Private Games

Chapter 12

THE MEN WERE Bosnians. There were seven of them armed with old single-barrel shotguns and corroded rifles that they were using to goad three handcuffed teenaged girls ahead of them as if they were driving livestock to a pen.

One of them saw me, shouted, and they turned their feeble weapons my way. For reasons I could not explain to myself until much later I did not open fire and kill them all right there, the men and the girls.

Instead, I told them the truth: that I was part of the NATO mission and that I’d been in an explosion and needed to call back to my base. That seemed to calm them somewhat and they lowered their guns and let me keep mine.

One of them spoke broken English and said I could call from the village’s police station, where they were heading.

I asked what the girls were under arrest for, and the one who spoke English said, ‘They are war criminals. They belong to Serbian kill squad, working for that devil Mladic. People call them the Furies. These girls kill Bosnian boys. Many boys. Each of them does this. Ask oldest one. She speak English.’

Furies? I thought with great interest. I’d been reading about the Furies the day before in my book of Greek mythology. I walked quicker so that I could study them, especially the oldest one, a sour-looking girl with a heavy brow, coarse black hair, and dead dark eyes.

Furies? This could not be a coincidence. As much as I believed that hatred had been gifted to me at birth, I came to believe instantly that these girls had been put in front of me for a reason.

Despite the pain that was splitting my head, I fell in beside the oldest one and asked, ‘You a war criminal?’

She turned her dead dark eyes on me and spat out her reply: ‘I am no criminal, and neither are my sisters. Last year, Bosnian pigs kill my parents and rape me and my sisters for four days straight. If I could, I shoot every Bosnian pig. I break their skulls. I kill all of them if I could.’

Her sisters must have understood enough of what their sister was saying because they too turned their dead eyes on me. The shock of the bombing, the brutal throbbing in my head, my jet-fuelled anger, the Serbian girls’ dead eyes, the myth of the Furies, all these things seemed to gather together into something that felt suddenly predestined to me.

The Bosnians handcuffed the girls to heavy wooden chairs bolted to the floor of the police station, and shut and locked the doors. The landlines were not working. Neither were the primitive mobile-phone towers. I was told, however, that I could wait there until a peacekeeping force could be called to take me and the Serbian girls to a more secure location.

When the Bosnian who spoke English left the room, I cradled my gun, moved close to the girl who’d spoken to me, and said ‘Do you believe in fate?’

‘Go away.’

‘Do you believe in fate?’ I pressed her.

‘Why do you ask me this question?’

‘As I see it, as a captured war criminal your fate is to die,’ I replied. ‘If you’re convicted of killing dozens of unarmed boys, that’s genocide. Even if you and your sisters were gang-raped beforehand, they will hang you. That’s how it works with genocide.’

She lifted her chin haughtily. ‘I am not afraid to die for what we have done. We killed monsters. It was justice. We put back balance where there was none.’

Monsters and Furies, I thought, growing excited before replying: ‘Perhaps, but you will die, and there your story will end.’ I paused. ‘But maybe you have another fate. Perhaps everything in your life has been in preparation for this exact moment, this place, this night, right now when your fates collide with mine.’

She looked confused. ‘What does this mean, “fates collide”?’

‘I get you out of here,’ I said. ‘I get you new identities, I hide you, and protect you and your sisters for ever. I give you a chance at life.’

She’d gone steely again. ‘And in return?’

I looked into her eyes. I looked into her soul. ‘You will be willing to risk death to save me as I will now risk death to save you.’

The oldest sister looked at me sidelong. Then she turned and clucked to her sisters in Serbian. They argued for several moments in harsh whispers.

Finally, the one who spoke English said, ‘You can save us?’

The clanging in my head continued but the fogginess had departed, leaving me in a state of near-electric clarity. I nodded.

She stared at me with those dark dead eyes, and said, ‘Then save us.’

The Bosnian who spoke English returned to the room and called out to me, ‘What lies are these demons from hell telling you?’

‘They’re thirsty,’ I answered. ‘They need water. Any luck with the telephone?’

‘Not yet,’ he said.

‘Good,’ I replied, flipping the safety on the sub-machine gun as I swung the muzzle around at the Furies’ captors before opening fire and slaughtering every one.