The Balkan Assignment

Once away from the suburbs of Belgrade, the train runs across the vast Serbian plain and slowly begins to climb the eastern flanks of the Dinaric Alps separating the interior of the country from the sea. In mid-December, snow lies on the ground at the lower altitudes, but patchily; etching bare trees boldly against the gray sky. Not until you reach two thousand feet does the snow become the thick winter blanket typical of Central and Balkan Europe.

The train winds slowly through numerous small villages as it climbs, the steepness of the slope often forcing the engine to a crawl. If I hadn't known better, in the half-light of the winter night, I would have thought we were passing through Bavaria or Switzerland. Each tiny village is tucked snugly into a narrow valley; a main street running along the floor at right angles to the tracks, a church . . . usually Orthodox . . . invariably located at the far end of the street and on both sides, two-story gingerbread houses straggling comfortably up the slopes. Occasionally, the firefly lights of other houses showed through the silent trees.

It had been early evening as the train had left Belgrade behind and now, approaching midnight, the few dim lights left in the villages were fading slowly. A touch of insomnia brought on by unfamiliar surroundings had kept me awake for the first time in years. I had finished the paperback novel I had picked up at the Belgrade depot and, desperate for reading matter, had just finished going over the route map that the railroad authorities thoughtfully place in each first-class compartment, when someone knocked on the door of my compartment. I opened the door to see Ley's bland, unsmiling face staring at me.

"May I come in?"

"Get lost ..."

But he shouldered past and sank down onto an opened-out bunk and sighed.

"Only in Eastern Europe do you still find train seats built for midgets."

"Okay," I muttered, "you're in. Now what the hell do you want. I thought the Yugoslav, police were hot to bounce you out of the country?" Ley sighed again and swung his feet up onto the bunk and leaned back.

"Ah, that is much better." He loosened his tie and sat back and smiled at me.

"Look," 1 said patiently, "I've already asked you what you want. If I don't get answers fast, I'll call the porter and have you thrown off the train." Ley laughed softly, deep down in his throat as if he really thought my threat was funny. It may have been to him, but it wasn't to me. I was tired. And I had already spent most of the afternoon with him. So maybe I have certain prejudices, but I don't care much for police agents. One thing sure, I didn't care for Ley. I'd met enough and worked with enough clandestine-type agents, spooks and cops in Vietnam to last me a lifetime; I didn'

t like any of them, and I had no wish to renew my acquaintance with their methods. That Ley was involved with some type of secret service or intelligence gathering outfit I had no doubt. In the past two decades, they had proliferated throughout Europe . . . some run by governments on both sides of the rusty Iron Curtain and some run by private organizations. The private groups are the worst. They employ the cast-offs from the government agencies, the riffraff that would have been—and probably are, anyway —

common thieves, pickpockets, murderers, rapists, what have you; the dregs of society, in short. These people really exist as I learned in Southeast Asia where the political conditions are similar in many respects to those of Central Europe . . . only the boundaries aren't as clearly drawn . . . and they would sell their souls, their grandmothers and their mothers for a few bucks and preferential treatment. Just where Ley fitted into this sad commentary on twentieth-century political fringe life, I had no idea. But wherever it was, I automatically did not like him and I did not like his associates.

Ley must have sensed the direction of my thoughts because he swung his feet off the bunk and sat up, looking indescribably weary.

"Look, my friend, I do not care what you think of me, personally, or my government or my business. I have a job that must be done. Many times it is a dirty job, but still, it must be done. Our enemy is not a government with a different political or economic system; or a people with a different skin color or religion. Our enemy, our common enemy, is man himself. Those men who are natural gangsters—who would rob and kill and cheat and torture no matter what political or social system they found themselves in. These people only use the system. Some of them sell drugs . . . these are killers of the worst kind because they rob the world's youth of their youth, of their chance to change that into which they were born. Others kill and lie and steal to realize a profit or to make their own life more comfortable or to satisfy an abnormal craving. They, and the men who use them for their own ends, are the ones I hunt. I am a policeman. My oath and everything I believe in requires me to do all I possibly can to stop these people. Now I am asking for your help as well."

I snorted and looked at my watch. "It's still a half hour to midnight; too early for sermonette. Now tell me —and fast—what you want and then get out of here and let me go to bed."

Something like pain washed over Ley's face, but only for an instant before it resumed its usual bland countenance.

"I do not care to again go over the ground we covered this afternoon in the hotel. You are involved in something that is larger and more dangerous than you in your self-assurance realize. I am asking for your help because of what you are and who you are."

"Who I am?" I asked mockingly. "Just who do you think I am?" Ley reached into his coat and pulled out a stapled sheaf of papers and flipped through the pages until he found the one he wanted.

"Christopher Boyd," he read. "Major, United States Air Force, retired. Air Force Academy graduate, assigned to Yugoslavia, Libya, Germany and Vietnam. Several commendations, the Silver Star and the Air Medal, not to mention the Republic of Vietnam Medal of Honor. You left the Air Force, resigning your commission after fifteen years, and with a friend, one Peter Schenk, also a resigned Air Force major, you now operate an airfreight line in southern Italy. You are divorced after a childless marriage, and your parents died four years ago. You have two married sisters, whom you have not seen since leaving the Air Force. Shall I go on?"

I shrugged. "Suit yourself. I don't see what you are proving by reading off my service record and personal history except to establish the efficiency of whatever-thehell organization you work for."

Ley stared at me for a long moment, then refolded the sheaf of papers but did not put them away. He reached into the same pocket and brought out a card, very similar to a plastic credit card right down to the embossed, computer-readable numbers; only this was no credit card, not by a long shot. It was pale gold in color and the slightly raised black lettering identified Ley as a captain in the International Criminal Police Organization.

"Not German?"

He smiled and nodded. "Yes, I am German, but I do not belong to any German police or intelligence force, although we co-operate with all of them. I am a member of Interpol and as such have limited investigational powers in most countries of the world. Yugoslavia, not being a member of the Warsaw Pact, accords me the same privileges as most any country that is, shall we say, more tightly in the western orbit. So, I am relatively free to come and go as I wish."

"I see," I said without really seeing at all. "I suppose then that you ran right to the Yugoslav authorities as soon as you left the hotel." Already I was kicking myself for my big mouth.

"On the contrary, I followed you directly to the train. In fact, so limited was my time, that I almost missed the train. I am without a ticket at the moment and had to rely on the head porter's understanding, or should I say, misunderstanding, of Interpol's authority, to remain aboard. I do respect the confidence of my sources of information," he finished with a grin.

"All right, you said you wanted help. What kind and how?" Ley was a big man, sure and quiet in his actions .. . and very deceptive. As I was about to find out, he could move with the speed of a striking cobra. But he became very deliberate now, pulling out a beaten, blackened pipe, stoked and lit up. When it was burning to his satisfaction, he returned his attention to our conversation.

"I would like you to leave the train with me shortly and meet a man who will show you incontrovertible proof of what your friend Maher has in mind for that million dollars in gold. If you agree to help, and we succeed, there will of course be a suitable reward . . . a monetary reward."

"Leave the train, are you crazy? We happen to be in the middle of Yugoslavia, somewhere in the Dinaric Alps and this is an express; it doesn't stop until Mostar." I had had enough of his nonsense by now. I stood up and opened the door to the compartment, but before I could call the porter, Ley had shot from his semireclining position, slammed the door closed just before my head poked through and shoved a pistol against my ear.

"You will please sit down," he said softly.

The pistol and the one meaty hand holding my wrist left me no choice. Ley let go when we were both seated on the berth again.

After a few moments, the surprise began to wear off . . . about the point that circulation returned to my wrist.

"All right," I said shakily, "you've made your point. We get off the train .. ."

"Just this side of a village named Tobruz," Ley replied, smiling with satisfaction. "It is a small and not very good ski resort. It was the best we could do on such short notice. I had to get my man in, but at a place away from any possibility that Maher's organization could watch you. There is no one on this train following you."

"There isn't? How the hell would you know if there was?" Ley smiled knowingly. "They have left a few too many tracks. Interpol knows most of their operatives. Evidently 'they felt that once you were safely aboard the train, you would stay on the train until you got off in Mostar. Their resources are not unlimited. And there is the matter of Colonel Mistako's murder in Belgrade, which they must clean up . . . part of that cleaning up involves my death as well as his. It was a matter of chance that we were not in the same automobile. A family emergency had taken Mistako home for lunch instead of the restaurant where we were expected to go." I also recalled that Mistako was going to make his decision about that time. I wondered if he had. Misinterpreting the look on my face, Ley chuckled grimly.

"Are you beginning to be convinced now, my friend. There are only a handful of people who have access to the files concerning the activities of the Neo-Nazi movement in Yugoslavia. Myself, of course, and Colonel Mistako. In this case, his direct superior is the Minister for Internal Security, who had not yet been fully briefed at the time Mistako was murdered. And possibly Colonel Mistako's secretary. She is at the moment being interrogated by the Security Police. It is possible that she had access to his private files, and it is certain that as his secretary she knew every move the Colonel made. It is unlikely, however, that she will be able to tell us much. She was too obvious a suspect.

"We therefore assume that Maher's cohorts know all that we know . . . with the exception that you have been involved. I personally suspect that the gentleman who called on you in your room was searching for evidence as to your whereabouts during the morning. They would know that you had already obtained the fuel pump. Obviously, he did not expect to find you in."

"So, you think I'll be followed when I leave the train in Mostar."

"Not necessarily. They saw you get on the train .. . they did not see me. There is nowhere else for you to go, now or when you reach Mostar. We have no reports of their operatives in the area, and they seem to be giving the island of Kornat a wide berth . . . as if they did not care to attract attention to themselves."

"That doesn't make sense. What about Maher? If he's so important . . ."

"Ah," Ley held up a hand. "It was only two days ago that we learned that your friend Maher might be involved. I am not sure why we have not discovered traces of him before this . . . either he has been too clever or he has remained inactive and carefully hidden." As we talked, I felt the train slowing. I picked up the map and folded it back to the central region of Herzceovina, the nine-and ten-thousand-foot Dinaric Alps. I knew that by now we were deep into the eastern flanks of the same mountains through which the partisans had ranged in their struggle against the Nazis, as had other partisan groups before them to battle Serbs, Turks, Bulgarians and a host of other invaders back to the dawn of history and beyond. There is perhaps no more blood-soaked arena in all the world than this mountainous and ruggedly beautiful area of the Balkans.

"We will be leaving the train in five minutes." Ley rose to his feet and stretched full length. "I will be glad to see this night's work finished. Perhaps with you convinced of our sincerity and honesty, I will be able to sleep a few hours."

He stared dreamily out the window. "Sometimes, I think I have forgotten what it is like to sleep an entire night through." Then abruptly, "But, no matter. Come, get your belongings and your coat. It will be very cold outside, and we will have to walk a mile or so."