For Valour (22 page)

She took a sip of her brew, hesitated, then put the mug down on the table beside her and got up. ‘But if you really want to try to understand this place, you must come with me.’

5

The hill rose sharply behind the house. The first seventy metres or so had been terraced – by some of Mladen’s mates and a JCB, I guessed – and each level had a specific purpose.

The first contained the kind of veggie garden I’d only ever seen in magazines. The next one up had a set of mini goalposts at each end and the skid-and stud-marks said it had seen some serious footie action. Another was paved in old stone and brick; a table and chairs and a couple of teak sun-loungers were arranged around a barbecue that had been an oil barrel in a previous life.

She guided me up to the final tier, just below the treeline. In pride of place stood a couple of very shiny black marble headstones beneath a cherry tree, surrounded by a white picket fence. An image of the dead had been etched at the centre of each.

The one on the left was a memorial to Adrijana Vlašić, a striking woman with fire in her eyes and severe but immaculate hair. She was born on 12 August 1947 and died on 3 April 1999. Dragan, her husband, had had the world’s biggest moustache, but I guessed his wife had worn the trousers. He’d survived her by about six months. Fresh flowers decorated their graves.

Aleksa dropped briefly onto one knee and crossed herself.

‘Your mum and dad?’

She shook her head. ‘Mladen’s.’

I looked again at the dates. ‘The NATO bombing?’

She nodded slowly. ‘Adrijana went to visit her sister in Novi Sad. They were going to do some shopping. She might have lived if the missiles hadn’t cut off the power to the hospital.’ She reached out and traced the etchings with her fingertips. ‘Dragan died of a broken heart.’

‘I’m sorry …’

Her eyes were shining when she turned to me. ‘It wasn’t your fault, Nick. Though I imagine in other circumstances it might have been.’

She gave me a glance that was penetrating enough to make me wonder what else Pasha had told her about me. ‘And that’s not why I brought you up here. I’m still trying to work my way through this. I was an interpreter during the war, as you know, based mostly in Sarajevo and Goražde, first for the NGOs, then later for your military.

‘I saw terrible things, of course. The assassination of Amina at the bridge across the Drina was among the worst, but there were others. And I knew that no one side was exclusively to blame.

‘I also saw the so-called peacekeepers in action – which meant not only failing to keep the peace, but standing by as the atrocities unfolded. You know that Edmund Burke quote, Nick? “All that is required for evil to triumph is that good men do nothing”?’

I did, actually. It was one of Anna’s favourites.

‘But I still believed that you and the Americans had our best interests at heart.’ She sighed. ‘Then Kosovo exploded and NATO bombed our cities for seventy-nine days to teach Milošević, a genocidal lunatic, a lesson. Cluster bombs in residential areas, for Christ’s sake. Missiles with depleted-uranium warheads. And yet the Belgrade cab drivers now treat the wreckage on Vardarska Street as if it is as big a tourist attraction as the fortress and St Sava’s Temple.

‘Many, many civilians were killed. It was an ecological disaster too. Fifty thousand tons of crude oil went up in flames at Novi Sad refinery. Fifty
thousand
! Sure, Serbia’s major cities weren’t emission-free zones in the first place, but think of all the toxins floating around in the atmosphere when something like that happens.’

She turned back to the headstones. ‘I guess what I’m trying to say is that, though I know Adrijana’s death is nothing compared to the massacres Milošević was responsible for, these small, private tragedies are often the ones that affect us most. And this one taught me, once and for all, that the guys in the white hats aren’t always on the side of justice and truth, and that Edmund Burke was right. Each of us, as individuals, must stand up for what we believe in.’

She waved in the direction of the boys. They’d changed into their Man U strip and were demonstrating some serious moves around the goalmouth below us. ‘If we don’t, what kind of world will we pass on to them?’

I’d never kidded myself I could change the world. I just hoped I could protect Anna and Nicholai’s bit of it. I’d always known that the guys in the white hats were the ones you really had to watch: they had a nasty habit of stabbing you in the back when you least expected it. But I was moved by her passion, and her distress. And I’d begun to understand her intense desire to save her boys from going through the shit that she’d been through.

We walked back into the sun room and she sparked up a new set of brews.

‘Do you have kids, Nick?’

Once again, I found her question difficult to avoid. I told her about Anna and Nicholai and coming to the conclusion that they were both safer if my world didn’t come knocking at their door. And for all her determination to be there for Goran and Novak, she was the first to really understand.

Her expression softened. ‘Anna sounds quite wonderful. I’m also sure that Nicholai will have your strength. I hope he will come to understand, as she does, that there are some battles that have to be fought on one’s own …’

I couldn’t quite meet her gaze. ‘I just hope he won’t grow up thinking I’m a complete prick who did a runner at the first available opportunity, and never did anything useful, like build a bridge or help one bunch of people understand what the other bunch is really saying.’

‘I’m sure he will forgive you for that.’ She reached across and touched my arm. I looked up and saw that her eyes had begun to sparkle. ‘But I’m not so sure he’ll be so understanding when he finds out that you’re not a close personal friend of Wayne Rooney.’

6

I managed to steer the conversation away from me, and back to the Crvena Davo. Aleksa’s careworn face returned. Like Pasha, she still found it difficult to cut away.

‘I heard many things about them, and we were never far from the things they did, particularly in Sarajevo. At one point during the siege they transported some of the wealthier and more twisted inhabitants of Belgrade – at a price, of course – to the hillsides around the city for a weekend’s hunting. Only it wasn’t bears and boars and game they shot. It was human beings – women, and children like Amina.’

I’d heard that rumour too. But this was the first time I’d heard that the Leathermen were behind it.

‘It was only later that I saw them up close. I was the interpreter for one of the UN legations during the run-up to the Dayton Accords in late ’ninety-five. It meant spending an unhealthy amount of time making peace with people I’d have preferred to stake out in the dust and watch being eaten by soldier ants. But we kept telling ourselves it was for the Greater Good.’

‘It’s one of the reasons I never fancied wearing the blue beret. Where did you go to meet them?’

‘They don’t have an HQ, sadly – or your NATO friends could have sent them a missile from the Adriatic. We met them in the hills, a different place each time.’

‘Who was in charge?’

‘There was probably a hierarchy at the beginning, but one of the challenges of coming to any kind of agreement with them was that they operated like a loose federation rather than a single entity. I always thought of them as a series of roughly connected snake pits – it didn’t matter how many you killed, there were always enough left over to keep spreading their poison. I don’t know whether that was intentional – to make them less easy to identify and undermine – or accidental.’

It wasn’t a big surprise. I hadn’t expected them to be under the supreme command of an Osama bin Laden figure whom I could locate, interrogate and kill. But it didn’t make my mission any easier.

‘Who was on the UN team?’

‘Oh, a mixed bag of American and British military and so-called strategic experts. I worked most closely with an English colonel, very smart, very courteous. Special Forces, I think, though of course he never said. He wanted to stake them out in the dust as well, and didn’t mind them knowing that. They really respected him.’

I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear the answer to my next question, but I had to ask it. ‘Can you remember the colonel’s name?’

She looked at me like I was a dickhead schoolteacher and she was the smartest kid in the class. ‘Of course! I saw him again a couple of weeks ago. The Crvena Davo called him Hladno Oružje. It used to make them laugh.’

I had to admit that my Serbian had never been as good as her faultless English.

She smiled again. ‘Sorry, Nick. Hladno Oružje means “cold steel”. The colonel’s name was Steele.’

I did my best not to react. ‘A couple of weeks ago? I hadn’t realized you were still on the translating circuit.’

She laughed. ‘I’m not really. But I like to keep my hand in. I love all this …’ she motioned towards the hillside and the water ‘… but I do need to escape it from time to time. The meeting with Steele – Major General Steele now, did you know? – wasn’t entirely professional, though.

‘During the war, one of your navy pilots was shot down and rescued by a Muslim resistance group, then sheltered by some of your military friends in Goražde. In the mood for reconciliation, the diplomatic community thought it would be a good idea to reunite the various participants at a reception there. It’s always nice to have something to celebrate …’

‘I don’t suppose …’

‘No, Nick. I said it was a celebration. Representatives of the Crvena Davo were definitely not invited.’

7

I talked with Aleksa until mid-afternoon. I knew I’d never overcome her boys’ disappointment about me and Wayne Rooney, but I got them quite excited when I demonstrated a couple of judo routines before they bundled me into the boat.

We chugged past the herons to my hire car. One or two lights started to spark up across the lake as we said our goodbyes. Goran went into shy mode but Novak reached up and gave me a quick hug. Aleksa apologized for going into rant mode and not being much use to me. I told her she had nothing to be sorry about, and that she’d been a whole lot more helpful than she knew.

She asked me to come back one day with Anna and Nicholai, and meet Mladen. She thought we’d like each other
very
much – though he could be a bit boring about bridges. I smiled but said I couldn’t make any promises.

I clambered up to the parking area and asked satnav to return me to the capital via Požega, through the other side of the gorge. I didn’t want to cover the same ground I had on my trip out.

On the way up the river I passed a layby where a blond guy in a black parka, combats and trainers was standing, head bowed, beside a small marble shrine. I couldn’t see the dates, but the picture on the plaque showed a young lad, early twenties at most, with a gold cross on one side and a BMW logo on the other.

I drove on, past a gypsy camp, a whole load of monasteries and a quarry with its own railway station. It was well past last light when I got back to Belgrade, and the fortress was floodlit. I parked outside the zoo and skirted the first set of battlements. There was a chill in the air, but the locals were out in force, wandering back and forth between the cafés in the pedestrian street and the promenades that wove through the citadel.

I checked out the area surrounding the snake statue fountain and took a seat some distance away from the nearest street lamp, facing the direct route from the city’s only remaining mosque.

The imam showed up a few minutes before eight. He was wearing a white
kufi
prayer cap and a shiny quilted jacket over his ayatollah kit. His neatly trimmed beard was streaked with silver, and he didn’t have a metal claw or mad, staring eyes. He struck me as something special even before he opened his mouth, an Islamic version of Father Mart.

I stood as he approached and he shook my hand warmly. He apologized for being a fraction late. ‘Reports differ, Nick, but some claim that there were once as many as two hundred and seventy-three mosques in Belgrade. Now Bajrakli is the only one, so my days are full.’

I told him I was grateful for any time he could spare me, and that Aleksa had asked to be remembered to him.

A smile lit up his face. ‘The young translator? How wonderful. A remarkable girl. There were very few happy moments in Goražde back then, but spending time with people like Aleksa and our friend Pasha was always a privilege.’

‘Do you have more happy moments now, Imam?’

‘There are no truly safe havens in our world, Nick, as I think you know. But Allah is merciful, and my work is needed here.’ His smile broadened. ‘Which brings us back to Pasha. He said you could use some help – though not necessarily of a spiritual nature …’

I knew he was my kind of priest. I told him that a friend of mine had become a target for a gang I thought might be the Crvena Davo, and I needed to discover more about them. He nodded slowly as I described the rose-coloured tattoo.

‘On the neck?’ He pointed to the patch of skin between his collar and his right ear.

‘Yes.’

‘I think I may be able to put you in contact with someone who will be able to give you useful information.’ He paused and gave me some serious eye to eye. ‘But I must ask you to give me your assurance that this is not about revenge. God asks us to fight evil but, more importantly, to forgive. And in a world such as ours, the vengeance trail, once begun, is never-ending.’

‘It’s about fighting evil, Imam.’ He didn’t need to know that I’d already killed the fucker who’d killed Trev.

He nodded, satisfied. ‘I have spoken today to a man who comes to the Bajrakli to pray. His name is Wenceslas.’ He raised the tips of his fingers to his neck again. ‘He has such a tattoo. But he has turned away from the Davo. He has studied the Qur’ān for these many months, and converted to Islam. If you wish it, he is prepared to give you any advice you might need in dealing with this threat. However, like me, he will not put lives in jeopardy.’

I asked when and where we could do a debrief.

‘How well do you know our city, Nick?’