Vanished (44 page)

‘A commercial paper, sold for money? How can a paper like that be free of restrictions? Its voice has been bought, it’s corrupt and deceitful.’

The man got up again and filled his glass, not bothering to offer Annika any this time. When he sat down again, facing her, she saw a certain spark in his eyes: this was a man who had loved to discuss things, a man who had possessed power and a gift for words.

‘Capital is true to itself,’ he said. ‘Its only aim is to accumulate more, regardless of the cost.’

‘That’s not true,’ she said, surprised at her own vehemence. ‘The press must be a free and independent agent in order to guarantee democracy . . .’

‘Democracy, ha! All it does is create competition and instability, politicians who offer their services like whores, capitalists who use and exploit their fellow man. I don’t have much faith in your democracy.’

‘So what’s the alternative?’ Annika asked. ‘A totalitarian state where the press is censored?’

The man leaned closer to her, almost smiling.

‘Only the government can take responsibility for its citizens,’ he said. ‘The state shouldn’t have any other obligations than to do the best for its people. The duty of the press is to inform and teach without financial gain. Your press and your media is not the voice of freedom, it is the voice of capitalism.’

Annika shook her head.

‘You’re wrong,’ she said. ‘How much fun are you having over in Serbia, with Slobodan Milosevic running the show?’

The colonel’s face darkened and Annika could have bitten her tongue off. Why the hell did she have to go shooting her mouth off like that?

‘I’m sorry,’ she said in a whisper. ‘I didn’t mean to offend you . . .’

‘Milosevic is a peasant,’ the man said in a controlled voice. ‘Just look at what he’s done to my country! He destroyed the KOS, the only organization that had the capacity to maintain law and order, cut our budget until there was nothing left and gave the money to the RDB.’

He banged his fist on the night-stand so hard that Annika bounced on the bed.

‘Those bastards at the RDB, just look at what they’ve done to my country! Criminal peasants are wasting the resources of Serbia. If the KOS was in power, Yugoslavia would still be a force to contend with, a unified Serbian nation. We never would have allowed the country to be divided.’

Colonel Misic sat there, his head hanging down, his elbows propped on his knees. Annika didn’t dare move.

‘Up to the late 1980s, certain ethics existed in the Balkans,’ he said in a low voice. ‘There were norms and values, but then barbarism took hold. Men like Ratko were given power, mere clean-up men, criminal idiots.’

Annika licked her lips, refusing to allow the taste of metal to intrude on her.

‘Who is Ratko?’

The elderly man sighed and sat up straight.

‘He comes from a wealthy family who lost everything during the Communist takeover, when wealth was supposed to be distributed to the people. His father had to work in a foundry, an honest job in a factory, but it was a blow to the family pride. Ratko decided to make a name for himself. He came to Sweden, to seek his luck here, but ended up in a truck factory, working on the production floor. He saw his countrymen wear themselves out working, so he picked a different career: crime.’

Misic took a mouthful of his drink.

‘Ratko and his father felt that the new law didn’t apply to them. In their view, communism had robbed them, taken their history and their superior status. The law was Ratko’s enemy: obeying it would be to lose everything. The only driving forces in human beings are greed and the lust for material gain.’

‘That’s not true,’ Annika said.

‘Only the state can take responsibility for its citizens,’ the man said.

‘But the state, that’s us,’ Annika said. ‘A government can never be better than the people it represents.’

The colonel looked at her.

‘Society is always greater than the people. Seeing ourselves as isolated individuals means that egoism will prevail.’

‘It doesn’t have to be like that,’ Annika said. ‘The state is made up of its citizens: we can’t dump the responsibility on anyone else. We shape our own destinies; the state is us. We are responsible for each other and it’s a responsibility that we have to take. Every individual can make a difference!’

‘And that’s when it goes straight to hell!’ Colonel Misic exclaimed and banged on the night-stand again. ‘Just look at Serbia! When Milosevic put himself above the state, everything went to hell! The RDB doesn’t have the necessary knowledge and experience, even though they have all the resources at their disposal. They use them in the wrong way, for their own gain, they abuse their power, they support crime . . .’

Slightly out of breath, he stopped talking.

Annika stared at him. The sweat gleamed on his bald pate.

‘How much do you know?’ she asked him in a low voice.

‘I know everything.’

‘Everything?’

‘Everything.’

‘About the Mafia too?’

The man looked at her intensely; studied her face, her hair, her hands.

‘The shining knight of the freedom of expression,’ he said. ‘Can you handle all kinds of truth?’

Annika blinked.

‘As long as I can verify them, and they’re of interest to the general public.’

‘Ah,’ Misic said. ‘And who makes that decision?’

‘First I do, then my editors.’

‘The censors,’ the old man declared.

‘Not at all,’ Annika countered. ‘We don’t bow down to anyone, we answer only to the truth.’

‘You wouldn’t dare write
my
truth,’ the man said. ‘No one could publish what I know.’

‘There’s no way I can judge that without knowing what you know.’

Colonel Misic looked at Annika for a long time. Her skin started crawling – she felt naked.

‘Did you bring a pen? Something to write on? Well then, write down my story. We’ll see if you dare print it.’

Annika bent over, grabbed her bag and fished out a pad and a pen.

‘Shoot,’ she said.

‘The Mafia is the state,’ the old man said, ‘and the state is the Mafia. Everything is controlled by Belgrade. The RDB, the secret police, is in charge of the operations. Gunrunning is their largest and most important source of income. Three-quarters of the money they make comes from selling arms. They have appropriated and stockpiled all the weapons of the former Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, and they can fight on until kingdom come, or even start a war. They have a lot of dealings with the Middle East and Iraq. North Korea is very interested in chemical weapons, and Belgrade can help them out. They keep numerous conflicts going in Africa, supplying weapons to several African nations. These munitions are transported using Polish submarines out of Gdansk: shipments are loaded in Serbia and they pass through Suez, where the Customs officers are on the payroll.’

Annika stared at the Colonel; she hadn’t managed to write a word.

‘What do you mean?’ she said. ‘Is this true?’

‘Cigarette smuggling is another major operation,’ Misic continued, ‘and, of course, liquor and drugs and prostitution. The cigarettes are manufactured in secret factories, provided with fake labels – Marlboro, for example – loaded on to sealed trucks, and then they are transported through Europe to Finland. Once they reach Sweden, the seals are broken, the shipment is unloaded and then they head for the Yugoslav Embassy for a fresh seal. Since the state is the official administrator, this is possible. Then they head back to Finland and unload a few cardboard boxes.’

Annika bowed her head.

‘Wait a second,’ she said, ‘could you repeat the first bit? The weapons, Africa, North Korea?’

Patiently, the old man repeated the details.

‘When it comes to prostitution,’ he continued, ‘most of the women come from the Ukraine and Belarus, and they’re exported to Central European brothels, mainly in Germany, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Poland. The bulk of the drugs come from Afghanistan. The opposition, not the Taliban, is responsible for their production. The route passes through Turkey, and nowadays the ethnic Albanians of Kosovo are generally in charge of that end. Once the ethnic Albanians have the raw materials, they sell them to the Serbs. The Serbs refine the raw materials into narcotic compounds. Entire hospitals are involved in these operations and so is a sizeable sections of the agricultural industry.’

Annika swallowed. Her head was spinning and now she was writing so fast that her arm hurt. Could all this really be possible?

‘Huge factories manufacture liquor that is bottled with fake labels: twelve-year-old Scotch, for example, or Finnish vodka. If these operations came to a halt, the country would collapse in a matter of days. The workers wouldn’t be paid and the system would fall apart.’

Colonel Misic sighed.

‘The RDB is able to forge all types of passports: Scandinavian, French, American. They have an efficient network throughout Europe consisting of bars, discos, Serbian Associations and chess clubs.’

He laughed mirthlessly.

‘The Serbian secret service has this peculiar habit,’ he said. ‘They only make arrests on Wednesdays. If you manage to squeak by on a Wednesday, you’re safe for a week. The clean-up patrols consist of three or five members. When they operate in foreign countries, they escape by way of the embassy or the consulate. Here in Sweden, the consulate offices in Trelleborg are very actively involved.’

Misic’s voice tailed off. Annika finished up her notes and paused, her pen still resting on the page.

‘How am I supposed to verify all this?’ she asked.

The man got up, went into the small hall, opened the closet and started to turn the combination lock of a small safe. When he returned, he was carrying a few documents, some printed on blue paper.

‘I stole these from the embassy,’ he said. ‘Two TIR seals. Soon they will be missed.’

He put them on the bed next to Annika. She stared at them and looked up at the colonel, feeling more and more bewildered.

‘How is this possible?’

Misic sat down heavily.

‘There are caches of weapons secreted throughout Sweden,’ he said. ‘Stockpiles of drugs, liquor, cigarettes, entire apartment buildings filled with Serbs who don’t have residence permits, trailers, cars, boats . . .’

Annika swallowed.

‘Do you know where they are?’

Nodding, he looked at her.

And started to talk again.

When Colonel Misic was done, Annika felt adrenalin surge through her body. This was incredible stuff!

‘One thing,’ she said. ‘What will happen if I put my byline on this? Won’t the Mafia come looking for me?’

The old man gave her a weary look.

‘Worried about saving your own skin? Are you more important than the truth? Can’t your nation of free citizens take care of you, protect you?’

She looked down and blushed.

‘This is business, you see,’ the man said. ‘It’s not personal. Ratko doesn’t have any friends left – no one will rub you out to settle a personal score. If you shatter their framework of crime there won’t be anyone left to hurt you, there would be no point in doing it.’

Annika looked up.

‘What about the embassy? If what you say is true, the embassy is behind everything.’

‘The Yugoslav Embassy will be your finest life insurance. It will be in their best interests that nothing happens to you. On the other hand, I wouldn’t recommend a visit to the Balkan states for a while. You might run into the wrong kind of people.’

She looked down at her notes and cleared her throat.

‘What will happen to Ratko?’

Misic hesitated.

‘Ratko has disappeared, no one knows where to. As soon as he shows his face in Europe, he’ll be a dead man. My guess is that he’s gone to Africa, to one of his arms connections.’

‘What will happen to
you
?’

The colonel regarded her for quite a while.

‘I’ve done my bit,’ he said eventually. ‘Everyone who ever meant anything to me is dead. Aida was the last one.’

‘What happened?’ Annika asked in a whisper.

The old man got up again, walked over to the window and looked out over the square, now grey in the twilight.

‘Ratko murdered the entire family, except for Aida. It was the prelude to the violence in Bosnia. It was in March 1992.’

Annika gasped. ‘Oh my God, the whole family?’

‘Jovan, his wife, his pregnant daughter-in-law and Jovan’s youngest son, who was only nine years old. The older son was in the army and died at the front six months later.’

‘Ratko killed them?’

Keeping his eyes fixed on the pattern of triangles on Sergelstorg, Misic continued.

‘Ratko and his Panthers. For quite some time there had been considerable political tension, and there had been fighting in Croatia, but the massacre in Bijelina was the first of its kind in Bosnia.’

‘And it wiped out Aida’s family.’

‘I don’t know how she managed to survive. She never told me.’

Annika felt the tears well up again: what an unspeakable experience.

‘What happened to her? How did she get to Sweden?’

The colonel stared out over the square. Snowflakes had begun to fall.

‘She was seventeen at the time and, as far as I know, she walked all the way to Tuzla after the massacre. She hitched a ride to Sarajevo and joined the
Armija BiH.
Her uncle, Jovan’s younger brother, lived in Sarajevo, and he accepted her into his
speciale diversansky
group.’

Breathlessly, Annika waited for the rest of the story, tears hanging on her lips.

‘And?’ she said.

‘The
speciale diversansky
group,’ Misic said, emphasizing each word carefully. ‘She became a sniper. When I found out, I washed my hands of her, broke off all contact.’

Not following him, Annika blinked.

With extreme weariness the old man said: ‘A sniper, she learned how to be a sniper, to lie on a rooftop and shoot people in the streets: men, women, children – it made no difference.’

Annika couldn’t breathe.

‘No . . .!’

Misic turned around and looked at her.

‘And I can assure you,’ he said, ‘that she became very accomplished. Only God knows how many people Aida killed.’