Zagreb Cowboy (4 page)

JULIUS STRUMB
I
Ć
WAS
supposed to have gone home for lunch on the Wednesday afternoon, but he couldn’t face his wife. The day before, she’d found a packet of condoms in the pocket of his uniform trousers and had given him grief all night.

Mr. and Mrs. Strumbić had no need for them. They’d never been able to conceive, and they’d long since given up trying. So on finding the condoms she’d immediately thought the worst of her husband. He’d been put on the spot. He’d come home too soon after a bottle of wine and wasn’t thinking clearly. He’d told her it was for some undercover work. He should have said they used them to keep their gun barrels dry when working in the field. She’d have understood that.

No, he should have told her the truth. That they belonged to a prostitute. He could have left it at that. Implied he’d arrested her and merely pocketed the rubbers as evidence or something. It wasn’t like he ever used the things.

So he went out for lunch on his own, tired from a long night of being harassed. Even when he went to sleep on the sofa, she followed him to make sure he got an earful. She was there when he woke, sitting and staring with those slitted Slavic eyes that made her look like a wolf, starting up again from the exact point when she’d finally let him fall asleep.

He went to a place around the corner from the railway station. It was one of the few remaining restaurants in this part of town that didn’t just serve meat on a stick. He was halfway through his boiled potatoes and schnitzel, tough grey meat under greasy breadcrumbs, when the two men came in. They ignored the waiter and the empty tables and headed straight for him.

“There’s somebody who’d like a word with you,” said the taller, skinny one. He had a Bosnian accent. The other one was shorter, square-built, once muscular but now with some extra weight on his frame. They both had slicked-back hair and pointy shoes. The look might have been retro, except Strumbić had a feeling their style was a hangover from the first time round. Whoever they were, they looked the sort who made sure the opposition limped off the pitch when they played a friendly game of football.

“He can make an appointment with my booking sergeant. I might be free next month. Of course, if you two were to start sucking each other off in here, I’d make sure you had an interview a lot quicker than that. I’m working vice this month.” He had to put some effort into cutting the veal. Maybe it was just the blunt knife.

“Heh. Hear that, Besim. The man made a joke,” said the skinny one to his companion. He turned back to Strumbić. “You probably don’t understand. This is a friendly invitation. We do unfriendly ones too.” The man smiled as if it cost him money.

Strumbić put his cutlery down and looked at them. They might have been regular hoods. Or they could have belonged to one of the security services. The
UDBA
often employed criminals, though sometimes it was hard to tell them apart from the secret policemen.

They didn’t show any ID, though that could have meant something or nothing. The secret police didn’t always feel the need to introduce themselves formally. On the other hand, they weren’t dragging him out of bed at three o’clock in the morning, so it probably wasn’t official and might not have been unfriendly.

“I guess you know what the proper channels are if you want a formal conversation.”

“Just a chat. And not with us. There’s somebody else who wants a word with you. It’s not far. It won’t take you long.”

Strumbić thought about it. These guys were too much like hicks to be secret police. But you could never be certain. If it was the security services and he made their lives difficult, they’d just try to kick his ass that much harder with their steel-capped boots. But that depended. The Croatian government might not allow them to kick his ass. On the other hand, if they were coming from Belgrade, they might not be inclined to ask the Croatian government if they could speak with him. After all, there wasn’t a lot of love or co-operation between the federal institutions and the Croatian government these days.

Still, whoever they were, they’d found him. Not that it would have been hard. They could have followed him from the police headquarters. They could have had an informant. This was Yugoslavia, after all. There were always snitches.

Strumbić weighed the probabilities. Criminal or operating on behalf of Belgrade? Maybe it was a setup. No. If it was a setup, they’d have pulled up next to him and bundled a rug over his head and thrown him into the boot. If they didn’t shoot him instead. Or they’d have taped a grenade to his car’s chassis, tying the pin to the wheel so that it went off when he drove away.

Things were uncertain enough in those days that it was worth cultivating friends everywhere. And if these guys weren’t the friendliest, at least they were polite. Who knew what would happen in the coming months. Favours granted now could be called in during more difficult times.

“If I was to go talk to this friend of yours, I’d be making life easier for you and less pleasant for myself. For instance, it would mean not finishing this very fine meal or this excellent beer.” Strumbić lay on a doleful expression, ignoring the piece of gristle in the middle of his plate.

“I’m sure our friend will make it worth your while.”

“I’d like to think so,” Strumbić said. Curiosity was getting the better of him. He figured he didn’t have much to lose other than the rest of the schnitzel. And it hadn’t been much of a schnitzel in the first place.

They didn’t drive far in the big Mercedes limousine, a model so recent he’d never seen one before. They stopped in the old town, near the cathedral. What few good restaurants and bars Zagreb still had were concentrated there. Had he been less lazy, Strumbić would have gone to one of them for lunch. But the weather was grim; it couldn’t decide whether to rain or snow.

They parked on a mostly pedestrianized street and went into one of the eighteenth-century village-style houses that remained in this corner of town. The driver, Besim, held the door open for him, but neither Bosnian followed him in.

The Metusalem Restaurant was empty and gloomy in the late winter light. A dim yellow lamp cast shaded light in a corner of the room, which was furnished largely in dark-stained wood, and showed a small old man sitting alone with his back to the wall. A waiter appeared from nowhere and led Strumbić to the table, where he pulled a chair out for him.

“Please, order yourself a drink,” said the old man. His voice was light and friendly. Strumbić asked for a Karlovačka beer.

“Thank you for allowing yourself to be dragged away from your lunch,” said the old man. “I think you’ll agree that an informal conversation right now is so much more pleasant and rewarding than having to do this another way.”

The waiter brought Strumbić’s beer in a glass and then left. The old man was drinking Coca-Cola. He looked oddly familiar, though Strumbić couldn’t tell why.

“If you don’t mind, I won’t introduce myself. It doesn’t really matter who I am; I’m just an intermediary. In fact, I’m retired. You can say I’m doing a favour for some friends.”

“Some friends in Belgrade?” Strumbić asked.

“Friends whose interest is to ensure the stability of the Yugoslav state, the homeland for which we fought so bitterly during the war against the fascists and for which we have struggled in the decades since.”

An old Communist,
Strumbić thought.
An old, well-connected Communist.
He knew the face, just couldn’t place it.

“God bless the proletariat,” said Strumbić, raising his glass. He took a long drink of beer while the man watched him coolly. His face was expressionless, oddly frozen.

At long last the old man spoke again. “My friends have noticed that certain sensitive files have been leaking from the organs of state security.”

“How terrible,” Strumbić said. “So you’d like the Zagreb police to investigate? I’m sure if your friends made a formal complaint, my superiors would do whatever they could to track down any thefts of official secrets from sources within this city. Not something I could help with, I’m afraid. I’m on vice for the next month. Helping them out.” He gave the old man a theatrical wink. “I’m sure your friends will be looking to do similar investigations in Belgrade and Ljubljana and Skopje and Sarajevo and everywhere else one might find leaky organs,” Strumbić added blandly.

“No. That’s not necessary. We know the files are leaking from the
UDBA
’s Zagreb offices.”

“Oh?” Strumbić said.

“Yes. And we know that they’re leaking through you.”

“That’s a serious allegation,” Strumbić said, mustering as much shock as he could.

“Yes, very serious.”

“It needs a considerable burden of proof.”

“No. I don’t think so. You see, my friends are not interested in a conventional prosecution. They know enough to be confident in their suspicions.”

Strumbić shifted uncomfortably.

“What they would like from you is the name of the person who has been passing to you official state secrets.”

“Mr. . . .” Strumbić paused meaningfully.

“My name is irrelevant.”

“In these difficult times a great deal of information is finding its way into the wrong hands. I may have seen one or two things and passed them on to interested parties — though this is not an admission of anything — but to pick me out is like a fisherman casting a hook for a particular sardine.”

“My friends are interested in one specific file. A file they traced to you. Now they want to know who gave it to you.”

Strumbić raised his hands as if in supplication to some god of memory, but the old man was having none of it.

“The file concerns Pilgrim.”

“What?” The name meant nothing to Strumbić.

“Pilgrim. Who gave it to you?”

“Much as I’d like to help . . .” Whatever the file was about, there’d have been only one source; della Torre was the only person Strumbić had got anything from.

“Detective, I don’t think you understand the position you find yourself in. All that hard-earned money of yours — my friends think that you are fully deserving of it. Fully. Yugoslavia’s third way has always left open scope for smaller-scale capitalism within the embrace of a wider socialist ideal. You are a small businessman and a valued technocrat. Perhaps you could benefit from closer ties to Belgrade in the future. Belgrade can be a very good friend, if you know the right people there. It would mean not having to run away to, where is it? Šipan. Or Varaždin. Or Opatija. Though I understand it might be very tempting to go with one of your lady friends. Renata, is it? Or perhaps you are reconciled to a long, happy retirement with your wife. But I’m afraid not everyone sees things as my friends do. Many, many people in senior positions in the Yugoslav government would wish to take away what you have earned through your industry. And to punish you for your presumption.”

Strumbić smiled, but his blood froze at how much this man seemed to know about him.

“That’s all hearsay, malicious gossip.”

“Detective, our burden of proof is different from a court of law’s. Belgrade and Zagreb may have their differences, but the organs of the State still have some sway here. And even if the State were challenged now, would you bet against martial law being imposed were things to degenerate further? Do you think that if the Yugoslav army took control you would still feel the same sense of immunity?”

Strumbić nodded in appreciation. He’d always been a deft chess player. When he was young, members of his chess club, the undergraduates and professionals, would patronize him as an uneducated boor, a lowly traffic cop. That was until they found their queens pinned by a merciless knight, forked and defeated from nowhere. And if they’d really offended Strumbić during the course of the game, there would be another beating to follow in a dark alley. He was starting to feel like one of those undergraduates. But he wasn’t giving up the game altogether.

“Information has a price. So far, all I’ve had in return for my time is a beer to replace the one I had to abandon at lunch,” he said.

“Very good. It is admirable that you see sense. Of course we would look to come to some agreeable arrangement. But I suggest we negotiate along Anglo-Saxon rather than Balkan lines.”

“Oh?” Strumbić wasn’t quite sure what the man meant.

“I give you a proposal and you accept it.”

“That’s not the way I usually work. These things have to be carefully considered . . .”

“Fifteen thousand.”

“Marks?”

“What else?”

“You are a shrewd businessman. That was exactly the number I had in mind,” Strumbić said.

“That’s not all. We wish help in arranging our interview with the source of your information.”

“But of course. I’ll give him a call now and get him up here. Assuming you have the money?”

“No, I think it can wait for the weekend. Make yourself available. Tell the gentlemen outside where you can be found. They will come to you and pay you once you’ve fulfilled your part of the agreement.”

Strumbić rose and held his hand out, but the old man ignored it. So instead he turned to leave.