roof and to the front it was obvious a shell had slammed directly into an upper corner of the house-nothing of large caliber, probably only a rocket-propelled grenade, but big enough to do the job, wrecking the front room and blowing out every nearby window that had still been intact. With luck the family had been sleeping in the back. Looking through the opening Vlado saw no bodies, and his inclination was not to go looking for any in the cold, especially with more shells possibly on the way.

But he couldn’t pull himself from the window. There seemed to be no one up and about. He listened closely, cupping his ear, but there were no moans, no cries for help, only the stillness of an early morning with bright sunshine flashing on a new dusting of snow. A hot metallic smell mixed with the usual sharpness of woodsmoke and burning garbage.

He completed the hasty repair of his window, pressing the final strip of duct tape into place. There would be no more morning inventories of the gravediggers, and the thought unexpectedly filled him with a sense of relief, the lightness that follows the completion of any long-dreaded chore.

Then, standing back from his work, he thought again of the family in the next apartment. His window plastic billowed slightly with a fresh breeze, and he shivered. There was still no sound from next door. Someone else would sort it all out later, he told himself. But he decided to take another look, and as he peeled back the new strip of tape there was a voice, a man’s, telling someone to stay inside. Vlado rolled away enough plastic to see a disheveled man, his hair and beard full of plaster dust, walking unsteadily through the hole in the front wall into the snow.

“Everyone all right?” Vlado asked. The man turned robotically, and his eyes briefly fixed Vlado with a blank stare. Thin streams of blood oozed from each of his nostrils, but otherwise he seemed in one piece. The man turned back around without a word, and when another minute passed without a reply, Vlado retaped the plastic over the window.

He should put the water on to boil for coffee, he told himself, as he turned toward the kitchen. Should tend to his cleaning, should shave and prepare for work. They would be fine out there, whoever they were. And if not, then the hospital would be far better equipped than he to set them right.

A few days earlier he had seen the two smallest children in the family playing out front, a boy and a girl, cooing and laughing as they tugged at a small raggedy doll. He turned toward his door and walked into the snow.

The man he’d seen earlier was visible through the opening of the apartment’s blown-out window. Vlado strolled across the courtyard and over the threshold, and saw that the man was shaking, on the verge of collapse. Vlado grasped him around the shoulders and lowered him into a chair covered with dust and chunks of plaster. A second explosion followed, perhaps a block away, and down a hallway a small child began to wail. Now he could see that there was also a large, ragged hole in the ceiling.

“Come on,” Vlado said sternly. “Those shots are coming from the north, and there will be more of them. You’ve got no protection here, now. Bring your family next door with me until this is over.”

The man still didn’t speak, but he seemed to stir himself, and he walked unsteadily down the hallway toward where the wail had come from a moment ago. He emerged at the head of a straggling column, with his wife trailing the children. They were all as quiet as the father, the four children staring with wide eyes, the mother seeming only weary, as if she’d finally given up.

“Come. Quickly,” Vlado urged them, more to get their muscles moving than from any fear of imminent danger. Often these “bombardments” consisted of no more than two or three shells at a time, flung like scattershot toward random points of the city. Then, having made their statement for the hour, the gunners grew bored and went back to their naps or their card games.

But the sooner this bunch was up and about, Vlado figured, the sooner they’d purge the shock from their systems.

He saw with relief that everyone seemed intact, although they had yet to speak a word. They followed Vlado into the snow, not exactly dressed for the weather. He glanced around to make sure that the children were at least wearing shoes.

Once inside his apartment he practically had to shove them into chairs, cutting his right hand as he hastily flicked shards of shattered glass onto the floor from the cushions. He then moved to the kitchen like the anxious host of a dinner party, lighting the burner to heat water for coffee.

“You should probably get yourselves checked out by a doctor,” Vlado shouted from the kitchen, still to no answer. “The concussions from these explosions can do more damage than you think. You can come away without a scratch and be dead an hour later from internal bleeding.”

“The hospital,” someone finally said. It was the woman. “Can you tell us how to find it?”

Christ, these really were newcomers if they didn’t know that. “It’s on the top of the hill over there,” Vlado motioned toward his covered window to the east. “Right across the graveyard, and on up the street from there. But I’d wait at least a half hour after the last shell.”

He clattered on with his hospitality, wiping out a pair of dusty and long unused coffee cups, and four small tumblers for the children. He wondered what he might give them for breakfast, figuring bread would have to do. It was probably what they were accustomed to, anyway.

Their silence resumed, and it began to unsettle him. He glanced up quickly, as if to make sure there wasn’t a roomful of zombies in his living room, propped in their chairs and going stiff with rigor mortis, and he saw to his relief that the two youngest children had dropped onto the floor, and were playing with something.

When he saw that their toy was one of his metal soldiers, his first impulse was to ask them to put it away. But what better use could there be for them, he told himself. Play with them all you like. The parents, however, remained as silent as stones.

“So, how long have you been in the city,” Vlado asked.

For a moment it seemed no one would answer. Then the father moistened his lips, as if with great effort, and spoke up. “Four weeks,” he said. He’d stopped shaking and seemed to have collected himself somewhat.

Vlado handed him a hot mug of weak coffee, and another to his wife. “The children, have they eaten?”

“Yes, some bread,” the mother said. “We will get more this morning.”

“What was your town?” Vlado asked. “Where did you come from?”

They named some village Vlado had barely heard of, some dot from one of his maps about forty miles distant, in the middle of a narrow beleaguered supply corridor. They must have had quite a time of it these past few years, and getting here couldn’t have been easy, either.

“How did you make it into the city.”

“With another family,” the father said. “By cart. We came across Igman. Sometimes you can still get through. We were lucky. A family that left only an hour after us lost two sons along the way to snipers.”

“I didn’t even know anyone was still trying to get in,” Vlado said. “I thought it was just people trying to get out.”

“You can’t,” the man said. “At least, not over Igman, not if you’re a man. The soldiers in the pass will only let a family in with an able-bodied male. For more soldiers. I keep wondering when they’re going to pick me up for that. But it was the only way we got in.”

“Oh, they’ll find you soon enough, I’d imagine. But I’d send your wife to the bread-and-water lines by herself from now on, if I were you, even if she can’t haul back as much. That’s how they get most of them.”

Then, something seemed to dawn on the man. And he looked Vlado full in the eye as he asked, “And you. How do you stay out? I noticed you our first week here and wondered that. You’re young and strong.”

“Strong, no. Young, debatable after two years like this. But you’re right, definitely of military age. I serve in the police, though. A detective. Investigating murders.”

The man shook his head, assenting to the reasonableness of Vlado’s occupation with the air of one obliging a lunatic. It was hardly the first time Vlado had seen such a response.

“Now, I guess we will have to find a new place to live,” the man said. “But it shouldn’t be hard. There are so many apartments open now, and there will always be more.”

Vlado considered this vast, continual shuffle that had been taking place beneath his nose, an inner circle of migration.

“I am Alijah Konjic,” the man said, as if suddenly remembering his manners. “My wife is Nela.”

“Vlado Petric.”

“We must leave now, I suppose. Go out to find food and another place to live. And I suppose you are right, that we should see a doctor first.”

They all stood to go without a further word, seeming more composed now, though still reminding him somehow of shellshocked troops being deemed fit for service by doctors under pressure to supply reinforcements.

“Come back if you need anything,” Vlado said, seeing with a pang of disappointment that the small boy had put the toy soldier back where he’d found it. “And if you need to use my place while you’re looking for a new apartment, you are welcome.”

“Thank you, but really, I am sure it won’t be difficult. This place was the third empty one we’d seen after we arrived. There really are many to choose from.”

“Do you need extra clothes?” Vlado asked, feeling the desperation of someone whose party has failed, ending too soon. “Or blankets? I have some spare ones.”

“No. We are fine,” the mother said. But at least she was smiling, and for the moment that seemed like more than enough.

“Children,” she called. “It is time to move. Please thank Mr. Petric.” And they did so, one after the other, beginning with the oldest and ending with the youngest, as if they were practiced in this routine.

“And like I said,” Vlado added. “I will be here again tonight if you need me.” But he knew that he would likely never see them again.

He watched them go from his open doorway, the two empty coffee cups still in his hands, and as they trooped away in a narrow line of footprints in the thin layer of snow it dawned on him that they’d been his first visitors since Damir had tipsily barged in on him all those months ago.

Closing the door, he noticed that the room still held their smell, not an unpleasant one, just another few variations on the local mix of smoke and sweat. And as he tidied up from his small duties as a host he felt a small lift, a fullness that had long been vacant.

He mixed his own cup of coffee, making sure to make his own just as weak as the cups he’d stirred for his guests, and as he went through the motions a thought returned to him unbidden from his final moments of sleep. His mind had been sorting, culling, searching through the previous evening’s conundrums. But now, with his first sip of coffee, the solution came to him: There would be a way to get a full copy of the transfer file, and he could get it before Murovic, or even UNESCO. And it would not have to depend on the aging memory of Milan Glavas. But it would require a satellite phone and a fax machine, on a line without a government minder or eavesdropper, and for either of those he’d have to visit the Holiday Inn.

The phones there could be scanned, too, but the odds were far better than with any official phone, especially considering the number of journalists who called in and out at all hours of the day.

He tried again to call Damir, but if the lines had come back on overnight, the explosion had knocked them back off in his neighborhood here. So he pulled on his boots and coat, then headed out the door.

Far across the makeshift field of graves he saw his family of neighbors, heads bobbing, small vapors of breath rising from them as they worked their way up the hill toward the hospital.

The Holiday Inn had become the lodging of choice for visiting journalists and international celebrities, mostly because it was the only choice. Virtually every other hotel of appreciable size had been shuttered or shelled out of existence, and under current conditions no Hiltons or Hyatts would be breaking ground anytime soon. So, on most every night the Holiday Inn had a full house, despite its precarious location three hundred yards from the frontline.

The hotel’s garish facade, the color of an egg yolk, looked out across Sniper Alley and the Miljacka River into the blind stares of Grbavica’s empty, windowless highrises, where snipers and grenade crews did a brisk business of sighting and shooting, lighting the place up at night with red streams of tracer fire, and the yellow bursts of launched grenades.

The result was that virtually every one of the hotel’s rooms across the front, or south, side was uninhabitable. The same was true for some on the east side, with gaping shell holes in the walls.

Vlado remembered the hotel fondly from 1984, when it was not only new but the hub of all social life associated with Sarajevo’s Winter Olympics. He’d been a single man in his early twenties, partying lustily and late at the overcrowded disco, drinking to the throb of sound and light, then wobbling home, often as not with a girl on his arm from some other part of the world, putting his good English to the best possible use, all of those studies finally paying off.

In those few precious weeks somehow the city had functioned as never before, with miraculously working phones, television signals crisp and clear, and a tram system that sparkled and ran impeccably on schedule. With that had come a certainty that, with Tito already four years in the grave, Sarajevo was about to move forward, beyond communism and beyond Yugoslavia, into some new realm that could only be wildly better and full of opportunity The world had made its mark, and the mark would never be erased.

Now the hotel disco was dark and closed. The restaurant up front had been moved to a safer location in a rear conference room, chilly and dim, with its own plastic windows. And the only way the world made its mark anymore was with the glare of television lights, or with the white fleets and blue helmets of the U.N. soldiers.

But the hotel kept running, fueled by mob money and connections, as well as the grim determination of its staff to hang on to their jobs. They still managed to serve up three hot meals a day, nearly always with meat. Waiters in stained dinner jackets patrolled with desultory efficiency, quietly setting aside for themselves the unfinished bottles of wine and water so often left on the table by roaring packs of weary journalists. Each afternoon a tanker truck pulled up out back and emptied a full load of water into the hotel’s tanks, ensuring another few hours of toothbrushing, cold showers, and flushing toilets. A steady but increasingly expensive supply of gasoline powered enough generators to keep electricity running for part of every day, if erratically, and once in a great many days there was warm water. On such occasions you could almost hear the journalists’ groans of pleasure from out on the street.

Thus, the hotel was once again the mandatory destination for any visiting elite, even if the star actors and musicians who occasionally came to town, eager to pick up their Sarajevo merit badge before flying back over the hills, were often of a low or dimming wattage. Sarajevo had become a place where you could boost a sagging career with some quick if risky publicity, not to mention the public relations points earned for “public service,” or “solidarity with the people of Bosnia.”

This, at least, was the way Sarajevans had come to see the interlopers. They’d been eager for the attention at first, flattered even, finding a thin silver lining to their predicament. And perhaps the publicity would help. Now they knew better, and saw their flak-jacketed visitors as just that, transients who would climb upon the ruins of their misery for a few brief moments in the world spotlight, then depart once the lights were off. The only impact anyone concerned himself with anymore was the economic ripple of D-marks and Marlboros strewn in their wake.

Vlado approached the building from behind, crossing an open courtyard. The usual lineup of hangers-on gathered near the rear entrance. Little boys stood outside the door asking for handouts. Down-at-the-heels young men chain smoked and showed off their smattering of English, hoping to pick up interpreting and guiding jobs which could pay up to one hundred marks a day, or more if you were lucky enough to latch onto a Japanese television crew.

The talk among the rabble this morning was of a hotel employee who’d been shot in the back by a sniper. He was the attendant of the underground parking garage, lord of the small but expensive fleet of vehicles belonging to the journalists and aid workers staying at the hotel. His job was to make sure none was stolen, siphoned, or vandalized, keeping them locked behind a chain-link entrance throughout the night. Most were armored, but not all, as he’d discovered this morning while moving one behind the hotel to ready it for one of the reporters. A bullet had come in through the rear window, passing through the driver’s seat before striking him in the left kidney. A few moments ago he’d been hauled off to the hospital, his shirt and pants soaked in red. The journalist himself was now out back inspecting the vehicle in the lee of the building, flak vest open in front as he peered inside, frowning at the bloodied seat. He then walked to the back, fingering the bullet hole in apparent fascination. Because he worked for one of the wilder London tabloids, perhaps he was already contemplating how a cheap bit of first-person melodrama might be salvaged from the morning’s damage: “It was a bullet with my name on it, but this time someone else took the hit.” Yes, that would do nicely. He’d work on it.

Vlado opened the door to see a guard inside a glass booth, where a droning TV was showing a subtitled American movie on Bosnian television. With the power out as usual across the rest of the city, this was one of the few places you could actually watch the broadcasts of the local network.

The guard stopped him with a stern grunt. Locals were not readily admitted here, especially when they arrived unsolicited to bother the paying customers. Vlado flashed his I.D. and the guard waved him along with another grunt.

Walking into the hotel’s mall-like plaza was like stepping onto the floor of a deep canyon at dusk, dim and chilly, with a hollow echo from every step. Looking up toward the broken skylights eight stories higher one wouldn’t have been surprised to see stalactites dripping from the ceiling. Word had it that a French radio journalist had spent his spare hours here sharpening his mountaineering skills by rappelling down the inner walls.

The front desk was surrounded by a jerry-rigged frame of wood and plastic to hold in the warmth from a small space heater. The clerk was mistrustful until Vlado showed his card. He asked for Toby Perkins and was directed to room 434.

He trudged up a darkened stairwell to the fourth floor, then groped along a hallway until he could just make out the numbers on the doors. He knocked.

A voice answered from inside: “Nigel? Come on in.”

Vlado opened the door to see Toby Perkins, the same pink and well-fed face from the other day, seated at the end of an unmade bed, flipping through a small notebook.

“Well, then, our intrepid detective is it?”

“Inspector Petric, yes. I hope I’m not interrupting.”

“Not at all. A pleasant surprise, in fact. Given that interview a second thought, perhaps? Or maybe my little lecture on social responsibility hit home. No, not that for sure, I suppose. Either way, I was expecting my photographer but you’ll do much better. Delivering me a hot tip no doubt.”

There was that cherub’s grin again, a face right out of a jolly evening down at the pub. Vlado hesitated at the door.

“Please, please, come in,” Toby said. “Sit down and tell me what I can do for you. No more coffee, though, I’m afraid.”

The implicit rebuke stung, and Vlado supposed he’d deserved it. But never mind.

“It’s a favor I need, actually. Access to a satellite phone, if you have one,” and Vlado had already seen that he did. It sat on a chair by the window, its antenna opened like a white umbrella next to the window, which even here was a sheet of plastic.

“You’ve come to the right place,” Toby said. “’Was just getting ready to pack it up and maybe head for the airport a day earlier than planned. Getting so slow here lately. My rag was sending someone else in in another week and we figured we could let the place go uncovered for a while. Then ten minutes ago my desk calls and my bloody editor says he wants me here for the interim. Says he thinks things are due to heat up again soon. Calls it his instinct, but that’s editors for you. Always seem to know exactly what you don’t want to hear. Anyhow, no problem with the phone. Come on in and I’ll get it on the uplink for you.”

Vlado dug the phone number out of his bag.

“So then,” Toby continued, “where are you calling, if you don’t mind my asking?”

Vlado hesitated, then figured Toby probably would know by the country code anyway. No sense in trying to keep it a secret.

“Belgrade.”

“Well, then.” Toby’s smile melted into a look of curiosity. “Not too many Bosnian government employees are in the market for calls to Belgrade these days, I’d imagine. Family?”

“A friend.”

“Yes, well, as long as I’m not participating in anything illegal.” He said it laughing, a knowing twinkle in his eyes. “I can just punch up the numbers to get you up on the satellite, and you can hit the rest. Country code for Yugo is three-eight-one now, in case you didn’t know. Belgrade is still one-one.”

Vlado was about to ask meekly for privacy when Toby said, “And I’ll wait outside, of course, as much as it might be tempting to eavesdrop on a policeman’s call to the enemy capital. Besides, even if I could overhear you I don’t speak the language, and my interpreter’s been out all morning drinking coffee.”

“One other request before you go, if it’s all right.”

“Sure.”

“I see you also have a fax machine. If my friend here has something to send me, what number would he use?”

“Well, this is getting interesting, isn’t it. Tell me, is this something you might be able to talk to me about? When it’s all over, of course. And I’m assuming now this must have something to do with your work, at least peripherally.”

“Yes. Peripherally, as you put it. Perhaps it does. And if you can help me I can certainly promise you no one else will get any of this before you would.”

“An easy promise to make since probably nobody else has asked for it. But sure, I’ll go for that arrangement. An exclusive. Fair enough then. Well, here we go … Oh, and try not to run on too long, if you don’t mind. It’s ten marks a minute on my tab.”

Vlado listened to the dial tone come onto the line, then punched in the numbers, hearing a hissing sound followed by all the old wheezes and clicks one had grown used to in the phone transmissions of the former Yugoslavia. And as he waited for an answer he thought of his friend at the other end, Bogdan Delic. Vlado had known him in university and had stayed in touch off and on until the war began. He was an artist, or at least that’s what Bogdan had always called himself, garrulously moving from one odd job to another, hectoring galleries to show his work and staying up until all hours with his friends and bottles of homemade brandy.

He was the living denial of the term “starving artist,” with a wide rolling belly that sagged across his belt, and a big, husky beard that had taken over his jowly face. The last time Vlado had seen him he’d had two loud, grubby children in tow, and a reed-thin wife who never seemed to speak more than two words at a time. It had been vintage Bogdan, muttering and talking about all his old obsessions, as if oblivious to the scurrying children or the beleaguered looking waif of a woman who trailed behind. He’d even managed to ignore the rising wave of Serbian nationalism as it began to catch on in the streets of Belgrade. Well, Vlado thought, we’ll see how much of a Serb they’ve made out of him now.

And suddenly there was his voice at the other end of the line, as gruff and loud as ever. The connection was remarkable.

“Bogdan, it’s Vlado Petric. From Sarajevo.”

“Vlado? My God, is it really you? And from Sarajevo? It’s like being called by the dead. A call from Sarajevo. Is it as bad as they say?”

“I guess that depends on how bad they’re saying it is.”

Bogdan answered with his big belly laugh.

“Same old Vlado. Never gives away his feelings without a joke or a struggle.” It was an observation mildly surprising to Vlado, even a little annoying. But at ten D-marks a minute this was no time to explore it further.

“Belgrade hates you, by the way, not you personally but you as a resident of Sarajevo. And even I am growing a little tired of you. You’re all anyone in the world hears about from this war. The whole world feels sorry for you and hates all of us. We have no jobs, no gasoline, inflation that doubles every hour, but it is Sarajevo they weep for on CNN. But now that is off my chest, my friend. For Chrissakes, how are you? How is your family?”

“They’re gone.”

There was momentary silence at the other end, and Vlado realized he’d been misunderstood.

“Gone to Germany, I mean. Berlin. Since June ninety-two.”

“Good God. A long time. But they’re alive, at least.”

“Yes, alive and growing. Sonja is almost three now.”

Bogdan, with his own children, understood without another word the weight of that remark, and all its ramifications. He knew how quickly children changed at that age, and how quickly they grew apart from someone far away.

“So, listen, Bogdan, I am on a borrowed and very expensive phone and can’t spend much time. But what I need is a favor, if you can do it. I don’t think it will be risky, but if you decide it is then don’t bother.”

Vlado explained what he needed, a copy of information from whatever Belgrade called the transfer files, more particularly those items listed with Sarajevo locations. Bogdan said he’d try. He had friends at the Ministry of Culture who’d find it for him, no questions asked, and the rest would be easy.

“I’ve been wrangling with some of their people lately anyway. Was finally starting to make a name for myself but now some of them think my work’s a little too adventurous. Or subversive is more likely.” He laughed again. “But I’ll tell them I’m trying to compile a list of which of our national treasures might still be in the hands of those dirty mujahedeen in Bosnia, in your incestuous city of heathens and mixed marriages. That ought to get them moving.”

“It’s several hundred items, but copy as many as you can, or least the ones with the higher values. And then you can fax it to this number. It’s a satellite phone, so it may cost a little. But anything you could do would be a great help.”

“Anything you can tell me about what this is for?”

“A murder investigation. That’s really all I can say. Sorry.”

“It’s good enough for me, Vlado. I’ll do what I can.”

Damir was waiting for him at the office, looking tired and despondent.

“Any luck in Dobrinja?” he asked.

“Maybe,” Vlado said. “In a few days I hope to have all the leads we could ever ask for. I only hope they don’t lead down the same dead end.” Damir waited for more, but that was all he was getting for now. Vlado knew it wasn’t fair, but he pressed on. “What about you? Anything more?”

“All my sources are dry on this one. About all they agree on is that the ministry’s undercover men are genuinely shady characters. But maybe that means they’re good undercover men. I don’t know. The more I’ve thought about it the more I feel like maybe we’re out of our league. Maybe there’s a good reason the ministry’s been taking these cases all these months, and not us.”

“How about the whores?”

Damir’s face brightened. “There was one I quite fancied,” he said, and Vlado felt a pang of jealousy, wondering if it was “his,” the “bank teller,” as he thought of her. Then just as quickly he felt guilty for caring. Some of his mother’s Catholicism must have rubbed off after all.

“She calls herself Francesca. A nice blonde, short, a little soft at the edges but in all the right places.” And in spite of himself Vlado relaxed. He thought he remembered the one. By her manner she’d seemed almost as experienced as the one who’d styled herself as the leader.

“Learn anything from her?”

“For our purposes? No. Same problem you had. The bossy one kept opening her mouth. What a bitch. But I’m seeing Francesca some other time, I think. She hasn’t been in the business too long to forget that she can still appreciate a man for an evening out. As long as he pays her way, of course.”

Damir was on the verge of further descriptions of this woman’s virtues and good sense when Vlado’s phone rang. Nice to hear them ringing again at all, he thought.

It was Goran.

“Vlado,” he shouted. He’d been typing when Vlado picked up the receiver, but now the clattering of keys stopped.

“The ghost lives, Vlado. Your man Neven Halilovic, former right hand man of the late lamented Zarko. He’s up on Zuc, living in his own little stronghold, if you can call that living. Seems he has managed to put together his own private army up there. Keeps the regular army happy by holding down a key part of the line, and they keep him happy by staying off his back. Though he’s not happy at all, by most accounts. Understandable under the circumstances. Can’t think of any other part of the line where there’s been more shelling and shooting lately, day in and day out.”

Vlado paused. He was glad to hear Halilovic was alive, but this was hardly where he’d expected to find him. A prison cell would have been much more conducive for a quick and productive interview. But did he want to get to the bottom of this case or not?

“How can I get up there?” he asked.

“Zuc? Are you serious? Even if you went, there’s no guarantee you can get past his guards and actually see him. And if that happens he might always decide to hold on to you for a while. He may owe the army but he doesn’t owe the police.”

“Are you actually urging me to be cautious, Goran? The man who believes I should live a little bit, even if it means dying? Just tell me how to get up there.”

“It’s easy enough, really,” Goran said quietly. “Replacement units go up every night. Small groups. Mostly the raw recruits, no training and none of their own weapons. They do an overnighter and come back down in the morning just before dawn, turn in their rifles, pick up their pay in cigarettes, and go home to sleep. Boys, for the most part. Kids with pimples and leather jackets and nervous girlfriends who wait up for them.”

“Every night?”

“Tonight even, if you wanted. I was about to say it wouldn’t be a good time. The shelling’s been heavier this morning. But Orthodox New Year is tomorrow night and you definitely don’t want to go then. So, yes, you’d better do it tonight if you’re hell-bent and determined to go. You are hell bent and determined, aren’t you? Because if you’re not you’ve got no business being up there for even a minute.”

“Then consider me hell-bent and determined.”

“Now you’ve got me wishing I’d never opened my mouth.”

“Exactly what I was hoping.”

“I just wanted you to get out of your house, to have a few beers or something. Are you sure this is worth it?”

“Not really. But the only way I’ll find out is to go. Anyway, it’s the only way I’ll find out anything more than I know already, which is precious little.”

“Well,” Goran said with a sigh, “I’ve got a friend you can call to arrange it. They assemble units over near the cigarette factory. I’ll call him with your name and number and have him get back to you, if you want.”

Vlado paused a second. Then he took the leap. “Yes. Go ahead.”

“Okay then.” Goran said. “But if you come to your senses, call me back and we’ll have a beer.”

“Something must be up,” Damir said as soon as Vlado hung up. “You actually looked excited.”

“Either that or scared to death,” Vlado said, and, after considering once again the implications of where he was going, he decided to level with Damir, at least on this one.

“I’m going up to Zuc tonight. To look for Neven Halilovic.”

“God is great,” Damir muttered. “I didn’t even know he was alive. And he won’t be much longer if he’s hiding out up there.”

“Runs his own army, apparently. They paroled him to fight.”

“Makes a certain twisted sense, I guess. Which is more than I can say for what you’re doing. I guess if anyone knows what goes on in the world of hoods it’s someone like him, but what if you get all the way up there and he won’t even see you.”

“Possible. Or even if he sees me he might say nothing. But then there’s the chance he might be just what we’re looking for. Former hoods can always use a friend with the police.”

“That’s assuming he’s former, not current.”

“Either way he’s likely pretty well out of the loop being up there, which would tend to lend him a certain credibility, I’d think, if he does decide to talk.”

“Yes, but Zuc? The reason I kept this lousy job was to stay out of places like that.”

“And I thought all this time you were in it for the comradeship and good training. Or the opportunity to meet interesting new people like Francesca.” Vlado sighed. “But I know what you’re saying. Zuc isn’t exactly what we bargained for.”

“So then why don’t I go instead. You’ve got a family. I’ve got nothing but a few girlfriends who would mourn nothing but the loss of the occasional night on the town. My mother and father can fend for themselves, for all I care anymore. Just lay out the questions for me and I’ll ask them, simple as that. It’s really no contest, is it?”

“Thanks. But Kasic would have it no other way, I’m afraid. It’s my investigation, when you get down to it, and if I’m not going to share much information with you …”

“Yes, I’d noticed that.”

“… Then I’ve got no business being so free with the dangers. Which reminds me. I soft-pedaled that shakedown business when I told it to you the other day. Actually they scared me to death, but I’m still not sure how serious they were.”

“Well, it should be good practice for tonight. You’ll have plenty of time to be scared to death.”

Damir clapped a hand on Vlado’s back, resting it there in the manner of someone comforting the bereaved at graveside. Then, without a trace of his usual mirth, he said, “Good luck, Vlado. Up there you’ll need all you can get.”