Killing Pilgrim

by Alen Mattich

  “I understand, Mr. Djilas. Now come the way you’re meant. Quickly, please.”

  There was silence.

  “Contact switched off between della Torre and subject,” Rob narrated. “Subject entering the south gate, walking towards the main square. Will pursue once subject has gone sufficiently far along the high walk.”

  “Well done, Gringo,” said Rebecca.

  “Where are you?” he asked.

  “Somewhere I can see you,” she said.

  There was a long wait. He listened. Dubrovnik was starting to wake. Somewhere in the distance, beyond the east walls, he heard a cock crow. A dog bayed in response. The faint strains of a transistor radio made their way from one of Dubrovnik’s tall, tightly packed houses. The grey light of shadowed morning was starting to lift.

  Away in the distance he heard footsteps. He shifted a little to see all the way down the Stradun. Pink dawn crept into the centuries-old man-made canyon of stone. He saw the form of a man enter the Stradun from the city’s inner harbour. The man’s movement was deliberate, slow, as if he was listening for something. He had in one hand the Americans’ rucksack and in the other a holdall.

  The man hadn’t gone far, two of those narrow Stradun blocks, less than a quarter of the way along the broad main street, when he stopped, disappearing into a blind arch.

  “What’s he doing?” della Torre heard Rebecca ask.

  Backing up against a wall to look up the side street, the Montenegrin had all but disappeared. Della Torre guessed he was roughly where the little alleys rose from the Stradun to the city’s only eastern gate.

  Without warning, he heard a metallic clank from somewhere overhead and behind him. That same instant, the Montenegrin sprinted across the width of the Stradun and into the opposite passage. Della Torre heard the clank again, and then the crack of splintering stone.

  The Montenegrin was gone.

  “Where is he? Where the fuck did he go?” Rebecca shouted so that he not only heard her in his earpiece but could hear her from the city wall far above him.

  Bill was already racing along the Stradun.

  “Subject disappeared toward the eastern gate,” said Rob.

  “Get on his tail. The walls go too far around for me to catch up with him. I’ll stay here. Gringo, you move a muscle, you move an inch, and you’re a dead man. I mean that. You are in my sight right now. You sneeze and your head comes off. Show me the girl.”

  “What?” della Torre said.

  “I said take the girl out of that blanket. Let me see her.”

  “Subject is with accomplice. Accomplice holding bags. Subject seems to be carrying something big. Out of sight again.” The American was breathing hard. “Subject and accomplice disappeared.”

  “Show me, Gringo.”

  Della Torre slowly unwrapped the bear from its blanket.

  “What the hell? What is that?”

  “A bear. From the Argentina.”

  “The bear from the Argentina? Gringo, you are in a world of shit. You hear me? You are in a world of shit.”

  “Subject disappeared. Seems to have left in car. No further sight of him.”

  Della Torre kept still, sitting on the edge of the Onofrio fountain, holding a large stuffed teddy bear on his lap, his heart pounding, any happiness mitigated by fear of what would happen to him next.

  The few people making their way to work in the heart of Dubrovnik might have noticed the two men, one sitting on the lip of the Onofrio fountain with a large pink stuffed bear on his lap, the other pressed up against him, a blanket draped over his arms. But no one was curious enough to stop. It was a tourist town. Plenty of oddities happened there.

  Della Torre felt the gun, wrapped in Strumbić’s blanket, pressed against his kidney.

  The other American was approaching along the Stradun.

  Della Torre suppressed a sudden suicidal urge to make a weak joke, something along the lines of the Bill needing to be paid, or being caught by the Old Bill, though he didn’t think it would translate to anyone who hadn’t spent time in England. Or about being Robbed. Robbing Bill to pay . . . whom?

  Rebecca walked quickly towards them, carrying her hard case.

  “Let’s get to the truck. Quick. We’ll deal with him later.” And then, turning to della Torre, she said, “You do anything, anything at all to piss me off, and you’re a dead man.”

  They hurried through the fortress’s massive northern gate and across the wooden drawbridge back to the truck.

  “You drive, Bill.” She gave the man her keys. “Rob, you sit with our friend here in the back and make sure he doesn’t do anything stupid. The slightest movement, shoot him.”

  She jumped into the bed of the truck, facing backwards, and quickly reassembled her rifle. “Gun it, Bill. I’ll bet three to one that Djilas’s people want to repay one of those bullets he didn’t catch.”

  She was right. As they moved off, so did a light-coloured Ford Bronco that della Torre had seen circulating further up the road. It slid behind them as the Hilux hurtled through Dubrovnik’s northern suburbs. Della Torre turned to look back, only to feel his nose nudged forward by a Beretta.

  “I think the order was for you not to move,” said Rob.

  “I just wanted to see what was happening.”

  “You’ll be looking through an eye in the middle of your forehead if you don’t sit still and face forward.”

  It was the most della Torre had heard the man say at a single sitting. He did as he was told, though by leaning slightly forward and to the side, as if in prayer, he could see what was happening behind them in the driver’s mirrors. There were at least two men in the Bronco, but he couldn’t tell whether anybody was in the rear seat. The passenger was holding what looked to be a submachine gun.

  The Hilux bellowed disapproval as Bill ripped it through the gears. Hard on the clutch and brake, harder on the accelerator. The truck’s high centre of gravity meant that they swayed with every twist of the wheel. The same must have been true for the Bronco, which was struggling to keep pace. Palm trees flashed past on his left, and then the harbour’s blue-green waters. Della Torre figured the Montenegrin’s man would fire once the Hilux went into a curve, hoping to catch them with a broadside.

  Rebecca fired a round into the rear window, exploding the glass. She kicked out the remaining shards. The Bronco’s gunman responded by firing off jackhammer rounds. They heard the thud of hail on sheet metal. Della Torre and Rob ducked in unison.

  For a moment della Torre wondered whether Rebecca had been hit. But then he heard the metallic clank of her rifle, and in the mirror, he saw the Bronco weave unsteadily.

  They turned sharply to follow the short, narrow inlet that marked the northern reaches of Dubrovnik’s suburbs. The road was even tighter than the one through town. They passed slower traffic at vertiginous speed. But the Bronco stayed behind them.

  They made their way around the other side of the inlet, pulling away after the switchback as a turning car delayed the Montenegrin’s truck. To the left, della Torre saw the little island that guarded Dubrovnik’s harbour.

  Without warning, Rebecca fired off another series of shots as they went around a bend. Across the corner of a tiny bay, she’d managed to draw a bead on the Bronco. He turned to look back, ignoring the gun aimed at his side, and watched the Ford rock unsteadily and then, like a drunk, slide with a total lack of drama off the road and into the Adriatic.

  A couple of cars pulled over but the Hilux kept going.

  “Bill, they’re off our case. I don’t see anybody else, so slow down. Drop us off at the village and then carry on up the coast to that little cliff. Drive the truck off the edge. We’ll pick you up at the bottom.”

  They stopped at the village and got out of the car. Rebecca made della Torre leave the pink bear behind.

  They got into Stru
mbić’s boat while Bill carried on up the coast in the Hilux. Rebecca steered the boat, hugging the shoreline. They’d lost sight of the truck on the main road, high up the hill. Half an hour later, the American called them on the radio. He’d spotted them and guided them into a little rocky cove.

  Bill splashed through the shallow water and pulled himself into the boat. Rebecca, who’d kept the motor running, gunned it before he’d managed to gather himself together.

  “I didn’t see anyone stop when I pushed the truck over,” Bill said.

  “Good,” Rebecca said. And that was all she said on the passage across the channel to Šipan. Everything seemed to be on autopilot.

  Things changed when they got to the villa.

  As soon as Della Torre stepped through the front door, he felt his knees give way under him. He hardly felt the first blow, but the next one, the kick between his legs, sent pain rocketing through his belly.

  “Jesus.” He breathed shallowly.

  Rebecca ignored him. “Guys, see if you can get him in a chair a couple of feet from the wall.”

  They picked him up and bound his hands expertly behind him, tying his ankles to the chair legs. She tilted the chair so that his head rested against the wall.

  “Okay, Mr. della Torre. Care to tell us what happened?”

  “The girl needed a pee —” he began. The chair was knocked out from under him. His head hit the floor hard, causing sparks to fly in front of his eyes.

  “Pick him up.”

  They leaned him up against the wall again.

  “You can tell I’m not feeling very patient. What I need is correct information from you. I will get it. When I have the correct information, I will determine a course of action. But I can’t do that until I have the information. You have the choice between a very big headache and then a bullet to make it go away, or to cooperate, and then we’ll see what we can do with you. Say yes if you understand. Say anything else if you want your head to hit the floor again.”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. Maybe then you can tell us what happened.”

  “I took the girl to an alley. I met one of the Montenegrin’s men. He swapped the girl for the bear and I came back. When Djilas was walking along the Stradun, his man called him over, and that’s why he ran.”

  “All right. I’m not convinced, but you’ve made a start. Do you want to tell me again what happened, the right way?”

  “That was —”

  His head hit the floor again. This time he heard the booms that went with the fireworks.

  “Okay, let’s try him again.”

  Della Torre’s head hurt. But so did his shoulders, arms, and neck from the fall, and the anticipation of the fall.

  “Gringo, I’ve found that most people can take about five or six of these falls before they pass out. They’re generally fine for more interrogation after a couple of hours, but we can’t play the same trick anymore because their brains get scrambled. There’s the risk of hemorrhaging and all sorts of nasty stuff. So we move on to other things. I need to know everything before you pass out, so we’ll try this one more time and then we move on to the other things. Understand?”

  “Yes,” he said. He realized he’d bitten the side of his tongue with his back teeth during the last fall. He could taste blood.

  “So tell me what happened. Exactly.”

  “I took the girl into an alley . . .”

  “I believe you.”

  “There, a man patted me on the shoulder and said, ‘I believe my card is marked for the next —’” He hit the floor hard again. “— dance.”

  Red lights exploded in his brain like a field of blooming poppies.

  “Funny boy. How’s your head?”

  “Attached . . . to the floor.” Della Torre wasn’t sure if he was smiling or grimacing. He wasn’t sure whether everything was blurry because of the tears in his eyes.

  “I think we go straight to Plan B. The kitchen table will do, boys.”

  They had della Torre on the table, facing upward, his hands tied behind him. It was agony for his shoulders and back. His legs were tied to the table legs, and that end of the table was lifted by a couple of bricks. One of the Americans stuffed a rag in his mouth and a hand towel was placed over his face. Blinded, tilted back, his terror of what he suspected they were doing made it hard for him not to cry out, to scream. He’d been told about it in the commandos but hadn’t been subjected to it. It was too effective. Maybe some of the commandos who’d trained in North Korea could take it, but he wasn’t sure about that either. They’d tried to teach the soldiers how to resist, but when the soldiers saw how easily they could be broken, their morale crumbled. So the trainers stopped doing live trials sometime before he joined, and instead merely described the procedure and its effects.

  Even though he knew what was coming, the water was a shock. It flowed into his nostrils. He held his breath as best he could. The damp towel stuck to his face. He blew air out of his nose and then tried to breathe. But he could no longer tell if he was breathing out or in. Nothing came. No air. The towel stuck to his face and panic sent his heart racing. He rocked his head wildly, tried to shake himself free, but couldn’t. He couldn’t breathe. He was lying on the table, drowning.

  They took the rag out of his mouth and he gulped air.

  “Okay, Mr. della Torre. Do you want to answer some questions or do you feel like trying that again?”

  He thought maybe he could last one more go. But then he’d break. Just one more go. But it wasn’t worth it.

  “I’ll talk,” he said, tears in his voice.

  “What happened?”

  “He was. He was . . . Strumbić,” della Torre lied, wondering why he didn’t just tell them it was Higgins. Wondering why he was exposing himself to the risk of being tortured again. He could handle one more time, he told himself. One more time. So it’d be Strumbić until they found out otherwise, because Strumbić was expendable.

  She looked at him skeptically. “Strumbić? What’s he doing in Dubrovnik? I thought he was back in Zagreb.”

  “He came back straightaway. He took a flight back that afternoon. He had some deal he wanted to do down here, some business venture.”

  “I don’t believe you,” she hissed.

  “He flew to Zagreb with your Mr. Dawes and some other guy. A friend of Horvat’s, who Strumbić said had an American passport. They landed in Zagreb and then the other man flew right out again. Strumbić knew because your Mr. Dawes left him at the airport, didn’t make sure he went back into town. So Strumbić stuck around in a café and then caught the next flight south.”

  All that was true. He’d heard it from Higgins. Strumbić really was in Dubrovnik. Back at the hotel. God rest his soul, and may he forgive mine too, della Torre prayed to himself.

  “Where is Strumbić?” Rebecca demanded.

  “At the Argentina.”

  “How did you set it up?”

  “I called him. I called from the shop where I bought the girl clothes.”

  She looked at Rob, who shook his head, denying it, though he looked uncertain enough for Rebecca to turn back to della Torre.

  “How did you know he’d be at the hotel?”

  “He told me he was coming back.”

  “That doesn’t tell me how you set it up. You didn’t know what was happening until last night, after you called Djilas.”

  “Strumbić came here. He took the ferry over and I met him at the little pension. I saw him in the afternoon, and then we met up when I went for a walk after the call. I gave him the details. He went to the north side of the island and then paid for a fishing boat to take him back to Dubrovnik,” he said. It was all true, except it hadn’t been Strumbić who’d come to Šipan. It had been Higgins.

  He’d waited for della Torre at a room in a little pension at the edge of the village,
according to their hastily made plans. The old woman whose house it was hadn’t wanted both men to be alone in the room until della Torre had paid her extra. Even then she’d muttered about Germans and their morals, confusing the languages.

  Higgins had listened as della Torre explained himself. Cicadas buzzed outside the window, the sudden trill and staccato whistle of a nightingale, and frogs calling in their hundreds. Higgins didn’t say much, and then only to confirm points or to check details.

  At the end he’d extended his rangy frame and smiled. “I’m guessing you’ll owe me one,” he said.

  Rebecca’s voice brought della Torre back to the present. “What did Djilas know?”

  “I don’t know. Nothing, I think. I told Strumbić —” He’d almost said Higgins. “— it would be too dangerous to get in touch with him. That Djilas was being monitored by everyone. It would have to be done in the morning.”

  “Rob, the man you chased who was with Djilas — was he Strumbić?”

  “Couldn’t tell. I don’t think so, but they were well up toward the top of the stairs. I’d have said he had blonder hair and looked thinner and taller.”

  “Maybe it was one of Djilas’s men. There could have been somebody else,” she said. “Okay, Mr. della Torre. Now we’ve got a little problem. I had Djilas in my sights but I missed. I shouldn’t have missed from that distance. Boys, maybe we should put Mr. della Torre back in a chair. It’s hard to talk to a man lying on a table.”

  They manhandled him upright. He offered no resistance, his body a burden. Pain flared through his shoulders, his neck, his wrists, his ribs. He stared at the floor, breathing deeply, savouring the air like a half-drowned man.

  He was beginning to regret sacrificing Strumbić. But Strumbić could take care of himself. The Canadian journalist wasn’t in the same league as these people. These Americans were no different from the UDBA.