The First Casualty

27

Back at the hotel, Jason had the current desk clerk add up his bill while he went to his room to pack his single bag. Finished, he set the bag on the bed and took out his iPhone, a specially modified device with a few apps not available in the basic phone shop in malls across America.

He texted Momma a brief review of the morning’s conversation, hit a button, and sent the entire message as a millisecond burst that, without the appropriate equipment, would register as no more than an electronic mini-surge. Minutes later, he was proffering the red-white-and-blue-on-silver Bank of America Visa card of Mr. George Simmons in payment of a bill that was modest by the standards of the day.

Outside, Džaja and his trusty, if diminutive, Zastava 750 waited to begin the mirror image of the trip Jason had taken yesterday. Unlike the unmanned stop at which Jason had disembarked in haste the day before, Gospić had a rail station. A small one-room building heated by a wood-burning stove, but a station nonetheless. Džaja insisted on carrying the bag inside, where Jason paid him and shook his hand.

“Do viđenja,” the Croatian said as sorrowfully as though losing his best friend.

Perhaps he was. Or close to it. Jason guessed fares were few in this part of the world. He repeated the phrase, assuming it to be appropriate to parting.

In addition to the wood stove, the room featured a pair of back-to-back benches on which an elderly couple sat, surrounded by half a dozen cardboard suitcases. Their clothes, though worn, were clean and pressed. The grime under the man’s fingernails and the obvious calluses on his large hands suggested farming as an occupation. Whatever their purpose in traveling, Jason had a hard time seeing them as a potential threat. There was no Natalia-type visible.

The man behind the ticket counter eyed him tentatively when Jason presented the credit card in payment. He held out both hands together like the opening and closing of a book. It took Jason a second to comprehend. The man wanted papers, identification. He seemed satisfied when Jason handed him the Simmons passport.

Required procedure, or had identity theft reached the Balkans?

Jason returned to sit on the bench just as his iPhone vibrated. He took it out of his pocket and read the message, a single line of an address in Paris in the 20th Arrondissement. He knew it well, well enough that he didn’t have to memorize it before deleting it.

When he looked up, the elderly couple, unfamiliar with current technology, was staring at him as if he had sprouted horns. Perhaps he had; the woman was definitely making signs to counter the evil eye.