The Threat (19 page)

“Let's go,” said the Dutchman. “We need to get off this strip.”

Dan flinched. Ducking, he followed at a jog through air that was warmer than he'd expected toward the largest building. A huge black U and N were painted on its roof.

*   *   *

He sat nursing a paper cup of Nescafé in a cold office that smelled of piss with Captain Manuel “Buddy” Larreinaga, U.S. Army. The American liaison was dark and short, and his border twang sounded strange in the split heart of Eastern Europe. He and the Dutchman sat on opposite sides of the table in their different green-and-brown camo patterns and did not look at each other. Both smoked, though, and Dan's eyes stung as they went over the route and what might ambush them along the way. He kept expecting the captain to ask exactly why Dan was here, but he never did. As if there was no point questioning anything from Higher.

The hulking armored car Larreinaga called a “transporter” was painted a white that looked dingy at close range. Its cramped interior stank of sweat and cheese and diesel fuel, but Dan felt more secure with steel around him. He clicked open a firing port as they growled and lurched into a city that had undergone a siege almost as long as that of Stalingrad.

The liaison officer told him he was going to have to be alert in the open. It wouldn't hurt to beware of windows too, especially facing south. The city was surrounded, and everyone in it was a target. Bridges, crossroads, streets that weren't masked by buildings, were areas of increased risk. If you had to cross them nobody would laugh if you broke into a jog. The residents had put up signs in the most dangerous areas. He should obey them and cooperate if someone grabbed him to pull him back into cover. “Remember, if you can see a mountain, whoever's on that mountain can see you,” Larreinaga said.

The signs were daubed on plywood or plastic sheets or chalked on the walls. In English, French, and what must be Bosnian. The streets were pocked with shellbursts. Some of the black ripped-out stars had been filled with gravel. Others hadn't. Every window had been blown out or shattered. The streets were lined with shipping containers, burned-out buses, wrecked cars, sections of levered-up sidewalk. Two old men huddled over a chess table close under high-school lockers stacked with sandbags. Dan realized they were cover from snipers.

They passed a huge nineteenth-century building, smoke trails like black eyebrows above the empty windows. “That's from the shelling three years back,” Buddy said. “These people have been through it. War One, War Two, this is War Three for them. That corner—see the bridge? That's where Gavrilo Princip shot the duke and the duchess. Where World War I started.”

Some streets farther on, the transporter slowed. It wove between giant jacks of rusty I-beams and stopped at a checkpoint. Troops with automatic rifles exchanged shouts with the driver. The transmission whined.

Headquarters was a multistory office building that hadn't been spared fragment damage. It was ringed with concertina wire, sandbags, parked transporters, and stacks of rusty containers decorated with large-caliber-bullet holes. Women hoed onions in garden patches no bigger than bedsheets. A desert tan French tank aimed its main gun down the street.

“Keep moving, remember,” Buddy said, and they went inside, Dan careful to keep as much metal and concrete between him and the mountain as he could.

*   *   *

The United Nations Military Observers headquarters held Swedes, Turks, Italians, French, Portuguese, British, Belgians, Japanese, Dutch. The UNMOs wore blue berets and all seemed very busy. Larreinaga did what he could, but Dan didn't get much attention. Shunted from office to office, he ended up on the fourth floor. The office was on the north, the safe side, and he could look out over the city.

“Commander Lenson. I trust you had a fast and safe trip in. Cigarette?” said a slight, poised officer whose name tag said
B FEVRIER
.

“Non, merci.”
Dan declined the proffered Gauloises bleues.

“We were, I very much regret to say, not prepared for your arrival.”

He'd thought about how he should handle this, and decided on low-key first. He also thought it might help to try it in French.
“Je regrette beaucoup d'entendre cela, mon colonel. J'espere que ce sera possible de visiter la site des evenements recentes, en poursuivant les orders de ma gouvernement.”

Fevrier made a half-concealed grimace, as if tasting a bad peanut. “You will excuse me, but perhaps we should conduct our business in English. I have taken the opportunity of calling the chief of staff, Brigadier Nikolai, about your request. I am sorry to say that though it is our desire to help, it is not possible at present to transport anyone to Srebrenica.” He pronounced it
Sebreneetsa
. “We are as you may have observed in the middle of a war. A confused and ugly little conflict. It is not a time for fact-finding missions.”

“Nevertheless I must insist. The president wants the situation clarified. It would be very desirable if transport and a small escort—”

Fevrier inclined his head politely, as if being introduced to the dignitary Dan had just invoked. He seemed to be listening. A moment later a heavy, close-by crack rattled the windows. Dan stopped speaking, interrupted not by his courteous interlocutor but by the shell.

Fevrier gestured, leaving a trail of smoke in the air. “A 120 mortar … We too would very much like to have the situation ‘clarified.' Unfortunately we are attempting to police a state of five million people with seven thousand troops, while both Croats and Serbs are trying to tear it in two. Envision two starving wolves, and a tasty piece of fillet. We simply cannot get you to Srebrenica. The peacekeepers there have been ejected. Local resistance has collapsed. Which means Ratko Mladic is in control. We would like to know what is going on there as much as you would. Naples may know more than we. That is where your Predators are controlled from. Have you checked with them?”

Dan had gone over the pictures the remotely piloted surveillance drones had taken. They showed crowds. Detainees. Then empty fields. But no graves. No clue where they could have gone.
That
was the mystery. But he just said, “May I speak with this Nikolai?”

“Impossible. Far too busy. It might just have been possible to get you in last week. The various factions would let an occasional truck through with supplies for UN Bravo. The Dutch unit there. But now—no. I am so sorry.”

“What happened in Srebrenica, Colonel Fevrier?”

The Frenchman blew out and scratched his scalp hard. “The local commander had seven hundred fifty men to cover the perimeter around the enclave. The Muslims refused to disarm. Went out at night raiding. Burned people alive, in their homes. These people are not as helpless as they portray themselves. Nasser Oric—ugly piece of work. Videotapes his victims. Both sides sniped at Bravo. Then three days ago the BSA—Bosnian Serb Army, Mladic's troops—began to push in the perimeter. To try to stop the raids. The Dutch tried to call in air strikes, but they could not be provided until the town had been overrun.”

So far every account Dan had heard differed. Sebold had said the UN special representative had refused to give permission for the air strikes, from the on-call carrier force in the Adriatic, until after the town fell. The reserve captain in Naples had said NATO air had actually been aloft, staged out of Italy and orbiting over the Adriatic; but by the time the request was approved in Zagreb, they were too low on fuel to go in. The Dutchman on the plane had said bitterly that his country's contingent had requested support repeatedly and never gotten a reply. And Larreinaga had said the Dutch had cut and run, but admitted they had no heavy weapons, while the Serbs had tanks.

He could see why Clayton wanted eyes on the ground, an unbiased report, if such a thing was possible.

“I'm not here to assign blame,” he told Fevrier. “I don't care who's responsible. That's a UN matter. All I want to do is get out there and see what happened.”

“Once again, I can't help you.” Fevrier stood. “We'll fly you back to Naples tomorrow. Be ready an hour before dawn. That is the safest time. Before they have enough light, on that mountain over there, to aim.”

*   *   *

Larreinaga, encountered again downstairs, told him the only place to find a bed was the Holiday Inn. Dan walked over, staying close to the wrecked trucks and buses. The hills reverberated now and then to a falling shell or exploding mine. No one shot at him on the way, though.

“You get one of the good rooms. No view,” the clerk joked. In the corridors he saw most had been wrecked, burned, their windows shattered. Some lay open to the wind, and all were unheated. The hallways smelled of shit. The few other guests who passed him wore coats.

He was hungry and realized he'd missed a bet. He should have eaten at the headquarters. He had an MRE pack and a Snickers from his briefcase instead. Tried the faucet, but nothing came out. He changed into civvies, jeans, and a down-filled jacket. Looked at himself in the cracked mirror. Thought about shaving, then figured he'd blend in better if he didn't.

The electricity was out in the first-floor bar, but somebody had an accordion, and candles flickered on the tables. It felt like a bunker in Stalingrad. He got fruit juice that tasted as if it had been canned under Brezhnev. There were a lot of customers, all smoking harsh-smelling local tobacco and talking very loudly above the Polish-sounding music.

He'd thought about this as he was changing, and decided he wasn't going to be on the plane back in the morning. He wasn't going to give up just because the French wouldn't give him a ride. Or because he was scared, though he was. Somebody else must want to find out what had happened. He asked several people if they knew anybody who was trying to get to Srebrenica. They looked at him as if he were nuts and waved him off. Except the last, a gray-haired old man with one eye. He muttered, “The Gypsy bitch. See her? The one drinking shots, in the corner.”

*   *   *

She was small-boned and fine-featured, with black shining hair that fell in ringlets. Pale lipstick, and kohl pencilled around the eyes. A worn brown leather jacket, open just enough to show a zip-up blouse the color of plums. Black jeans. She and the mustached, ponytailed guy with her watched Dan approach. They were smoking. A bottle of clear fluid glowed in the candlelight. “Hi,” Dan said. “Speak English?”

After a minute the guy with the ponytail said, “Some.” He didn't sound welcoming.

Dan pulled out a chair. He perched on the first two inches, to show he didn't plan to stay if they didn't want him. After a moment the woman pushed the bottle his way. “You look sober,” she said. “Not a good way to see a war.
Rakija
. Smuggled in from Bradina.”

“No thanks. They tell me you might want to go to Srebrenica.” He pronounced it
Sebreneetsa
too.

She didn't blink. Obviously used to strangers coming up and starting provocative conversations. “Who the hell are you?”

He didn't think it was a good idea to try to cross the Serb lines with a U.S. military ID in his wallet. “I work for a paper in Grand Centre, Saskatchewan.”

“Where the heel eez ‘Saskatchewan'?” said Ponytail.

“Canada. Western provinces.”

The girl said, “What paper?”

He'd been in Grand Centre but didn't remember the name of the paper. But probably she didn't either. “The
Record
. How about you?”

“I work independent. Radio networks, mostly. Jovan here, Jovica, he sells pictures to whoever's buying. Srebrenica? That'd take serious money. And a car.”

“I have a little cash.” Four thousand dollars, to be exact, which Jonah Freed had counted out, and made him sign for, before he left the Eighteen Acres.

“How much is a little?”

“Two thousand dollars.”

“We'd need three.”

“I guess I could get my hands on another thousand.”

“Canadian?”

“No, U.S.,” he said. She smiled, and he realized she'd just blown away his little facade.

“I won't ask who you really are.
Gavorite li srpskohrvatski?
”

“Is that Bosnian?”

“You really aren't going to blend in.” She looked him up and down. “Though the stubble helps. But maybe that'll be okay. Maybe that'll even be better.”

“So you're going to blend in with the other side? As you put it?”

“At least convince them we're not Muslim.”

“You speak Bosnian?”

“
Da, gavorim
. And it's not ‘Bosnian,' it's Serbo-Croatian. My mother was from Vlasenica.”

“Which is where?”

“Not too far from Srebrenica. As it happens. We had Muslim neighbors. Serb neighbors.”

“So you're a Croat?” Dan asked her.

“Yes. But I can pass. And Jovo here, he really
is
a Serb. One of the good ones. So we should be okay. If we don't run into the wrong people. Keep Jovo company while I go talk to somebody.”

Dan looked at the guy again—she pronounced his name
Yoh
-vo—wondering just what kind of war it was, when not even the participants could tell enemy from friend.

“We've got a ticket through the tunnel,” she said when she came back. “But that's the easy part. Getting through the mountains, that'll be hard.”

“All we can do is try,” Dan told her.

“You sure you want to do this?” she said, twisting a lock of hair so dark it was blue-black, looking straight at him. “They kill strangers here. Journalists too. The JNA kills them, the Muslims kill them, the Chetniks kill them. Not to mention we could drive over a mine. I don't know your business in Srebrenica. And I don't want to. But it'd be smarter for all three of us to just stay here and finish getting drunk.”