by Mark Burnell
Milan Savic was an only child. His father, Borisav, left home when Milan was six. A year later his mother committed suicide. Thereafter he lived with his maternal grandparents in Belgrade. A teenage thug, then a black-marketeer, by 1989 Savic was well known to the police in the Yugoslav capital, not only for his criminal activity, but also for the generous bribes he paid to them.
After January 1989 there was a gap in the files. A two-year blackout. When it was over, early in 1991, Savic was running a paramilitary unit in Croatia. The file claimed that in conjunction with the SDB, the Serb secret police, Savic was instrumental in preparing Serb communities within Croatia for insurrection. These activities were coordinated by Colonel Ratko Mladic, commander of the Knin garrison. Despite this Savic remained under the direct control of Franko Simatovic, known to everyone as Frenki, and Radovan Stojicic, known as Badza, numbers two and three at the SDB.
Frenki and Badza – pronounced Badger – were familiar names to her. They'd both known Zeljko Raznatovic, also known as Arkan. As Petra, Stephanie had known Arkan too, if only for a moment. On 15 January 2000 both of them had been in the lobby of the Hotel Inter-Continental in Belgrade. So had Dragica Maric. But Stephanie had only discovered that later, inside the derelict Somerset Hotel on West 54th Street, New York. It had been raining, she remembered, the downpour drowning the sound of Manhattan's traffic. That was when Dragica Maric had told her that she was there too, watching, as Arkan walked towards Petra Reuter, unaware.
Arkan had founded the Serbian Volunteer Guard, later known as the Tigers, just as Savic had founded Inter Milan, his Internationals, a group of outsiders, hungry for violence and money. Between Arkan and Savic existed Frenki and Badza, on behalf of the SDB.
At first Savic worked in areas of the Krajina, stirring the ghosts of the Second World War, resurrecting the spectre of the dreaded fascist Ustashas. Arkan was doing similar work, as well as making arrangements to arm the local Serb population. Once the Serb Autonomous Region – the SAR – had been set up in the Krajina, Savic's unit was instrumental in purging it of non-Serbs. This formed a behavioural template that was to last for eight years. In Croatia and Bosnia, then Kosovo, villages were attacked, cattle slaughtered, crops burnt, houses looted, innocents brutalized, then murdered.
From the screen to her left she picked another title: Inter Milan. There were photographs and brief biographies. She scanned them.
Savic's right-hand man within Inter Milan was Vojislav Brankovic. His name was one of the nine on the list that Alexander had shown her. A native of the Krajina, Brankovic came from the small town of Titova Korenica, not far from the beautiful Plitvica National Park in Croatia. The son of a baker, he'd done military service with the JNA, the Yugoslav National Army, before returning home. In early 1991, when Savic went to the Krajina, Brankovic was apparently contented, working in the family business, living with his parents, surrounded by friends from childhood. His girlfriend, Maria, was a beautiful Croat whose parents lived in a house four doors away. The file did not disclose how Brankovic had been recruited by Savic. It only documented those activities accredited to him.
Brankovic was known as the Spoon because he wore a JNA army-issue canteen spoon on a chain around his neck for good luck. There was a picture to prove it, Brankovic in a tight-fitting olive T-shirt, the battered teaspoon worn like a set of dog-tags. He had a broad, agricultural face, a fuzz of fair hair, pale skin and a physique that radiated power through scale rather than menace. Here was a chopper of trees, Stephanie felt, rather than a baker of bread. Along with Savic, Brankovic had been one of those allegedly killed by the KLA outside Pristina on 13 February 1999.
She looked at some of the internationals. Barry Ferguson, British, from Gateshead, ex-SAS, ex-husband to a battered wife, ex-father of three, ex-inmate of Durham Prison. Troy Carter from Maine – unlike Ferguson, he'd never made the grade as a professional soldier. He'd gone to the Balkans to prove himself. And had failed again. Within a fortnight a landmine had scattered him over his colleagues. Fabrice Blanc, a native of Marseille, had deserted the French Foreign Legion specifically to go to the Balkans.
'I need to fight to live,' he'd claimed.
It was a phrase with resonance among the Inter Milan hard core. How did mild-mannered Vojislav Brankovic, the baker's son, become a vicious murderer? How did a boy with a beautiful Croat girlfriend end up stabbing other Croats in the face simply for being Croat? Stephanie knew part of the answer: in war, some men found themselves.
There was a picture of Harald Gross kicking a severed Bosniak head into a makeshift goal with spent shell cases for posts. In the background there were several blurred onlookers, their grins smudged. The rest of the mercenaries were European apart from a Canadian, two Australians and a South African. At any given moment the internationals accounted for between thirty and forty per cent of the Inter Milan force. Mercenaries they might have been, but one thing was clear: they were there for the fighting, not for the money.
On the screen to her right Stephanie touched a box with a woman's face. She came to life, her expression as harrowed in motion as it had been frozen. A box of text in the right-hand corner informed Stephanie that the woman was from a small village close to Foca, in eastern Bosnia, a town that had been ethnically cleansed in 1992. Over her testimony, another woman translated into English.
'They came in the morning. They beat up anybody who got in their way. One of them shot a farmer in front of his wife and children. When the wife attacked the gunman, another one intervened and cut her throat. The children were hysterical. Their mother was in a pool of blood in the dirt. Other men took the children away. The leader told us we were to be transported to Foca, where we would join the people of the town, and then we would all leave the district together. They said we had one hour to make our preparations. We went home. An hour later we gathered in the market square. I had a bag, packed with … I don't know what … anything … I couldn't think. My husband carried a sack with bread and clothes. Then there was a delay, a lot of confusion. They made us sit down in the square. It was very hot. We were there for some hours.'
Stephanie reckoned the woman was in her late forties. The interview was taking place in an institutional room: cream gloss walls, a smooth concrete floor with a single table at its centre. She was talking to another woman whose back was to camera. Stephanie paused the footage and checked the directory; the interview had been conducted in a Bologna police cell. When the action resumed, so did the clock in the bottom left-hand corner: 14.14 on 11 April 1997.
'They asked me what I did. I said I was a teacher. The one with no teeth told me to show him where the school was. He said they would need a place to keep us for the night because we would not go to Foca until the next day. I got up from the ground to take him to the school. That was the last time I saw my husband alive. Four other men came with us. It was a small building with one large classroom and two small utility rooms. The man with no teeth told me to take off my clothes. I refused and one of the others hit me across the cheek with the butt of his rifle. Then they stripped me and raped me.'
The other woman asked a question that Stephanie couldn't hear. The first woman shook her head defiantly and continued, her voice a sobering monotone.
'No, it was all of them. The man with no teeth went first. When he was finished, the others followed. I tried not to make a sound because I knew they would hear me outside. Later some of the men went out, then others came in. Sometimes it was one of them, sometimes two or three. They brought in other women. Some of the women were older than me, some were just girls.
'They brought in the doctor's wife late in the afternoon. After four or five men had raped her, they brought in her husband. They made him watch as more men raped her. Then they slit his throat in front of her. Like me, she survived the massacre the next day. I know that because she made it to Athens where she had some family. But she's dead now. She killed herself.
'During the night they were drinking. We heard screams and shout
s in the square. We didn't know what they were doing until the morning when we saw the bodies. They'd knifed some of the old men and hung some of the boys. One of them was six. By the end I don't think I felt a thing. I don't know how many of them raped me, or how many times. It doesn't matter.
'When they left they shot some of those who were still in the square. But not all of them. It was the same in the school-house. They murdered a few and let the rest live. To tell others what had happened, to spread the fear. I can't forgive any of them for anything. But in particular, I can't forgive them for not shooting me. For letting me live. I don't care what any of the other survivors say, that was the worst thing they did to me. I think about suicide every day, but I can't do it. It's a sin. I want to die, though. As soon as possible so I won't have to remember.'
She was staring, unblinking. Not at the woman opposite her, but at the camera. At Stephanie.
Another box on the right-hand screen, another face, this one a man's, an Albanian from Kosovo. The interview was recorded in a community centre in Hamburg on 13 June 2001. There were other immigrants in the frame. The man spoke slow, clear English.
'They kicked us out of our houses, robbed us, then beat us up. They separated the men of fighting age from the rest and told us they would be taken to a secure camp. They said they would be well treated, but we didn't believe them. We already knew they were butchers. There was panic, women clinging to their husbands. The terrorists – that is what they were, not soldiers – beat the women back. But there was no controlling them. There was one woman, she was on her knees clinging to her husband's legs with one arm and her little boy with the other. The leader of the terrorists, a big man with a shaved head, tried to pull her off her husband. I could see how angry this monster was. His eyes were dead. He grabbed her by the hair and pulled but she would not let go. Instead she spat at him. And so he shot her husband. Just like that. As though be was taking the top off a bottle.
'Before the woman had time to react, he grabbed the little boy, his face splattered with his father's blood. The savage held him tight, put a gun to his head and threatened to shoot unless there was order. Nobody said anything. Nobody protested any more. The men who had been singled out got on the bus and were driven away. Those of us who were left – the sick, the old, the women and children – we watched, some crying, some too terrified to cry.
The man said we had to pay for the trouble we had caused. Fifteen thousand deutschmarks for the boy. I was one of those detailed to collect the cash. He gave us half an hour to find the money. What could we do? They had already robbed us. But they knew we would find cash that was hidden. We went from house to house, collecting what we could. When we returned we had just over ten thousand deutschmarks, much more than I expected. I was the one who handed the money to him. He counted it and said, "Ten thousand is not enough. I said fifteen." Somebody else said there was no more, that it was all we had. He shrugged and said, "Okay. I'm a fair man. A deal is a deal. You give me two thirds of the money, I give you two thirds of the boy." He decapitated the child in front of us. When they left they took their third away – the head – and left his little body on the ground next to his father.'
The windows are open. I can hear the distant murmur of traffic on the Gloucester Road, a phone ringing, the dull drum-roll of a helicopter passing overhead. Mark looms over me, enters me and kisses me. I can taste myself on his tongue.
Already flushed, I break into a sweat, our skins soon slippery, the sheets beneath us crushed and damp. I push my fingers through his dark hair and they come away wet. At first I'm content to let his weight pin me to the bed; I snake my arms around his neck and pull him down onto me. Later we roll over and I'm in charge, swiping away his hands from my hips so that I decide how hard we go, how deep, how fast. Which is when I seize up. Suddenly I'm no longer in his bedroom and I have no idea how it's happened.
I try to escape his grasp but he doesn't get it. He hardens his grip so I grab the fingers of his right hand and twist violently. I lurch forward and we separate. Still clutching his fingers with a force that amazes both of us, I wrench again, clamping my other hand over his, straining the tendons in his wrist.
'Jesus … Stephanie …'
He rolls with the pain. He has to, otherwise the wrist would snap. I know that for certain. It's a move I've used often. I let go just in time, but he's hurt. And in shock. For a second or two neither of us does or says anything. Then I stumble off the bed and scramble to the bathroom, where I lock the door.
I'm trembling but I'm not sure whether it's anger, sorrow or surprise. I lash out at the shelf above the basin, scattering two plastic mugs, a can of shaving foam and a half-used bottle of Listerine.
I don't know what to think. Or what I can say to him. Because whatever I do, I can't tell him the truth. I can't share my day's work with him. I can't say what I've learnt after ten hours, or excuse my behaviour by telling him that all I could see was a Bosnian school-teacher being gang-raped by a Serb paramilitary unit. Or a little boy lying in the dirt next to his father, his head severed.
There's a knock on the door. My breathing is slowing but my skin still gleams with sweat. He murmurs my name. I stare into my reflected eyes – my most potent weapon – and take control again.
Then I turn round and open the door.
Mark had pulled on a pair of cotton trousers. Stephanie was still naked. Her voice was barely a whisper. 'Do you want me to go?'
'I want you to talk.'
'It would be easier to go.'
'I'm sure it would.'
He offered her an old shirt of his. She pulled it around her damp body. When she said she was sorry, she couldn't bring herself to look him in the eye. He asked if she needed a drink. She did but she declined. Then she sat on the edge of the bed, her back to him.
'You know that feeling, when you're almost asleep but not quite? And you're not actually sure whether you're awake or not. And then you picture yourself tripping or falling, and even though it's your imagination your whole body lurches … that's what it was like.'
'I know the feeling. But I don't know what you're talking about.'
'I can't. I'm sorry.'
Mark said it was okay. When it clearly wasn't. Or, at least, shouldn't have been. He should have asked questions. Or shouted. Something. Anything. But he didn't because he didn't have to. He understood without the details.
From the very start there had been a condition, laid down in her bed in the hotel in the Dolomites. Don't imagine you'll ever get too close to me, Mark. No matter what happens to us, there are whole areas of my life that I will never be able to share with anyone. He'd said he didn't care.
Now, despite what she'd said, he had got close. Far closer than she could have anticipated. But not to her past. The condition remained intact.
He opened a bottle of wine to soothe the tension. Later, he cooked for them and they relaxed a little, a second bottle helping.
They went to bed just before midnight. With the curtains open, a street-lamp washed the ceiling dirty orange. They lay tangled together, her head on his chest, his fingers in her hair.
He said, 'You're the strangest person I've ever met.'
'I'm not half as strange as you.'
'I don't think I'm strange.'
She looked up at him. 'Do you really think I am?'
'One moment you're one person, the next moment you're somebody completely different. That seems to me to be strange. Then again, it is who you are.'
'Trust me, Mark. You have no idea.'
Chapter 3
The first week of September brought the first storm since mid-July. Volleys of rain lashed the carriage windows as the District Line train wheezed to a halt at Olympia. As the doors parted, Stephanie turned up her collar. Maclise Road was just a minute away but she was dripping by the time she kicked her front door shut. She shed her raincoat and draped it over a chair, leaving her in grey sweatpants with a green stripe, a chunky black V-neck over a purple long-sleeved T-shir
t and yesterday's underwear. In other words, the clothes that had been closest to her side of the bed.
She switched on the Sony Vaio in the living room and sent a brief message to a Hotmail address.
> I'm back from my travels. I've got a couple of questions for you. Let's get in touch.
In the kitchen she made herself coffee and turned on the radio. The news bulletin was finishing with an item of gossip about some soap star she didn't know. It was five past seven. Mark had been asleep when she'd left him. By contrast, she'd been awake since three. Worrying, wondering.
It had taken several days to absorb Alexander's deal fully. At first she'd only seen the carrot and that had blinded her to everything else. As intended, she supposed. It took longer to analyse the detail, the reality, the potential consequences. The more she considered it, the more anxious she'd become. Above all, there was one thing she knew: Alexander was not a man who liked to give.
There would be a subtext. There always was. Offering her a future free of Magenta House was not credible by itself. Alexander had prohibited her from seeing Komarov after New York out of nothing more than spite. Why would he let her go now? There was no obvious answer.
And what of the contract itself? It wasn't what she was trained for despite Mostovoi and Marrakech, there were others who'd be better suited to the task. Was it a demotion? Did Alexander feel she no longer had the cutting edge to survive in S7? She'd never heard of anyone being demoted at Magenta House. Those who left did so without fanfare and never returned.
The deal and the contract itself, neither was right.
She checked three Hotmail addresses of her own, as well as her five AOL addresses. Over the years she'd developed a system for e-mail management. The Hotmail addresses were permanent and belonged to Petra. Consequently very few people ever used them, and she couldn't think of anyone who knew more than one of them. Nearly all her Hotmail traffic was spam: tacky offers for cheap loans, penis or breast enhancement and off-the-shelf diplomas. The AOL addresses were spread across five of her established identities, Stephanie Schneider among them. Finally there were those addresses that were set up for one contract only. Or even one message.
