by Alen Mattich
“I don’t understand it. Is he friends with Horvat? Does he still want me dead?” Della Torre rested his chin on his hand and contemplated the indestructible rubber plant in the corner of the room.
“I don’t know, Gringo. Though I’ll tell you what I think. I think the Dispatcher was doing tricks for Belgrade. And now he’s doing them for the Croat government. He doesn’t know any more than we do how this whole thing is going to turn out, and he wants to make sure he’s covered on both sides.”
“But why make the public appearance?”
“It wasn’t too public. Just enough to show us that he has friends in high places, in case we get ideas. He’ll have been talking to Horvat anyway. He may be ancient and he may be poison, but he knows a lot. Politicians value his survival skills. Maybe Horvat talked to him about getting to know the Americans. The old man knew plenty about Tito’s diplomatic shenanigans, playing one side against the other. Half the time Tito didn’t trust his own foreign ministry people, thought they were all spies for somebody else, had his translator run the show for him. I’m sure the Dispatcher helped out as well.”
“You seem to know a lot about it.”
“Of course I know a lot about it. When you disappeared to London, I was the one who dug around. And I was the one who went to ask the old man why he wanted my friend dead.”
“I didn’t know that,” della Torre said, surprised and grateful for Anzulović and feeling even more miserable that he was losing some of the older man’s protection now that he was no longer his junior.
“Well, you do now. A thank-you and a Lucky Strike might be in order.”
“Thank you,” della Torre said, handing his pack over to Anzulović. “Now what?”
“I suggest you do what the Americans want. Horvat might be running things now and the Dispatcher might be pulling the strings, but the Dispatcher’s old. And Horvat . . . well, Horvats come and go. Americans are forever.” Anzulović gave della Torre a wry smile. “Fetching, that redhead of yours. How is it that you keep landing them? Irena, Grace Kelly in London, and now Rita Hayworth.”
“Who?”
“Never mind. What did she want?”
“Djilas. The Montenegrin.”
Anzulović sat up. “And what does she want with the Montenegrin?”
“She says she wants to talk to him. About UDBA wetworks operations in the States.”
“Just to talk?”
“That’s what she says.”
“But you don’t think so.”
“No. I mean, not that he’d take a phone call from her. He won’t take one from me. He’s sensitive that way.”
“So she wants to see him. For a chat.”
“That’s what she says. To clarify some things not in their files.”
“He won’t come here.” Anzulović blew smoke through his thatch of nostril hair. He was clean-shaven otherwise, though he could have woven himself a fine moustache and sideburns from the foliage growing out of his nose and ears.
“That’s what I told her. Wants to meet him in Dubrovnik.”
“Will he go there?”
“I doubt it.”
“So what do you think our new-found American friends want with him?”
“I don’t know,” della Torre said with a shrug. “Maybe it is just to talk to him. But in Washington.”
“Or Aviano,” Anzulović said, referring to the American air force base north of Venice.
“Or there.”
Both men had smoked their cigarettes down to the filter and dropped them into a cracked tea saucer.
“Whatever they want, I’m going with them,” della Torre said. “Djilas may have done unmentionable things, but as far as I know he did them within the letter of Yugoslav law. If the Americans have a beef with anyone, it’s with the presidency.”
“The hangman’s friend.”
“No, but I’m not going to let him stand as some sort of sacrificial lamb to win the hand of American friendship.”
“Forever the lawyer,” Anzulović said. “Anything else new?”
“Strumbić wants to be involved.”
Anzulović let out a laugh from deep in the diaphragm, an honest, infectious laugh that della Torre hadn’t heard in what seemed like a lifetime.
“The Americans are welcome to him. Let him loose on them. He’ll give them a real taste of the Balkans.”
“You’re not serious.”
“Why not? Strumbić is the most honest crook any of us will ever meet. And he’s a smart guy. It would do you good to have somebody that canny by your side. And we now know that in a pinch he’s not going to shoot you in the back. Had plenty of opportunity to do that already. Might not step in to save you, but at least he’s not going to be standing on your head when you’re under water.”
“That’s encouraging. I’m going to be shot and drowned. Only not by Strumbić.”
“You’ve already been shot.”
“Thanks. That cheers me up.”
“I’m serious, Gringo. He may not be your closest friend, but he can be a useful ally. So if you can, let him play along. And who knows, you might be able to get him to sign the affidavit.”
He called Rebecca after Anzulović left. She seemed pleased by the description of the field at Strumbić’s weekend house and even more so about his villa on Šipan; both fit the requirements she’d laid out. It didn’t take long to convince her that he wouldn’t be able to arrange a meeting with the Montenegrin in Dubrovnik. He’d have one shot, he said. And the only way it would be effective would be to meet the Montenegrin on his terms, on his choice of ground. And della Torre, because he knew the man well, would have to go along.
She agreed to it as if she’d known all along and had merely been looking for him to come to the same conclusion. For him to propose it. Maybe as an act of goodwill. But it took a lot of persuading for her to take Strumbić as part of the deal. The quiet place in the country and the ideal location near Dubrovnik finally convinced her.
On Friday morning, della Torre and Strumbić arrived at the Esplanade early. They waited on the hotel’s raised terrace and had a cigarette and a coffee. Della Torre thought he saw a black Hilux parked at the end of the square, but he wasn’t sure. Strumbić was distracted by something else.
“Get a load of that,” he said to della Torre. And then, louder: “Hey, Red, where’s the fire? Between your legs?”
The woman had passed below the corner of the terrace and was out of sight by the time della Torre turned to look. But he already had a bad feeling.
Rebecca strode up to their table, dressed in tight running gear, her hair tied back under a damp baseball cap. It was still early, but the morning was hot and she glistened.
“Hello, Marko.”
“Rebecca Vees, this is Julius Strumbić.”
Strumbić beamed, and said, “Please to meet you,” in the clearest English he could conjure. He spoke the language reasonably well, though he sounded like a cross between Dracula and a Viennese psychiatrist.
In a lower tone he asked della Torre in Croat, “Does she speak the language?”
Rebecca replied, in Russian-accented Croat, “Da. I know what legs and fire mean.” And then in English: “I can work out the rest.”
Strumbić froze for half a beat and then burst out laughing.
“Is good. We will be friends in English,” he said, putting his hand flat against the small of her back.
Rebecca gave Strumbić a warm smile in return. She’s generous with those smiles, della Torre thought.
“If you fellows don’t mind, I need to shower. I’ll be quick. Promise. Why don’t you come up, and then once I’m sorted you can help take some of my bags down.”
They went up with her and sat in the suite’s sitting room while she showered and dressed. Strumbić grinned knowingly at della Torre but didn’t say
anything. Rebecca came out wearing shorts, walking boots, and a vest under a thin, flowery shirt.
“Maybe you can each carry one of these bags, and I’ll take this one.”
They each took one of the identical suitcases, metal covered in hard plastic with ribbed sides. They weren’t particularly heavy.
“I have car near,” said Strumbić. “BMW.”
He’d gotten back the car that della Torre had once stolen, though della Torre wasn’t quite sure how. Strumbić had never mentioned it, so maybe it hadn’t cost him.
“That’s nice of you, but how about if I drive? I’ve picked up a new car and I’d like to give it a test run,” Rebecca said.
As it happened, her car was parked just down from the BMW. It was a two-door Mercedes coupe as big as a saloon.
“I thought this might be a bit more comfortable than the Volkswagen for long drives.”
“Is good idea. Volkswagen is okay, but this is Mercedes,” said Strumbić approvingly. “Very, very nice Mercedes.”
Della Torre considered the motor with mixed emotions. The last time he’d been in such a high-spec vehicle, he was being kidnapped by three Bosnians who’d been paid to kill him.
They loaded the suitcases in the boot. Strumbić sat in the back. Before della Torre got into the car, curiosity made him look around for the Hilux. He thought he saw it on the opposite corner, but again he couldn’t be sure.
Rebecca started the car, but just before pulling away she turned to Strumbić and said, “Honey, I suggest you buckle up. Seat belt.”
“Is no problem. In Yugoslavia seat belt is for child and woman.”
“Well, this woman isn’t taking you anywhere unless you buckle up.” She fluttered her eyelashes at him, but there was no give in her voice.
Strumbić grumbled but gave way. Money before scruples about his manliness. Della Torre was a rare Yugoslav. He had no problem wearing a belt, not least because he remembered all too well how one had saved his life only a few months earlier.
Rebecca drove the car even more aggressively than she had the Golf. She said she was testing the machine’s responses, accelerating hard so that the eight-cylinder, 5.6-litre engine bellowed, and then braking even faster, until della Torre thought each manoeuvre would end in an accident.
“If we get pulled over, you might have to talk to the nice policeman for me,” she said, not taking her eyes off the road.
Once they were off the motorway, Strumbić guided her through Samobor’s tight streets. It was a pretty town at the foot of the steep hills that rose up at the Croat and Slovene border. They went through to the other side and up a narrow road that wound its way along a hillside ridge, deep into the countryside. Rebecca took the corners fast.
“I’d take it a bit easy,” della Torre said. “I was in a wreck not far from here in a car a lot like this one.”
“Were you driving?” Rebecca asked.
“No. I was a passenger,” della Torre said. Somewhere deep in his memory he could almost smell the Bosnian peasants he’d been squeezed between in the back of that Merc as they drove him to his grave.
“Well, whoever was driving, I’m better,” she said, decelerating into a bend and then accelerating hard through it.
“I see why you wear seat belt,” Strumbić said, cackling as the wheels threw off gravel that edged the rutted road, flinging it into a deep ravine with a stream at the bottom. “You slow down now. Is little road in hundred metres.”
She swung the car onto the rough track as if she’d driven the route every day of her life. They bumped over protruding roots and potholes until the track twisted right, stopping on a levelled area cut into the edge of a steep meadow.
“Nice place you got here,” Rebecca said.
She was looking over the clearing cut from the otherwise heavily wooded hill. There was a little two-storey house halfway up the slope, where the land flattened like a step before rising again. The house had a steep-pitched red-tiled roof and looked over a deep, pretty green valley and higher hills beyond. A village straggled along the valley floor. They could hear distant cockerel calls and barking dogs.
The meadow, a couple of hundred metres square, was bounded by woodland. Rows of vines ran below the house and some above it, and to one side an orchard had been planted on the hill. A giant cherry tree shaded the house, and under it stood a wooden table and a pair of rough benches made from halved logs. The last time della Torre saw the place had been at night. After he’d locked Strumbić in the wine cellar, having just shot him in the shin.
“Marko told me that there was a three-hundred-metre clearing. This can’t be it.”
“Up there, is two hundred fifty metres maybe. Come, is this way,” Strumbić said, pointing up the hill.
He led Rebecca and della Torre to the top of the meadow at the crest of the hill, where the land once again levelled off. There was indeed a long and straight, if narrow, clearing, cut deep into the forest, much deeper than the main part of the meadow.
The grass had been mown to a hard stubble. Where the forest would have started were low stumps, cut not long ago. The trees had been cleared and piled to the side, chopped into neat lengths.
“I making little road here up to main road,” Strumbić explained, pointing at the long, straight stretch. “Not now but maybe next year. Cutting trees and then I put asphalt. Make garage up here too. Maybe swimming pool.”
“Looks perfect,” Rebecca said. “Is there anybody else up here? Anybody who’d notice a bit of noise?”
“What kind of noise? Sexy noise nobody care . . .”
Rebecca cocked her right eyebrow, neutralizing Strumbić’s leering grin with an indulgent smile. Della Torre chose to ignore the comment. Anyone who spent time with Strumbić became inured to his innuendoes.
They walked back to the car, where they unpacked the metal cases, a wicker basket, and a couple of picnic blankets. She was wearing a wide-brimmed sunhat and big square sunglasses. It was midmorning and already a heat haze was rising off the ground.
They carried the cases to the near end of the field, where she unrolled the blankets and laid them on the ground.
“Bit early for a picnic, isn’t it?” della Torre asked.
“Not for the sort I’ve got planned,” she said.
She pulled a litre bottle of water from the basket and took a long drink, then passed it to the men.
Strumbić declined. “Water is like poison for me,” he said.
Then she pulled out a couple of spray cans and marched off, marking one metre after another with deliberate strides along the full length of the clearing.
Strumbić whistled.
“Gringo, I’ve got to hand it to you with the women. A wife like yours would keep most men happy. But then you get yourself that bird in London — most men would give their left arm and right nut for one quick spin. And now this one. Never had a thing for redheads before, but she’s got me converted.”
Della Torre shook his head. “You’ve got it wrong.”
“The hell I do. I don’t know much about the finer points of international law, but men and women — that I do know something about,” Strumbić said.
Rebecca had stopped at a tree in the far distance, on which she spray-painted at head height a white circle and within it a red cross.
“What do you think she’s up to?” Strumbić asked.
“Tagging.”
“What?”
“That’s what they call it when kids graffiti their nicknames or initials.”
“Smurfs?” For some strange reason, people had been spray-painting the word around Zagreb.
“I’m not sure that counts. That’s just a lack of imagination and not enough decent television,” della Torre said, watching Rebecca making her way back towards them.
Still silent, she took one of the suitcases, turned the combination code on
the lock, and popped it open. From inside the padded compartment she withdrew a long metal tube. With the remaining pieces, including an ingenious folding stock and an attached bi-pod stand, she assembled a rifle. She attached a silencer to the barrel and finished off with a high-powered scope. Both men stared at her, incredulous.
She stood up, raised the rifle to her shoulder, and pointed it at the target. “Very nice scope,” she said. “There’s a night vision one too.” She handed the rifle to Strumbić, who took it admiringly.
“I have a few other toys,” she said, opening the biggest case flat like a butterfly. On one side it held a Heckler & Koch submachine gun with a light detachable stock and four magazines in its cushioned mould; on the other were two Beretta handguns, with a row of magazines and several boxes of nine-millimetre ammunition.
Strumbić whistled, pointing to the third case. “And there you have M75?”
“A what?” Rebecca said.
“It’s one of our anti-aircraft guns,” della Torre said. “A cannon.”
“Oh,” she laughed. “I suppose you can’t be too prepared. No, it’s a comms set. Radios. I guess you’re pretty used to the Berettas. They’re standard here, aren’t they? Have you tried the Heckler & Koch?” Strumbić shook his head, but della Torre had been trained on a version of the machine pistol in the army. “Well, we’ll have to have a go.”
She fixed the stock onto the submachine gun, loaded it with a long, curving magazine, and then showed them how it was operated. There was something disconcerting about having a deadly weapon explained by a pretty young woman dressed in summer hiking gear, a big straw hat, and beach sunglasses. Although both men paid close attention, they were uneasy.
She flipped off the safety, moved the setting to semi-automatic, and fired off a few rounds. She then flipped it to automatic and let off a burst.
Strumbić gave it a go after her. He grinned with pleasure.
“Is loud,” he said.
“Yes. Normally I wear ear protectors or plugs, but today I wanted to spend some time calibrating that,” she said, pointing to the rifle.
She spread a rug on the ground. The men watched, fascinated, as she fixed a tripod on the rifle and then the big scope and lay prone.
