Private Games

Chapter 21

SEVERAL HOURS AFTER Marta killed the forger, the four of us were staying in a no-star hotel on the outskirts of western Sarajevo. I handed the sisters envelopes that contained their passports and enough money to travel.

‘Take separate taxis or buses to the train station. Then use completely separate routes to the address I put in your passports. In the alley behind that address, you’ll find a low brick wall. Under the third brick from the left you’ll find a key. Buy food. Go inside and wait there quietly until I arrive. Do not go out if you can avoid it. Do not be conspicuous. Wait.’

Marta translated and then asked, ‘When will you get there?’

‘In a few days,’ I said. ‘No more than a week, I should imagine.’

She nodded. ‘We wait for you.’

I believed her. After all, where else were she and her sisters to go? Their fates were mine now, and mine was theirs. Feeling more in control of my destiny than at any other time in my life, I left the Serbian girls and went out into the streets where I found dirt and grime to further soil my torn, bloody clothes. Then I wiped down the guns and threw them in a river.

An hour before dawn I wandered up to the security gate at the NATO garrison, acting in a daze. I had been missing for two and a half days.

I gave my superiors and doctors vague recollections of the bomb that tore apart the Land Cruiser. I said I’d wandered for hours, and then slept in the woods. In the morning, I’d set off again. It wasn’t until the previous evening that I’d remembered exactly who I was and where I was supposed to go; and I’d headed for the garrison with the fuzzy navigation of an alcoholic trying to find home.

The doctors examined me and determined that I had a fractured skull for the second time in my life. Two days later, I was on a medical transport: Cronus flying home to his Furies.