Immortal Hate (Harry Bauer Book 5)

by Blake Banner

  “You are soldier, yes?”

  I nodded. He drained his drink and pushed his empty glass toward Helen for her to refill it. As she did he started to talk.

  “April 1st, 1991, Serb majority in Krajina declared independence. They will secede from Croatia and align with Serbia. This is beginning of path to war. Tito is dead, Yugoslavia is dead, war is coming to Balkans. And when Croatia is declare independence, Croatian Serbs are establishing SAO of Western Slavonia, of Eastern Slavonia, Baranja, Western Srijem…,” he accepted the glass Helen handed him and sipped carefully, shrugged and went on, “…and establish Republic of Serbian Krajina. So, this makes brave other Serbian majorities, and they are begin to unite. Serbia becomes strong, and other areas are scared. The old, immortal hate, which was sleeping under Tito, begins now to wake up, and soon the old family feuds, old vengeance come back, and the atrocities begin.”

  The wind groaned. The shutters creaked and rattled. The candles and the lamps guttered and dull light and shadow wavered across the walls.

  “You know the story of Vukovar?”

  I sipped whisky and nodded. “Of course.”

  He smiled and grunted. “You know what you read in the papers, what you saw on TV. But you don’t know the story of Vukovar. People talk!” He raised his hands up in the air and looked around, like he was confronted on all sides by stupidity. “People talk, ‘Oh, he is Serbian, he is from Croatia, oh, she is from Montenegro!’ But for long, long time we all live as Yugoslavs!” He pounded his chest. “We were Yugoslav! And people who talk don’t know, Serbs marry Croats, marry Montenegran. No! Not all the time, is true. But it happened. And suddenly you see Croat wife and Serbian husband fighting ten mile away from each other. And she has his baby—in her arms—and if they see each other, they must kill! This is madness!” He raised his fists to his forehead and brought them down softly on the table, shaking his head. “This was madness of death of Yugoslavia. Families broken, children broken.”

  He paused, moving his glass in small circles, staring at the deep amber liquid. After a while he said to the glass, raising one eyebrow, “Am I a Serb?” He looked up at me, like he expected me to answer. “My mother was Croat. My father was Serb. So what am I?” He waited a moment, hunched his shoulders and spread his hands, shaking his head at the apparent madness. “I think: ‘I am human being!’ But no, you cannot be just human being only.” He laughed suddenly. “You cannot be just human being. God, he tell us, ‘You must be Serb!’ ‘You must be Croat!’ But my mother is Croat and my father is Serb. And when communist Tito was alive, they love each other and we have happy family. You can explain this to me?”

  I shook my head. “No.”

  “Yugoslav army, which is now Serbian army, march into Vukovar, with paramilitary. They destroy town, kill many people, many people! Women and children dead in streets, everywhere.

  “Red Cross negotiate evacuation of hospital of Vukovar. But JNA—Yugoslav Army—say no. Yugoslav army is Serbian army now, and they say no, no evacuation. Not evacuate hospital. And they take more than three hundred Croatian people from hospital, take them to farm, outside town, in the south. Farm belong to one Serbian, Ovčara farm.” His face became suddenly twisted with anger and hate. “There, prisoners are torture, beaten—with sticks, iron stick, boots, hands tied with wire,” he put his hands behind his back to illustrate, “for many hours, men, women. And after, they are taken out, groups of ten or twenty, and executed.”

  He stared at me for a long moment, holding my eye. Then he leaned forward and his eyes and his cheeks were red.

  “These people are from hospital. There are nurses and doctors. Some nurses and doctors are released and can go to UN mission, but not all. My mother is Croat nurse in Vukovar hospital. She cannot go to UN.” He put his wrists together in front of my face. “They tie her wrists with wire coat hanger, they kick her, stamp, rape her, then shoot her in the head and put in big hole in the ground. Mass grave. Colonel Kostas Marcović do this. Others go to trial, die in prison, but not Kostas. He escape.”

  Outside the wind had grabbed hold of a garbage pail or a small dumpster and was dragging it down the road, slamming it against cars and walls as it went. We let the noise pass and fade and after a moment I asked him, “There is a problem with your story, Colonel. If you are not Colonel Kostas Marcović, there is only one other guy who can be, and that’s Kostadin Milojević.” He nodded. I went on, “But you have been here longer than he has. You didn’t follow him here. You came first, and he followed you.”

  He smiled, and after a moment he chuckled and drained his glass.

  “He doesn’t even know I exist.” He shrugged and made a face like maybe that wasn’t true anymore. “Well, now he knows I exist. But he think like you: I was here first so I am not hunting him. He thinks I am refugee, like him. We avoid. We do not talk.” He grunted softly and went quiet for a bit, then asked, “You are hunter, Mr. Friedman?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “Then you know that sometimes, especially with cats, the predator can use strategy and is going ahead, to wait for the prey. She knows the prey must go to the water, or from the water to a safe place where he lives. And the cat, she is go ahead, and wait, and when the prey is passing, strike and kill!”

  I gave a small laugh and shook my head. “I don’t buy it, Colonel. Your prey has been to the water, drunk, had a damn bath, sunbathed, strolled home, kicked back and relaxed and is currently building a six-room extension to the warren, and you’re still just looking broody and watching. You plan to avenge what he did by watching this guy die of old age? I have to tell you, pal, that’s not how revenge works.”

  He scowled at the table, and then turned baleful, red eyes on me. “But there is big difference between you and me, Mr. Friedman!” He pointed a savage finger at me and his face contracted with anger. “You are killer! I am not!”

  He looked away, stared at Helen for a moment and then back at me. His eyes flooded with tears.

  “I am not killer! Yes! I come, to kill him. That was my intention. I knew he has contacts with Russians. I talk to them, pay money. I risk my life to find out. Finally, in Zagreb, I find a man, one Russian, who has spoken with Colonel Kostas Marcović and sold him escape service. I go, I talk to him. At first he is going to kill me, but I tell him no, no, I pay plenty of money. He is my family. I need find him to help him. So they let me to live, but tell me they have give Marcović name of contact in South America, in Colombia. He is in Medellin, and contact can give him new identity. He give me same name. I pay more money, I travel long way to Colombia. Again I am risk my life, again I am explain: he is family, I must help him. And South American contact tell me, Colonel Kostas Marcović is disappear in jungle, making an exploration.” He raised both hands, hunched his shoulders and made a face like he had no damn patience with the explanation, “He is looking for El Dorado or something bullshit like this! Anyway he will die. He is already dead! Forever! But in two year one Kostadin Milojević will arrive in Colombia, travel through Venezuela, and then go to make his home in St. George. This new man, I understand, is in reality Colonel Kostas Marcović, reborn! So,” He nodded elaborately, “I am think to myself, ‘I am become one hunter. I am become like cat. I go ahead and I wait…’”

  Outside the wind rose suddenly to a frenzied shriek. Something struck the wall and then clattered against the shutters. The rain was a constant hiss, rising occasionally to a roar.

  “Why didn’t you kill him when he arrived?”

  “Because of Bill, Helen’s father. In the beginning he believes I am a refugee from Serbia, and he investigate. But very soon he come to an impenetrable wall in Colombia. He can get no information, and he knows that it is Bloque Meta stopping him. This confirm for him that his suspicion is right. So he come to see me and we talk.” He sighed heavily. “I tell him my story, and in the end he believe me. But he tell me, ‘Constantine, revenge is one cycle of immortal hate, and it lead only to Hell. You do not need to forgive—some things you
cannot forgive—must not forgive!—but it is necessary not to perpetuate.’” He laughed suddenly. “I did not pay him attention. I was decided to kill Colonel Kostas Marcović. And when he come to the island I begin to make preparations, and I go to his house.” He clenched his fist. “I am going to kill this man! And I am hiding, with my gun, and he is here! Right here! Two, three meter away, and I cannot!”

  He sagged and shook his head. “I am not a killer, Mr. Friedman. I am not like you. I am not like him. He killed my mother, and so many innocent people just because…” He spread his hands and shook his head. “Because why? Because they are Croat! And he is right here in front of me and I must to punish him, but the gun is shaking in my hand, and I cannot. I run. I piss myself. But I cannot kill.” He made a small, reluctant gesture with his hands. “So I wait and I tell myself, ‘Soon, one day…’ And then I tell myself, ‘It is enough that he knows that I am here, and every day I make him to remember what he has done.’”

  We sat in silence for a moment, listening to the urgent rattle of the shutters.

  “Did you ever talk to him?”

  “We never talk.”

  “You are certain it’s him?”

  “In Colombia they tell me, his name will be Kostadin Milojević. This man is Kostadin Milojević. It is him.” He shrugged again. “Kostadin Milojević, Kostas Marcović. Is same, convenient also for change official documents if necessary.”

  I turned to Helen. “You know him?”

  “Of course. He’s been here for years.”

  “You buy this story?”

  Her eyes went wide. “You can’t possibly ask me to make that judgment!”

  I turned back to Constantino. “Have you any evidence to support this story?”

  “I don’t need to prove nothing. It is you who need prove I am Colonel Kostas Marcović.”

  “This is not a court with a judge and jury applying the rule of law, Colonel. I have a job which I am required to execute. If you have information or evidence that proves you are not Marcović, you had better let me have it.”

  His expression was of disgust and defiance. He gave his head a small shake. “I can prove nothing.”

  I drained my glass and stood.

  “In that case we need to go to Kostadin Milojević’s house to talk to him, and then we need to go to your house, so I can see for myself what you have and haven’t got, and what you can and cannot prove.”

  Fifteen

  They both stared at me in the wavering light of the lamps and the candles. Helen said:

  “Now?”

  I jerked my head at the Serbian. “He got here, didn’t he?”

  He answered, “Before storm. You cannot to my house in storm! Is high up, very up, road is river!”

  I turned to Helen. “What about Kostadin Milojević’s place?”

  She shook her head. “You’re out of your mind.”

  “That’s not an answer.”

  Her face flushed. “He lives a mile outside town! The roads will be impassable! And the wind will be uprooting trees and tearing roofs off houses!”

  “You can drive or you can give me the keys to the Toyota. You choose.”

  “God damn you!”

  She stood and stormed to the kitchen. Constantino was watching me with eyes that were beginning to look scared.

  “You are insane,” he said. “These storms are dangerous. People die…”

  “People die all the time, Colonel, even when there are no storms.” I held his eye. “You know that.”

  “Why do you call me colonel? You do not know this. I have told you truth.”

  I nodded. “That’s why we’re going to Milojević’s place, to find out.”

  “And then…?”

  “Then somebody has to pay the check. Somebody goes home, and somebody checks out.”

  “You feel nothing?”

  “It’s not for me to feel, Colonel. It’s Colonel Kostas Marcović who needs to feel something. I am just here to take out the trash, and make the world a little cleaner. What about your man, the driver?”

  “He is nobody. He knows nothing. He will wait here for me.” He faltered and repeated, “He will wait…”

  Helen came out of the kitchen with her cheeks flushed and the keys to the Toyota swinging from her fingers.

  “You are a stupid, obstinate, dangerous man! And you may get us all killed tonight! We live here! We know this island! You cannot go out in a storm like this!”

  I nodded. “Noted. Give me the keys and you stay here.” I held out my hand. She stormed past me and made her way to the door. In the kitchen doorway, Nanny’s sons stood, black silhouettes, watching. I jerked my head at Constantino.

  “Let’s go.”

  He stood and pulled on his coat and hat. He scowled at me a moment, then headed, hunched and stiff, for where Helen was pushing open the shutters. The gale wrenched the shutters from her fingers and hammered them against the wall. Sheets of rain lashed at her, saturating her hair and her clothes in seconds. She turned and screamed at me over the howling of the hurricane, pointing behind her at the dark street, glistening with torrents of water.

  “You want to go driving in this? You’re mad! You’re out of your mind!”

  I gently propelled Constantino toward the door. “Maybe so, Helen, but at least we can guarantee we won’t be followed, and we’ll find Milojević at home. Now either get in the truck or give me the key.”

  She made a noise that was inarticulate but expressive, stamped out into the lashing, howling gloom and stopped, covering her face with her arms. The truck was just six paces away. I took the keys from her and hunched through the screaming gale. Across the road the palms were tossing and bending almost horizontal in a wet mist of deluge. A palm leaf, torn from a tree, sailed past and cartwheeled down the road. If it had struck someone it would have killed them.

  I wrenched open the driver’s door and clambered in, wiping water from my eyes. I fired up the engine, mounted the sidewalk and pulled in close to the door. Helen helped Constantino into the back, then climbed into the passenger seat beside me, heaving the door closed with both hands.

  “Which way?”

  “Do a U-turn and go down the hill, left at the intersection and drive out of the town.”

  That was easier to say than it was to do. The hill was a torrent of water six inches deep and climbing. The wind was coming up the hill and threatened to roll the truck as I turned it around. I ground down the hill in second gear with the windshield flooded with water, not seeing a damned thing as I went. I leaned out the side window, but the wind lashed stinging needles in my face, blinding me and making it impossible to breathe. We crawled to the corner and turned. The water surged around the wheels of the truck and then the gale was coming at us from the right, battering the vehicle, making it swerve and rock on the uneven road, lurching over rocks and skidding in potholes filled with mud and water. But here at least I could lean out the window, because the gale was coming from the far side, and I could make out a track that was little more than the space between dry-stone walls. On either side, tall palms and tall, spindly pine trees twisted and whipped in the wind, their branches stretched out, streaming in the gale, threatening to be torn off at any moment. Above, thick, blue-black clouds churned and boiled, and spilled a billion tons of water, turning the fields into marshes and flooding the tracks that ran between them. We ground on, picking our way painfully slowly through the deep, gray light.

  Eventually Helen pointed ahead, peering past me at the fields outside.

  “At the end here,” she said, “the road splits and there is a track to the left. It’s beaten earth, so it will be all mud now.”

  She was right. We lurched, over rocks and potholes to a place where the road branched to the right, and on the left, what had been a drive, but was now a river running between two fields, disgorged mud and sludge onto the road in thick eddies. I slowed and spun the wheel, and we plowed into the stream. Now the gale was behind us, driving us forward an
d making the wheels spin and slide in two feet of thick liquid. But we lurched forward, grinding in first gear, steadily climbing the slight incline toward a dark, tossing woodland through which I could now see the faint glimmer of lights.

  Another five minutes of slithering and sliding brought us around the woodland and into a clearing. At the far end there was a house, a curious mixture of medieval castle and Mexican adobe, with flat terraced roofs and tall towers. There were few windows, but the ones there were, were plate glass and from within I could now see the flickering light of oil lamps and candles.

  The path of mud and water we were on cut through the clearing to the front of the house, where three broad steps rose to a flooded porch from which a wooden veranda had been ripped, and strewn across the sludge and the waterlogged grass.

  I followed that path, with the wheels slithering and sliding, occasionally losing their grip, until we came to the porch, where I drove up the three steps and parked, sheltering the front door.

  Helen clambered out and I turned to Constantino in the back seat. He shook his head.

  “I don’t want to go into this house.”

  I pulled the Sig from my waistband and pointed it at his head. “I don’t much care what you want to do, Colonel. Climb out or I’ll shoot you dead right here. Your choice.”

  He slid across the seat, not in much of a hurry, and climbed out of the door. I climbed out too. We were protected by the Toyota, and by the wall of trees just fifty paces away. I hammered on the door. A palm branch smashed against the Toyota, making us all duck. Then the door of the house wrenched open and a man stood gaping at us.

  He was roughly the same age as Constantino, maybe a little younger. He was five ten or eleven, with powerful shoulders and a bull neck. He was bald and the thick glasses on his nose reflected the light from the headlamps of the truck. He stared at us each in turn until I said, “Are you Colonel Kostas Marcović?”