by Fritz Galt
A happy image of Tammy and his kids flickered in his mind. He would say nothing about them. He would take their memory to his grave.
Chapter 9
Powerful cars drove uphill into Mick’s diplomatic housing area, the roar of their engines breaking the morning stillness.
Mick had been scanning local papers for news of his scrape on Gypsy Island. No news so far. He set the paper down and glanced out his Mylar-covered window.
He could tell by the late American car models that they were from his embassy. He lunged past Zvonko, his bleary-eyed guard, and stepped outside. The armor-plated Chevy Suburbans squealed to a halt at the doctor’s house.
Mick put on some loafers and cut through another diplomat’s back yard to get there.
When he arrived at the walkway in front of the doctor’s house, a man’s body was lying on the ground. A local embassy guard was placing a white sheet over the stiff corpse.
“Who is it?” Mick asked.
The guard respectfully lifted the corner of the sheet to show him Dr. Moore’s disfigured face. Through the mud and burn marks, he could tell the good doctor had met a gruesome end.
Mick turned toward the doctor’s house. The embassy staff stood back to let him enter.
Tammy sat in the dining room with her two preschool-aged children. She waited pensively at the dark polished dining room table, her back erect, her fingers fidgeting.
Mick’s heart tumbled out.
He grabbed the phone in the entryway and dialed the embassy. “Come to the doctor’s house right away,” he told Natalie.
Then he took Tammy into the living room where the seating was more comfortable. She sat next to him on the sofa and stared at the blank television screen.
“Did you discover him?” Mick asked.
She nodded. “I called the embassy. But I could tell he’s dead.”
Surely she had seen the cigarette burns on his face and the twisted angles of his arms. Mick had no idea why anyone would do such a thing, but somehow he felt deeply responsible.
Ed Carrigan barged into the house next. Exercising his full authority as the embassy’s Chargé d’Affaires, he grabbed the phone and requested the Belgrade police.
“Jesus Christ, Tammy,” Mick said. “I don’t think anybody saw this coming.”
And then her tears began.
She should have spent a normal morning sending the two kids off to preschool, reading in preparation for a book group, or perhaps washing a load of laundry as the sun streamed through the enormous windows.
Instead, her husband was dead on the walkway in front of her house. And it was not a simple death.
She became inconsolable, but it was good that she cried. She was defenseless against the insane forces that shaped her life. Her emotions shook her body. There was no way to bring her husband back, and it was best that she recognize it immediately.
He looked through the thin gauze of the sheer curtains. Tears in his eyes blurred the figures of men circling the body. The sun, hard and yellow, pierced the sky where the helicopter had hovered the previous day.
There was something he could do. Once Mick flushed his brother out of the brush, he would hold Alec personally accountable for the doctor’s death. He had learned that lesson the hard way. You don’t let good people die.
He saw Natalie pull the Jeep through a crowd of onlookers. She whisked her shoulder-length hair behind her ears and hurried past the white shroud. Mick heard her heels echo in the tile entryway. Her clear blue eyes momentarily engaged his. He shrugged grimly and directed her attention to Tammy.
“I’m so sorry,” she said.
Tammy had half risen to greet her.
Natalie hugged Tammy and they sat together sobbing.
Mick crossed to the dining room where the children sat at the table watching in confusion. Jake was trying to behave, but Tabitha was on the verge of tears.
“Do we have school?” Jake asked.
They had no idea what had happened. And once they learned, it would take a lifetime to comprehend.
“Do you want to go upstairs for a while?” Mick urged.
“I have a new computer game,” Jake said.
“Tabitha, why don’t you join us.”
“Okay.” She was three, a year younger than her brother.
The three walked upstairs, and Mick sat them on a bench in the sunlight.
He cleared his throat. He had their full attention, but didn’t know what to say.
“Before we play any games, I want to tell you something. Your father was a great man. He was a doctor who helped many sick people to get well. Your father got very sick and couldn’t live any more. We’ll remember him every day because he had so much courage.”
He knew that he was rambling, but the children slowly began to understand what he was saying. He could only cushion the fall.
“Your mother will need a lot of help from both of you.”
Both kids nodded. They were fine kids, like their parents.
He looked down at the driveway. Police were circling the Jeep. They would find the Marine’s blood.
“Can you play together for a while?”
“Don’t leave us,” Tabitha cried.
“Start up the computer, okay?”
They nodded uncertainly, and he flew down the steps. “Natalie, the keys.”
She reached into her purse, which was already open for tissues. He took the keys without a word and bounded out the front door.
He trotted up to the Jeep and greeted the men in uniform. They had opened the passenger door and were examining the bloodstains.
He had to distract them.
“Just a moment,” he said. The men didn’t prevent him from climbing in. He pulled the passenger door shut, honked the horn and backed through the gawkers on the driveway.
The car flew over the crown of the hill, entered the stream of traffic without stopping and sped, his foot frozen to the accelerator, down the incline onto his own street and driveway.
In one swift, mechanical motion, he jumped out and unlocked and opened the garage door.
Back in the car, he peeled rubber and shot into the garage. He didn’t breathe again until he had closed and secured the garage door.
He brushed past Zvonko and entered the house.
He went straight for the bathroom, where he stood there holding his head. He couldn’t stop the roar of blood in his ears. He had ceased to think.
He stripped down and walked into the shower. He turned the hot water on and let it run over his scalp and his knotted shoulders.
It splashed all over the bathroom, for the shower was designed without a door or curtain.
What the hell was he doing in that country after all? He was just a lightning rod for disaster. Alec’s machine gun fire. Tyrone’s stabbing. Now John was dead.
He could have canceled the Gypsy Island op altogether. Letting those kid Marines from Brooklyn and El Paso play undercover cop in a foreign land had put their lives in jeopardy and had probably put an end to John’s life. Was it his job to slaughter all remaining Americans at post?
As steam enveloped the tiny room, he began to see more clearly. The embassy was poorly equipped to handle an operation, much less his insane brother. A trained killer would have a field day with the remaining officers. Back in Washington, his boss, Director Gutman, had been right. They had to abandon the mission, chalk everything up as a loss.
John had fallen prey to everyone else’s zeal.
His blood stopped pounding. He was thinking clearly now. This was not just about foreign currency. Pinpointing low-life German miscreants who circumvented UN sanctions should not have provoked such deadly revenge. Something larger was at stake in Yugoslavia.
…which wasn’t his job. He closed his eyes. One man alone couldn’t fix Yugoslavia.
Yet it was his last chance to set things right in the Balkans. It was the kind of thing the UN stunk at and he did well. It was, ultimately, the only thing that could save him.
In the next few days, he would keep a low profile and a cool head. Per Ed’s instructions and in the doctor’s name he would complete the foreign currency investigation. Meanwhile, he would press those involved for information on the larger scheme that was afoot. It might even lead to Alec.
Through the drumming shower spray, he heard his telephone ring.
Chapter 10
Dripping wet and a towel around his waist, Mick picked up the ringing phone.
“Meet me at my office,” an old Serb said. The line went dead.
Mick could barely make out the words, but the man’s voice was unmistakable. It was Professor Cercic, Alec’s former academic advisor.
He put on jeans and a shirt and tossed his black fisherman’s hat on top of his head. But he wasn’t about to let the Jeep out of the garage.
To get downtown, he’d find a taxi.
In order to conserve gas, taxis sat parked along the curb of a long hill, and to move forward in line, the drivers would simply release their hand brakes and roll downhill. The forward momentum also probably helped them start their engines once they had a passenger.
Mick let his own momentum take his feet down the sidewalk to the bottom of the hill. There, he yanked on the paper-thin door of the Skoda sitting first in line. The cabby looked well rested.
“Belgrade University. Two dollars,” Mick said, and hopped in the back seat.
The driver nodded his consent and gunned across the tram tracks onto the main street into town.
In hard times, a cab driver was happy to accept American dollars. Mick just prayed that no peasant just off the farm decided to step into the road that moment.
The cab let him off at the Rector’s Building. True to their agricultural roots, the city’s workers kept early hours. The professor’s day would be half over.
Mick squeezed into the stuffy old office. A frail man with bushy gray eyebrows, Professor Cercic set his newspaper aside. Mick leaned left and they kissed cheeks, three times, the Slavic way in honor of the Holy Trinity.
“Goodness, you’re fast.” The professor looked nervously at the ceiling and walls.
They dropped into the only two chairs in the office. Mick had to straighten up to see over the stack of books on the desk.
Cercic offered a cigarette that Mick declined, then lit up anyway. “Have you read my latest anthology of the Draza Mihailovic writings?”
“I’ve been away. But a tome on Chetnik battle strategy should hit the bestseller list. In Serbia.”
The professor nodded, but didn’t laugh.
What was on his mind? And how did he know that Mick was back in town?
They had spent many afternoons in Belgrade discussing military history along with Alec. As a Fulbright scholar studying military history, Alec had found the perfect cover.
With the onset of war, however, Alec’s relationship with the professor became strained. Belgrade University ceased to host American scholars and Yugoslavia dropped their participation in the Fulbright Commission.
After the embassy canceled all academic and cultural exchanges, Alec was left to fend for himself academically and personally in a university overrun by ultra-nationalist students and polarized professors.
Only through persistent visits, occasional dinners and aid to his daughter in the United States, had Alec and Mick maintained contact with Professor Cercic.
Moving slower than a man of sixty should, the professor leaned forward. “I noticed that your notebook was missing.”
Mick frowned. Had the professor confused him with his brother? Perhaps Mick hadn’t interpreted the Serbian correctly.
The old man looked at the walls and pointed with his chin at the light fixture on the ceiling.
It was a warning. Even a professor’s office would be bugged. “Yes, it seems my notebook is missing. I’ve looked everywhere.”
“Perhaps you left it downstairs.”
“That sounds likely.”
“I haven’t been down there in several days. Should we look?”
“Of course, if you have the time.”
Cercic laughed and his shoulders relaxed. “These days I have plenty of time.”
The steps spiraled down tightly to the War Library.
A woman in a heavy sweater and light blue housekeeper’s uniform sat at a desk before the locked door.
“Your pass, professor?” She busily shifted her hands around her desk as if to straighten it up.
“Here you go, Gordana.” He held out his identity card.
“I’m told you need a different pass today. You need one with a red stripe across the front. Like this.” She pulled her own from a desk drawer.
“Who gave those instructions?” the professor growled.
“I got a phone call yesterday. I’ve turned back several students already. Nobody has had the pass.”
“Well, neither do I. But, after all, I’m not a student.” His voice was firm, but kind.
She smiled with understanding. “Tomorrow I’ll ask you to present the new pass.”
She stood up, pulled a key from her desk drawer, unlocked the wooden door before her and let them enter.
The room was cold and musty with the smell of books. Light from outdoors illuminated only the top shelves. Based on the disorderly clutter and thick layer of dust, scholars rarely came down there.
What a shame. After all, it seemed that most great Serbian works dealt with war.
Gordana clicked on the lights. A few rays fell on what could only be described as a crime scene. Shattered glass littered the floor. A thin carpet lay discarded to one side. Her hand shot to her mouth. Serbia’s national icon was gone.
Mick glanced at the professor, who observed his reaction.
“I’ll call the police,” Gordana said, and ran out.
Mick couldn’t believe it. The Karta had clearly been stolen.
Serbia’s greatest triumph as a nation was its pre-Ottoman empire. Its borders extended like the tentacles of an octopus north and west to the Austro‑Hungarian borders, east over the Danube into much of Romania’s Walachia region, and south through the newly independent nation of Macedonia, almost to the present Greek border. It was a proud nation with a democratic tradition, a beloved monarch and a literary culture.
Every country seemed to have its defining achievement. The English had their Magna Carta, and the Americans their Declaration of Independence. For Serbs it was a map, painted on animal skin for King Stefan Dusan, depicting the full extent of his empire in minute geographical detail.
It was simply called “Karta.” With the Slavic absence of articles in speech, objects often took on a metaphysical quality. It wasn’t known as “The Map.” It was simply called “Map.” The Serbs adored it. They stored it more carefully than any other artifact in the country. It had lain in Serbia’s only climate-controlled display case. Not only sealed under glass, it had been locked and guarded. Now the glass was shattered and it was missing.
Mick raised an eyebrow at the professor. The old man had revealed to him a fact so grave that concealing the theft could amount to treason before a military tribunal.
It was clear the perpetrator had not tried to cover up the crime. Nor had anyone investigated it. The crime smelled fresh.
The professor stepped over to a bookcase. The soles of his shoes collected splinters of glass as he walked. Mick watched as he approached a collection of treatises on early Serbian Orthodox monasteries.
The professor pulled out a leather-bound book with gilt lettering. Mick could barely make out the Cyrillic characters. “Ravanica.”
He had heard of the monastery that was reachable by car several hours south of Belgrade.
“Be there tomorrow morning early,” the professor whispered hoarsely. Then he carefully replaced the book.
They found Gordana by her desk, the telephone receiver still in her trembling hand. “The police are on their way. T
hey’re also calling in the Ministry of Internal Affairs.”
“It’s not your fault,” Cercic said kindly.
Gordana sank into her seat.
Mick shuddered as he stepped outside. The room left an icy chill within him.
Revered as it was, the map was rarely displayed in public. But it was seared into the Serbs’ collective imagination. Should someone elevate it once again, with all its historical weight, Serbs would trample all over their neighbors to reclaim their former glory. Should someone destroy it, they would incur the wrath of a nation.
Mick watched sunlight struggle through a dull brown haze. People on the congested street were unaware of the historical crime that had just been discovered. But soon the truth would come out and shake the nation to its foundation.
“Let’s meet for lunch,” Mick said gently to Natalie over the phone. It was more of a request than a suggestion.
“After this morning, I have absolutely no appetite.”
Like Mick, she was still shaken by the killing. And he got the impression that she thought he wasn’t altogether blameless.
“I’ve been hankering for the American Club,” he persisted.
“Fine.”
The façade of the American Embassy in Belgrade had once been two apartment buildings separated by a large single-family residence. Now the three buildings were connected and protected by a ring of large concrete planters.
The facility was too large for America’s current needs. In the past, traveling from northwest to southeast, one could pass through the Yugoslav republics of Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Montenegro, Serbia and Macedonia. With republics seceding right and left, only Serbia and Montenegro remained in Yugoslavia and fell under the embassy’s purview.
Mick walked out of the dull roar of traffic and entered the club from a side entrance. Once a lively watering hole for businessmen, scholars and diplomats, it had become a shell of its former self.
He found Natalie sitting alone in the cafeteria-style restaurant, her hands gripping a cup of coffee. It was past lunch hour, and patrons had long since returned to work.
