by Alen Mattich
“Both the Interior and Foreign Ministries will do our utmost to ensure not just that you have a contented retirement, but that however you choose to occupy yourself is made easy.”
“Thank you,” the Montenegrin said, encouraged but still cautious.
Former UDBA men often opened bars and restaurants to keep themselves busy and to earn some extra money. Belgrade could smooth many difficulties: red tape having to do with planning restrictions, hours of operation, access to low-interest loans, finding adequate staff and ensuring their loyalty. All that was necessary to make business lucrative.
“It is the very least we can do. The very least.”
There was a brief knock on the door, and the young man came in with the coffees and then left just as quietly.
“You have written a report?”
The Montenegrin nodded. “The barest details.”
“Good.” Dragomanov looked relieved. “Nothing else is to be committed to paper. No mention of this anywhere. Including the agency.”
“As far as anyone is concerned, Pilgrim is a blind file. It ends here.”
“Good. Of course, this isn’t just for our benefit — I mean, for the presidency and the ministry. You must rest assured that we will not be producing much documentation either. And it will be stored carefully. I’m sure the UDBA archives are safer than any other for the material, so it will be compiled there.”
“Thank you.”
“This is why you were chosen. No one is more . . . capable or discreet in the Interior Ministry. In fact, I don’t think I know of any diplomats with your reticence. It’s a shame we didn’t scoop you up when you were young.”
The Montenegrin smiled in a perfunctory way. The Foreign Ministry would never have considered him for anything. A boy from the wilds of Montenegro who hadn’t even gone to gymnasium, much less university, who’d gone straight from school to an apprenticeship? It would have been a capital joke.
They drank their coffees in silence.
“Colonel, should you ever need a favour in return . . .” Dragomanov said, though he left the offer hanging there. Implied but not explicit.
“Thank you. Is there anything else, sir?”
“Only to wish you as much luck in the future as you have had in the past,” Dragomanov said.
The Montenegrin stood up to go. He shook the tall man’s hand. Dragomanov looked even more handsome in the flesh than he did in photographs of days past, when he’d stood beside Tito as the dictator’s official translator and general advisor on foreign affairs. It seemed such a modest title, official translator to the presidency, for a man who had for so many years been the helmsman, navigating Yugoslavia through international affairs.
The Montenegrin had walked as far as the tall double doors when something made him turn back to Dragomanov, who had already shifted his attention to the papers on his desk.
“Sir?”
“Yes, Colonel?”
The Montenegrin knew he shouldn’t ask. Knew it was senseless, unprofessional. That any answer he got would be worse than silence, would leave him in even more clouded ignorance. But the urge was there. One day, he sensed, he would be made to pay for his Swedish luck. He wanted to know why.
“Why?” Why did the innocuous leader of an innocuous country have to die, an act that, from all he’d read, could glean no advantage for anyone anywhere? An act whose consequence was also a boy’s death.
“Why?”
“Yes. Why Palme?”
“You surprise me, Colonel, asking such a question. You must know I couldn’t possibly answer.”
“I’m sorry, sir. It was an impulsive question.”
“I understand. You’re right, it is very different from anything we’ve ever done before. Let’s just say it was a favour to a very important friend of the presidency’s, a friend of Yugoslavia. Leave it at that, shall we?”
DUBROVNIK, AUGUST 1991
He was in a big wooden fishing boat. It had a cabin at the front, but he was sitting on a bench near the stern, facing inward. His arms were tied behind his back and looped around a cleat so that he couldn’t move, but he was no longer parched. They’d given him something to drink.
Rebecca sat across from him. She was also trussed up, with a gag in her mouth. She was even paler than usual in the moonlight. The dark stain on her side might have had something to do with it. She’d already been in that position when he’d got into the boat, so he hadn’t been able to talk to her. But her eyes told him she didn’t have much to say. They shone with contempt. If she was injured, the wound hadn’t been deep enough to weaken her will.
Della Torre wondered whether the Montenegrin was taking them back to the Bay of Kotor. But that didn’t seem right. His internal compass told him they were going north. Then again, what could his internal compass know on such a night, in a strange sea?
“Comfortable, Gringo?”
“Better now that I’ve had something to drink. Thanks.”
“That’s the problem with choosing an inconsiderate hostess.”
“How is she?” della Torre said, pointing his chin towards Rebecca.
“She won’t bleed to death.”
“Do you think maybe you ought to take the gag out of her mouth?”
“No, because, quite frankly, there’s nothing I want to hear from her.”
“How did you find us?”
“My daughter told me. She’s a very observant girl. So good that she even knew the depth of the dock. Said the water came up to your shoulders at the end of it.”
“How is she?”
“Astonishingly untroubled by her misadventure.”
“She’s quite a girl.”
“It’s easy to underestimate her. I’m glad you discovered how special she is.”
“What happened to the others?”
“The two men? Fish food. I’m afraid I only asked for you and her to be kept alive. My men were very unhappy about what had happened to Snezhana. They took their revenge.”
“So what now?”
“Now?” The Montenegrin pressed a button on his watch to illuminate it. “We wait for another ten minutes or so. With this current and in these channels, I need to get things right.”
Della Torre didn’t understand, nor did he feel like pressing the man.
“I will leave you to contemplate the moonlight,” the Montenegrin said, standing up. “But I won’t be gone long.”
Moonlight. It made him think of Harry in England. Listening to Britten, watching her look out over the broad Suffolk marshes and the North Sea. The melancholy bars of the third Sea Interlude, “Moonlight.”
His memory matched the rocking boat, the cantering motion of waves in a choppy sea. The wind had picked up, lifting the swell against them. The great silver and green moon.
Rebecca’s eyes were focused on him. She wasn’t communicating anything, just watching him, as a caged panther might gaze at a visitor through its bars. They were at the Montenegrin’s mercy. But the Montenegrin was a professional. In his career he’d never shown himself to be a merciful man. Nor was he cruel. There would be no long wait, no torture, no gloating bloodlust such as might be expected from Gorki. A professional, like Rebecca. Maybe that was the defiance in her eyes. Whereas della Torre retreated into sentimental nostalgia.
The Montenegrin came back to the fishing deck. Della Torre could see the moonlight glint off something in his hands. A knife. The Montenegrin was steady on his feet, unaffected by the boat’s motion. He walked over to Rebecca, reached behind her. For a moment della Torre wondered whether he’d stab her, gut and fillet her like a fish. But the Montenegrin had only cut the ropes holding her to the cleat. Her hands remained fixed behind her back and her legs tied. The Montenegrin put away the knife in a holster on his belt and pulled Rebecca up.
Then, in one smooth motion, he lifted Rebecca abov
e the fishing boat’s gunwales and threw her over the side.
Della Torre watched her surface behind the boat. He watched her through the green and silver light, the seawater rope knotted about her neck, her copper hair gone black in the night water, her face, sick of sin, gasping up towards heaven, nostrils flared above the bound mouth. He watched her flounder, strive.
And then, with all the horror and terror suffered by a battle-shy youth, he watched her drown.
The boat pulled away.
She’d felt no sickness or remorse in murder. For her, death was absurd, and life even more so. For the Montenegrin too. But it shook della Torre. He gasped, breathing for the drowning woman and himself.
There was a long silence. The Montenegrin stood watching over the boat’s transom.
“Even at my age, you live and learn,” the Montenegrin said without turning.
“Die and forget,” della Torre said to himself, but audibly enough for the Montenegrin to hear.
“And then, yes, you die. But if you’re lucky, someone carries the memory of what you learned.” The Montenegrin looked at della Torre. “You mustn’t be surprised. It would have been less cruel to have shot her first, but this was the punishment prescribed by Snezhana. She said Milady sends her greetings. Whatever that means. I’m afraid I’m not as bookish as she is. Anyway, she said an honourable death was too good for the red-headed woman, so it was death by drowning. She told me to tell you.”
Della Torre nodded. Snezhana. Snow. Winter’s snow. Milady de Winter. The child who’d been fearless. The ten-year-old girl, light as a feather but with an iron will, had known. Had seen. She was right. Only Milady had that sort of strength, courage, ferocity. Understanding just how cruel life can be, compared to the sentimentality of the Musketeers. Who had she thought Rebecca was? Buckingham? Constance? The wretch Fenton? And who was he? D’Artagnan? Athos? No. Planchet.
“Rebecca nearly had you,” della Torre finally said, swallowing his words. “On the Stradun.”
“Did she? I thought I heard a bullet fly past, but I assumed it was my imagination. It must have come very close for me to have heard it so clearly. She was a good soldier.”
“Is Irena . . .”
“Your wife? She’s unharmed. But she’s in danger still. No longer from me. But now she’s in the thick of war.”
“Thank you for not taking your revenge on her.”
“Thank you for my life. And for tending to Snezhana. There was a price on your head. Had she been hurt, you would have learned how the Turks exacted vengeance when they owned much of this country. Though never Montenegro.” He laughed. “People learn the hard way that Montenegrins are difficult to subjugate, no?”
Della Torre stayed silent.
“When you called and I warned you that I would accept no trickery, that any deceit would be met harshly, you said, ‘Trust me.’ I laughed. But later, I thought about it. I had always trusted you. And you had always been trustworthy. And when you freed my daughter and had your friend save me, you were again trustworthy. So when you brought that American woman to me, did you know what she intended to do?”
Della Torre thought in silence and then knew it would be worthless to lie. “Yes.”
“You knew she meant to kill me?”
“Yes.”
The Montenegrin turned to face him and nodded.
“I didn’t know that she would use Snezhana,” della Torre said.
“Yes, this seems apparent. Did they know that Gorki would help you?”
“Maybe. That’s not something they told me. There was much they didn’t tell me. I don’t know why they wanted you dead. I know what they said. That it was because you’d run the liquidation program and had arranged the assassination of people on American soil.”
“But you don’t believe it?”
“No.”
“Gorki wasn’t the only one who helped the Americans.” The Montenegrin sat next to della Torre now, the boat rocking in the light swell.
“No, he wasn’t,” della Torre agreed. “Horvat had something to do with it too.”
“Horvat is easy. He was doing the Americans a favour, an easy favour. He was sacrificing a former UDBA agent to kill another former UDBA agent. I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t weep too much at your funeral. And he’d dance on my grave. Because without me he could develop a monopoly on smuggling down here. He’s got one up in eastern Slavonia. He has a little power base in Vukovar, which means he’s sewn up the smuggling routes to Hungary. I hear he’s doing something similar in Istria, though there are plenty of established interests that are proving hard to budge. He’s got links with Bosnia through Zadar, and he’s building up his interests on the Austrian border. He’s a busy man.”
“Yes, I hear he’s a clever businessman.”
“He’s very good, very forceful, canny. People underestimate him because he’s crass. They shouldn’t,” the Montenegrin said. “Horvat, I understand. But I find it interesting that the Americans know about my difficulties with Gorki. Did you tell them?”
“I didn’t know anything about it. I thought he was in Vukovar until I found out he was here.”
Somewhere over the water, della Torre saw a beam flash towards them.
“Ah, we have a shepherd. We’ll have to continue our conversation in a little while, Gringo.”
It was a signal demanding identification. One of the naval patrol boats. They’d become increasingly active in these waters. The Montenegrin used a heavy waterproof torch to flash out a code towards the ship. Della Torre read the Morse without having to think about it, his army training so deeply embedded in him that he’d never forget it. A . . . T . . . H . . . O . . . S, it read. There was a delay and then the navy ship flashed back: P . . . O . . . R . . . H . . . O . . . S.
“Stupid signaller,” the Montenegrin said. “Drunk conscripts.”
He flashed a repeat signal and the ship repeated it correctly: P . . . O . . . R . . . T . . . H . . . O . . . S.
The Montenegrin replied again: A . . . R . . . A . . . M . . . I . . . S.
And there was nothing more from the navy.
“They’re being very . . . how shall I say it? Fastidious. They’re being very fastidious with the night shipping. Too many smugglers.” The Montenegrin laughed. And then, more seriously, he said, “And I think they’re getting ready for something.”
“So are the militias.”
“Yes, the militias too.” He fell silent and then slapped the locker he sat on. “Would you like anything, Gringo? I should have asked, but the conversation was so engrossing. Some water?”
“No. My thirst is gone.”
“You certainly drank enough to burst.”
“Maybe a cigarette.”
“Of course. But I’m afraid I can’t untie you. You understand.”
“That’s okay. If you hang it off my lip, I can do the rest.”
The Montenegrin went forward and came back with a lit cigarette from one of his crew. Gently he put it up against della Torre’s lips. For a moment della Torre thought he might kick out at the other man; his legs were untied. But to what end? He’d never manage to free himself.
“So, we were talking about Gorki. You don’t know why he would want to help the Americans?” the Montenegrin asked.
“I can only assume it has something to do with UDBA.” Talking with a cigarette in his mouth made della Torre sound like some gangster from an old black and white Hollywood movie, like the ones they’d shown on Saturday afternoon television when he was living in Ohio. In any other circumstance, he might have found it funny, made a joke about it.
“The old UDBA never had that much use for him, though he had defenders in the hierarchy,” the Montenegrin said. “He was an operative. Before my time in command they’d used him on a couple of liquidation teams. But he was unreliable. He had a bad habit of robbing banks and getti
ng caught. He was always in one prison or another. Unfortunately he is a very good linguist; he has very good English, French, German, speaks some Dutch, some Italian, and enough Swedish to get by. I imagine he’s probably got Russian as well, but I never asked. His friends are now even more senior in the Serbian UDBA. So he grows in strength. Maybe he does what he likes, sees that there are advantages to being friendly with the Americans. Maybe he was doing a favour for his masters.”
Della Torre sucked on the cigarette, the smoke coursing into his lungs and the nicotine washing through his body so that he felt he could withstand anything.
The Montenegrin had grown quiet again. The boat’s engine was chugging regularly. It felt like they were making steady progress through the night sea. Where they were was littered with islands and dangerous channels. Della Torre could understand why they would be cautious. In the distance he could see the occasional cluster of lights. Villages, some on the water, others in the hills. But not many lights. No one wasted electricity here.
“You asked about Pilgrim.”
“And you never answered.”
“No,” the Montenegrin said. “Pilgrim was a secret file. All reference to it was supposed to have been destroyed. But these things never are, are they? Files are cross-referenced and little side notes are made. The important things, though, they were never written down. Not with Pilgrim.”
“I know.”
“What do you know about Pilgrim?” the Montenegrin asked.
“It had something to do with nuclear centrifuges. Swedish centrifuges sold to Belgrade that Belgrade then sold on.”
“Ah, that was part of it, a little part. Though I don’t know what part. But Pilgrim was a person.”
Della Torre looked up at the man, ash dropping on his lap from the half-spent cigarette.
“I did that assignment. Alone. No backup. No one else party to it, except a boy who didn’t know anything and didn’t live.” The Montenegrin sighed. “That target was Olof Palme, the Swedish prime minister.”
The cigarette fell out of Della Torre’s mouth onto his leg, burning him before dropping onto the deck, where the orange-red ember hissed and then fell silent in damp darkness.
