by Tom Saric
“Where is his brother?”
“I’m told he lives on Hvar.”
25
Hvar, Croatia
The drone of the ferry’s horn cut through Luka’s consciousness, snapping him back to the present. He was on the deck of a ferry docking on the island of Hvar.
The ferry glided against the pier and jerked to a hard stop. Gears crunched as the ramp was let down.
Ahead, a cluster of shingled clay buildings surrounded a channel. Over the rolling green hills beyond it was Dol, the small village where Luka found a listing for Nikola Pavić. No phone number.
He walked down the ramp, through the crowd of women in black babushkas offering disembarking passengers “Sobe! Zimmer! Rooms!” and past stands selling lavender oil and seeds from the island. A young man wearing a U2 T-shirt sat on a moped with a cigarette in one hand, pressing buttons on his mobile phone with the other. Luka asked him for a ride to Dol, offering twenty kuna. The young man looked at his watch, then asked for thirty.
The ride took them past Stari Grad and up the dirt roads that traversed the hills leading inland. The moped didn’t have the power to carry both of them up the steep sections, so they traded off walking until they reached the top.
This had to be a mistake, Luka thought. How had Nikola’s name found its way onto the list of people who fought for Croatia in the War of Independence? His brother had pledged allegiance to Yugoslav forces months prior to the war’s outbreak. Either some administrator never got around to striking his name from the record, or the whole list was bogus, taken from an old phone book and used by Zlatko Marić to draw more attention to himself. Those were the possibilities. Those were the likelihoods.
Why, then, was he sitting on the back of this moped, jerking and bouncing over each pothole and bump along the dirt road, to see the man he’d cut out of his life? Because maybe Nikola wasn’t a traitor. He heard Jurica’s voice: “You disowned your brother, your own blood, without knowing anything about his decisions.” Luka felt dizzy at the thought.
At the top of the next hill, he saw the village: six houses sitting in the valley, the bottom of a bowl. Vineyards ran up the slopes, and the fields were terraced by low stone walls.
The young man motioned to a farmhouse at the edge of a drive. Luka handed him a few bills and walked towards the house. Paint flaked off its green doors and shutters. The clay roof was browned from years of sun.
He knocked on the door. No answer. A child’s pants and T-shirt and a woman’s dress fluttered on the clothesline. He knocked again, then peered in the window. The lace curtains were drawn, but he was able to make out the living room and kitchen, both empty. No car in the driveway.
Around the house, he heard hens clucking. A vineyard sloped down the hill, and he saw a man crouched over, tending to spring vines.
When Luka was two rows away, the man stood up. The burning expanded in his body, the pressure built. He waited for it to burst into anger or despair, but it just hung there, keeping his body leaden and his legs wobbly.
Nikola. His face was hidden by a thick head of hair and a beard that ran up to his cheekbones.
Luka stood, no longer feeling any sensation, as though he were floating and watching from above as Nikola opened his arms and wrapped them around his little brother. A prickly kiss on each cheek followed.
Luka felt nothing but heat. He reminded himself where he was and took inventory of his surroundings.
Nikola took a step back and wiped his eyes. “I wondered if you’d come find me.”
Luka’s eyes narrowed, his jaw tightened. “You actually thought I’d come back to see you?”
“I used to wish you would. But I knew you better than that.” He shrugged. “I only thought it was possible when I picked up the newspaper this morning. War criminal. Fugitive. Now wanted for another two murders.”
“I-I didn’t—”
“Spare me any claims of innocence. I don’t care what happened.” Nikola crossed his arms. “I stand by my family.”
Luka was quiet for a spell, his gut hollow. It was Nikola who had left. Nikola who had traded sides. Nikola who had abandoned his family. Abandoned him. “And I don’t stand by mine?”
“You made yourself clear.”
“Three months before the war you left the Croatian militia,” Luka said. “You said that you didn’t think it was ‘time.’ That you would fight against your own people.”
“And you said that if I saw you on the battlefield, I’d better be sure to shoot you first.”
“How would you react,” Luka said incredulously, his anger rising, “if the man you modeled your life after turned his back on everything he believed in? Turned his back on his countrymen because of a woman?”
Nikola swallowed hard, closed his eyes, and bit his bottom lip.
“The war is over. Secrets don’t need to exist anymore,” Luka said, wiping sweat from his forehead. He took a stuttering breath. “I didn’t kill Bojan Radović, Saša Tadić, or Filip Nemet. I didn’t kill eleven women. I didn’t kill that girl. But The Hague thinks I did. I’ve been hiding for years, until someone came to kill me, though I have no idea why. Then I get my hands on this list of every veteran who served for Croatia during the war. A top-secret list. Guess what I found on it.”
“Radović? Tadić?”
“You.”
Nikola turned his head sideways.
“Now, I’ve been telling myself that a list with four hundred thousand names must have some mistakes. Some omissions, some additions. But a deeper part of me says it’s real. And my mind keeps going back to what you said when you left that day.” Luka moved directly in front of Nikola and grabbed his shoulders. “‘I hope you’ll understand someday.’”
Nikola chewed on his fingernail, staring through Luka.
“Make me understand today.”
Nikola’s face was pale, eyes bobbing back and forth, not looking at Luka, not looking at anything. He crouched and plucked small stems off the vines. “Six months before the war, it started.” He took a deep breath. “The Yugoslav JNA knew there was going to be a rebellion, so they were trying to shore up loyal servants. They knew I was talking to the Croatian National Guard and would be leaving soon to join the fight for independence.”
We all did, Luka thought, but said nothing.
“But things changed. I got called to a meeting in the barracks in Belgrade. I didn’t even plan on going, but war was at least three to four months away and I’d be jailed if I didn’t show up. I walk into the room, and two generals and some higher-ups from the secret service UDBA are sitting along one side of a table. They sit me down and say they want to promote me to a brigade commander. They back it up with a villa in Belgrade. They say they want me to be part of their plans. They call it a ‘special offer.’
“And then the guy from UDBA speaks. That’s when I learn what was ‘special’ about the offer. He says he understands my allegiances. He has his elbow resting on this puke-green folder, and he pulls out a stack of pictures from inside. Everything was in there. I had gone to a secret meeting in an apartment in Karlovac three months earlier to discuss strategy with the National Guard, to defend against Yugoslav retaliation once Croatia declared independence. He had pictures of everything. Me at the table next to Tuđman. Me outlining major passes where the JNA could launch attacks.”
Nikola’s voice shook. He stood up and tossed a handful of vines to the side. “They could have tried me for treason and hanged me right there. UDBA killed for a lot less.”
Luka said nothing as Nikola glanced out past the hills, his eyes distant.
“It was a case of keep your enemies closer, I guess. They said they understood my confusion about where my loyalties lay. Real patronizing bullshit. They said they would overlook everything if I kept meeting with the National Guard and relayed all information I had about the rebellion back to them. They recognized that information could turn the war from one that dragged on for years to one that petered out in days. They thought I
would outline the supply lines, the concentrations of military installations, the weapons capabilities.”
The burning feeling Luka had felt when Nikola left that day now returned. The air felt heavy with humidity. “So you told them what you knew?”
“No.” Nikola huffed at the suggestion. “I told them that they could charge me for whatever crimes I had committed. I was loyal to my countrymen.”
“You said that?” Luka took a breath.
“And I meant it. If Dad taught me one thing—and let’s be honest, being drunk his whole life, he didn’t teach us much—it was that some things are bigger than you.”
“But you didn’t listen to him.”
“He was only loyal to a concept, Luka. He wasn’t loyal to anyone or anything. Mom died and he didn’t even cry. The man had cut off all his emotions. If he’d been capable of feeling anything, he would have done the same thing I did.”
“What did you do, Nikola?”
“Next they showed me a picture of Nada outside our home, pinning clothes on the line. They’d been watching us. But that didn’t bother me as much as the next four pictures, which were all of Ana playing outside at school, kicking a ball. She looked so happy.” Nikola’s voice cracked. He covered his mouth and swallowed, collecting himself. “The look on that man’s face was frightening. He had these beady grey eyes that stared through me. He didn’t blink. Killing a child didn’t bother him in the slightest. The idea that they’d—” Nikola’s hands trembled and he clenched them into fists. “We have to protect our children.”
“You had to take their offer.”
“That’s what I thought, too. At first. But I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t settle down. There was this… this pain, in me.” Nikola pointed at his chest. “And I realized it didn’t have to be like that. I could protect my family and serve my country. It was I who decided to keep my enemies close.”
“Which enemies?”
“I gained their trust, Luka. I commanded the brigade. I killed my own people. But I needed their trust, and I got it. Even after Milošević ordered all Croats out of the JNA, they kept me. Because I was good. But for that, I can never forgive myself.”
Luka felt a lightness in his body. He reached out and touched Nikola’s shoulder. “They forced your hand.”
“No. I forced theirs.” Nikola stood up, wiping tears from his eyes. “Three months into the war, I contacted Marko Boban, an old friend in the National Guard. He barely spoke to me. To him, I was a traitor. And I was. But I told him just to listen. I told him about a planned airstrike on Gospić. He listened and prepared his men for the attack. The airstrike failed, and the National Guard managed to take down four of their MiGs. From there, I contacted him with every single piece of strategic information that passed through my ears.”
“Didn’t the JNA suspect you?”
“Paranoia was the order of the day. My phones were tapped. Wherever I went, I had two or three shadows following me. If I slipped up, they would catch it.”
“So, how’d you do it?”
“By being good at what I did, Luka. I won my battles, and I hate myself for it. But I knew that if I sabotaged my own work, they would notice. And I kept my communications with the National Guard convoluted.”
“You didn’t have direct communication with anyone in the National Guard?”
“I wasn’t the only person spying on the JNA. There were many agents from the Croatian Intelligence Agency embedded in the JNA that I knew of, and many more that I didn’t. And the JNA and UDBA had their own people in the National Guard. The war was fought through intelligence as much as with guns. But when I had information to pass over, I went through a single source: Boško Pavlovski. He was a tailor in Belgrade that I met getting my uniform altered.”
“You trusted him with this information?”
“He was a perfect resource. He had a chain of men’s clothing stores across Yugoslavia: in Sarajevo, Tuzla, Ljubljana, Zagreb, Split, even Podgorica. He had this shipping network right across the Balkans, with ships coming from Italy and trucks from Greece. He was well connected. And he wanted Yugoslavia to disintegrate.”
Luka shook his head. “What Serb wanted Yugoslavia to fall apart?”
“As Yugoslavia fell, so did communism. In came democracy and the free market. Boško already had the infrastructure set up with a network of stores, capitalizing on the relaxing of state laws during the eighties. He was constantly traveling around from store to store, meeting hundreds of people.”
“Did you pay him?”
“I didn’t. But I’m sure that he profited… in some way.”
“What do you mean?”
“When you have established shipping routes, it becomes easier to move”—Nikola waved his arms, as though searching for a word—“anything.”
“Drugs?”
“During the war, it was cigarettes. Boško became a major smuggler of counterfeit cigarettes, among other things, I’m sure. It was well known, but at the same time he was friends with people on all sides. So I think in exchange for the intelligence he provided, the authorities looked the other way.”
“Crime doesn’t count if you’re on our side?”
“It was war, Luka. There were bigger threats to worry about.”
Luka stood on Nikola’s back patio, where vines climbed a pergola. He lit up a cigarette and leaned over the railing. Lavender shrubs dotted the hills that rose and fell towards the Adriatic. Everything was still, soundless. He could hear the sizzle of his cigarette.
Nikola returned, holding two glasses filled with dark red wine. He passed one to Luka and leaned against the railing.
“You smoke now?”
“Trying to quit. Want one?”
“I’ve quit.”
Luka stared at the vineyard while Nikola swirled the wine in his hand.
“I tried to find you when I heard about the indictment,” Nikola said, taking a sip. “But you were already gone.”
I wanted to find you too, Luka thought. “I had to make a quick decision. Whether it was the right one…”
“I want you to know that I believe you’re innocent. You’re not capable of killing someone for no reason. You don’t have it in you.”
He seemed to expect Luka to speak. Instead, Luka finished his cigarette and put it out against the railing.
“But I didn’t want to find you to tell you that,” Nikola continued. “I remembered something that I thought you needed to know about. When I read the newspaper articles about your charges, the name of one of the dead men rang a bell: Saša Tadić.”
“You heard of him?”
Nikola nodded. “In ’92, Boško suddenly slowed his traveling down. And I think that he slowed down a lot of his operations too. I mainly noticed because he started avoiding me, and when I asked him to send information to Croatian Intelligence, he blew me off. So I confronted him, asked him what was going on, reminded him we had an agreement. He was frustrated, and told me that he had to reduce operations and was being investigated by the secret police.”
“On what grounds?”
“He thought they were trying to crack down on weapons smuggling during the war. He was frightened, because an international presence was investigating smuggling operations. And Tadić was a name that he had mentioned.”
“You think that Tadić got too close?”
“Well, look at it this way, Luka. You stumbled upon an execution. A decade later, someone is trying to kill you, and they kill Čapan. Why? The only reason I see is so you never get to The Hague, because that will lead to further questions, motives. Maybe more investigation. The best way to deal with it is to burn the loose ends.”
“Tadić found something?”
Nikola shrugged. “That’s the way I see it.”
“But what?”
“I don’t know. But I can get us to someone who might.”
26
Split, Croatia
Robert Braun knew serendipity played a major part in finding war criminals. Ca
rlos the Jackal was captured by French forces when he needed surgery on his testicles. Border guards recognized Charles Taylor trying to cross from Nigeria to Cameroon in his Range Rover, days after he disappeared. Simon Wiesenthal received an anonymous postcard telling him that Adolf Eichmann had been spotted in Buenos Aires, which led to an arrest.
And Braun saw Luka Pavić step off the Jadrolinija ferry in Split.
It didn’t happen purely by fluke, of course, but luck was always part of the equation. The French secret service had worked hard to establish that Carlos was in Sudan prior to their stroke of luck. Wiesenthal had to conduct a thorough investigation establishing that Eichmann was in Argentina. Braun always had to have his eyes open and his ears tweaked so that he could recognize when his slice of fortune had arrived.
Alone on a bench in the shadow of an overhead palm, his briefcase beside him, he looked across the harbor at Split’s waterfront promenade. The remains of an ancient Roman palace rose up along the coast like it had grown out of the dry, rocky landscape. People moved down the promenade in twos or threes, turned into the ancient palace’s narrow alleyways, or walked underneath the crimson umbrellas of the outdoor market.
He thought about calling Nicole again, to tell her that he had a lead on Pavić. Maybe she had considered coming to Como with him again. Maybe she had an answer for him. Maybe it wasn’t the answer he wanted.
He dialed, holding the phone to his ear as a woman in a flowery dress carrying a large backpack walked up to him and motioned at his briefcase. She said something in broken Croatian, then, flustered, asked in English, “Sit?”
Braun slid his briefcase under the bench so she could sit down. The phone call went to voicemail and he hung up without leaving a message. He looked at the woman standing over him. She was young, couldn’t be over thirty, and had wavy auburn hair tied back with a wood clip. White tan lines ran down her neck and underneath her collar. She dropped herself onto the bench, unclipped a water bottle from her backpack, and drank.
