The Heart of Hell

by Alen Mattich

  He tried the door opposite. This room was warm and smelled of cigarette smoke and coffee. He swung the flashlight around and saw a table on top of which a tall church candle sat, slightly bent, in a holder. He lit it and left it on the table to shed its soft glow through the room.

  In one corner of the room was a massive ceramic stove covered in green tiles. When he opened the small grate, he could see the dim glow of embers in its narrow firebox. To one side of the stove a big galvanized basin stood on a folding stand. On the other side was a small table, covered in a towel and obviously used for drying dishes.

  The walls were covered in more shelves containing bottled and preserved food; dried salamis hung from a rail on the ceiling. A few potted plants enlivened the space, and in the corner was a lemon tree with a single plump green fruit clinging to one of its branches.

  A dozen butts were in the square crystal ashtray on the kitchen table. Despite the smell of smoke in the room, the butts were cold.

  Della Torre wandered out of the room to explore the rest of the house. Whoever was living there was fastidious and, judging by the size and location of the house and its furnishings, well-to-do.

  “Hello,” della Torre called out. “My name is Major Marko della Torre, and I’d like a word with Mr. Zidar if he lives here. I am not here to take you away from your house. I would just like a little information, and then I’ll leave.”

  Silence.

  He wandered farther along the hall to the real kitchen, which faced the back of the house and the river. The room next to it had a large window overlooking the Danube. The window had been reduced to jagged shards and a broken frame.

  He climbed the stairs. The floor above followed a similar pattern: furniture had been moved from the back to the front two rooms and covered in white sheets. Once again, everything was neat and tidy. But here there was no warmth. Dust had been allowed to settle.

  Della Torre pushed aside the planks and plastic sheeting that blocked access to a smaller wooden staircase and climbed it into the attic. The floor was a thick, solid layer of concrete. He saw piles of old suitcases and cardboard boxes. A few rafters were charred, but the fire hadn’t taken hold.

  And then something in a corner caught his eye. He edged over, ducking under a broken beam. A smell hit him with undiluted force, punching its way to the back of his throat, and he retched up a mouthful of saliva. He stepped closer, the cylinder illumination of the flashlight casting strange shadows over the atrocity. Bodies were stacked under a black, swarming mass of flies, breeding in open orifices, wounds, mouths, eyes.

  A mortal terror ate into him. In that instant, he saw a flash across the river. And then another one. A tile near him smashed. Realizing he’d been in an exposed position, he ducked back down the stairs.

  The flashlight dimmed, its battery already largely drained. As he reached the landing below the attic, a strong beam of light shone in his face, blinding him. He raised his forearm to cover his eyes. “Julius, lower that bloody light.”

  “Up. Back up the stairs,” a hidden voice said. “Keep your hands raised.”

  Strumbić’s voice came next: “Do what the man says.”

  Della Torre could vaguely make out Strumbić’s form behind the blinding light. He wanted to ask what this was all about, but he knew.

  He turned and climbed back up the raw concrete steps, with Strumbić following behind.

  “Keep your hands up. Walk over there,” the man said, flicking the beam of the flashlight towards the gap in the roof where the bodies had been stacked.

  “He’s not joking,” Strumbić said. “He’s got a fucking cannon.”

  “Shut up,” the man said.

  They shuffled in the direction they were bidden. Again the shooting started. Della Torre and Strumbić dropped to their knees at the sound of splintering tiles.

  “Up,” the man said. “Stand up.”

  Della Torre understood now. The man hadn’t been killing trespassers. He’d left that for the snipers across the river. The attic was a shooting gallery. Maybe that’s why the artillerymen had left this house intact. The man had fed them sacrificial victims, and they’d spared him the devastation his neighbours had suffered.

  “Up, I said.”

  A stone kicked up from the concrete, cutting into the back of della Torre’s hand. He flinched.

  “I will count to three. If you don’t stand up I will shoot you kneeling where you are. One . . . two . . .”

  Della Torre and Strumbić rose slowly from their knees, knowing they were exposing themselves in the beam of light to the merciless snipers across the river.

  And then the flashlight beam swung sharply. The heavy-­calibre automatic rifle issued a brief explosive belch. Della Torre and Strumbić dropped back down on their knees. Della Torre dug a hand into his jacket pocket, finger on the trigger of the Beretta, and fired back towards the man standing at the stairs.

  DELLA TORRE HEARD a shriek of agony. The man rolled on the concrete floor, pounding his hands against his head, which was wrapped in flame.

  Strumbić was onto the man first, beating out the fire and at the same time wrestling the rifle away.

  “Let’s get him down the stairs,” Strumbić said as more and more broken tile and concrete kicked up around them.

  They half-dragged, half-carried the screaming man down to the kitchen. Della Torre had salvaged the powerful torch, but the rifle they’d left behind.

  The man’s face was charred and blistered on one side. His hair was burnt off and he had a raw open wound on one hand.

  “Find some salve or something so that bastard stops moaning,” Strumbić said.

  Della Torre took a jar of congealed cooking fat from one of the shelves and, with Strumbić, slathered what he could on the wounds. The man whimpered and motioned to a drawer in the dresser. Della Torre pulled it open to discover a pharmacopeia of pills and bottles.

  “Codeine, codeine,” the man said. Reading fast through the labels, della Torre broke open four blister packs and brought the pills over. The man downed them all, dry.

  Della Torre found a bottle of water and glasses and poured some out for all of them.

  And then, in the doorway, he saw another ghost. Plavi, pale in his vivid dress, which was as bright as the burn victim’s opened flesh.

  “I’m . . . I’m sorry.”

  “Plavi — goodness, you frightened me.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said again. “Is he okay? Will he be okay?”

  “Nothing more than he deserves, trying to kill us up there. What the fuck was that?” Strumbić said.

  “A charnel house,” della Torre said. “I counted at least a dozen bodies.”

  “Fuck.”

  “I’m sorry,” Plavi said. “All I had was a lamp. I . . . I threw it at him. I didn’t mean for it to burn him so badly.”

  The man continued to whimper.

  “That was you?” della Torre asked.

  “Yes. I saw him hit you and take your gun,” Plavi said to Strumbić. “And I didn’t know what to do. It was too far to go back to get someone.”

  “You did the right thing, boy,” Strumbić said. Della Torre saw a long bruise along the side of Strumbić’s face. A stinging sensation reminded him that the back of his own hand had been torn open.

  The man moaned less now. His eyes blinked rapidly, rolling a little.

  “Who are you?” della Torre asked. “Are you Zidar, Mr. Dragomanov’s nephew?”

  The man gave a vague nod.

  “Have you been living here the whole while?”

  Again he nodded.

  “Why didn’t you escape when you could?”

  The man’s head rolled back. Della Torre wondered how strong those codeine tablets were.

  “Gringo, we don’t want his life story. We just need to know one thing. Where are Dragomanov’s
papers?”

  The man’s head rolled again.

  Strumbić leaned forward. His upper lip had risen, baring his crooked teeth. “Wakey, wakey, Mr. Zidar. I won’t ask again. Where do you keep the papers?”

  Zidar’s head shook slightly.

  Strumbić pressed a finger into the flesh of the man’s arm that had been most severely burned by the lantern’s sticky, napalm-like fuel, through the white translucent coat of fat and down into the wound.

  The man bellowed and mewled as the instant, unendurable pain cut through the effects of the drug. Della Torre was transfixed by the man’s electric reaction, horrified at himself for not looking away. For allowing it.

  “Where are they?” Strumbić repeated.

  The man’s eyes were wide. His head turned towards the other side of the house.

  “Of course. It’s through the garage, isn’t it. I wondered where you’d appeared from when you blindsided me.” Strumbić dug into Zidar’s pocket to retrieve his confiscated Beretta. “Boy, how old are you?” he asked Plavi.

  “F-fourteen.”

  “You ever shoot a man?”

  Plavi shook his head fast, afraid he might be asked to.

  “It’s not so hard. This thing is loaded. All you need to do is pull the trigger and it puts a hole in Mr. Ghost there. Just remember, anybody wandering around this part of town lately would have gotten a bullet, thanks to this fellow. You sit over there, and if he moves, you squeeze that trigger. We’ll come running. But you make sure the barrel is pointed at him. Here, sit on this side of the room, away from him.” And then, turning to della Torre, he said, “Let’s go and have a little look.”

  They found a steel door leading to a set of concrete steps that stretched at least two full storeys underground.

  “Fucking nuclear bunker,” Strumbić said, leading the way.

  “Could be why Dragomanov bought it. Far enough out of Belgrade and deep enough underground to survive a strike.”

  “And anonymous enough that the first wave of invading Russians would ignore it,” Strumbić said. “Smart guy.”

  The door into the bunker itself was heavy but well balanced, a good thirty centimetres thick. The room was square, four metres by four metres, a raised bed at one side, the shelves underneath stacked full of tins of food. A little kitchen was to one side. The only sound they heard was coming from a fan overhead. Strumbić swung the flashlight around and found a switch. The fluorescent lights flickered on.

  “Can you believe that? It has its own electricity supply,” Strumbić said. “Must be a generator in a service room behind that door.”

  They looked around and saw a desk, a radio, and stacked boxes. A number of paintings hung on the walls.

  “Would you look at that,” della Torre said.

  “What?”

  Della Torre motioned to a painting in a dim corner. It was of a hellish scene: a burning city in the background, and in the fore were destroyed buildings, tiny figures in the throes of humiliation and agony, St. Anthony tempted by a satyr, by gold, and by the demons that were threatening to tear him apart.

  Della Torre stepped towards the painting and then stood in front of it. He touched its frame, shocked not by its subject matter but by its provenance. “This isn’t a copy.”

  “Of what?” Strumbić asked.

  “Hieronymus Bosch,” della Torre said. “The National Museum now lends out its paintings?”

  “Gringo, if you’re a big shot, everything’s available.”

  “But it normally hangs in the National Museum. In Belgrade. Have they already started looting —”

  On another wall was an abstract of geometric shapes on a white background. “Malevich?” he wondered. He pointed to another small painting with bold colours. “Matisse?”

  “Well, maybe that explains why the nephew stayed behind. Somebody had to watch the stuff.”

  Della Torre was too shocked to comment.

  Strumbić began rummaging around the two tall filing cabinets in the corner just behind the entrance door. “Fuck, he’s got enough here to worry half the presidency. The Pilgrim file ought to be in a safe — but then again, that’s what this place is: one giant safe.” He stopped, picked up a small black silk bag and looked inside. “Oh, and look, a bag of little shiny stones.” He laughed. “I’d bet my left nut they’re diamonds.”

  “How much?”

  “In value? I’m figuring this bag is around two hundred grams. My recent experience in Dubrovnik has taught me that this equates to a thousand carats. Most of these diamonds seem to be the two- or three-carat variety. Reasonably good quality, one carat runs around two thousand dollars wholesale.”

  “Two million dollars,” della Torre said with a small gasp.

  “A very good day’s work. I had been wondering why I let you convince me to come to this hellhole,” Strumbić said. It didn’t escape della Torre’s notice that he’d pocketed the bag of stones.

  “Ah, and the other Pilgrim file,” Strumbić said, slipping it and a few other files into the big white handbag. “I’d say help yourself to one of the paintings, but somebody might notice that it looks a lot like the one that used to be in the museum. That’s the nice thing about diamonds —”

  They heard the sound of a gunshot.

  They raced up the steps and into the house. Plavi was still sitting where they’d left him. The burnt man lay on the floor, bleeding heavily.

  “I . . . I didn’t mean . . .” the boy started to say, holding the gun in his palm. Strumbić took it from him. “He got up and, I thought he was going to —”

  “You were just protecting yourself, like Julius told you,” della Torre said softly.

  The boy nodded, wide-eyed from shock, horror, or maybe curiosity — della Torre couldn’t be sure.

  “Never mind, Plavi. They’d have shot him anyway,” Strumbić said.

  Della Torre knelt by the man. He was still alive.

  “If we patch him up we might get him to the hospital,” della Torre said.

  “And what then, Gringo?” Strumbić said. “He was a dead man from the moment he failed to kill us.”

  “Would you have done it?”

  “Nope. I’d have marched him up the stairs and made him take his place there. But Plavi here has saved my conscience. Not that it would have been very bothered.”

  “Let’s get out of here,” della Torre said.

  PLAVI LED THEM back to headquarters, where they slept.

  They were woken before first light. The first group of militiamen was retreating from Vukovar. Boban had organized the withdrawal of the troops, though his own unit wouldn’t leave for a couple of hours. But the headquarters needed to be cleared, so they staggered into the cold of the pre-dawn hours.

  Della Torre was groggy, stumbling in the half-darkness, lit by countless fires. He passed the yard of a family home where a dead horse lay on the ground, its entrails being eaten by a pair of golden retrievers whose ribs showed through their coats. As the troops passed, the dogs looked up to watch with guarded indifference, then returned to their bloody meal.

  A fog had risen from the river. Della Torre could taste ash in the cold, damp air. Somewhere in the distance he heard an echo of gunfire. The shelling had started again. Far away the great guns coughed, and above, the sky fizzed. The explosive impacts made him jump.

  He desperately wanted a cigarette but refused himself. He didn’t want a sniper shooting it out of his mouth.

  As the sun rose, he could see the light twisting the fog into vortices. The fog softened the edges of Vukovar’s destruction while sharpening his sense of its doom. Rattling gunfire punctuated the muffled echoes of parents calling for their children. A starburst shell flooded the sky with rippling illumination. Della Torre’s mind desperately sought connections to reality in all the unreality that he saw and heard and smelled.
r />   “Did you find what you were looking for?” Boban asked.

  “Yes,” della Torre said. Yes, they’d found what they’d come looking for. He didn’t know how they’d use it or what good it would do them. If they survived Vukovar. They had the secrets for which Dragomanov had killed and for which the Americans were prepared to kill.

  He thought of Irena.

  He had a couple of hours before Boban’s group was due to make its dangerous foray out of Vukovar. He wanted to see Irena again.

  It was still the small hours but there’d be no chance of catching any more sleep. Fires lit the town in an orange-red glow. Shells traced meteorite paths across the sky, though the JNA was desultory in its destruction. Had the Yugoslav soldiers tired of it? Had the unceasing bombardment also broken their sleep, shattered their days, so that now they too wanted to see the end of it?

  Despite the rubble and the flickering light, della Torre realized he knew where they were. Even hell had its familiar roads.

  “The hospital’s not far, is it?” della Torre said.

  “No, though it’s probably the most dangerous place to get to, outside of the front lines. The Serbs use it for target practice,” Boban said. “I’m not sure the doctors will have time to look at your hand tonight.”

  Della Torre looked down at his wound, blood dried on the skin where it wasn’t wet and open. “Oh, that’s nothing. Stings a little but it’s just a graze. I thought I’d try to say goodbye to Irena.”

  “Oh,” Boban said. “Of course. I’ll send someone to collect you when we leave. He’ll find you.”

  Della Torre made his way to the hospital alone, scrambling through the rubble hurdles on the way, flinching at the sound of each explosion. When he got there, he found a seat in the long hall where visitors and the walking wounded waited to be admitted below ground. He sent messages to Irena and waited hour after hour for her to come. In the gloom, he thought of his father in his big farmhouse near the sea.

  His father drank in solitude, and della Torre knew that if he survived Vukovar and whatever else this war brought, he’d take the old man’s place at the lonely kitchen table with the worn oilcloth, pouring glass after glass of his own yellow wine until he too dissolved into those infinitesimal floating specks of dust.