by Alen Mattich
She paid.
“What’s this?” the soldier said, still picking through their things.
“Steak,” said della Torre.
“What do you need to bring steak for?”
“In case we get hungry.”
“It’s raw.”
“Tartare.”
“What?”
“That’s what they call raw chopped steak.”
“I thought that was called ground beef.”
“It’s ground beef if you cook it. Tartare if you eat it raw.”
He could see the soldier making a mental note. Americans were barbarians who didn’t cook their meat and didn’t bring with them anything worth stealing.
“The visas are irregular,” he said. Della Torre doubted that the Americans had got anything wrong. More likely they were going to be “taxed” further. “You and the lady can get into the truck. You’re going to drive to the border post. It’s two kilometres along this road. My corporal will be following you. And don’t think because you’re American you can get away with any funny business.”
Della Torre translated for Rebecca, adding, “I wouldn’t try that trick of running anybody over this time. Just keep it nice and easy.”
The other soldier backed the militia truck, a new-looking Land Rover with a spotless paint job, out of the way so that Rebecca could drive past. She drove slowly down the centre of the road, the Land Rover hard on their tail. They passed through the barren landscape; there were no buildings or signs, just road and rock. And then, from nowhere, a soldier sauntered onto the median line in front of them and signalled for them to turn off onto a dirt track. They followed into a little clearing, where they stopped at a tired farmhouse flying the Serb and Yugoslav flags.
Della Torre wondered how much effort the U.S. government would make on his behalf. As a native Yugoslav, he belonged to a diplomatic netherworld.
They parked and the soldier from the Land Rover took the keys from Rebecca. He was holding both of their passports. He walked them to the house, where they were made to wait on a dark-stained bench that was more a pew, in what had been someone’s sitting room. There wasn’t any other furniture. The only decoration was a framed picture of Mary, her radiant heart almost anatomical in its detail. Della Torre rubbed his hands on his trousers and made to stand up once or twice. Rebecca sat patiently, unperturbed.
It couldn’t have been more than ten minutes, though it had felt much longer, before the soldier returned.
“You.” He pointed to della Torre. Rebecca stood up but the man told her to sit. Della Torre followed him to an upstairs room, what looked to have been a bedroom once, though now it was bare except for a desk and an old walnut wardrobe. And then he laughed out loud.
“Sergeant Major,” della Torre said, exhaling relief. He hadn’t seen his old sergeant major, the one who’d trained him in the commandos, for . . . he tried to remember. “How long has it been?” he said, taking the older man’s hand.
The sergeant major was in his late fifties. His moustache and his short-cropped hair were more salt than pepper, though he looked fitter than della Torre.
“Lieutenant Gringo. Must be at least six years. Maribor, wasn’t it?”
The sergeant major had long before retired from the army, but he’d never been good with money. Slipping into a senior position with the border police was a fine way of supplementing his meagre pension, what with the ad hoc taxes and fines he could levy, not to mention the occasional carton of cigarettes or soap powder that fell off the back of a truck.
“It’s major now,” della Torre said, smiling.
Of all the non-coms who’d kicked his ass during his army days, the sergeant major had been his favourite.
“Ah, forgive me, Major. Just goes to show how far brains will get you when you aren’t good for anything else.”
Della Torre shrugged good-naturedly.
“So, Gringo, what’s this about you being a spy? This thing real?” He waved della Torre’s American passport at him.
“Between you and me?” della Torre said, lowering his voice. The older man nodded. “It’s as real as a can of Coke.”
“Well, I always knew there was something funny about you. You were as useful as a three-legged donkey. Never knew why the commandos took you. Always did figure they were training you for a spy. So who are you working for?”
Della Torre nodded at the passport and reached into his wallet, pulling out his UDBA ID card.
“Well, that tells me everything and nothing. Good thing for you I was here.”
“You’ve been knocked down to guarding border posts at the arse end of the world,” della Torre said.
“At least it’s not Kosovo.” The sergeant laughed. “Gringo, this here is a world of shit. I was sent here to set up a border station, now that we’re different countries and all. Or I think we are, anyway.” Like most of the army’s professional classes, he was Serb. “And then suddenly these guys with the fancy shoulders drop in on us from hell knows where and decide to throw their weight around.”
“Who are they?”
“They call themselves the Wolves. They belong to a fellow named Gorki.”
“I know about him.” And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth.
“They figure the Croats need a bit of sorting out around here. Who am I to tell them what to do when they’ve got Belgrade behind them? So they moved the border a bit farther up the valley and they tell everybody what to do. They made a little headquarters for themselves back there —” He pointed with his thumb behind him. “— and they play their games. Frankly I’m surprised they let you through without shooting you first.”
Della Torre nodded. “Any idea why they’re here? Last I heard they were pissing on Vukovar.”
“They’re there, they’re here. They’ve got more volunteers than they know what to do with. They call themselves patriots. But from what I’ve seen, they go to wherever they can smell money. Belgrade says they’re allowed to keep what they steal. And I guess he thinks there’ll be plenty enough to steal around here.”
“What? Rocks?”
“Rocks around here. Richer pickings in Dubrovnik.”
“They’re heading for Dubrovnik?”
“Who knows what happens when the ceasefire ends, eh? Between you and me and these four walls, the local militias have mobilized. They’re in the mountains, but they’re ready for something. The Yugoslav army is with them and they’ve got plenty of big guns. So your guess is as good as mine.”
“You going to let us through, Sergeant?”
“What’s your business, if you don’t mind my asking?”
“I don’t mind. To have dinner with an old UDBA colleague.”
“No spying?”
“What do you think?”
“I think I’d like it to be none of my business and that if you get into trouble you don’t mention the fact that you know me.”
“Never saw you before in my life,” della Torre said.
“In that case, here’s your passports. No problem with the visas that I can see. Except the inking on them’s too good. Nobody stamps this neatly in any of our embassies.” He handed them over to della Torre, who smiled back. “I’m not being funny,” the older man continued, “but you’ve just got to watch these militia guys. They’re all amateurs, but some of them are vicious.”
“Criminals.”
“Exactly. Here, you can’t go without having a drink first.” The sergeant pulled out a bottle and a couple of glasses. “Maybe we should get your friend up here to join us.”
“She’s driving. Anyway, she’s a waste of good slivovitz.”
“Bottoms up.” They knocked back the scorching home-brewed alcohol and shook hands.
“When you
coming back through?”
“Sometime late tonight.”
“Save it till the morning. Drive down this road at night, you’re liable to get shot at.”
“I’ll bear that in mind.”
• • •
Della Torre walked back down the stairs to the living room. Rebecca hadn’t shifted from her seat. She was smiling at Gorki’s militiaman. The soldier affected an air of cool detachment, but the blush on his neck gave him away.
Della Torre and Rebecca got back in the car and drove on, unimpeded. Della Torre explained what had happened.
“Stroke of luck my old sergeant is running the post.”
Rebecca said nothing.
“The Wolves are dangerous. We shouldn’t cross back over too late. We’ll have to eat and run,” he said. Surely the thought of being trapped on this side of the border would make her think twice about doing anything foolish.
“We’ll figure it out,” Rebecca said.
The road wound through the valley, and as they approached the coast they took the fork to Herceg Novi. Della Torre longingly watched the green sign pointing back towards Dubrovnik pass by. They drove unmolested. There was plenty of military traffic, though nothing like a general mobilization.
They skirted the port town, following the signs for Kotor. Once they got to the waterfront, all they had to do was go left. There was a single road, and that was the road they needed to be on. They crawled along for a while behind a horse-drawn wagon, its rubber wheels the only concession to the last decade of the twentieth century.
And then they reached the channel to the inner bay. Under leaden skies, the landscape was forbidding. Dark, cavernous mountain walls funnelled into what looked more like an alpine lake, belied only by the palms that lined the shore. A ceiling of cloud obscured the mountaintops, casting their slopes into black shadow, while tendrils of mist hung halfway between the peaks and the water. The late afternoon sun had broken below the cover, oozing bloody light.
“Montenegro. Black mountains,” della Torre said.
“They’re something. You feel hemmed in here, don’t you.”
“You can only get in or out of this bay along the shore road or on one that goes east, up across the mountains.” Della Torre pointed towards the opposite corner of the bay. “But that inland road just takes you deeper into Montenegro.”
“There’s a track on the map, seems to go straight up the mountain, on this side. Little town or village at the bottom. Just where the channel opens into the bay. If you trace it all the way up, it joins with the road to the little border crossing we used, doesn’t it,” Rebecca said.
Della Torre opened the detailed survey map in front of him. “There’s a track that goes up from this side of the mountain and another one that goes up the other side. It finishes up not too far from the border post we used, but they don’t actually meet up.”
“So what’s in between?”
“Meadows? Fields? Pastureland? Something like that,” della Torre said, wondering why Rebecca had committed the route to memory.
“Let’s have a look.”
“Those little mountain roads are terrible. If somebody doesn’t run you off the road, you end up in some ditch or in a house-sized pothole. These maps ought to come with a health warning.”
“We’ve got time to do a little exploring.”
Della Torre shrugged, knowing better than to protest. He didn’t particularly want to be at the mercy of a local farmer or militiaman if they got stuck. But better that than carry on to the Montenegrin’s. So he used the map to guide them through the waterside village, counting off the little side streets and alleys until he found the unmarked turning to the track up the mountainside.
“Why do you ask me for advice if you already know what you’re going to be doing?” della Torre asked.
“To make you feel useful.”
“Thanks.”
They left the road that wound its way around the bay and followed a series of alpine hairpins, always rising. The road was asphalted until they passed the last houses, and then it became a rutted gravel track. The Hilux bounced up to what proved to be a steep pass. They stopped at the top and pulled over on a rocky verge. Della Torre got out of the truck and lit a cigarette. The clouds had started to break up and the landscape opened below them, heady scenery of brush and rock ending in the bay’s deep metallic blue waters.
“I think I like this road,” Rebecca said, stretching.
She stood with her toes over the edge of the steep escarpment. Della Torre steered clear of precipices. People overestimate risks they have no control over and underestimate the ones they can do something about. Falling down a cliff face, he figured, was something worth avoiding.
They got back into the truck and reversed back onto the track, della Torre’s heart in his mouth and his feet grinding hard into an imaginary brake and clutch as Rebecca cut the corner so fine that one of the back wheels seemed to spin in empty space.
Then they drove on up the mountain until they finally reached a meadow, where two flattened grooves marked a route through hip-high stalks of dried yellow grass. It would have been too much for most cars, but the Hilux managed. They drove through the fields until they once again reached track; the path they’d taken connected the two sides of the mountain.
“I can’t see why everybody doesn’t use this shortcut,” Rebecca said, putting the Hilux through a five-point turn to head back in the direction they’d come from.
Because most people worry about replacing their exhaust manifolds, della Torre thought to himself.
They bounced their way back up through the high mountain meadow and down the hairpins, the track forever threatening to crumble into a cascade of rock at the bends. They reached the main road along the bay and continued their journey until they were at the far side of the inner bay. The road there had been carved out of rock, threading its way between mountain and water.
“The Montenegrin has a real fortress here. They’ll have been watching us coming for the past half-hour, wondering what we were doing going up the mountainside.”
“We’ll have to tell him we got lost,” Rebecca said.
Della Torre laughed.
“I’m sure we’re not the first people who’ve gone up there to get a view of the bay,” she said.
“I’m sure you’re right.”
She slowed down coming into the Montenegrin’s little fishing village. Della Torre suggested she park just off the main road, next to a little pebble beach, but Rebecca turned left and drove up the slope, making the Hilux’s engine whine as the grade steepened.
“This it?” she asked when they reached the end of the path, deftly balancing the truck, pointed skyward towards the mountain’s high peak, with clutch and accelerator. A young man with black hair was standing by a low steel gate that opened onto a courtyard.
“This is it. Pull up to the side of the house and put the truck in gear. If it rolls backwards, you’d better hope the Hilux floats.”
“Don’t worry about the truck,” she said, parking it next to a recent-model white Ford Bronco. It was the first American car they’d seen in Montenegro.
Della Torre took the bag of biscuits and booze that the militiaman at the border had refrained from stealing. Rebecca carried a straw shoulder bag. The man at the gate gave their bags a cursory search and asked them if they were armed. He looked them over with a practised eye. From somewhere behind the house came the rattle of heavy chains and the deep, throaty sound of dogs baying at the visitors’ strange scent.
The young man shut the gate behind them with a solid clang as the Montenegrin briskly took the stairs down from the house’s raised terrace.
“Gringo, how good to see you,” he said, gripping della Torre’s hand and grasping his shoulder at the same time. “Apologies for my dogs, but you can never be too careful. They’re being taken t
o the back barn. It’ll shut them up. Fine truck you’ve got there.”
“You too,” della Torre said.
Ever since he’d first met the man, all those years ago in his student digs in London, the Montenegrin triggered a ripple of . . . was it fear? . . . in della Torre.
“Need them around here. They’re good, the Broncos. I’ve got another one at my son-in-law’s. The Mercedes I don’t dare drive up here anymore. I park that down in the village. Forgot to leave it in gear one day and almost had to go fishing for it. Can you imagine what the bill would have looked like getting that cleaned up?” Della Torre whistled appreciatively. The Montenegrin had an S-Class saloon. “But I like those Hiluxes.”
“They’re not bad. We picked up ours on a whim, you might say, but we’ve been happy with it,” della Torre said, and then switched to English. “Sorry. Mr. Djilas, this is Rebecca Vees.”
“How do you do,” the Montenegrin replied in accented but clear English. He was as tall as della Torre, but more solidly built. His face was tanned and lined, his eyes dark, almost black. A neat greying moustache covered his lip. “Shame about the weather, but at least it’s not raining. Was a real pig last night. We were on the water, though it felt more like we were under it,” the Montenegrin said.
“I just caught the start of the storm,” della Torre said.
“Well, you were up late, then. Pissed down around three o’clock. Didn’t last all that long, but it was damn wet,” the Montenegrin said in Serbo-Croat. “Excuse me, I will talk English now. I forget sometimes,” he said to Rebecca.
“That’s fine. I brought my translator,” she said, offering the Montenegrin one of her most vibrant smiles. He was a good-looking man and not unused to women’s attention, but he still took her smile with pleasure.
“I brought a few little things,” della Torre said. “I know you pensioners get thirsty lounging around in the sun, and here’s something for the lady of the house.” Della Torre handed over the bottle and the biscuits. “If I remember correctly, these are the biscuits your daughter likes.”
“You have an excellent memory, Gringo. She will be very pleased. Very pleased. She doesn’t often come to say hello to guests, but she remembers you fondly. She still has that German toy bear you brought her. But for me, you shouldn’t have. This is nice slivovitz, but you’ll see the rakija we make here is even more special,” he said, with real warmth.
