Zagreb Cowboy

by Alen Mattich

  The door was heavy wood bound in riveted metal. A pair of big padlocked iron bars on the outside made it more secure than some banks. It needed to be — these wine huts in the hills were ripe for pillaging by thirsty peasants. The window didn’t have any glass; instead there was the shutter, a solid, heavy sheet of iron, also padlocked on the outside. The window frame, like the one for the door, was wood, but it too was solid and well seasoned and bound into the concrete walls with thick iron bolts.

  The window it had to be; it was the weakest point in the structure.

  At first Strumbić hammered at the shutter with the iron bar. But this didn’t make the least impression and only succeeded in deafening him.

  He sat back down and stared at it. The shutter was secured at the bottom by an iron flange set into the concrete. To release it there, he’d either have to use enough force to break the padlock, which was as big as his fist, or work the flange loose from the wall. He’d have more joy just digging his way through the concrete. It would have to be the shutter’s hinges, which were set into the wood at the top of the frame and bolted on. He didn’t have the tools to work them loose, but if he could weaken the wood he might be able to break the hinges off. He’d still have to force the shutter outward.

  The only way to weaken the wood around the hinges was to burn it. At least della Torre had left him his matches. And the slivovitz was an excellent accelerant. There was a stack of paperback black-and-white comic-strip westerns, mostly Zagor translated from the Italian, that would burn. It was a shame; they were Strumbić’s favourites. Still, if he could avoid dying of smoke inhalation, they’d help him get out.

  Strumbić filled a tin bucket with wine to douse any fire that burned out of control. Then he dabbed slivovitz on and around the hinges. He pulled his shirt off and wrapped it around his face and then lit the frame. It burned fast, the paint bubbling and letting off black fumes. But once the slivovitz had burnt off, the fire went out. Strumbić found himself a candle stump. It was going to be a long night, and he didn’t have enough matches to waste them.

  DELLA TORRE WENT down the building’s stairwell, his limp making an awkward echo against the hard terrazzo surfaces. He chewed on a slice of bread Irena had pressed on him. He ignored the main entrance and walked down a further storey to the garden level, where he unbolted the secured back door and then retraced his steps from the previous night back to the BMW, parked a few blocks away. He was relieved no one had broken in to steal the three cartons of Luckys he’d negligently left in plain sight on the back seat.

  Even worse than opportunist thieves were the cops. Had one spotted the cigarettes, they’d have been long gone by now. Together with the car. Della Torre wouldn’t have put it past a Zagreb flatfoot to call out a municipal tow for some make-­believe parking violation. Things often went missing in the pound.

  Just as bad were the vandals. Croats had been smashing up cars with Serb licence plates. So Serbs had taken to removing Croat plates on expensive cars and replacing them with fake Serb ones.

  Della Torre drove through the lower town. It had been neatly laid out during the Austro-Hungarian imperial reign on flat land north of the river, at the foot of the medieval and Baroque old town on the hill above. He passed block after silent block of once-elegant buildings like the one he lived in. But now they were a forlorn parade of impoverished dowagers. In many places, the detailing on their faÇades had crumbled, great flakes of filter-yellow paint chipped to reveal their drab grey rendering underneath.

  Decades of Communist neglect together with the recent fear and uncertainty gave Zagreb a cold, hard look. Even the lower town’s grand squares — big, formal spaces — offered no relief.

  He passed King Tomislav’s statue. At least Tomislav kept his spear high. A cavalryman from the Wild West of Croatia’s collective imagination, ready to ride to the rescue. They were crazy about westerns in this country. When della Torre was a kid, over from America to visit relatives, he’d never failed to be amazed by the stacks of comic books bought by grown men, cowboy adventures full of six-shooters and Indians, piled high at every news kiosk. No wonder he found it impossible to shake off his unwanted nickname. Gringo. He couldn’t even remember who’d given it to him.

  Della Torre followed the route the Bosnians had taken to Zagreb’s southern suburbs. Traffic was light; working people usually started early, but not quite this early.

  He parked the BMW in front of Anzulović’s modern apartment block, another of an endless series of late-1960s concrete eyesores. He didn’t have more than three cigarettes’ worth of a wait before he saw Anzulović take his wife’s decrepit piss-yellow poodle for its morning walk. Anzulović stopped in the building’s shadow, on a weedy, overgrown patch of lawn, while the creature strained. Della Torre went over to him.

  “Gringo. What brings you here, other than the sights?”

  “Guess.”

  “You wanted to pay me back for that cigarette I gave you on Friday, because you knew I’d left mine upstairs.”

  “Right in one.” Della Torre handed Anzulović the now nearly empty pack of Strumbić’s Luckys and then gave him a light. “I also wanted to buy you breakfast, if you can bear to get into the office a little late.”

  “As long as we’re having a work-related conversation about movies or broads, that shouldn’t be a problem.”

  “Great. I’ll wait for you in the car. It’s the BMW over there.” Della Torre pointed a thumb over his shoulder. Anzulović appraised the car and glanced at della Torre from the corner of his eye. He looked back at the car and nodded but didn’t say anything.

  “On your way, do you mind helping the mutt out with its crap. Just give it a little kick. Don’t worry if it keels over. I’ll buy you a nice bottle of Bell’s to help you get over the trauma,” Anzulović said, eyeing the dog with contempt.

  Della Torre hadn’t been waiting in the car long when Anzulović came back down, more than happy to get away from his wife and three adult daughters, every last one of them a nag.

  “Nice motor. Yours?” Anzulović asked.

  “No.”

  “Didn’t think so.”

  “Borrowed?”

  “Stolen.”

  Anzulović nodded sagely. “Legally?”

  Della Torre thought about this for a little while and then said, “Nope.”

  “I see. So it’s a piece of crucial evidence in one of your cases, then.”

  “Something like that.”

  Anzulović looked around the car, keeping his counsel, taking in the glossy wooden panelling and the grain of the leather-covered dashboard.

  “Nice motor,” he repeated meaningfully.

  Della Torre could tell he was clipping facts together. The car. The early visit. Della Torre was notorious for not liking mornings. And New Zagreb was well outside of his normal orbit. It had to be serious.

  Anzulović ran Department VI, but he was more like an avuncular colleague to della Torre than a boss. Maybe because he’d worked his way up from traffic cop through the regular Zagreb police’s hierarchy before leaving to set up the new UDBA unit, while della Torre had been the international law expert at the prosecutor’s office, good enough to take an academic post had he wanted one.

  Della Torre had been one of Anzulović’s first appointments.

  Years before, they’d worked together on a tricky cross-­border fraud investigation that, ironically, had involved an UDBA agent. Anzulović came to appreciate della Torre’s intelligence and clarity.

  At first della Torre had underestimated the older man, as a lot of people did, dismissed him as a bland bureaucratic time-server. But his prejudgment had been overturned by Anzulović’s political skills, ironic cast, and, despite all appearances, ability to get things done.

  So when offered a move from the politically suffocating Zagreb prosecutor’s office to Anzulo
vić’s new UDBA unit, della Torre gave it serious consideration. And the more he considered, the more he was swayed. Department VI would give him unusual freedom. He’d have a boss he liked, who would insulate him from political crap rather than exacerbate it. And he would be able to look into files that would otherwise have forever remained mysteries.

  During the good times, Anzulović ran the department efficiently, making sure his staff were protected from Belgrade’s often baleful attention. What’s more, he allowed his people some of the UDBA’s perks. Like revoking tickets for minor traffic violations. And a certain flexibility with their expenses. Not to mention allowing private use of cars, equipment, and “safe houses” on the Adriatic coast.

  But anyone using their UDBA status as leverage in ordinary neighbourly disputes or to force discounts from shopkeepers was fired. It happened a few times in the early days, and then people learned.

  Anzulović had risen in standing from a good boss to a great one during bad times. As the Croat government put the screws on the department, he moved heaven and earth to make sure his people had enough money to live in something more than outright poverty. Those of his staff who were Serbs he protected from the Croat government’s increasing hostility, refusing to fire any of them.

  The UDBA brass had never wanted Department VI, but when it became inevitable, they insisted on appointing an ineffectual, supine bureaucrat to lead the charge. And they were conned into thinking Anzulović fit the bill. In time, the UDBA leadership realized their mistake, but he wore away at them too. What Department VI’s UDBA colleagues wouldn’t provide willingly, he’d use other means to get. He wasn’t above skulduggery. Or, when necessary, threats.

  But it was a careful balancing act. As a Croat, Anzulović lived under the permanent threat that he’d be accused of having an anti-Yugoslav nationalist agenda, which meant he had to be exceptionally deft in dealing with Belgrade — obsequious and friendly on the outside, but in reality calculating, with an extraordinary sang-froid. Department VI, encouraged by Anzulović, learned patience and improvisation. And cunning.

  He was the one who’d arranged for Strumbić to do the occasional bit of intelligence work for della Torre.

  “You didn’t drive all this way in an almost new car, two hours before you normally get up, to give me an American cigarette.”

  “Have another one.”

  “Thanks, I don’t mind if I do. You can develop a taste for these.”

  He lit the cigarette and smoked in silence for a while.

  “Somebody wants me dead,” della Torre finally said.

  “We work for the UDBA. Plenty of people would happily dance on our graves.”

  “No. It’s not like that. Somebody put a hit on me.”

  “Oh? How do you know?”

  “Because last night I was in a car with the guys who were going to do the job and on my way to a very unpleasant end.”

  “You’re sure they wanted you dead? I mean, you seem a bit stiff, but you’re not what I’d call a corpse.”

  “They weren’t very good. Remember those guys who did the really messy hit in Karlovac on that businessman who wouldn’t play with the local protection racket? That’s the story, anyway — had a factory and wouldn’t pay his insurance.”

  “I remember. Bosnians, wasn’t it? The Karlovac cops were surprisingly reluctant to investigate.”

  “That’s the one.”

  “And? You got in the car with them because . . . ?”

  “I was set up,” della Torre said.

  “I see. Set up by . . . ?”

  “A friend. I’ll tell you about him later.”

  “So your friend wants you dead. Sure it wasn’t your wife? Couldn’t say I’d blame her.”

  Anzulović had always had a soft spot for Irena, whom he inevitably compared favourably to his own women.

  “I had a word with my friend. He says he was put up to it. Had no choice. That sort of thing. It was a help-or-else proposition.”

  “So if your friend doesn’t want you dead, who does?”

  “Belgrade.”

  “Oh? Anyone in particular? Or has the federal government decided it doesn’t like you?”

  “I don’t know. Somebody took offence at something I had.”

  “This is starting to feel like twenty questions. I think I’m just going to have a little shut-eye on the way into the office and enjoy my luxurious surroundings, and if you decide to start talking sensibly, maybe I’ll listen.”

  Della Torre drove in silence for a while.

  “Nice leather. Should fetch a bit,” Anzulović said in his slow, ruminating way. “Shame it’s stolen. Though it’d be hard to keep, even if you got yourself new plates. Expensive to run. Still, if you could flog it there’d be a few pennies in it. Lord knows we could all use the money. I think Belgrade and Zagreb are competing to see who can starve us out of our jobs first.”

  “Okay. You’ve got me. I was selling stuff. Selling some files to this friend. Nothing sensitive. Just some of the lowest-classified stuff that was kicking around.”

  Anzulović nodded.

  “Really. No state secrets. I promise. Nothing to compromise anyone or any investigation. Just the sort of dross they’re not even bothering to burn.” Files were being destroyed wholesale at the UDBA’s various archives.

  “Alright. I get it. So these files you flogged got you into trouble?”

  “See, that’s the thing. They didn’t. Not the ones I sold.”

  “I’m afraid I’m a little slow. Probably has to do with age. When I was a younger man, I could watch those Russian films that never made any sense except as some sort of puzzle. You know, Tarkovsky,” Anzulović said. But della Torre didn’t know. Anzulović was always going on about films that della Torre hadn’t a clue about. “But these days it’s Hollywood straight down the line. Give it to me Hollywood.”

  “The person I was selling files to didn’t find them very useful. So he stole some. From me.”

  “And just what sort of files did he happen to steal?”

  Della Torre squirmed as he took a corner, slowed down, and then drove over the curb to park on one of Zagreb’s wide cobbled pavements, the car pointed towards the door of the little café just far enough from their offices that there was little chance of bumping into colleagues, but close enough for Anzulović to walk into work.

  The older man turned towards him but della Torre sat facing forward. “Hobby files,” he said. “Background stuff.”

  “Oh? You mean the sort of things you’re strictly forbidden from keeping?”

  “It makes life easier.”

  “What, keeping dead investigations around just in case they come in handy? Notes on things you might find useful sometime in the future? I’m afraid, my boy, what’s logical for a normal cop is very bad form for the UDBA. What do you think would happen if there was an internal investigation and they found you with a filing cabinet full of stuff you weren’t meant to have?”

  “I kept it locked . . .”

  “So how did this person get your files?”

  “I unlocked it.”

  Anzulović sighed. “Let’s get some breakfast, and I’ll see if I can dig any more out of you before I die of old age.”

  They sat in a booth and ordered coffees and rolls that looked vaguely like French croissants. Della Torre studied his boss. He was in his early fifties, lugubrious, with a long face and a pot belly on an otherwise thin frame. He had permanent black bags under his eyes. A thatch of black and grey hairs grew out of his potato nose, matching the ones sprouting from his ears.

  “So do you know what was in the stuff that was stolen?”

  “Something about Pilgrim.” Della Torre had his notebook out and was going through the back pages, where he kept brief descriptions of cases that struck his curi
osity.

  “You know, that notebook is just as bad as keeping illegal files. What happens if it gets stolen?” Anzulović said.

  “Good luck to anyone trying to decipher it.”

  “If it’s the UDBA they won’t have to. They’ll just beat you until you tell them, and then they’ll use it as evidence that you’re a spy and hang you. Unless they shoot you. No wonder somebody lined you up for the nine-millimetre solution.”

  “Thanks for cheering me up.”

  “So what is this Pilgrim file about?”

  “I don’t know. I mean, I’ve got a little in here, and I’ll tell you what I can remember, but I have no idea why anyone would be touchy about it.”

  “Give me a go.”

  “The reason I took an interest is because one of the Montenegrin’s files mentioned Pilgrim. So when I ran across the Pilgrim file, I . . . well, I thought it might come in handy one day.”

  The Montenegrin had been a thread running through della Torre’s professional life. He’d been a senior agent, on the liquidation teams. And then, around the time Department VI had been formed, he’d been promoted to be the head of the UDBA’s wetworks. Its killers. The people della Torre was charged with investigating.

  It was the Montenegrin who’d approached della Torre that first time in London — back when the UDBA was still some mysterious, malign, distant force — and demanded co-operation from the student lawyer.

  “And?”

  “And nothing. It was a real curiosity. It had something to do with centrifuges the Swedes were selling that went through Belgrade sometime in the mid-1980s.”

  “To Belgrade?”