Testimony

by Scott Turow

  “Ferko goes runnin back to Boldo and says, ‘I think we just sold shit to Kajevic,’ and Boldo laughs in his face. ‘Who cares? NATO and the Americans won’t know anything about this. They haven’t caught Kajevic for ten years and there’s barely any of them left to catch him now.’

  “Now Ferko, there’s a lot here he don’t like. First off, he don’t like Boldo. Nobody does. He especially don’t like Kajevic, who killed lots of Gypsies. And he don’t like losin his job with me either, since I pay better than Boldo. But worst of all, what he really don’t care for is gettin caught. Because he knows that if the Bosnians ever get wind that he had to do with sellin weapons to Kajevic, they will peel the flesh off him one square inch at a time and fill each wound with that famous Tuzla salt. No exaggeration. None at all. And thanks to Boldo, he, Ferko, is the guy everybody in Doboj saw deliverin that shit.”

  “So you got Ferko to tell Army Intelligence about Kajevic?”

  “No, Boom, I went to Intelligence. Was me. I said, ‘I have this Gypsy driver who swears some of them sold some black-market shit to these guys hiding out in Doboj and he’s sure it’s Kajevic.’

  “Of course, Intelligence, they’re like, ‘Well, we gotta talk to him,’ and I’m like, ‘Negative on that. Gypsies don’t rat out Gypsies. The Roma won’t just drown this bird in Lake Pannonica. They’ll excommunicate his whole family.’ Which is true by the way. ‘Here’s the coordinates,’ I tell them. ‘Do a surveillance and see for yourselves.’”

  “But you didn’t mention the weapons Ferko delivered?”

  “Never. I said the guy I heard this from was a car thief, and that’s all I know. I was tryin to cover Ferko. And Merry. Even that prick Roger. And me. If they balled up Boldo, he’d blame it all on me. After all, I’m a fuckin white man.”

  “So to speak.”

  She smiled. “So to speak.” She took a second to raise her thumb to her teeth. The determination with which she bit and tore at herself was not pleasant to watch. “But, Boom, honest to God, it never dawned on me that Intelligence wouldn’t realize Kajevic and his Tigers were armed to the teeth. How fuckin stupid do you have to be to know an arms convoy has gone missin thirty kilometers away and not wonder if Kajevic got some of that shit? But it’s the military, Boom. One hand don’t know about the other. The NATO guys who are looking for my trucks have decided it was jihadis who stole them. And to this day, I don’t know why. Some hot tip they had.

  “So Kajevic was waitin for Special Forces with firepower they flat-ass never figured on. We got four dead Americans and eight more in various states of blown-to-shit, and I’m in deeper now than I could ever imagine.

  “And within a week, it gets worse. First, Kajevic has sent word that he’s shootin every Roma in Barupra, and Ferko is givin me that I gotta protect him and them.

  “And Intelligence, they are just beside themselves. They don’t need nobody to tell them they screwed the pooch, and they’re tryin to figure how. And they come back on me sayin, ‘No bullshit now, we gotta talk to your source.’

  “So instead, after about a day I tell them the truth. Sort of. I say, ‘I looked a little harder, and them damn Gypsies spun me. They stole weapons from that convoy and sold them to Kajevic and they still have thousands more. And now, because my guy did the right thing and told me about Kajevic, him and his Tigers want to come back and wipe out the whole camp.’

  “And of course, the Intelligence guys at first, they’re saying, ‘Sounds like a good idea, fuck those fuckers anyway. We sure as shit ain’t gonna protect a bunch of people who sold out our troops.’

  “I’m like, ‘Understood, only we got some very big problems here. Which are gonna undermine our whole mission in this country. First, if those guns the Roma stole get sold to the Tigers or the Scorpions or some other paramilitary, who knows what hell they’ll raise? Or who gets killed or wounded tryin to disarm them? Maybe those Gypsy fuckers do what NATO thought and deliver those weapons to a bunch of jihadis who send them to Hezbollah. Or imagine Kajevic actually does go into Barupra and kills them all. How does all this peacekeeping shit look after that? There ain’t no happy ending here. We gotta do something and we gotta do it quick.’

  “And the guys I’m talkin to, they say, ‘Well, we’ll take this to HQ,’ and I’m like, ‘You kick this upstairs and they’ll all pull their puds for a week, and somethin bad will happen in the meanwhile.’ Merry had just left and the new NATO commanders, they were still scoutin around for the latrines.

  “Naturally, the intel guys ask, ‘Well, you got a better idea?’ And I do. ‘Let’s get rid of the weapons and get rid of the Gypsies, too,’ I say. ‘Take the fuckers back to where they came from. We’ll let my guy—’”

  “Your guy is Ferko?”

  “Exactly. Let my guy stay here and say these masked men came in there and killed the rest of them.

  “And you know, Boom, it wasn’t such a bad plan. It had to be a vigilante kind of thing, cause no one in command would ever sign off on it. But it was no lack of volunteers from Intelligence.

  “So here I am finally directing an armed operation. Everybody had creds as CoroDyn civilian employees, and typed orders from NATO to cross the border. We timed it so Ferko and his sons and sons-in-laws were the sentries that night. We drove in from the back, on the mine side, and glided down into the valley, then secured the Cave and double-timed up into the village on foot. I knew Boldo would be sleepin with an AK, literally, so we surrounded his dumpy little hut to start. But Boldo, man, Boldo wasn’t hearin this Hands-up shit.”

  “Who shot him?” I asked.

  “Me. First, at least. I didn’t wait long neither when I saw that assault rifle in his hands. Twenty years in the Army, Boom, and I never shot at anything but a target before that. I probably could have waited another second, probably. I mean, I hated the fucker. But still. I don’t know. But once the bullets start flyin, people get nervous.” She peeked up at me. “This combat shit is way overrated,” she said. She reflected a second on that.

  “And you know, once one guy pulls the trigger, everybody wants to. And that’s how that poor boy got shot. By some lame-ass kid not much older than him. And Boom, I just stood there thinkin, Okay, now, you’re the one who figures everything out, figure out how you’re gonna make this good. It just didn’t seem possible there wasn’t some way to turn around something that took just a skinny little part of a second.” Attila shook her head for a long time.

  “What about the brother?”

  “He was the same kind of jerk as Boldo. He wouldn’t let his damn life get saved. So there he goes, too.

  “Joke is, the rest of it after that went down totally excellent—movin the Roma out, blowin the Cave. We had them in Kosovo and were back before Taps. And the Roma all took that stuff about Kajevic looking for them as gospel.”

  “And Ferko’s reward for snitching was that he stayed and took over Boldo’s business?” I asked.

  “Right. Somebody had to stick around to say, This is what happened. We needed the word to go out that the Roma were dead and gone.”

  “And Ferko wasn’t worried about Kajevic?”

  “You kiddin? He’d start to whimper whenever he heard Kajevic’s name. I wanted him to say Kajevic’s Tigers killed all the Roma, but Ferko was afraid to draw that kind of fire. Kajevic got what he wanted anyway. The Roma were gone. He probably thought the US had buried all them in the Cave.”

  “I believe he did.”

  “So it was what it was, sad and all: The Roma were gone and so were the arms Boldo stole. Until 2007 when your Gypsy honey showed up and said she’d heard these terrible rumors about a massacre and wanted an international investigation. I told Ferko just to blow her off, which he did several times, but then she says she’s got this idea about building up a circumstantial case, going to Mitrovica to find the relatives of the people in Barupra so they, the relatives, can say the Barupra people haven’t been heard from by any of their kin for years now. Well, that just sucks. If she starts in wal
kin round Mitrovica, jabberin in Romany, sooner or later she’ll know the whole damn story. And she’s no ordinary Gypsy.”

  “Hardly,” I said.

  “She’s going to start in demanding records and raisin hell in the newspapers. I called Roger.”

  “You were back on speaking terms?”

  “Not really. But he wasn’t about to ignore my call.”

  “And what did you want from Roger?”

  “I thought maybe he could get the Kosovars to keep her outta the country. Which he couldn’t. At least, that’s what he said.”

  “And did you tell Roger then that the Roma from Barupra were alive?”

  Attila stared down, pinching her thighs as she was thinking.

  “I started, but he didn’t want to hear any of that. He told me the Gypsies were my problem. But he didn’t mince no words that what happened with the shit we sent to Iraq still had a top-secret classification. People were talkin about Merry bein president, so all the ins and outs with those weapons, who stole what when, would get a lot of attention that would probably sink us all if reporters or the GAO got hold of it.

  “So we couldn’t let Esma get to Kosovo. I told Ferko, ‘You gotta talk to her and convince her everybody in Barupra is dead.’”

  “What was in it for Ferko?”

  “Well, I paid him for one thing. But there wasn’t anything he’d done he wanted to go braggin about neither—waylaying a convoy of weapons, or sellin to Kajevic, or tippin me off? There was plenty he needed to hide. So best for everybody if she bought that story.”

  Attila had been pretty shy about looking at me, but she faced me now, as she continued fingering the mason jar.

  “So, okay. Do I sound like just the biggest dick so far?”

  “Keep talking, Attila. I’ll tell you what I think when I’ve heard the whole story.”

  Attila caught sight of one of her dogs outside doing something naughty and she got up to yell at the pooch. Through the screens, the black dog came into view, slinking off in shame.

  “Can I jump ahead a little?” I said, when Attila again sat in her wrought-iron chair. “I understand that you didn’t want Esma going to Kosovo. But why in the hell did Ferko have to testify in my case?”

  “I told him not to. There was nothin to gain from that. Nothin. But, you know, over time, man, he got to be sort of fascinated with the Gypsy lady. Real interested in makin her happy. He never quite said so, but I was pretty convinced she was lickin his lollipop now and then, when there was something she wanted.”

  Goos had overheard Ferko saying to Esma in Barupra, ‘I want what you promised.’ I thought I had her figured out the other day in Manhattan, but with Esma you never got to the bottom. In bed, she lied to no one. She could make Ferko—or Akemi—or me believe what she needed to, because she could abandon herself to it. That was one of the great advantages of having a personality without real boundaries. She was compelling, as Merry said. The sociopaths always were.

  Attila said, “I told the dumbfuck, ‘If you’re really gonna testify, you better do it well. You get up there and lose your shit, we’re all in deep—including your people back in Kosovo. Kajevic will have a team of Tigers on the first train if he knows they’re all alive. You better do just like she tells you.’ Seems like he enjoyed all the rehearsing.” Attila rolled her lips into her mouth to suppress a lurid little smile. “Still and all, I can’t believe folks were dumb enough to believe a Gypsy.”

  “Like me, you mean.”

  “Your dick believed him,” Attila said. I was inclined to quarrel, but there was no point.

  “Did Ferko actually bury Boldo and his relatives in Barupra?”

  “Nope. We carried those bodies with us to Kosovo. Boldo’s people, you know, they were the only ones we were afraid wouldn’t stick with the program. But they were terrified. They knew Kajevic would be lookin to kill them first. And I gave Ferko money to send them every month, sayin it was their cut of the business. When your investigation started, Ferko found a couple grave robbers to bring the bodies back to Barupra.”

  “And who reburied them?”

  “Ferko. He wanted me to help, but I’m like, ‘This is on you, dude. This is all because you wanna testify.’”

  “And he tossed a couple of rounds in there to make it look good?” I asked.

  Attila’s murky eyes rose to the ceiling.

  “I think I told him to do that.” She nodded, and bit again on her fingernails. She was bleeding from one of the cuticles. “So whatta you say, Boom? Am I just this big douche who got away with all kinds of stuff? I really was tryin to do good every step of the way. I was. But there were seven people dead in Bosnia inside of a month on account of me and those bang-bangs, and eight more wounded. And I know it. I really do. I ain’t proud or anything. I fucked up. I think about it all the time. But I ain’t a bad person, Boom. I’m really not.”

  Attila liked to present herself as a hard case, but her tiny eyes were welling as they searched me for my appraisal.

  I had heard this declaration—I’m not bad—in some form from many clients over the years, and I often used the preacher’s piety about not judging any person by his worst acts. But Attila was speaking from a deeper place of need. She had been told much of her early life that there was something wrong with her, and she wanted my comfort.

  But justice is supposed to be unsparing. She’d empowered me to pronounce judgment and I was going to do it.

  “First, Attila, you can wrap yourself in the flag and talk about the troops in Iraq and protecting Merry and Roger, but this was about you, first and foremost. Your security classification. Your company. Your money. I know all that means a lot to you, and I understand why. But that’s no excuse.”

  She chucked her head around, seemingly agreeing. I wasn’t sure she really thought I was right, but she wasn’t going to argue.

  “Second, I don’t buy that you were surprised you ended up having to kill Boldo. I think you went to Barupra expecting that. You knew Boldo would believe the Tigers were there for him, and that he’d be better off making them shoot him, rather than getting captured and tortured.”

  Attila rubber-mouthed a second. This time she shook her head.

  “If he’d have come out with his hands up, Boom, he’d be fat and happy in Kosovo, stealin whatever he could. But I wasn’t gonna count to three and see how many of us he could kill. The AK was loaded, Boom. You sayin you wouldn’t have shot him?”

  “No, I’d have shot him, too. But I’d have realized when I hatched this plan that it probably was going to involve killing a man, and I hope I would have thought twice about the whole escapade for that reason. I know Boldo was an asshole, Attila. But generally speaking, that’s not a crime punishable by death. Let alone for two more people who were basically blameless.”

  She looked down at the table like a second grader. I had the feeling my evaluation had taken her by surprise.

  “And third, and most important to me, Attila, very few of the people in Barupra had done anything to deserve getting deported at gunpoint. NATO could have guarded that camp from Kajevic. But you wanted to get the Gypsies and what they knew the hell out of Bosnia to keep them silent. So the Roma are getting lead poisoning in Kosovo for two reasons: First to cover your ass. And second to give a bunch of Intelligence guys, who were sore and ashamed that they hadn’t figured on Kajevic being heavily armed, a chance to take out their sorrows on somebody else. And the Gypsies have always been useful for that purpose.”

  “I fucked up, Boom. Like I said. I’m not really askin you to forgive me.”

  “I don’t forgive you, Attila. You’re walking away from this with no punishment. That’s as much comfort as you’re going to get from me. I won’t pat you on the back and say you can just forget about it now.”

  We locked eyes at that point, a long look, until she suddenly rose in her herky-jerky way and fled the table.

  I stood to look at the river and the bluff. The dogs, both black labs, were chasing aroun
d in the yard. I could see a far-off pasture with a fence where several horses, Appaloosas, were standing around, flicking their tails at the flies. I enjoyed the full air and the richness of summer for a minute or so, then I followed Attila into the huge kitchen, where I found her with her back to me and her arms around her wife, who was a good head taller.

  I stood a moment, then said, “You have a good woman, Attila.”

  She started nodding, while she picked up a paper napkin from the counter, using it to wipe her nose and eyes. When she turned my way, her face was bright red.

  “We can agree about that, Boom. Good woman’s hard to find. Hope you have some better luck. I warned you about the Gypsy lady, didn’t I?”

  “That you did.”

  Attila invited me to stay for dinner but I meant what I had said. I wasn’t going to sit at her table and pretend nothing was wrong. I sent more than one person to the penitentiary whom I ended up liking for their honesty or their humor, or even because they were at core far better people than they’d been in a weak moment when they’d given in to impulse or the influence of someone else. And I liked Attila. And felt for her. And accepted that things had gotten away from her. But she’d wreaked havoc in many lives.

  I kissed Valeria good-bye. Attila saw me out and we shook hands beside my rental car in her driveway.

  “Where you go from here?” Attila asked.

  The question startled me, because I realized only now how hard I’d been avoiding it. I still had no long-term answer. I could feel a pit starting to open in my chest, a bit of it nerves, but most of it absence.

  “I’m taking my sons to a ball game tomorrow. After that, I’d prefer to return to The Hague,” I said. “I like the Court. I believe in what they do. But I’m not sure the stars are in the right place for me to go back.”

  I could see Attila’s inner busybody calculating, but she seemed to recognize that we were no longer on a footing where she was free to ask.