Killing Pilgrim

by Alen Mattich

  “Can I use your phone?” he asked the shopkeeper.

  “Ah, no. That’s not for customers.”

  “A quick call. I’ll pay for it.”

  “There are pay phones outside.”

  “Ten Deutschmarks for a local call. You can watch me dial.”

  Once again, money swayed the shopkeeper.

  He found the number in a local directory, and the hotel switchboard put him through to the room straightaway. The voice on the other end registered only the briefest sign of grogginess and then slipped into quick professionalism.

  “It’s Marko della Torre. I need a favour.” He started without preamble, keenly aware that he had only seconds to make himself understood. It was a one-sided conversation. He hoped against hope that his threadbare plan would hold together.

  Afterwards, he went to look for a bookstore. Rob was impatient to get back, but della Torre ignored him long enough to find some children’s classics. They found a taxi to take them up the coast to the fishing village across from Šipan. Rob had radioed the house. The old women in the village, sitting on their shaded doorsteps, shelling beans into plastic tubs, watched them as they sat on the jetty wall, waiting for Strumbić’s boat.

  They’d been gone less than two hours. Snezhana had only just woken.

  The little girl was pleased with his purchases. Della Torre gave her the breakfast she asked for, white bread dipped in warm milk. Then he took Snezhana swimming again, to escape the muggy warmth. When they got back, he fed her some of the biscuits she liked as a snack, and read from one of the books he’d bought, Robert Louis Stevenson’s story about the adventures of young David Balfour.

  The Americans left them alone, happy enough for della Torre to take responsibility for the handicapped child. The men, who were mostly stony-faced, avoided Snezhana, except when della Torre took her out of the house; then one followed behind. Rebecca also kept a detached watch on her, as if the girl were a strange animal.

  Later, when Snezhana had fallen asleep in the cool of the thick-walled room, della Torre crept down the stairs to a quiet corner in the sitting room. He had the house phone in hand when Rebecca came into the room, shaking her head.

  “Just calling my wife.”

  “’Fraid not.”

  “Why?”

  “Because the phone’s disconnected.”

  “Strumbić didn’t pay the bill?”

  “Bill didn’t want Strumbić to pay for your calls.”

  “Oh. So do you mind if I use the satellite phone?”

  “It can wait.”

  “In that case, you won’t mind if I wander into the village.”

  “Phone there doesn’t work either,” Rebecca said.

  “Bill?”

  “Bill.”

  Della Torre nodded. It wouldn’t have taken much skill to disconnect the island from the rest of the world. But surely they wouldn’t interfere with the ferries?

  “It’ll be over in a day or two. So don’t worry yourself too much,” Rebecca said. “Just relax.”

  “Am I allowed to go to the village, or do I need a babysitter?”

  “Feel free. Just make sure you stay in sight of us when the ferry leaves. Otherwise, Bill and Rob will get nervous.”

  “You don’t trust me?”

  “Oh, we trust you,” she said. “But sometimes people do things they regret.”

  “I never asked you, what exactly did you think would happen to me when they took me away at the border post?”

  “I thought there was a risk you’d be shot.”

  “You knew about Gorki?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you arrange for him to be there?”

  “Our people let his people know that it might be in his interest to be around.”

  “You had always intended to take the girl?”

  “No. But it was a possibility. I’d rather have done the job there, but . . .” She shrugged.

  Suddenly, della Torre didn’t know what to think. “You knew you could get the girl across the border?”

  “After we crossed, I knew you had a friend at the border. And that Gorki’s militia control that sector. And I heard Djilas mention how he and Gorki don’t get along, for whatever reason. So yes, I thought there was a better than even chance of getting the girl across the border.”

  “What would have happened if we didn’t?”

  “Bill and Rob were monitoring the situation. They were there to get us out of trouble.”

  “Us or you?”

  Later, it was the memory of her grin that stayed with him. Toothy, feline. “Us, of course,” she said. He didn’t believe her.

  “What happens now?”

  There was an ironic glint in her eye. “Djilas is a very rich man. And he’s going to part with some of that money. Call it a commercial transaction.”

  “You kidnapped a crippled little girl for ransom?”

  “Sure. Why not? Julius says Djilas has ready access to more than a million Deutschmarks and can raise more at short notice. Seeing him and his place, I can believe it. A million is enough. You’re going to arrange for him to deliver it to us in Dubrovnik tomorrow morning, bright and early. And in exchange, he gets the girl.”

  “The American government kidnaps people for money? Or has this been a scam from the start?”

  “Gringo, everybody in this country can be bought or sold. You. Strumbić. Him. He understands corruption, probably expects it. It’ll be a relief for him, that Americans are no different from you people. It’ll make sense, won’t it?”

  Della Torre understood. These Americans felt contempt for them all, for Strumbić, for the Montenegrin, for him. All open to bribery, to a backhander, to selling and buying anything and anyone. They thought that reducing the kidnapping to money would deceive the Montenegrin. Perhaps she was right.

  “But it’s not the money, is it?” he asked. “It’s him.”

  She smiled. That was answer enough.

  He was tempted to say he wouldn’t be party to this any longer, but he was caught. However much he thrashed, he was on the hook and he couldn’t escape. Not now. Because it wasn’t just himself he had to worry about. It was the girl too.

  “How does Horvat tie into this?”

  “Horvat?”

  “Yes. The man who introduced us at the Excelsior. The man you and your Mr. Dawes met up with in Dubrovnik the other night.”

  “Have you been playing spy, Gringo?”

  “I was in town having a drink, and noticed you all going into the same restaurant.”

  “With your Canadian friend?”

  “So what’s the deal with Horvat?”

  “No deal. He was just being polite. Keeping up with developments.”

  “Did you tell him about the Bosnians?”

  “He was very interested in the .50-calibre they had.”

  “Should have been, since he smuggles them in.”

  “Not that one, apparently. It was a Chinese gun.”

  There was a sound overhead, on the landing, someone falling. Della Torre sprang up the stairs to find Snezhana on the floor near the top. He lifted her tiny, almost weightless frame and carried her back to the bedroom.

  “Are you okay? Have you hurt yourself?”

  The little girl struggled to make herself clear. “I’m fine. I was listening,” she said. “The woman with red hair isn’t Milady de Winter.”

  “No? Who is she, then?” he asked, smiling with relief.

  “You’ll see one day.”

  “Oh?” della Torre said, puzzled

  “She’s not Milady. My name comes from the word for snow,” the little girl said. “I am.”

  She unsettled him. In that tiny, fragile, twisted frame there flickered a cool ferocity. What child imagined herself the villain, the vengeful Milady
de Winter?

  “So who,” he asked, “am I?”

  It wasn’t dawn yet when they took Strumbić’s motorboat across the strait. Della Torre had had to wake Snezhana. She shook with the cold of the early morning, though he’d left her pyjamas on, pulling a dress over them and wrapping her up in a blanket to protect her from the night air.

  The water was calm, but the three-kilometre-long passage was still tense. There were no dangerous rocks, but they went faster than della Torre would have liked. Strumbić’s plastic-hulled motorboat bounced against the small waves, sending up spray. None of them was wearing a life jacket.

  The forty-horsepower engine made it a quick trip, though they slowed sharply as they approached the other side, wary of the stone jetty. Rob sat on the covered bow, lighting their way with a powerful torch, while Rebecca steered, the motor chuntering leisurely. She manoeuvred the boat alongside the fenders that cushioned the mooring. Bill jumped out, and tied the boat fast. No one had spoken during the whole journey.

  Rebecca and the two Americans carried the hard plastic and metal cases from the boat to the Hilux, which was parked in the shadow of the fisherman’s house. The village was asleep, though a dog, picking up their scent on the faint breeze, sounded a warning.

  Rebecca drove to Dubrovnik’s walls, parking the truck within easy access of the citadel’s northern gate. One of the Americans wired up della Torre to a radio, a discreet earpiece fixed onto his right ear. The unit was attached to his belt and a microphone clipped onto the lapel of his cream linen jacket, a souvenir from London. Della Torre sat in the truck while the Americans wandered a short distance into the night to give the radio system a last-minute run-through. All four were on the same speech-activated channel. Della Torre was astonished at how well it worked, even when more than one person was speaking.

  Rebecca collected one of her cases from the back of the truck and took it with her into the old town. The rest of them settled into the truck to wait, the silence broken only by Snezhana’s involuntary low grumble and grinding teeth. Della Torre thought he felt her tremble. But then he realized it had been him. He’d slept badly the night before, going over the permutations of Rebecca’s plan, and he was cold with fatigue and nerves. He reached into his jacket pocket for a cigarette but then stopped himself. He wasn’t going to smoke in the truck with the little girl there, and he didn’t want to leave her.

  “Number one in position,” he heard Rebecca say through the earpiece.

  “Number two heading out.” Rob left the truck, taking a rucksack from the back with him.

  The sky lightened at the top of the mountain overlooking Dubrovnik, and slowly they began to pick out more and more of the city’s walls in the pre-dawn wash.

  “Time to go, Mr. della Torre,” said Bill.

  They walked along the walled road, over the wooden drawbridge that connected the wider world with the ancient town, and through the massive gatehouse. They followed the twisting stone passage to the edge of the Stradun. He could see the full length of the wide white pedestrian road, which ended at the square by the walled harbour.

  No one was awake in the city. The street lights were still on, though dawn filtered down onto the rooftops. Della Torre sat with Snezhana on the edge of the Onofrio fountain, the broad white stone cylinder that marked the Stradun’s northern limit. The little girl sat on della Torre’s lap, wrapped tightly in the blanket. Bill stood somewhere in the darkness.

  “It will be fine,” he said softly into her ear. “It’s almost over and you’ll be fine. You’re a brave girl.”

  She murmured something in his ear, but he couldn’t understand what she was saying.

  “She will die,” she repeated, her voice laboured.

  He felt his scalp tighten and a ripple of cold trace his spine. Something in him believed the girl.

  They sat still for a while. Della Torre checked his watch for the third time and then got up, the little girl straddling his left hip, and started walking down the Stradun.

  “Gringo, where are you going?” Rebecca said in his earpiece.

  He looked around and up. He knew she was somewhere above. At this time of morning, access to the walls was prohibited. The main entrances were barred until the ticket sellers arrived, though they weren’t selling many these days. But he remembered how when they’d visited, playing tourist, she’d climbed up a tree and the ruins of a building on the seaward side of the wall, where the high walk had been nearest the ground.

  “Just stretching my legs,” he said.

  “You’ll have time to stretch them. Right now I want you to sit,” Rebecca said into his earpiece.

  He remembered how Rebecca had spent time crouching so that she could only just see through the arrow loops. She’d spent the most time over the Pile gatehouse, looking down along the Stradun with field glasses. And she’d had him stand, stock still, three-quarters of the way along. Two hundred and fifty metres from the top of the Pile gatehouse.

  He looked up but couldn’t see her. He returned to the fountain and sat down, willing control into his muscles, which had become as rigid and trembling as the girl’s. He sat her on his lap again, pulling back his jacket sleeve so that he could keep an eye on the luminous dials of his watch. He watched the seconds turn. At exactly twenty minutes to the hour he stood up again.

  “The girl needs a pee. I’m just taking her round the corner to a gutter,” he said, speaking into the mike on his lapel.

  “Wait for Bill.”

  “Sorry, got to run, poor girl.”

  “I said wait for Bill.”

  “Can’t. It’s an emergency. She can barely hold it in.”

  “Don’t make me shoot you.”

  “You’re going to shoot me because a little girl needs to pee?”

  He was running now along the Stradun, counting the side streets as he passed. They all looked the same. He prayed he hadn’t missed one. Two. Three. There it was, the fourth along. Snezhana was feather-light, but it was still awkward carrying her, and his left elbow hurt. He worried it would give way under the strain but dared not stop to swap her to the other arm.

  “Gringo . . .” Rebecca said, her frustration audible.

  He heard the footsteps behind him, the flat pancake sound of running shoes on stone. His were leather-soled and he was afraid he might slip on the glass-smooth paving slabs. But he’d reached the narrow alley he was looking for, one of the ones that spread perpendicular to the Stradun like the bones off a fish’s spine. He ran along it, up a flight of steps, and then along another flat section and another flight of steps rising towards the city’s massive east wall. The Stradun alone was unbroken by stairs in this hilly city carved out of stone.

  Could he remember the place? It had been night when he’d been there. He thought it was close but he still hadn’t reached it. Had he gone up the wrong street? He didn’t know Dubrovnik that well and didn’t have the luxury of getting it wrong. If he screwed this up, he wouldn’t be given another chance. Rebecca would make sure of it. She’d probably replace him with Bill, make Bill sit with the girl on the bench.

  “Lost the girl,” he heard Bill say in his earpiece.

  “Where are you, Gringo?” Rebecca hissed, her voice betraying impatience and strain.

  Where was he?

  Giving up on his objective, della Torre ducked into a smaller side passage.

  He heard footsteps, though he couldn’t tell where they were coming from. The city was still, silent in its early morning sleep.

  He tried to control his breathing, but the run had winded him and his lungs wheezed. The girl ground her teeth as she made a heroic effort to stay quiet.

  A man passed, moving in the direction della Torre had just come from. Shit.

  Della Torre ran back to the mouth of the passage and saw the man moving cautiously, uncertainly, staying firmly in the buildings’ shadows. Della Torre c
alled out in a hoarse whisper, “Here.”

  The man was holding something. When he turned, della Torre could see it was a big pink stuffed bear wrapped in a hotel beach towel. Higgins. Della Torre held his finger to his lips.

  Higgins came running up to him. Della Torre gave him the little girl and took the bear in return. The transaction passed in silence, though Snezhana made quiet guttural moans. Without saying a word, Higgins wrapped her in the beach towel. Della Torre made a motion for him to stay while he left, the pink bear covered by Strumbić’s blanket. He kissed Snezhana on the forehead and then went back down the alley stairs to the Stradun.

  “Done,” he said. “I’m just coming back.”

  “We were getting worried about you,” Rebecca said.

  “Like I said, it was an emergency.”

  “Where’d you go?”

  “In an alleyway.”

  “Okay, go back to the fountain. And don’t do anything like that again.”

  He held the bear covered in the blanket tight to him and returned to the fountain’s white stone lip. Bill flashed him a dirty look as he passed, breathing hard from his dash around Dubrovnik’s dark alleyways.

  Della Torre waited.

  “Car,” he heard Rob say in his earpiece. “Subject exiting alone. Has found rucksack. Doesn’t look like he trusts it.”

  “Talk to him, Gringo. Bill, put what della Torre says through on the rucksack radio channel.” Rebecca exuded calm authority.

  “Mr. Djilas?” della Torre said. “Mr. Djilas?” There was a long pause. “Mr. Djilas?”

  “Gringo?”

  “That’s me. Do you have the money?”

  “In my bag,” the Montenegrin said.

  “Are you alone?”

  “I’m alone. Do you have my daughter?”

  “Yes.”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “Walk down the middle of the Stradun towards the Pile gate.”

  “Am I being set up, Gringo?”

  “No, Mr. Djilas, you’re not being set up.”

  “Because if I am, I know where your wife is. She is working at the hospital in Vukovar. I have a man at that hospital. If he hears nothing from me in two hours, your wife is dead. I know where your father lives in Istria, Gringo. He too will be dead. Anything you have ever touched or loved will be dead. Do you understand, Gringo?”