Lie in the Dark

CHAPTER 17

Vlado glanced over his shoulder every few feet on his way home, half expecting to see Kasic, or perhaps the man in the beret who’d greeted him at the ministry, or even the four men in dark overcoats who’d taken Glavas away. Thinking of them he decided on a detour, and he turned toward the small hill on the east side of town that had come to represent so much about the way this war was fought.

Sprawled atop the hill were the buildings of the Kosevo Hospital complex, home to the city’s dead, dying, and wounded. This status made the hospital a prominent site on the targeting map of every siege gunner. Although who needed maps when from most vantage points Kosevo was as easy to spot as the highest office tower. For anyone gazing down the long barrel of a howitzer it loomed on its hump of land like a broken medieval fortress, its crowded wards ripe with the promise of being able to finish the work that yesterday’s shells had only begun.

The hospital’s doctors and administrators-or at least, the ones who hadn’t either left or been killed-had duly and painstakingly mapped each of the hundreds of shell impacts. They distributed the maps liberally to journalists, human rights organizations, and visitors of all stripes, another small cry of outrage with its inevitable perverse edge of pride: Look at what we have endured.

Vlado’s destination was a low-slung plastered building halfway up the face of the hill. You didn’t need directions to it anymore because of the smell that announced from a hundred yards away that this must be the city morgue.

Early in the war the place had been quite literally swamped by death, the chambers of its cellar knee-deep in stacked bodies, maggots, and floodwater from pipes that had burst in the shelling. The director had fled, along with half his staff. It had taken weeks to get another team up and running, and by then the overload was nearly unbearable. The water and most of the maggots had since been mopped away, but the smell from those weeks had never quite disappeared, and some believed it never would.

The smell was even stronger indoors, as Vlado found the moment he opened the door, a stench of rot and putrefaction that nearly doubled him over. He reached for a handkerchief, then stopped, working hard to breathe through his mouth, feeling the rasp of the foul air on his throat. Two men sat behind a dull gray counter at empty desks, smoking cigarettes and reading outdated magazines as if manning the office of an auto garage. Both wore thick, black rubber boots. Stained cotton smocks hung beside heavy rubber gloves behind them on the wall.

“Police Inspector Petric,” Vlado announced, still struggling not to inhale through his nose. Somehow the stench was registering anyway, more as taste than smell.

“I’d like a look at your new arrivals. Particularly anything that might have come in from Dobrinja. Or anyone in the past twenty-four hours who has showed up with a Dobrinja address, no matter where they were found.”

“Got a name?” said one of the men, putting down his magazine.

“Glavas, Milan. Older man. Late sixties, early seventies.”

The man checked a clipboard, flipping back a page, then shook his head as he exhaled smoke.

“No one by that name. But we do have three without I.D.s.”

He opened a rear door and leaned down a stairwell. The reeking smell doubled in intensity. Vlado shifted uncomfortably.

“Mustafa!” the man shouted down the stairs. “The three no-names, were any from Dobrinja?”

Mustafa came strolling up the stairs in reply, wiping his hands on a filthy rag. His smock, too, was stained brown, only his glistened with fresh additions.

“Yes,” he answered finally. “Two of them, I think. A man and a woman. Both older. She’s still here, funeral tomorrow.”

“And the man?” Vlado asked.

“Buried this morning.”

The clerk turned toward Vlado. “Sorry, Inspector. Looks like you’re too late.”

“I want him dug up.” Vlado said. “Now.”

“You’ll need the family’s approval.” Clearly the clerk was ready to go home for the day, and Vlado could hardly blame him.

“Family approval, when you don’t even have his name?”

Vlado had him on that one, but the clerk wasn’t yet ready to give in. “Look, we’re happy to dig him up for you. We won’t even make you get a judge’s order, although technically we could. But it’s a bad time of day now. Too much light. It’ll be dusk in less than an hour, so why don’t you just have a seat and a smoke and wait until dark. You could wait until morning, but the ground will be frozen harder then, so you’d best get out there while the digging’s easier.”

Good enough. But he was damned if he’d wait here. “In an hour, then, but I’ll meet your man on the field.”

“Look for him at the fresh mounds. They’re the only ones not covered with snow. You know the place?”

“Know it well,” Vlado said.

“Mustafa will be there as well.” Mustafa looked less than happy to hear it. “In case you make an identification.”

Vlado spent the next hour trying to walk off the smell that clung to his jacket, his pants, his face. He coughed and spat as if it were a bone lodged in his throat, but after a while he couldn’t decide whether the smell or merely the thought of it was stronger.

When the appointed time arrived he moved down the hill and across the snowy field, soaking his shoes and socks as he strolled by the rows of rough wooden markers-the narrow slabs for the Muslims mixed with the crosses for the Catholics and the Orthodox Christians. In the gathering darkness he could see that the gravedigger was already at work. The earth was still soft from the morning’s labors, so the going was easy, and it was only a few minutes before the shovel struck wood.

A year earlier and the body might not even have merited the luxury of a coffin. Death had come in such a rush that the city had run out of caskets, and most wood had been used for firewood. Now, with casualties slacking off, supply was again meeting demand. The few casketmakers still in business were setting away a nest egg for their future, provided they themselves survived.

Mustafa had also arrived, waiting at the grave with hands on his hips. After a few minutes more the gravedigger cleared the rest of the dirt covering the lid of the coffin. He then dug a small shelf into the mud next to the casket and stepped out, resting on his shovel. Vlado tried to recall the gravedigger’s face from all his mornings by the window, but he seemed like all the rest, chiefly recognizable by the slight stoop to his shoulders, the cap slouched on his head, the thin jacket loose across his back.

Mustafa stepped down to the small shelf of mud. He pulled a screwdriver from a coat pocket and pried open the lid, then flicked on a small flashlight. The yellow beam swept onto the face of Milan Glavas.

“Is this your man?” Mustafa asked, looking up at Vlado.

“Yes,” he said. “Glavas, Milan.”

They’d at least let him change out of his dirty robe and blanket, although his chest was a matted eruption of torn fabric and dried blood. His mouth was ajar, as if it had drooped open in the middle of a nap. His expression seemed almost one of boredom rather than pain or terror. The overall impression was that of someone who’d gone through life dirty and disheveled, and that made Vlado sad. It was not the way Glavas would have wanted to have been buried, that was certain, and for some reason this realization brought tears to Vlado’s eyes, as he stared into the grave at the drawn, gray face.

“I remember him from last night,” Mustafa said.

“You examined him?” Vlado asked.

“Yes. He came in late. Later than usual. I was halfway out the door.”

“Cause of death?”

“Shrapnel. Sniper. Who knows? I’m not really trained in those things. Hit by something, though. Whole chest torn open, as you can see for yourself. Death by war. What else is worth saying once you’ve said that?”

“Who brought him in?”

“Army. From Dobrinja that’s usually the way it works.”

“Did they say where he was found?”

“They never do. It probably wasn’t near his home or they’d have been able to make an I.D. They usually ask some neighbors to have a look when they can. He’s lucky, though. No-names in Dobrinja usually end up buried in a backyard.”

“Yes. A very lucky man.”

Vlado walked across the graveyard toward home, tired and hungry, the day’s information bearing down on him. He was still clearing his throat and spitting from his visit to the morgue, though by now he knew virtually all of the smell must be gone.

Having seen what had become of Glavas, he wondered at his own predicament. Who was he fooling with his persistence, or with his flimsy excuses to Kasic? For that matter, what purpose was he really serving? Even if he cracked the case, who would he report his findings to without feeling he was risking his neck. Kasic was obviously poised to deal with him at a moment’s notice. He couldn’t count on the U.N. for much help either. To survive two years of war only to die investigating a murder would be the height of absurdity. Why bother?

The last person to walk this path had been Esmir Vitas, and Vlado had seen all too well where that led. If the city’s cultural heritage was vanishing, was that so terrible when stacked up against the city’s other losses?

Then again, by now the effort to smuggle artwork seemed so much a part of the machinery of the war itself that stopping it would seem to be a calling as high as his work had ever offered.

But another problem remained: How to put his findings to use. If even U.N. channels posed a risk, were there any channels available that would accept the information without then turning it on him as a weapon. As for Kasic, the case against him seemed damning enough, but there was still the possibility he was only the tool of someone else, perhaps even higher in the government. For all Vlado knew the entire ministry was corrupt, now that Vitas was out of the way. There was so much to think about, and so little time or room for doing so.

Even if Vlado wanted to back out of the investigation now, how could he? It was time for him to huddle with Damir, to look for some way out of this mess. He supposed they could report findings tame enough to appease whoever might fear the truth. But would that be enough to protect them, considering what they’d learned? For all Vlado knew, Damir had stumbled onto a home where a painting had been removed, and had set off some unseen alarm with his queries.

Not for the first time it occurred to Vlado how small his world had become. In the last few days he had traversed virtually all of it on foot, and even his most remote destination, Zuc, had been reached in a few hours. There really was no place to run unless one was willing to cross over to the Serb lines at night, and Vlado was surprised to find himself thinking that such a chancy proposition now seemed within reason, or at least an option he could no longer reject out of hand. Even that held extra complications, though. On the other side there would still be the influence of General Markovic to deal with.

The moment he walked through the door, something seemed awry in his apartment. The sloppiness was the same as always. But he felt the same unmistakable sense of disturbance that he’d felt at Vitas’s apartment. He walked around slowly, looking for some tangible difference from the way he’d left things. After a few minutes, having found none, he began to calm. It was just his nerves, just an accumulation of the day’s facts upon his mind. He would brew a cup of coffee and have a bit to eat, then he would relax. And once his stomach was no longer empty, he would paint his soldiers to clear his head. Perhaps he’d finally finish the platoon.

He picked up the hunk of cured meat from the butcher. There was still enough for a few more meals if he paced himself, though he decided that tonight he owed himself a larger-than-usual slice. He lighted the stove to boil water for coffee.

A few minutes later, the water boiling, he lifted his mug to pour in some Nescafe, and as he did so it left behind a chocolate brown ring on the green fields of Austerlitz, at almost the same place on the page that he’d wiped clean that morning.

Someone had moved the mug.

A coldness stole down his throat to his stomach, and he began a cursory inspection of his painted platoon. They, too, seemed in disarray, brushed closer to the edge of the workbench than he’d left them. In fact, the unit was now a man short. Whoever had searched the place must have knocked one into the piles of newspaper below. Doubtless they’d been in a hurry. Vlado had kept such odd hours recently that they probably figured he might walk in at any moment. But there’d certainly been nothing to find. As always, Vlado had kept all his notes and numbers in his satchel, which he took wherever he went.

Vlado wondered what might have brought this on. Had Kasic’s curiosity simply been too much for him? Perhaps Krulic, the clerk from records, had felt a pang of bureaucratic conscience and phoned Kasic to alert him to Vlado’s unusual requests. Maybe someone in the morgue had been tipped to watch for anyone inquiring about an old man from Dobrinja. Or maybe Colonel Chevard had gotten wind of the strange request for information on shipping a parcel out of the city. Glavas might have said God knows what before he died, depending on how forceful they’d been with him before finishing him with a shot to the chest.

The more Vlado thought about it, the more he realized how almost anyone he’d talked to during the past few days might have wittingly or unwittingly tipped higher-ups to his progress on the case.

He suddenly felt such an amateur, a complete and utter naif. He was a fisherman set loose upon a reef full of sharks who only now had noticed the rot in the hull of his sinking craft. Far too late he considered the depth of his carelessness as it opened darkly before him.

He’d let Toby, a reporter, see the transfer file, and God knew who Toby might have asked about it. He’d blabbed about Glavas to the gossipy director of the national art museum, a man who undoubtedly had his own uses for such information. Then there were his blunt questions to Neven himself, a man looking for a way out of a tight spot, a well-connected man who knew as well as anyone how to use the right sort of information for the right sort of leverage.

Even if Krulic hadn’t already phoned Kasic, by tomorrow morning the entire ministry would be aware of exactly which files Vlado had requested. He couldn’t have drawn attention to his trail any better than if he’d lit a long line of torches in his wake. He’d barged along as if this were any sort of murder in any sort of city.

So where did that leave him, other than vulnerable? He could tell all to Toby; then Toby would get a nice story. Or perhaps Toby would only ask a lot of embarrassing questions and write no story at all, considering that Vlado still had little actual proof. Either way, Vlado would likely end up with a bullet, and Damir as well. And for a panicky moment he wondered if Damir weren’t already dead, stashed in some alley or thrown into the river, having asked one too many sensitive questions, careless if only because Vlado had given him so little to go on.

He could do as Kasic had asked, and turn over the worthless undercover men to the ministry for further questions. But even worthless men working at minor graft have families to support and small mouths to feed, so why sacrifice them? As he stumbled past that thought, his telephone rang.

So, the lines were back up at last. But he was damned if he’d answer it now. With each ring he felt more claustrophobic, as if the air in the room were slowly being consumed by the sound.

He picked up the hunk of meat, stuffing it in his coat pocket, then opened the door. The view was of nothing but mountains, outlined darkly in the pale, washed light of a rising moon that had just broken through the clouds. The graveyard below, out where Glavas and all the others lay beneath their mounds of mud and snow, glowed whitely, with just the hint of a sparkle.

He stepped outside, shutting the door behind him on the ringing telephone, and walked briskly toward the center of town.

Clouds had moved back across the moon by the time he reached the office, and from the look of the sky there would soon be more, further blotting the light on yet another night without electricity. But he was relieved to see that the office generators were up and running, and that everyone on his floor had left for the day. No Garovic to lean over his shoulder. He had just begun to calm his nerves amid the peace and quiet when his phone rang, as if the earlier call had stalked him down the hill.

This time he picked up the receiver.

It was Damir. Hearing the familiar voice sent a wave of relief over him. “Where the hell have you been, Vlado? I’ve been trying everywhere.”

“Was that you ringing my house about twenty minutes ago?”

“You mean you were there? Why didn’t you pick it up?”

“I don’t know. Too skittish. My place had been searched.”

“Mother of God. By who?”

“Kasic’s people, if I had to guess.”

“Mother of God,” he said again, in a lower voice this time. “Vlado, what’s going on with this case?”

“That’s what I’d like to know. Too many people in high places with their fingerprints on it. You wouldn’t believe what I found in some files this afternoon. But it’s nothing we should dare discuss over the phone. Suffice it to say that you should trust no one. The further I go the more I wonder if maybe Garovic was right. Maybe I should’ve just left this one alone.”

“Well, unfortunately I’ve got more bad news for you. Some U.N. guy’s been trying like hell to reach you all day. From the moment you left to see Kasic he must have called six times. So frantic he was half out of his mind. I told him he could talk to me just as easily, but he insisted that only you would do. He wanted your home number, but I wouldn’t give it to him. He wanted your address, too, but well, you know I’m not giving him that.”

“What did he want?”

“He wouldn’t say. Wouldn’t leave a name or number, either. But I think he really is U.N. Definitely foreign, anyway.”

“French?”

“British, from the accent. And not your Nescafe man. I memorize voices of people that generous.”

“Maybe he’ll call here.”

“Maybe. But in the meantime he just called me here a few minutes ago.”

“At home?”

“Yes. How the hell he got the number I’d like to find out, but considering some of the women I know, I think I can guess. I don’t like it, Vlado. This Vitas case, we’re going to get ourselves killed. Or stuck in a trench somewhere.”

“What did he say?”

“That he had to get hold of you. Had to meet with you. Now, and not tomorrow. I told him there was nothing I could do to arrange it because I didn’t know where you were, but the only way I could finally get rid of him was by agreeing to reach you at home tonight. For some reason he still can’t seem to get your home number. One of the benefits of your celibacy, I guess.”

“But he wouldn’t leave his own number?”

“Said it was too sensitive, that he can’t have you calling him when the wrong person might answer, not only at his office but wherever he’s living. So all he left was a message. He wants a meeting tonight, with you and you alone. Half an hour after curfew.”

Vlado glanced at his watch.

“Christ, that’s in forty minutes. Where?”

“The end of Dakovica Street. Down by the river. He said it’s then or never. And Vlado?”

“Yes.”

“He said he’s convinced his life is in danger, yours as well. But he wouldn’t say why, or from who.”

“And you’re sure he was British?”

“As far as I could tell.”

“But not French? You’re sure he couldn’t have been French?”

“I’d know a French accent right away. My first woman was French, you know, back during the Olympics. I was only fourteen. You think I’d forget French accents after that? I’m just glad this guy reached me and not Garovic. Can you imagine how nuts he would have gone?”

The mere thought of that possibility, of Garovic spluttering and red in the face, paralyzed by the sheer bureaucratic horror of the moment, was enough for some welcome levity. The two of them shared a laugh over the phone.

Damir slipped into a confiding tone. “Vlado, I know you don’t think of me as much of a policeman.”

“That’s not true.”

Actually, in some ways it was. Not that Damir wasn’t smart, or didn’t have the skills. He just always seemed too interested in women, drink, and a good time to ever make a big investigation work. Vlado conceded to himself that perhaps one reason he’d held back had to do with this as well, not just his promise to Kasic, who’d proven unworthy of such loyalty anyway.

“I’ve just questioned your seriousness at times, that’s all. Your commitment. But you’re young. You’ll outgrow it. And who can learn to be a good investigator with a war on anyway? We’re all too busy saving our own skin.”

“Well, one thing I’m serious about, and that’s backing up my colleagues. know you were always closer to Vasic before the war, that the two of you always worked better together. And I understand that. He had a wife, kids, like you. But Vlado, you shouldn’t go into this one alone. You don’t even know this man’s name and you’re going to go meet him only a block from where Vitas was killed, by the same person for all we know.”

That had occurred to Vlado, and he was relieved at the offer of a backup.

“Your help would be welcome, but it sounds like two of us might scare him away.”

“So I’ll lay low. I’ll go early, work from the edges, just like our old boss always taught us back when we had a real boss. He’d be proud of me for a change.”

The reference to Imamovic, their old chief, was somehow calming, as if the old man himself had just whispered a sage word of advice from beyond the grave.

“If I leave now,” Damir continued, “I’ll be able to make it about ten minutes ahead of schedule. I can get the lay of the land before you arrive, and if things look shaky I’ll warn you away with a double whistle when I hear you approaching. Consider anything else, silence or otherwise, as an all-clear. As dark as it is tonight, it should be pretty easy to move around without being spotted.”

“Just don’t spook him. If he’s as nervous as you say he is he’ll run at the first sign of being double-teamed. Do you have your gun?”

“Always. You’re the one who doesn’t think you need to be armed in this city.”

“Well, mine’s here in a drawer somewhere.” Vlado again checked his watch. “We have about thirty-five minutes. You’d better get moving if you’re going to make it.” Damir lived on the west side of the city. It would be a haul. Vlado needed only to walk a few blocks. He’d have some time to kill.

“I’ll have to hustle,” Damir agreed. “But I’m younger than you. I’ll make it. See you there, then.”

“And Damir?”

“Yes?”

“Thanks. I’ll owe you one.”

“One? More like five or six.”

He hung up in mid-laugh.

Vlado set down the receiver. Things were moving too fast. He looked again at his watch. He still hadn’t eaten and was famished, though now he had time for some of the meat and a cigarette. Maybe that would tamp down the excitement. Otherwise, everything else-the long walk to and from Zuc, the sleepless night in the trench, and all the day’s revelations-might overwhelm him just when he needed a clear head.

He unwrapped the meat from its loose sheath of butcher paper. The smell made him salivate. He’d have to cut off a nice slice for Damir after this evening. Well, let’s not go overboard, he thought. Damir seemed pretty well stocked on his own lately.

He reached into his desk for his Swiss Army knife, a coveted souvenir from his prewar trip to Berlin, then remembered he’d loaned it to Damir the week before.

Perhaps this guy from the U.N., if he was indeed U.N., had the goods on Chevard, or even the whole operation. It might even have been the Brit he’d talked to the other day on the phone. Perhaps word of the investigation was spreading to some of the right people as well. Who knew, he told himself, this might pan out yet. But stay careful. And get some food in your stomach.

He tugged at the top drawer of Damir’s desk. Locked. No problem. Vlado and his old partner Vasic had long ago discovered a ridiculous flaw of Titoist office furniture, one that not everyone knew, even now. In most offices, one key fit all, desk after desk, drawer after drawer, supervisors’ equipment excluded, of course. They hadn’t decided if the mistake had been a typical Communist snafu or a devious way to allow Party zealots and snitches to snoop on their coworkers. Whatever the case, Vasic and he had put it to use for many a practical joke until Imamovic found out. He’d requisitioned a whole new set of locks and keys, but, the system being what it was, they’d never arrived.

So, Vlado took his own key and slipped it into Damir’s lock. It opened easily.

My God, what a mess. Damir was even a bigger pack rat than he’d suspected. There were coffee-stained napkins, crumpled memos, torn scraps of paper with phone numbers-probably Damir’s version of a little black book-cassette tapes of heavy metal music by bands Vlado had never heard of, paperclips, and various other odds and ends. Vlado rifled through the pile, pushing small mounds of crumpled paper aside, wincing in pain as he pricked his thumb on a pushpin.

Then, success. He spied the red handle of the army knife, lying at the bottom toward the back. But as he reached for it something else caught his eye, like the flash of a familiar face in a moving crowd. It was a small blue tunic with tiny gold buttons, handpainted. A tiny Austrian hussar, circa 1805, with his sword, still unpainted, raised boldly to the sky.

Vlado picked up the soldier, holding him aloft in the weak fluorescent light. A victim of Napoleon, now briefly taken captive by Damir. Vlado shut and relocked the drawer, then stuffed the soldier deep in his pocket as he absorbed the implications of his discovery. He tried to come up with an innocent explanation, but there was none. Nor was there time to ask for one, now. He reached into his own desk and pulled his service revolver from a similarly chaotic mess of papers and tapes. Finding its chambers fully loaded, he clicked off the safety and stuffed the gun atop the soldier. The tiny man would now be his backup, he mused darkly.

He grabbed his satchel, slinging the strap across his shoulder. Then he strolled across the office and out the door, leaving the meat unwrapped and uneaten on his desktop, and feeling very lonely indeed.