The Exception (7 page)

After getting a piece of chocolate, she phones Rasmus in Cologne, but he must be in a meeting or something because his mobile is switched off.

Instead she calls Iben. It turns out that Iben has had a threatening email too and has completely freaked out. She ran out
without a jacket and is somewhere on Nørrebro Street.

Malene thinks Iben’s reaction is over the top, even given their place of work. It was just an email after all. She tries to empathise and calm down Iben at the same time. However, she finds herself listening for sounds in her own flat, though she can’t take herself seriously.

Going out into the cold night doesn’t make her happy. She has just started the washing machine and the flat is a mess. Still, she agrees to meet Iben at Props. Afterwards she intends to sleep in her own bed; Iben can stay where she likes.

Before leaving, Malene phones Paul. He is giving a lecture out of town, but luckily she gets hold of him during a coffee break.

He seems untroubled by her news. ‘It’s the kind of thing you expect if you’re involved in anything political. You just have to learn to put up with it. Of course, we’ll look into these threats, but on the other hand, don’t let them scare you.’

Malene doesn’t feel scared. ‘So you’ve had emails like this too?’

‘Yes.’

‘People threatening to kill you?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Are they sent by war criminals, do you think?’

‘No, I don’t. It’s mostly right-wing idiots who write to me – neo-Nazis and what have you. Everyone in our kind of job gets threatened sooner or later. All you can do is ignore it.’

Malene is breaking off small pieces of her chocolate bar, but isn’t eating any of them. ‘I’ve just talked to Iben about it. You know, about how seriously we should take the threats.’

‘It’s unpleasant, I know. Is Rasmus at home now?’

‘No, he’s in Cologne. At a trade fair.’

‘That’s not so good.’

Malene doesn’t answer. She can hear the voices of Paul’s audience in the background.

Props is nearly empty. It’s too early in the evening. A couple
of years ago, Malene and Iben started going to Props where most of the regulars are men, often creative types with slightly haggard faces. Many have made a pass at Malene across the café tables that look like relics from a 1960s summer house.

Iben waves Malene over.

Even before Malene has a chance to sit down, Iben starts speaking urgently, as quickly and matter-of-factly as if she were at work. Her voice cuts through the low Steely Dan number that’s playing in the background.

‘Listen, I’ve rung Camilla and Anne-Lise. Camilla hasn’t received one of the emails but Anne-Lise wasn’t in. And I phoned Lotta and Henk from the Swedish and Dutch genocide centres. Neither of them has had emails like the ones we received and they don’t know of anyone who has.’ She smiles a little, holding a warm cup of coffee with both hands. ‘Then I contacted Anders and Karen at Human Rights and Svend at International Studies. And Paul …’

‘I called Paul too.’

‘I know. He told me. After you called, he phoned his wife and asked her to check. He hasn’t got emails like ours. It looks like you and I are the only ones.’

Malene had wanted to hug Iben because she’d been so scared, but the stream of words gets in the way. Instead she hands over a sweater she has brought and goes to order another coffee for Iben and a glass of white wine for herself. The two of them agree that Paul would be the likeliest target for a war criminal’s threats. Paul is constantly in the media spotlight and signs most of the Centre’s public statements regardless of who drafted them. So why hasn’t he, or someone else prominent in the human-rights sector, received the menacing messages?

They try to think of a war criminal they have exposed on the web, one Paul hasn’t mentioned publicly, but no one seems to fit the description.

At a corner table two men in football jerseys start arguing loudly. Iben holds her line of thought, and blinks, turning to scan
the darkness outside the large window that looks onto Blågård Street. Malene can’t help following Iben’s gaze, but there is nothing to see. Iben is definitely not herself.

Wearing Malene’s coffee-coloured sweater, Iben leans forward. What she says gives little away about how she feels. You must watch her eyes and mouth instead.

‘Here we are, good people with university degrees. Day after day, we’re off to our jobs at the Centre or the Institute for Human Rights or Amnesty International or Doctors Without Borders. We discuss the news during our lunch breaks and water plants and put up posters for UN special days. And we don’t realise that at any moment we might have to fight torturers or executioners or militia bosses. Because, although we never think about it, we’re soldiers at war.’

Small muscles twitch around Iben’s mouth, indicating, as Malene knows, that what she is saying is paramount.

Malene feels a surge of warmth towards her friend and proposes a toast: ‘To us. Women at War.’

Iben responds eagerly, as if Malene has just uttered the phrase she had been searching for. ‘Yes, that’s who we are! – Women at War. We’ve never realised it until now. None of us ever thought about ourselves that way …’

Iben has said it so loud that the two men in football jerseys turn around to look.

‘We’re not much good at warfare, though. We’re so easy to find on the Internet. If notorious war criminals want to know what’s been written about them in the media they can find us, no problem.’

It sounds to Malene as if Iben truly believes that her life is in danger. She seems to be going through many of the same feelings Malene has endured for years, ever since learning about her illness. Malene feels more connected to her old friend than ever before. She smiles and says she’s going to get another glass of wine. This time Iben wants one too.

Back at the table, Malene quickly checks the dark street outside once again. ‘Why now, do you think?’

‘Because we’ve challenged somebody.’

She sits up straight. ‘That’s it. Someone thinks we’re making a difference. Enough for him to feel uneasy.’

Malene wants to call Rasmus and goes outside to escape the music. Blågård is a quiet pedestrian street. She looks around for Iben’s men with swarthy faces and a military bearing. There are dozens of them. At this time of evening the street is full of immigrants gathered in small groups, almost all of them male.

Rasmus replies this time. He’s in a taxi, taking a few clients to a bar.

Malene tells him about the emails and Paul’s advice. She adds that Iben is taking the threats much more seriously than she might have expected. ‘I’ve never seen Iben like this before. At least now she seems ready to admit that there was no one in her flat.’

Two years younger than Malene, Rasmus’s laid-back, boyish style makes their age difference more pronounced. Nevertheless he is sensitive to her moods and able to shift instantly from being narcissistic to being supportive. ‘If only I were at home with you. We could find out more about this together.’

They talk for a few more minutes. Malene feels happy because she has someone special to lean on, but she’s aware that if she discusses her concerns – even her illness – for too long, Rasmus becomes restless. She hates to think about it, but he seems to have less and less patience.

‘Would any of your IT specialists know how to trace a sender?’

His voice becomes animated at once. ‘Actually I know quite a bit about that. If your sender is smart he’ll have emailed via an anonymiser site. If he has, we won’t be able to trace him so easily. But let’s make sure. Email his mail-header to me. You should be able to find his IP address if you right-click on the mail. Choose Properties and then Details. If he uses a fixed Internet link we’ll have him cornered. If not, it will give us the name of his service
provider, so we’ll know which part of the world he’s mailing us from – unless he uses an anonymiser site, that is. If he does, we’ll write a spyware program and send it back to him by using Reply. If we do it right, the spyware will pick up his personal details and mail them back to us.’

‘Is it hard to write spyware?’

‘Don’t worry. We’ll try it when I come home.’ Rasmus doesn’t sound eager to get off the phone but he has to go. ‘We’ll track down this lunatic, no problem.’

In the café the music has changed from Steely Dan to Gotan Project. Iben has been in touch with people in England and France and is feeling energised. ‘They all send their regards.’

‘Thanks.’

‘And they had loads of ideas about who might’ve emailed us. I borrowed a notepad from the bar and began a list. Here, look.’ The list already has more than twenty names.

Malene sits down. ‘I don’t know where to begin.’

‘Let’s move to an Internet café.’

Malene hasn’t finished her wine, but she understands that collecting information is Iben’s way of dealing with stress, so she drains her glass quickly.

While they’re getting ready to leave Malene’s mobile rings. It’s Lotta from the Swedish study programme on the Holocaust and Genocide.

‘Iben called me earlier. Her phone has been busy so I thought I’d try yours. I wanted you to know that I’ve phoned around. Nobody seems to have received any emails. That’s all, really. Except, everyone I spoke to came up with people who might have done it. Do you have pen and paper handy?’

Malene adds to Iben’s list. ‘Thanks. That’s great.’

‘You’re welcome. Take it as a thank you for your article. It was great.’

‘What? Which article?’

‘“A Guitarist from Banja Luka”. About Mirko Zigic. We had it translated and printed it in our weekly paper.’

‘But Iben wrote it.’

‘Did she? I thought it was you.’

‘No, I didn’t. She did.’ Iben must have left out her by-line in the Word version of the article. Then it hits her what the mistake means. ‘Christ!’

‘What’s the matter?’

Malene has to make sure. ‘Lotta, that article, is it on your website now in my name?’

‘I think so. I mean, what we publish in print instantly goes on to our website as well. Automatically. Not that I—’

Iben interrupts. ‘Tell me. What’s happened?’

Malene needs to sit down, but somewhere else, where they aren’t visible from the street. Holding the phone, she puts her arm around Iben.

‘Iben, I’m so very sorry. In Sweden your article about Zigic was put on the Internet under my name.’

Iben backs away. ‘I see. Now we know. It couldn’t be anyone else, could it?’

Malene doesn’t like the tone of her voice. ‘No.’

‘Mirko Zigic is the only one we’ve both written about.’

A Guitarist from Banja Luka

Old friends of Serb war criminal Mirko Zigic still cannot grasp that their schoolmate is wanted by the International War Crimes Tribunal at The Hague
.

By Iben Højgaard

‘Mirko was a guitarist in the band and composed most of their music,’ says Ljiljana Peric, who was at secondary school in the same class as Mirko Zigic.

‘No question about it, he had something special. He believed he could make a living as a rock musician after leaving school. His band played a kind of intense, poetic guitar rock that only became the “in” thing a few years later. He was good, and we all wished him well, but no one really believed that he’d make it apart from the boys in his band and a handful of groupies.’

Ljiljana Peric is a political scientist from Serbia, who attended the Oslo conference, Strengthening Democratic Media in the Aftermath of War. Our hotel rooms were on the same floor and, chatting in the lift one afternoon, Peric touched on her early friendship with Mirko Zigic. Zigic has been charged with war crimes and is wanted by the International War Crimes Tribunal at The Hague.

We agreed to meet in the hotel bar that evening, and that I would bring my tape recorder.

The good years: until 1990

That evening, Peric began by describing the secondary school in Banja Luka, the town where she and Zigic grew up.

‘It was a large school, with more than a thousand pupils and was built in the 1970s. Mirko was good-looking, and had a mane of blond hair and a thin face that made him look like a rock star. He arranged gigs in cafés and bars, not only for his own band but for others too. He might have made it if the
fashion for US grunge music had arrived a few years earlier and not when the war started.

‘I used to gossip about him with my girlfriends. Some of them were crazy about him. And I have such a clear image of Mirko putting up posters for concerts that he had arranged himself. He was so passionate about music, always insisting that everyone should subscribe to his favourite music and not waste time on dumbed-down pop.

‘We were a mixed school – Serbs, Muslims, Croats – but we never paid much attention to racial divisions. After the economic crisis of the eighties the future looked bright for young people. The Yugoslav economy was buoyant and the country politically independent of both the Eastern and Western blocs. Lots of people went shopping for clothes in Italy and travelled to places like Budapest for concerts or theatre. The recent communist past meant that tickets were much cheaper.

‘In 1990, one year after we had left school, there were occasional TV reports about small paramilitary groups stopping cars at roadblocks to check identity papers. It seemed to be happening only in the countryside, so we figured it must be gangs of peasant blockheads who had nothing better to do than play soldiers. Nobody I knew even imagined it might be a precursor to war.

‘But only a few months later, the war began. Suddenly, these stupid peasants morphed into real soldiers. The TV news was full of massacres, one after the other. The broadcasters would advise viewers several times a day to send children and old people out of the room because they were about to show Serb bodies that were decapitated or half-decomposed, floating down rivers – that sort of thing.’

The propaganda

‘These images made us very sad and angry, of course. We all shared a desperate wish to help, to do something.

‘This was Serb-controlled TV and just when the viewers
were at their most upset and vulnerable, the screens would fill with war propaganda. We were told that Muslims and Croats were on the rampage, killing Serb civilians, reminding us that this was a repetition of what happened during World War Two when “they” murdered four hundred thousand of “us”. We watched this kind of thing day in and day out.