by Glenn Meade
As Carla’s cab drove up the dirt track, Paul came out of the studio to greet her.
He looked tired and gaunt. He was dressed in jeans and sneakers, his worn T-shirt smeared with paint and mud stains. On his wrist was a leather strap covered in turquoise beads, his long dark hair cut in a fringe.
He looked so like Jan—the same ready smile, the same determined brown eyes and handsome looks and slim artist’s hands.
She almost cried as she stepped out of the car and he hugged her.
“It’s good to see you, Carla. Come inside, I’ve got some fresh coffee brewing.” He put an arm around her shoulder and led her into the house.
• • •
It was all white painted walls, and sparsely furnished with hand-carved ranch-style furniture. The studio door was open and inside looked messy, with a potter’s wheel, the floor and walls crammed with bright colored pottery—plates and vases and pieces of art in pastel blues, vivid reds, striking yellows.
Out back she saw the brick-built kiln her brother-in-law had built with his own hands.
Paul had done well for himself, a beautiful wife and two pretty daughters. He had carved out a reputation as a skilled artisan and designer, with VIP clients from Hollywood and New York who flew in specially to buy his work.
In the kitchen he placed a coffeepot and some cups and chocolate-chip cookies on a tray. “You look better than the last time I saw you, in the hospital. The baby’s still okay?”
“So the doctors say.”
“Thank heaven for that. How’ve you been coping?”
“Just barely. And you?”
He smiled bravely but his eyes were bloodshot, grief showing in the tightness around his mouth, his shoulders slumped as if he were carrying a weight. “Trying to get back into work, but I just can’t seem to concentrate. Let’s go sit on the back porch, okay?” His face looked serious. “There are some things we need to talk about.”
9
* * *
He poured their coffee. On the walls of the living room behind them were family snapshots of his wife and daughters.
“Where’s everyone?”
“Kim took the girls to see their grandparents in Sedona. They ought to be back tomorrow.”
Carla looked out at the desert landscape. It was stark but beautiful, dotted with cactus plants, the pastel sky so achingly blue it almost hurt her eyes.
Paul sipped his coffee. “Jan and I loved that view the first day we came here. The colors, the light. It’s always been a very special place.”
“Tell me about those days.”
“Jan never told you?”
“He sometimes spoke about losing his parents back in Croatia. How you and he witnessed a lot of pain and horror during the war in your homeland. It affected him deeply. I think maybe it was why he was such a great musician.”
“He didn’t often talk about his pain, but he sure put it into his work.”
“You’re right. He always seemed able to draw on such a deep well of emotion to play such haunting music. For some reason I felt a connection to him because of that.”
“Me, I always wanted to forget about our past, but Jan always kept a photograph he cut from a magazine and stuck on his bedroom wall to remind him of that time. Of the pain he felt, and the injustice he witnessed. He hated injustice.”
Paul hesitated, looked away, then back again. “Jan was ten, I was fourteen when we came here. Our parents had been killed when the Serbs shelled our town. Our heads were so messed up by the sights we saw in the war—dead bodies, entire families shot and killed, ethnic cleansing—that it took us quite a while to settle in. For weeks we wouldn’t speak at all, except to each other. Two little orphans clinging to one another for comfort and safety.”
“But you found peace here?”
“It was like going from hell to paradise. We were grateful to be alive, grateful that my father’s sister and her husband offered to become our guardians, instead of spending our lives in an orphanage.”
He jerked his chin toward the cactus-strewn desert.
“We had some good times out there together, my kid brother and me. Our uncle would take us riding on his horses out on the desert trails. We’d see rattlesnakes, coyotes. It was like some Wild West adventure we’d seen on the movie screen in the local flea pit back in Croatia. I’m going to miss him.”
Carla couldn’t hold it in. She gave an anguished cry and wiped her eyes. “Why, Paul? Why did Jan have to die? Why would anyone want to kill him?”
Paul’s face became grim. He fell silent.
“What is it?”
“Ronald Reagan, the U.S. president.”
“What . . . what about him?”
“In 1987 he told the Russian leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, to tear down the Berlin Wall. It came down two years later when the Soviet Union crumbled, and everything changed. All its former satellite states were on their way to independence. Poland, the Baltic states, Czechoslovakia, and my former homeland, Croatia, which was part of Yugoslavia.”
“What has this got to do with Jan’s death?”
Paul looked at her. “A lot. Do you know that Yugoslavia was a manufactured state? A bunch of independent republics that were forced together by kings, or dictators. People like Marshal Tito or Slobodan Milosevic, who supported the communists.”
Carla nodded, although she wasn’t sure she was following.
“The main three states were Christian Orthodox Serbia, Catholic Croatia, and Bosnia, which is mostly Muslim. For hundreds of years, these three have often fought each other in bitter wars. The biggest dog in the fight was always Serbia. When Yugoslavia began to pull apart, it was led by the brutal and corrupt Serb president, Slobodan Milosevic, He had the strongest military, so he controlled the entire country.
“But all those republics now wanted independence. The country started to break apart. Milosevic ruthlessly tried to put down any revolt that threatened Serbia’s power.”
Paul sat back. “And this is where it gets interesting. What do you know about Balkan and Serbian organized crime?”
“Nothing. Why?”
“There’s a long, long tradition of ruthless crime and banditry in that part of the world that some say can be traced back to Roman times, when mountain outlaws in the region robbed Caesar’s supply trains marching east to Constantinople. Hitler’s convoys invading Yugoslavia centuries later suffered the same fate. The Serb mafia make the Italian mob look like a bunch of charming old ladies.”
Paul explained that it was the breakup of Yugoslavia, during a war lasting over five years, that made the Serb organized crime gangs billions in profits.
President Slobodan Milosevic desperately needed more troops to halt the breakup of Yugoslavia, and so he made the mafia an offer they couldn’t refuse: amnesty for the gangster clans and a vast supply of weapons to equip their own paramilitary special forces in return for aiding the Serb army.
The mafia’s job was simple: to help put down revolts in the breakaway ethnic republics—mostly regions within Croatia and Bosnia with millions of civilians who had chosen to no longer be a part of a greater Serbia. In addition, they often ethnically cleansed those regions, by either massacring the inhabitants or removing them forcibly.
The war meant more than two million displaced refugees on all sides: men, women, and children evicted from their homes, businesses, and farms. It meant evil slaughter on a massive scale—a quarter million dead and many more tortured, wounded, and injured.
Formed into mobile, well-equipped paramilitary squads—some composed of thugs and vicious crime gangs released from high-security prisons—the mafia-led units scoured the countryside, inflicting murder and mayhem on a terrified civilian population, and profiting on the battlefield by looting and stealing.
Their victims were mostly Muslims, civilians and paramilitaries alike, but Christians and Orthodox also felt their wrath.
Towns were shelled, villages torched, entire cities ransacked. Banks were robbed and their vaul
ts emptied.
Entire ethnic groups were terrorized and executed, and their property and belongings confiscated. Even their refrigerators, washing machines, and TVs ended up being sold in Belgrade’s second-hand markets.
Wealthier victims were often first forced to sign documents surrendering their homes, business premises, money, cars, and jewelry. As a final indignity, they would be charged a fee for being transported out of town, to be imprisoned or executed.
For the crime gangs quickly learned a lesson Hitler’s SS had learned decades before—that wholesale slaughter can be a profitable enterprise.
Paul sat back. “Camps were also set up to imprison adult female prisoners, adolescent girls, and male and female children—and many of their fathers, brothers, and sons above the age of fourteen were destined to be callously executed.”
He looked toward the desert, revulsion on his face before he turned back. “The sole purpose of the women’s camps, later called ‘houses of rape and horror’ by war crimes prosecutors, was to provide for the sexual pleasure of the paramilitary gangs, while they carried out their murder and theft. Some rape victims were documented to be as young as seven years old.”
Carla listened in grim silence, then said, “Why are you telling me all this?”
“Because there’s a reason Jan was killed, and you deserve to know it.”
10
* * *
“You mustn’t tell anyone, not even Baize. This is just between us.”
“What are you saying, Paul?”
“Jan was trying to hunt down wanted killers and bring them to justice. That’s why he died.”
There was a shocked silence. Carla stared back. “What killers?”
“You remember that Jan often went abroad on concerts?”
“Of course. That was work.”
“Sometimes. Other times it was to talk with an organization called Families for Justice. It’s a group of relatives of victims of the genocide in the former Yugoslavia who try to track down war criminals.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Jan wanted to help find the brutal camp guards and executioners who carried out so many of the war crimes, the ones who escaped. Have you any idea what happened to those wanted men?”
“No.”
“NATO caught the big names—the top army officers and politicians who ordered the ethnic cleansing and the butchery. We all saw the names in the headlines, the ones tried in the international courts at The Hague. People like Milosevic and his top henchman, Ratko Mladic. But many of the lesser-known thugs who carried out atrocities avoided prosecution.”
“How?”
“Some vanished abroad and created new identities for themselves. Others were aided by supporters or friends. A number of the more brutal Serb paramilitary commanders had connections to organized crime, the Balkan and Russian mafias, who helped them do a disappearing act.”
“Where did they disappear to?”
“Anywhere you can think of. Europe, South America, Australia, even the United States. Just like the Nazis of old, they fled like rats deserting a ship. Jan was determined to bring as many of them as he could to justice. That’s what he was doing in his spare time. That’s what consumed him.”
“Why didn’t Jan tell me all this?”
“I guess he didn’t want you to be involved. There were other reasons, too.”
“What reasons?”
“These were dangerous people he was hunting down. He thought you might be worried about that.”
“I’m still waiting for an answer, Paul. Why did Jan die?”
“Because he got close to identifying several brutal paramilitary commanders who were never brought to trial. That’s why.”
“Has this got to do with your parents’ deaths? How they died in the shelling? Is that why he was hunting these war criminals down?”
Paul didn’t answer but his eyes welled up with tears, and he put a hand on his jaw and looked away. Finally, he said, “Yes, that was part of it. These men are just like the ones who destroyed our village and ruined our lives.”
He looked at her. “I still remember that day. How we made it out alive was a miracle. Anyone who didn’t flee fast enough or survived the shelling were rounded up and either executed or imprisoned.”
“How do you know what Jan was doing, Paul?”
“Because he told me. What we lived though as kids made us very close. We kept no secrets from each other.”
“These people paid someone to murder him?”
“I’m sure they didn’t need to. They could do it themselves. Butchers like those didn’t need to pay others to kill for them.”
“You mean to say someone just decided to kill Jan because he was investigating them?”
“They’re dangerous people, Carla. With horrific crimes in their pasts. They probably saw Jan as a threat to their freedom. A threat they decided to eliminate.”
Carla sank back in the chair, shaking her head, her hand going to her mouth.
“How long have you known about this work Jan was doing?”
“Since he got involved a few years ago. I begged him to stay out of it, but Jan was determined to carry on.”
“Why did he do it? Why risk his life?”
“Because he wanted to speak for the dead. Because he wanted to see these killers and torturers face the courts. He was obsessed with finding the guilty.”
“Were you involved, too?”
“No, I kept my nose out of it.”
“You should have told me all this before now.”
“Jan insisted that I not breathe a word to you. I had to keep my promise to him.”
“Why didn’t you tell the police everything you’ve just told me?”
“Carla, you don’t understand.”
“Understand what?”
“I know what these people are capable of. As a boy, I witnessed their terrible crimes. I saw the villages they destroyed, the victims they butchered. Men, women, children. They’re not human, they’re unfeeling beasts. Like the worst of the Nazis, they showed no mercy.”
“Who killed Jan? Who? Tell me their names.”
Paul pushed himself from his chair. “I don’t know their names. Jan didn’t confide everything to me. But I’m pretty sure it was the same people he was trying to track down.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because Jan told me he was worried for his safety. That he’d noticed that he was being followed on a few occasions.”
“Followed by whom?”
“He didn’t know. But he felt certain he was being watched.”
“That’s not proof.”
“No, it’s not. But he’d had a veiled warning.”
“What kind of warning?”
“A call to his cell phone a few months back.”
“Tell me.”
“The caller spoke in Serbian. It was a man. He told Jan not to stick his nose in where it wasn’t wanted. That’s all, then the man put down the phone.”
“That’s still not proof.”
“One of his contacts in the Families for Justice called me and told me he was convinced that these people killed Jan. That others were murdered in the past, when they got too close.”
“Are you going to tell the police about the men Jan was hunting? Are you going to tell them everything now?”
“No, I’m not.”
“I don’t understand.”
Paul glanced at the family photographs on the sideboard.
“I have a wife and two young daughters to protect. I’ve already lost my parents and my brother to those beasts. I want no more bloodshed, no more murder. The men who killed Jan got what they wanted—his silence. They’ll have no gripe with anyone else so long as we don’t stick our noses in it. It’s over, it’s done. We have to let it be, Carla.”
Anger flared in her voice. “He was your brother, for heaven’s sake! How can you sit there and say that so calmly?”
“Would it help if I shouted?”<
br />
“I can’t believe that you’ll accept Jan’s death that easily.”
Paul stared back, and Carla saw the wet at the edges of his eyes. “What’s easy about it? I loved him. My heart’s broken. I’ve lost the only living relative I had. You speak as if I have a choice. But I’ve got none. These people are a law unto themselves. If you pursue them, or inform on them, they will find you and kill you.”
“What about the police? They can protect us.”
“No, they can’t.” He leaned forward. “Do you know what happened to the first Serb prime minister after Milosevic? A man named Zoran Dindic. It was he who sent Milosevic to trial at The Hague, then ordered the arrest of Serb war criminals with connections to organized crime.”
“No, tell me.”
“A Serb mafia hit man put a sniper’s bullet in him. They assassinated the prime minister, for God’s sake.”
He shook his head. “All the mafia hoods behind that crime have still never been caught, despite Interpol, despite the FBI, and despite almost every police force on the planet out to arrest them.”
He sat back again. “These men are hard and violent gangsters. Into drug smuggling, prostitution, murder, human trafficking, you name it. Cross them and there’s no escaping their wrath. They’ve killed a prime minister. Do you think they’d stop at killing me and my family?” He glanced at her stomach. “Or a pregnant woman?”
He stood, massaging his neck. “They killed our dog. I found her in the backyard with her throat cut.”
“What?”
“It happened while we were at Jan’s funeral. I had to bury her out in the desert. I couldn’t tell Kim and the girls. They think the dog ran away.”
“How can you know for certain that it was a threat?”
“Come on, Carla, a blade is a favorite Balkan weapon. You’re lucky if there’s a single warning. After that, you’re dead.”
He placed a hand firmly on her shoulder. “I’m telling you what I told Jan. To stay out of it. And don’t make things worse by informing the police. I love you, Carla; you’re part of my family. Your safety matters to me.”
