Bosnian Inferno

by David Monnery

  ‘One of them’s based in the Starigrad Hotel, about a quarter of a mile north of here, near the railway station. The other ones, I don’t know, but they’ll know at the Starigrad.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Docherty said, getting up.

  ‘Dawn would be a good time to pay them a visit,’ Thornton suggested.

  Docherty walked across to the bar and inspected what was on offer. He chose a bottle of Glenfiddich, paid for it in dollars, and took it back upstairs. All three men were in his and Razor’s room.

  ‘You clowns may have forgotten it,’ he said, reaching for the grimy glasses above the wash-basin, ‘but this is New Year’s Eve.’ He poured two generous shots into the glasses, and then two more into the ones Chris fetched from the other room. ‘Here’s to us,’ Docherty said, ‘and everyone we love back home.’

  A thousand miles away, in their Glasgow home, Isabel was sitting on the couch, reliving in her mind’s eye a scene from the morning on which he had left. She had come to their bedroom door and seen Marie seated at the dressing-table, her father kneeling on the floor behind her, lovingly running the comb through her dark hair. He had become such a gentle man, and though she knew the gentleness must always have been there inside him, she knew that she and the children had helped to bring it out. Now a part of her was afraid that in some impossible-to-know way it would make him more vulnerable. ‘Please send him home to me,’ she whispered, pulling her knees up under her chin and clasping herself tightly.

  7

  Docherty and Chris left the hotel at the first hint of light, leaving behind a mutinous Razor and the Dame. The PC could understand how frustrating it must be sitting in the hotel while he and Chris had all the ‘fun’, but he could see no justification for risking an extra two lives just to alleviate boredom. ‘The moment something comes up which requires your talents, it’s all yours,’ Docherty told Razor.

  ‘But who’s going to charm the lovely Hajrija?’ Razor wanted to know. ‘You two?’ he added disbelievingly.

  Docherty grinned to himself as he followed Chris up the side of the wide boulevard. As on the previous morning the clouds were riding low in the valley, and despite the growing glimmer of dawn, visibility was still poor enough to deter any but the most determined sniper.

  Halfway up the road a trio of burnt-out Japanese cars reminded him of what a dangerous walk this would be in sunlight. And then, as if to scoff at his presuming to know anything, a brightly lit bus sailed serenely past, crowded with people on their way to work.

  ‘This place is like Alice in Wonderland,’ Chris said.

  ‘You can say that again.’

  They crossed a meeting of five roads and found themselves in the more densely built-up area around the railway station. ‘There it is, boss,’ Chris said, pointing across the street to where an unlit sign bearing the legend Starigrad Hotel hung from a dingy three-storey building.

  ‘Freeze,’ a voice grated behind them. ‘Hands on your heads.’

  Chris rapidly translated the commands for Docherty. ‘We’re English,’ he shouted. ‘We’re looking for someone.’

  At least two pairs of footsteps came up behind them.

  ‘Who?’ another voice asked.

  ‘Her name is Hajrija Mejra,’ Chris said.

  ‘Why do you want her?’

  ‘We are looking for a friend of hers, and we think she might be able to help us.’

  There was a silence lasting several moments.

  ‘How did you know to look here?’ the first voice asked.

  ‘A journalist told us this was where one of the units was based,’ Chris replied, deciding that something close to honesty was probably the best policy in this situation.

  ‘Are you journalists?’

  ‘No. We are with the UN.’

  ‘You have papers?’ the voice asked, its tone changing from hostility to mere caution.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Let me see them,’ the man said, walking round to face them. He had long, brown hair surrounding a lean, bewhiskered face, and carried a machine pistol in his left hand. He looked, Docherty thought, like an extra in a spaghetti western.

  He examined their papers with interest and then led them into the hotel. The drabness of the outside was mirrored within, where more pale, bearded men sat cleaning rifles on a black plastic sofa. They ignored the new arrivals.

  The SAS men’s interrogator had disappeared, hopefully to find Hajrija Mejra.

  A minute passed, and another. He reappeared, leading a tall, slim young woman in camouflage fatigues. She walked gracefully, head held high, her face dominated by dark Latin eyes. Between twenty-five and thirty, Docherty guessed. A woman surrounded by men.

  ‘I’m Hajrija Mejra,’ she said without preamble, in English. ‘Who are you?’

  ‘My name is Jamie Docherty,’ he said. ‘This is Chris Martinson.’

  ‘What do you want?’ she asked simply.

  ‘I was the best man at John and Nena’s wedding,’ Docherty said, as if that explained everything. ‘I’m looking for Nena.’

  Her face broke into a smile, which quickly became a frown. She looked around. ‘There is nowhere to talk here,’ she said. ‘Come, follow me.’

  She led them across the lobby, up a single flight of stairs, and into what had probably been a dining-room. Now it contained six mattresses and small piles of personal belongings. A man lay on one of the mattresses, listening to a Walkman. He grinned up at them. ‘Beastie Boys,’ he said.

  A door on the far side led through to a smaller room, which showed signs of having once been an office. A small brown couch stood under the single, shuttered window, across from a desk, upright chair and wall of empty shelves.

  ‘Please, sit down,’ Hajrija said, offering them the couch and taking the chair.

  Docherty sat down, but Chris decided to stand, rather than squeeze in next to him.

  ‘Now,’ Hajrija said. ‘I will tell you. You know about the Russians?’

  ‘What Russians?’

  ‘The two journalists.’

  ‘All we know is that she’s missing,’ Docherty explained. ‘We don’t know whether she’s still in Sarajevo, or if not, where she’s gone, or when…’

  ‘She is not in Sarajevo. She leave here four days now. With the two Russians and my American journalist friend, Dwight Bailey…’

  ‘Where were they going?’

  ‘Nena and Dwight go to Zavik. She hear stories…you must know them, yes?’

  Docherty nodded.

  ‘She worries about her children. And John, but she never says that. Dwight hopes to get the big story about the Englishman fighting in our war.’

  ‘And he never came back.’

  ‘No, but the Russians, they come back. I go to see them at the Holiday Inn and ask them what happens. They say that they leave Nena and Dwight in Bugojno and not see them again, but they do not speak the truth.’

  ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘I know. They hide the truth. I know. I go to see the American journalist friends of Dwight and they agree. Something is smelly, they say. But they say there is nothing to do.’

  Docherty considered what she had told them. Maybe she was wrong, and Nena was already in Zavik. If she was right, Nena could be anywhere, always assuming she was still alive.

  ‘Why are you looking for Nena?’ Hajrija asked.

  ‘We are from the same regiment as John Reeve…’

  ‘Ha! The famous SAS.’

  Docherty smiled. ‘Aye. Our political bosses are getting worried about what Reeve is doing in Zavik, for all sorts of reasons. We’ve been sent to find out what is happening there, and if it turns out that Reeve has lost his senses, I’m supposed to talk him back into them. Or something like that. It seemed a reasonable enough notion when it was first put to me.’

  He shrugged. ‘We came to Sarajevo partly to talk to people who know something about Zavik, and partly because we hoped Nena was here. I thought she’d be the best person to ask about Reeve’s state of mind
, and, if she was willing to come with us, the best person to make him see sense.’

  Hajrija nodded. ‘She understands him, I think. Though she is still very angry with him at the moment. Or she thinks she is angry – it is hard to know.’ She smiled to herself. ‘But I can tell you about Zavik – I am born there, and grow up there. Nena is my friend since I am a small girl. Our fathers are comrades in the partisans.’

  ‘What we need is a good map of the town, and the area around it. Could you draw one?’ Docherty asked.

  ‘Of course. You go soon?’

  ‘I don’t know. Do you know where these Russians are staying?’

  ‘At the Holiday Inn.’

  ‘Probably down the corridor from us,’ Chris said.

  ‘Maybe we should pay them a visit,’ Docherty decided. ‘Do they speak English?’ he asked Hajrija.

  ‘Some, I think.’

  ‘What are their names?’

  ‘I only know Viktor and Dmitri. But I come with you, yes?’ she said, her mouth setting in an obstinate line.

  She had probably had a hard time getting accepted as a woman fighter, Docherty thought, but she needn’t expect any opposition from him. He had married one. ‘If you want,’ he said simply.

  ‘I go to speak with my commander,’ she said. ‘You wait here.’

  She was only gone a few moments, and returned dressed for the outside world in a long, fur-lined anorak that had seen better days, though it looked warm enough.

  The two SAS men were not looking forward to the walk back down the street, but they needn’t have worried. Hajrija led them by a slightly longer, more circuitous route which only involved negotiating two open spaces. They sprinted across both without drawing fire.

  At the Holiday Inn she tackled the receptionist with the insolent grin, and came away with the Russians’ room number. ‘He no see them this morning,’ she said. ‘They are sleeping still, I think. Russians all lazy,’ she added conclusively.

  ‘Let’s pick up Razor and the Dame first,’ Docherty said, as they headed for the stairs. ‘With any luck sheer weight of numbers will scare the truth out of them.’

  ‘This “Razor” and “Dame”,’ she asked, ‘they are people?’

  ‘As far as we know,’ Chris said.

  ‘They are nicknames,’ Docherty said, ‘names that friends use.’

  ‘Silly names?’

  ‘You could say that.’

  Razor had, appropriately enough, just finished shaving. The Dame was, as usual, deeply engrossed in a trashy novel. Both men looked relieved to be offered a reason to leave their rooms.

  ‘Just follow my lead,’ Docherty said, as they climbed yet another flight of steps. The Russians were on the sixth floor, in a room at the back of the hotel.

  Docherty knocked on their door and waited, ignoring the questioning voice inside the room. When the door inched open he shoved it backwards, pushing the man who had opened it back into the room. ‘Viktor?’ he asked.

  The other Russian looked up from the edge of the bed, where he was sitting surrounded by what looked like bottles of pills, and said something sharply in his native language. ‘Who are you?’ he added, switching to English, as the other four crowded in, herding his colleague towards the bed. Razor closed the door and leant on it, feeling like someone out of The Godfather.

  Then the darker of the Russians recognized Hajrija. ‘You again,’ he said. ‘We have told you everything.’

  ‘You lied to her,’ Docherty said. ‘We know that you lied,’ he bluffed, ‘and now we want the truth.’ He casually reached under the hem of the Gore-tex jacket and pulled the Browning High Power handgun out from its cross-draw holster.

  The eyes of the two Russians on the bed opened wider.

  ‘Who are you?’ the darker one asked again.

  Docherty ignored the question. ‘We want to know where you left the woman and the American,’ he said. ‘Tell us the truth and you won’t get hurt. Keep lying and…’ He shrugged.

  ‘You cannot do this in the Holiday Inn,’ the fairer Russian half-shouted, as if outraged by the damage such activities might do to the hotel chain’s international reputation.

  ‘This is Sarajevo,’ Docherty said, ‘and we can do just about anything we want.’

  ‘We left them in Bugojno,’ the dark one said, and they both stared defiantly back at him.

  Hajrija had been right, Docherty thought: they were lying. He wondered how far he was prepared to go to force the truth out of them, and realized he didn’t know. This war was already tugging at his notion of who he was.

  He mentally shook his head, and tried another tack. If they were lying, why were they lying? To cover up misdeeds? He doubted it. To cover up shame? More likely.

  ‘We are only interested in finding the woman,’ he said. ‘Anything you tell us will remain a secret between us. I promise you that. And I also promise you that if you do not tell us, one of you – you, I think,’ he said, looking at the fair one, ‘will be thrown out of that window there. And then your friend here will tell us to avoid the same thing happening to him.’

  ‘You will not do this,’ the dark one said.

  ‘Lads,’ Docherty said, gesturing Chris and the Dame forward, and catching the anxious look on Razor’s face as he did so.

  The two SAS men grabbed the Russian and pulled him to his feet.

  Docherty watched with a stony face. Talk, he silently pleaded with the Russian, please talk. Don’t call my bluff.

  They started dragging him towards the window.

  ‘OK, OK, I tell you,’ the potential victim spluttered. ‘They just say leave the woman behind…’

  Chris and the Dame threw him back on the bed, turning away to conceal their sighs of relief.

  ‘The whole story,’ Docherty ordered.

  The fair one shot a reproachful glance at his colleague and started recounting what had happened.

  ‘Do you know where he means?’ Docherty asked Hajrija when the Russian’s account reached the roadblock.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, not taking her angry eyes off the two Russians, ‘it is thirty kilometres in the west.’

  Razor was watching her, and noticed the single tear that rolled down her cheek when she heard of the American’s death, a tear that she didn’t bother to wipe away, or even seem to notice. Her face remained unchanged, as if the part of her which grieved had no connection with the rest of who she was.

  He was struck by how lovely she was, and wondered at how he could feel something like desire at such a moment. He remembered something his mother had said to him years before, that at heart he was a carer, and how bizarre it was that he’d opted for a life in the military, who only came into contact with needy people at the end of a gun.

  The Russian finished his story, and then looked up with the unspoken question in his eyes: which of you would have preferred to die than run away?

  Docherty had no answer for him. He put away the Browning and started for the door.

  Hajrija had. ‘You are cowards,’ she said. ‘Not for running away, but for lying to me about my friend.’ Then she turned and strode from the room.

  They reconvened in Docherty and Razor’s room.

  ‘Where is she likely to be now?’ Docherty asked Hajrija.

  The woman took a deep breath. ‘There are three, how do you say, possibilities? One, she is dead. Two, the pigs keep her where she is taken. Three, they move her to one of the brothels in the area.’ She ran a hand through her hair, anguish on her face.

  ‘These brothels,’ Docherty asked gently, ‘are there many? Do you know where they are?’

  ‘We know some. There is one in Visograd near border with Serbia, and one in Vogosca, which is only a few kilometres away on other side of mountain. And there are many others. The Serbs think they can make every Muslim woman pregnant with a Serb baby…’ She shook her head, as if she was trying to shake out the thought of her friend in the beasts’ hands.

  ‘Is there any way we can find out if she has been taken
to one of these?’ Docherty asked, wondering how far he could take such a search. Finding Nena, which had been a means to an end, was becoming an end in itself. And so it should, he told himself, for a friend. But the other three men in the room had never even met her. Could he risk their lives for something that was only marginally relevant to their mission?

  ‘I can try,’ Hajrija said. ‘There are always new people coming to the city, and someone can know something. But what good will it do? You cannot go and talk to her.’

  ‘If she’s only a few miles away we can try,’ Razor said.

  ‘We are the famous SAS,’ Docherty told her with a wry smile.

  An hour later Hajrija, Razor and the Dame were surveying the interior of what had once been the city’s skating rink. Docherty had reluctantly accepted the need for the other two men to have their turn in the outside world. And if they needed a translator, they had Hajrija.

  They didn’t need one to describe this, Razor thought, as he studied the scene in front of him. Where there once would have been throngs of skaters gliding across the ice, and room for thousands more in the surrounding seats, there was now a refugee camp. Across the thawed rink, scattered across the seats and aisles, small groups of people were huddled listlessly together. The only heat came from a multitude of small butane stoves, and on most of these a saucepan containing water and a few desolate bits of greenery was quietly simmering. Most of the adults seemed to be staring into space, and only the younger children seemed unresigned to the passing hours.

  ‘Most of them come from the city,’ Hajrija explained. ‘The big buildings, yes, and some have shells destroy their homes. We look for people from outside.’

  They started working their way methodically through the hall, asking the groups where they came from. A few refused to say, but most seemed happy to tell them – what difference does it make now, their faces seemed to say. There was no one from Zavik, and none of those who had recently arrived from Serb-held territory recognized the photograph of Nena Reeve which Docherty had brought from home.

  Until, that is, Hajrija stooped to ask two women who were sitting with their backs to the rink wall, heads bowed as if they were deep in thought. At the sound of Hajrija’s voice both raised weary faces. Then, catching sight of Razor and the Dame behind her, they seemed to shrink back into the wall.