Evil Deeds (Bob Danforth 1) (16 page)
Read Evil Deeds (Bob Danforth 1) Online
Authors: Joseph Badal
Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #Mystery; Thriller & Suspense, #Thrillers, #Spy Stories & Tales of Intrigue, #Espionage
For one thousand American dollars Miriana would have agreed to meet with Dracula. The message she had received from an aide to General Alexandrovic described the woman she was to meet in the park and told her how to approach her. Miriana scanned the tiny park until she spotted a woman who seemed to match the description she’d been given seated on a bench. She walked along a meandering path in the woman’s direction.
“Would the pretty lady like a nice ring?” Miriana asked in Serbo-Croatian, stopping in front of a blond, thirty-year-old woman wearing a blue scarf around her neck. She noticed the woman’s deep blue eyes, straight nose, and prominent cheekbones.
The woman stared at Miriana, as though she was scrutinizing every aspect of Miriana’s appearance: Her age – nineteen, her long black hair and pale blue eyes, her red and black shawl, bulky blouse, and ankle-length, and heavy skirt that Miriana knew failed to conceal her voluptuous figure.
“You have rings to show me?” the woman finally responded.
Miriana sat next to the woman. “Miriana has the best jewelry in Belgrade,” she said, setting a leather pouch on the bench between them and opening it to spread out an assortment of cheap rings and bracelets.
They stared at the jewelry rather than at each other.
“I expected someone older,” the woman finally said, still looking down. “Every fortune-teller I’ve ever seen was old and could pass for a witch.”
“I will take that as compliment,” Miriana said, unable to resist smiling. “What do you want from me?”
“What were you told?”
“That you would pay me one thousand American dollars if I met you here. Is this about sex? I am no whore.”
The woman laughed out loud. Several people passing by on the path stared. “No!” she said in a whisper. “This isn’t about sex. Why don’t you pick up one of your rings and show it to me.”
“First, I want the money.”
The woman took a white envelope from her purse and slid it across to Miriana, who snatched it off the bench in a lightning-quick motion and slipped it into the bodice of her dress. Then she picked up a gold ring and made a show of trying to get the woman’s interest.
The woman took the ring, slipping it on a finger as she said, “You know a Serb general named Karadjic?”
Miriana’s mouth dropped open. “Did General Alexandrovic tell you that?”
“It’s not important. What I want to know is when you are scheduled to see him again?”
“I’m not going to tell you shit,” Miriana said. She pulled the ring off the woman’s finger, rolled up her package of jewelry, stood, and began walking away.
“Miriana!” The woman called. The girl paused. The woman got up and went over to her. “Do you know how many Gypsies have died because of your friend Karadjic?”
Miriana stared defiantly at the woman. “What are you talking about?”
The woman walked to the bench, sat down, and patted it with her hand.
Miriana returned to the bench and sat.
The woman slipped three photographs from her large purse and laid them upside-down on the Gypsy’s lap.
Miriana turned them over. When she looked at the first one she gasped, jerked a hand to her mouth, and kept it there while she scanned the other two. Each photo showed piles of bodies – men, women, and children. A giant mass grave yawned behind them. Most of the dead women wore traditional Gypsy clothing. Several yards away from the piles of bodies in one photograph, eight women were tied to stakes stuck in the ground. Their hair had been shorn and their breasts mutilated. General Antonin Karadjic stood proudly posing in each picture.
“Serb troops rounded up all the Gypsies within fifty kilometers of Mitrovica,” the woman said. “They tossed babies, alive, into the pit. They raped the girls and women and made the men and boys watch. After the soldiers finished with the women and girls, they shot them. Then they shot the men and boys. According to a boy who escaped and hid in the woods nearby, the women who were stripped, tied to the posts and mutilated had resisted their rapists.”
“Why would the Serbs do this to Gypsies? We have helped them by giving them information. We are their allies. The Kosovars hate us for this.”
“You sleep with dogs, you come away with fleas.”
“How did you get these photographs?”
“Your friend Karadjic had one of his own soldiers take these pictures. He keeps them so he can relive his greatest moments. How I got my hands on them is none of your business.”
Miriana bent over and put her head in her hands.
“Are you crying?’ the woman asked.
Miriana dropped her hands, raised her head, and turned toward the woman. “What do you want to know?”
The six men sat on the worn sofa and three chairs in the cramped space of the living room. The fireplace provided less than satisfactory warmth. Several of the men held their full tea glasses in their two hands to help cut the chill in their fingers.
“This damn war is ruining business,” a wire-thin, middle-aged man announced to the group of men who’d assembled at Stefan Radko’s house. “There’s nothing to steal. Kosovars leave all their possessions behind when they flee their homes, but before we have a chance to grab anything, the Serb Army sweeps through. They steal or burn everything. Worse, American bombs scare Serb civilians into staying inside their homes, so even pickpocketing is poor.”
Stefan forced himself to suppress his disgust for this group of men. A bunch of whiners, he thought. Seventy years old and I have more nerve than all of them put together. But he needed them to do his dirty work.
“Okay, have we heard from everyone?” Stefan said, sarcasm heavy in his voice. He looked around the room to make sure he had each person’s attention. “We will shut down our operations for awhile. We cannot take the chance the Serbs will catch – and execute – our people on the street.”
“But Stefan,” one of the men protested, “how do we feed our families?”
“Try honest work!” Stefan snapped. “Or spend some of the money you’ve been hoarding.”
The man’s face went red, but he said nothing.
Stefan stood.
The other men began to leave. He walked them to the front door, giving each one a reassuring pat on the back. After they left, he sat in a chair and rested his head in his hands.
“What’s wrong,
O Babo
?”
Stefan looked up when his daughter came into the room. “I worried about you, my beautiful, little
papusza
. How did it go?”
“I am not your little doll anymore, Papa, I am a grown woman,” Miriana said, blushing. She pulled an envelope from inside her blouse and dropped it on the table.
Stefan slit the seal on the envelope and peered inside. “One thousand dollars?”
“As promised.”
“Good job, Miriana. Now tell me what this woman wanted.”
“She wants to know about my work as a
drabarni,
about my fortune-telling sessions with General Karadjic.”
Stefan nodded encouragingly at his daughter.
Miriana’s voice suddenly broke. “
O Babo
, she showed me photographs of Gypsies massacred by Karadjic’s soldiers. There were dead bodies everywhere, and Karadjic just stood there by the bodies.
O Babo
, Karadjic has murdered our people. His men raped our women, killed our children.”
“You listen to me, Miriana,” Stefan said. “Your people, as you put it, are not the sheep Karadjic slaughtered. Your people include your brother Attila, your mother Vanja, and me. No one else counts.”
“But,
O Babo
–”
“No buts, Miriana. You start worrying about Gypsies who don’t have the sense to run away from the Serb Army and you will wind up dead. You worry only about yourself and your family. Now, tell me about this woman in the park. Who was she?”
“She wasn’t
Rom
. She looked Serbian, but at the same time there was . . . something about her that made me think she was a western
gadji
. She had a Belgrade accent, but she was too confident, too aggressive to be from Serbia. I thought about it all the way back from Belgrade. If I had to guess, I would say
Amerikanka
.”
“
Amerikanka
? Hmm.”
“What are you thinking,
O Babo
?”
“What did this woman promise you if you helped her?”
“Ten thousand dollars!”
Stefan thought for a minute.
“If she is European – British or German – we cannot expect to get any more money than what she offered,” he said. “But if she is with the Americans, and the information they want from you is important enough to them, we may be able to squeeze them for a whole lot more. When do you see her next?”
“The day after tomorrow – Thursday. Same time, in the park.”
“Good, Miriana. By the way, you got a call. The General wants to see you on Sunday.”
“
O Babo
, when can I stop meeting him? He scares me. There’s evil in him. The
mulo
is on him.”
“Don’t start that superstitious junk. The spirit of the dead is no more on Karadjic than it is on you or me. As long as Karadjic needs you, we’re safe.”
The Serb Army force left Surdulica and crossed the Morava River into Kosovo. It was a relatively small unit – really more of a raiding party: Forty-three men packed into two armored personnel carriers, two Jeeps, and a two-and-a-half ton truck. The soldiers were tense, but excited. Whenever General Karadjic joined a patrol, they could anticipate mayhem and looting.
The patrol moved northwest and arrived at the staging area at dusk. The men got out of the vehicles and lounged around, smoking cigarettes and talking in excited, but muted voices. They waited an hour until the sun dropped below the horizon, and then reboarded the trucks and moved at speed to the twenty-house village of Prizla. When the trucks skidded to a stop in the center of the village, the soldiers jumped to the ground and fanned out, forming a perimeter around the village.
Thirteen-year-old Nuradin Osmani, late as usual returning from the high pasture with his two dozen sheep, heard the sounds of vehicles racing into Prizla. Several hundred meters away from his village, he hid, terrified, behind a rock outcropping and looked down on the cluster of one-story homes. He strained to see what was happening, but it was too dark. Only dim candlelight showed through the house windows in the distance.
Suddenly, the glare of floodlights filled the night. Nuradin saw men dressed in Serb Army uniforms kick in the doors of houses. They shouted at the people and forced them onto the dirt road that ran through the village. Some people cried and begged for mercy. But most seemed dumb-struck with terror.
Nuradin watched a giant soldier drag his little brother, Sultan, by his collar, out into the center of the road. Then other soldiers pushed his father, mother, and sister, Salima, into the circle of villagers huddling under guard.
An officer walked over to a Jeep and saluted. A man with gold braid on the shoulders of his uniform blouse got out of the Jeep, walked with the officer to the frightened captives, and marched on short legs around the group. He strutted arrogantly, his large belly protruding over his belt. Then he suddenly stopped and pointed. One of the soldiers pulled Salima over to him. The fat man grabbed Salima’s wrist and dragged her into one of the houses.
Salima’s screams carried up to Nuradin’s hiding place. He covered his ears, but he could not silence his sister’s screams. He wanted to run away, but he seemed paralyzed. Then he heard a gunshot. Nuradin peeked around the rock and saw the fat man come out of the house alone, stand in the road, and shout, “
Uradite to!”
Do it? Nuradin wondered. Do what?
He felt cold. He began to shake. Tears poured down his cheeks. He saw his father in the crowd of villagers.
Baba
, you must do something, Nuradin silently pleaded.
The soldiers were quickly separating the men and boys of Prizla from the women and girls. They lined up the men and boys and forced them to kneel. A soldier stood behind each of them and, on the command of the fat man, fired a bullet into the back of each male’s head.
Nuradin felt a wetness pour from him, but he still couldn’t seem to move. His piss steamed in the cold night air and made him shiver even more.
The soldiers shot all the old women, too, before taking the remaining girls and women, including Nuradin’s mother, into the houses. Nuradin listened to the screams for over an hour. Then more gunshots.
In the eerie silence that followed, there were flashes of strobe lights. Someone was taking photographs of the massacre.