The Unquiet Dead (26 page)

“I'm coming.”

He'd known this day would come.

Cities falling, villages burning. Rape. Torture. Madness. Death.

This last day in Srebrenica had been inevitable from the beginning.

His right hand grasped Ahmo's. His arm brushed Mesha's.

Whatever happened, he would be with them. The last faces he saw would be theirs.

Three years in frantic pursuit of survival would end here.

Mesha took his arm.

“You are not coming.”

“I am not staying.”

“You are staying on the base,” his brother screamed into his face. “You are staying because you
can
stay, that's the end to it!”

“I won't!” he screamed back.

“You will. You are.”

He shoved Mesha aside. Mesha grabbed him by the neck and punched him in the face.

He fell back, stunned.

“Mesha!”

“You stay,” his brother sobbed. “I will take care of Ahmo and our parents. You stay because you
can
stay.” Mesha pulled him close, wrapped his arms about his neck, kissed his cheeks. He felt the hot wet slide of his brother's tears. “You live,” he told Damir. “You live and you remember.”

The soldiers pressed them forward.

He watched their silhouettes recede into the crush.

He looked down to find the megaphone in his hand.

 

25.

30 Dutch = 30,000 Muslims.

Khattak met Tom Paley at Café Morala on Bank Street. He'd wanted to meet at Justice, but Tom had sidestepped him. Instead, he'd suggested a place away from his colleagues at War Crimes, this café with its bohemian vibe and sinful Mayan hot chocolate. The proprietor's homemade black bean panini was legendary.

Khattak wasn't in the mood to eat. He ordered a strong cup of coffee and waited for Tom in the café's sunny interior. His friend, when he came, looked as disquieted as Khattak felt. He ordered the panini from the menu and a small bag of alfajor Argentino cookies to go with his hot chocolate.

“Everything here's homemade. You should try the cookies. They're out of this world.”

Khattak studied his friend's face. He'd always thought of Tom as a comfortable man, energetic but running to fat, with a shiny pink skull and an absentminded manner that fooled no one. His knowledge of his field was encyclopedic, his reputation international.

“We've a mess here, Tom. I hope you've found something.”

“Immigration status.” Tom bit deeply into his panini, its melted cheese scouring his chin. He dabbed at it with his napkin. “He came as an investor with the requisite funds tied up for a five-year period. He landed as an Italian citizen with documents to suggest he was the son of ex-pat Americans who made their home there.”

“What do we know about the documents?”

“We've requested them. Immigration does its own check, as you know. Police clearances, provenance of funds. He ran textile factories in Italy to substantial profit. Based on his records, they thought the money was clean. We'll need to dig deeper now. The fact that they didn't means the passport forgery must have been first rate.”

“He's had seventeen years to learn a new trade,” Khattak said bitterly. “Easy enough to erase traces of a past life. What brought him here, I wonder?”

“Too many old associates in Italy, most likely. Too many people apt to recognize him or come calling for a share of the company's profits.”

“Krstić wasn't the kind of man most people would dare to blackmail.”

“The Drina Corps and the paramilitaries aren't what you'd call most people. Blackmail would be nothing to them. Krstić worked hard. He was a success. Most people don't and aren't, but they're happy to hitch a ride on someone else's coattails.”

“This is all speculation on your part.”

“True.”

“He may have had personal reasons for moving to Canada.”

“He hasn't been here long. Three years. Two at the present address, buried away at the edge of Scarborough. We haven't been able to trace any personal connections.”

“Scarborough's not that remote. He's been keeping company with Nathan Clare. Although—” Khattak paused as he sifted through the facts he'd learned about Drayton's plans to marry Melanie Blessant. “His fiancée did point out that he was loath to sit for a well-known photographer. He may consciously have been attempting to shelter his new identity. Where was he for the first year?”

“Manitoba. What about this museum you've told me of? Wouldn't that raise his profile?”

Khattak sampled one of the cookies. It melted into his coffee, changing its flavor.

“It would have. If people were to associate a much older, much heavier man by the name of Christopher Drayton with a fugitive named Dra
ž
en Krstić. His contacts at the museum would have been limited to the intelligentsia.”

“Then why not the wedding photos?”

“Maybe he was more afraid of local publicity. Krstić must have known there's a fairly significant Bosnian community in the city. He may have viewed a portrait in the wedding section of the paper as a danger to himself. Tom, I have to ask this. Why did you ignore the letters you were sent about Krstić?”

Tom finished his sandwich and turned his attention to the trio of teenage girls that spilled through the café's door into its warm interior. They jostled each other for seats, draping their handbags over wooden chairs before lining up in front of the chalkboard menu. They were pretty and lively; for a moment, everyone in the café stopped to watch them make their selections.

Tom sighed. “You know how this kind of work is, Esa. You've been in intelligence. You collect so much information, it takes time to sort through it all. We're understaffed, underbudgeted—I can't keep up with my correspondence. This didn't ring any bells. Typed letters in the mail. No prints, no DNA. No reason to think it was anything more than someone trying to work through their personal pain by casting about for answers. The letters were accusations, nothing more. There were no photographs, no proof. In time, I would have asked someone to do a little digging. The last letter made it a bit more urgent. It said that Krstić was dead.”

“So you called me.”

“I called you.” Tom lingered over his chocolate-soaked cookies. “Because I could call you. Because your unit exists, and I couldn't think of anyone more closely connected who would know what to do with the information. And because that last letter worried me.”

“Why?”

“It said: ‘Krstić is dead. Everything is finished. I don't need you anymore.' And then the letters stopped. In my experience, when someone has a pathology, that doesn't happen. It made me wonder.”

“You must have wondered before that.”

Again, Tom sighed. “What do you want me to say? Sometimes we miss things. Can you say with certainty that Drayton is Krstić?”

“Come on, Tom. The tattoo and the gun make it certain. And you'll have used facial recognition on the photograph I had the morgue send you.”

“Esa, this will be a terrible embarrassment for the government. For me, more than anyone.” His evasion answered Khattak more effectively than an open admission would have. “Immigration at least did their due diligence. They only have so many resources.”

“And the investment of half a million dollars may have dampened their enthusiasm for a more rigorous examination of Drayton's credentials.”

“I don't think so, Esa. They've sent me everything they have. They didn't miss a single step. Drayton went to a lot of trouble to cover up his tracks.”

Khattak wished he could feel more for his friend. He had other worries, other priorities. The teenage girls had taken the table beside them and chatted to each other noisily. He lowered his voice.

“Make the same arguments that Immigration will. Your resources were limited. The letter writer offered no proof, not even a photograph. If your letters are anything like ours, it was difficult to pinpoint the source of the writer's information. You can't be held accountable for that, Tom. What will matter is how swiftly you resolved things upon learning of Drayton's death. You called me right away. Based upon my findings, you've made major strides investigating Drayton's background. You've matched the photo. You know Drayton is Krstić.”

Tom looked over at the table of girls wistfully.

“Yes. It is Krstić. And we'll have to announce it, and there could be hearings. Someone's job on the line. Maybe mine.”

“Never yours, Tom. Not with your reputation. And frankly, shouldn't we be more concerned about the Bosnian community?”

Tom studied him as if seeing Khattak for the first time. “That is your remit,” he agreed.

“My God, Tom! There's a limit to objectivity. Krstić was ubiquitous at the execution sites. He's knee-deep in blood.”

“I'm not denying that, Esa. And I'm not asking you to do anything you shouldn't. All I need is a heads-up. If you're worried about the Bosnians, isn't it best that we coordinate our response? Or is something else bothering you?”

Khattak looked over at the table beside them in time to see the girl with long, blond braids widen her eyes at him.

“The letter writer worries me,” Khattak said. “
Krsti
ć
is dead. I don't need you anymore.
Why? Because the letter writer killed him when the government wouldn't act?”

“Christ, are you laying that at my door?”

“Of course not. If he was killed by one of his victims, we have a much bigger problem on our hands. A trial, a scandal, the evacuation of Canbat revisited. All of that and more.”

“There's something you're not telling me.”

“Drayton wanted to get on the board of the museum, Ringsong. His presence was strongly objected to by one of the directors, a neighbor of Drayton's. I interviewed him during the course of the investigation. His name is David Newhall.”

“So?”

“I was at the Bosnian mosque in Etobicoke yesterday. My sergeant found David Newhall's photo hanging there.”

“What? Why?”

“Because his real name is Damir Hasanović.”

The girls beside them forgotten, Tom stared at him, aghast.
“Damir Hasanovi
ć
?”
he whispered.

“Exactly,” Khattak said. “The translator at the UN base in Poto
č
ari. Dutchbat gave him refuge on the base. That's why he survived the Srebrenica massacre.”

“It can't be.”

“If you check with your friends at Immigration, I think you'll find he came here as a refugee.”

The blond girl brushed her leg against his. She apologized brightly. He ignored it.

“That's not all. I think Newhall is the man who sent the letters to you and to Drayton.”

“And Drayton is dead.”

“Which means Dra
ž
en Krstić is dead.”

“Damn,” Tom muttered. “Goddamn it all.”

“I think that sums it up.”

“You need to interview him again.”

“I plan to. Rachel's looking into his background. With CPS resources.”

The two men weighed each other.

“But you'll let me know whatever you find.”

“I won't forget that you asked me to investigate, Tom. Of course, I owe you that. I've a long drive back tonight. I'll call you with any news.”

“It was good of you to do this for me.”

Khattak's answering smile was brief. “I think you know I did it for myself.”

 

26.

It was a crime committed against every single one of us.

Rachel was surprised to find her parents sitting together in the family room, a program on the television that her mother particularly favored. Her father wasn't napping, nor was there a beer on the coffee table in front of him.

“Hey, Da,” she said, tossing her keys on the console in the tiny dark foyer. Winterglass, this was not.

“Where've you been then, girl?” he said in response.

She debated telling him. Sometimes hearing about Khattak made her father ballistic: he still thought of her boss as a politically correct, affirmative-action appointee to a unit whose purpose he'd once described as barefaced boot-licking. Once or twice, they'd been able to discuss the finer points of an investigation without it ending in tears or slammed doors or a shattered beer mug or two.

She brushed off her weariness and came to sit beside Don Getty. One part of her mind observed her mother's leery glance.

“Mostly up in Scarborough. Trying to figure out if some guy fell from the Bluffs or was pushed.”

“The Bluffs, eh. You go by the marina?”

“I did, Da.”

Her father was still a handsome man with bullet-gray eyes and a head full of thick white hair that stood on end when brushed. His jowls and neck were thicker because of the drinking, but his bearing was otherwise compact and upright. She had noticed more and more of late that his eyes were more likely to be alert than blurred by booze.

“Rachel,” her mother intervened softly. “You shouldn't talk about the marina. You know how your Da is.”

She hadn't mentioned the marina. Her father had. She wondered what had made her mother say it with that gently martyred air of hers.

The years had not worn well on Lillian Getty. Her wardrobe rotated through a series of faded-print dresses with full skirts and fitted tops. Occasionally, her lips would be smeared with a coral shade of lipstick that emphasized their thinness. Her dark eyes and lifeless hair were the same as Rachel's own. In Lillian's case, a permanent treatment had transformed it into a gauzy cloud about her head.