by Tom Saric
“Anyone know who she is?”
The passenger shook his head. “Parents are dead. Caught her running from the house in a mine field.”
Debeli nodded and looked through the windshield at Natalia. He turned to the driver again. “How old?”
“Not a day over seven.”
Debeli nodded, walked over, and opened the car door. He crouched down in front of Natalia and smiled.
“Do you like ice cream?”
Natalia stared but didn’t respond.
“You can call me Uncle. And when you’re at Uncle’s house, you can have as much ice cream as you want.”
Mateja and Julia clapped their hands together at the mention of ice cream. The man offered his hand for Natalia to take.
INDICTED: Chapter 3
Split, Croatia
Six Years Later
“Do not answer the door,” the voice on the line said.
Luka stood with his back to the wall in the hallway of his apartment beside the door, pressing the phone to his ear and holding a newspaper in his other hand. He stayed corpse-still in the dark hallway, remaining in the shadows, away from the fan of blue moonlight.
Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! The door rattled with each knock.
He placed the phone down on the tile floor, got down on all fours, and crawled over to the door. He saw four rectangles of light under the door. Four legs. Two people.
He looked towards the bedroom at the end of the hall. Inside the second drawer of the nightstand, atop the Bible, was the gun. He pressed his eyes closed at the thought. The gun wouldn’t help.
He rose slowly, face pressed to the heavy oak door near two steel deadbolts and a heavy chain latch. His eye found the peephole. One of the figures was tall and notably wiry, even though the fish-eye distortion made him seem round in the middle. The short one was older, rounder, and balder, and under his partly zipped jacket that read INTERPOL on the chest were the bulges of a bulletproof vest. The tall one shrugged and then raised his fist to pound another four times against the door.
Luka dropped to the ground and took a deep breath. A moment later he heard murmuring and shuffling on the other side of the door. The shadows disappeared, and when he stood again and looked through the peephole, the hallway was empty.
He picked up the phone, then swallowed hard and said, “I think they’re gone.”
“Not for long,” the voice said. “We have to meet now.”
“Right now? I thought that—”
“This is happening more quickly than I expected. You don’t have time.”
As the voice gave him instructions, Luka nodded, listening to every detail and committing them to memory. He put the phone down on the hallway table beside the glass ashtray overflowing with cigarette butts. He picked up Jutarnji List, the day’s newspaper, and flipped it over. His eyes darted across the page as he scanned the headline for the umpteenth time that day, each time desperately hoping he’d read it incorrectly.
“MORE HEROES INDICTED”
He stared down at the black and white photo of a younger, thinner version of himself standing in front of a dozen troops, with the caption: Luka Pavić, speaking to his troops prior to the Oluja offensive, is now wanted by The Hague.
The newspaper trembled in his hands as he was sucked into reading through the first paragraph again.
Two more Croatian officers have been added to the list of people wanted by The Hague for war crimes related to the Croatian War of Independence. An indictment was issued by Nicole Allegri, the chief prosecutor at The Hague, on May 30th, at 8:00 a.m. Greenwich Mean Time, for Luka Pavić, age 29, a retired sergeant in the Croatian military, and Ante Čapan, age 27, a retired corporal. The document cites, among a few other offenses, the executions of fourteen Serbian civilians in a house in Nisko as the primary reason for the indictment. Both men are to report immediately to the nearest local authorities for extradition to The Hague...
Luka looked up from the newspaper, staring out the window in the living room towards the black night sky, into nothingness. He remembered the day the picture was taken. He had just made staff sergeant, ahead of two older, more seasoned soldiers, and a handful of reporters wanted a feature on this rising star in the Croatian military. How had the picture now become this, a poster for the reviled?
He looked at the indictment date. Statehood Day, of all days. His jaw tensed and his hands contracted, crumpling the paper into a ball. Then he stopped himself, letting his arms drop and pushing the thoughts away. He flicked the ball onto the floor.
Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! “Luka Pavić, open up!”
Luka bolted upright. He cocked his head to the side, listening to the murmurs. They couldn’t possibly think he was inside. It was Independence Day. No one in the city stayed home tonight.
He moved through the darkness to the balcony door at the back of the apartment and slid it open an inch. The street was deserted. Cars were parked along both sides, the road and low-rise buildings awash in the glow of orange streetlights. The faint cheers of a crowd singing and the vibration of a bass guitar in the distance broke the thick silence.
Footsteps clicked on the sidewalk below. The tall officer stepped into the light, looking towards the balcony window. There were only two ways out, and the officers had now blocked both. Luka knew it would take a reasonably fit individual twelve seconds running at full sprint to get from the back of the building, where the young officer now stood, to the front entrance. That didn’t account for a delay in reaction time, which would add another four. Sixteen seconds.
Luka slipped through the shadows to the bedroom, opened the nightstand’s second drawer, and pulled out the gun. He shuffled through the hallway and grabbed a set of keys from the table. Standing in front of the door, he silently turned the two deadbolts, then lifted the chain a millimeter off the guides and dragged it across to the opening. He lowered the free chain, leaving it hanging. Ever so slightly, as though moved by a draft, the chain swung and tapped against the door. Click.
Luka stepped three feet back, revolver pointed squarely at the door, and waited.
Bang! Bang! Ba—
With his left hand, Luka twisted the handle and swung the door wide open. At the sight of the gun, the short officer immediately raised his hands. Luka grabbed him by the shoulder and pulled him into the apartment. He pushed the man forward until he was facing the bedroom, his back to Luka.
“On your knees. Hands behind your head.”
The man’s hands shook, and he interlaced them behind his head before lowering himself onto his knees.
“Kiss the floor.”
The man tipped forward, groaning as his face hit the floor.
Luka began counting.
One.
He ran out the door and down the hall to the stairway.
Two.
He flew down the three flights of stairs four steps at a time.
Three. Four. Five.
Luka knew that the round man was now realizing that he was alive and alone. Radioing his partner.
He slammed his way out the door and into the alley.
Six.
He sprinted up the street, where his motorcycle was parked between two Fiats.
Seven. Eight. Nine. Ten.
He hopped on, inserted the key, and turned the choke on.
Eleven. Twelve.
He pressed the kick starter twice. Nothing.
Thirteen. Fourteen.
Again, he pressed. Harder, more forcefully.
Fifteen.
He heard footsteps around the corner. “Hey, stop there!”
He pushed once more. The engine revved. He looked over his shoulder; the tall officer was approaching, hand on his belt, reaching for his firearm. Luka shifted the bike and cranked the throttle; the tires spun, squealing against the pavement before launching him forward and around the corner.
Luka picked up speed, staying focused on the road. He had at least a thirty-second head start; there were only two Interpol officers, and he c
ould have gone in a dozen different directions.
As he crested the hill, he saw the meeting place: The Riva, Split’s waterfront promenade. Tonight, the marble walkway that stretched between Roman-era stone buildings on one side and the palm tree-lined Adriatic on the other was packed shoulder to shoulder with people celebrating Croatia’s independence. Two stages were set up, drums and bass guitars thumping away while a light show illuminated the sky in emerald, white, and electric blue.
It was here that Luka dreamed of living out his days, sipping Karlovačko beer under a white canopy at one of the dozens of outdoor cafés and periodically cooling off in the crystal-clear sea.
He pushed those thoughts aside. He could no longer stay.
Dropping his bike at the end of The Riva, he pushed through the sweaty mass of limbs: proud locals draped in red, white, and blue Croatian flags, lanky teenage boys in shorts and flip-flops with red and white checkers painted on their faces, young women in too-short skirts singing patriotic tunes and dancing atop benches, tourists holding cameras tightly, taking in the spectacle of Croatian Statehood Day.
He crashed into a young woman yelling into her cell phone, nearly knocking her over. He ignored the glance she gave him as he rushed to the meeting place.
As agreed upon, sitting at the third bench next to a couple locked in an embrace, was Tomislav Rukavina, Advokat. He wore a navy jacket with brass buttons and khakis with pleats that were razor-crisp.
“Were you followed?”
Luka shook his head. “There were only two. Interpol.”
Tomislav picked up a newspaper from the bench and they made their way through the crowd, deeper into the old town, where the spaces between the maze of stone buildings created a network of narrow alleyways, giving them more privacy.
They passed a bookshop, and Tomislav handed Luka the sports section. “You have everything you need inside.”
A police siren wailed behind Luka, followed by the flashing blue and red lights of two approaching police motorcycles.
Luka turned towards the window so that his back was to the police officers. Tomislav didn’t react. Luka craned his neck as the police raced right past him, surrounding a red BMW parked beside the open-air market.
A parking ticket.
Tomislav laughed and put his arm around Luka like he was an old friend. “Stop being so paranoid. The local police aren’t going to arrest you here, Luka. They wouldn’t dare. You’re a hero to them.”
Tomislav lit up a Du Maurier and offered one to Luka, who cupped his hands, lighting it up. Then he exhaled and unfolded the newspaper, revealing a yellow envelope. He pulled out two passports, both with his picture inside: one Croatian, with the name Ilija Srna; the second German, with the name Mladen Šimić.
“You might try to get another one when you have a chance. There are also birth certificates inside. We should hurry.” Tomislav glanced at his Rolex. “The boat leaves at ten.”
“Today?” Luka swallowed. “I thought maybe I’d have a few days to—”
“Listen carefully to me,” Tomislav said, his expression grave. “You don’t have time. They’ve sent a couple of low-level officers to bring you in. They haven’t sent the cavalry yet, for a few reasons. One, The Hague has three or four generals that they want to bring in first. The big fish. But after that, you’re next on the list. Two, they want to see if you’ll come in on your own. If you don’t, they’ll put a bounty on your head, and then there’ll be nobody you can trust. They’re already surrounding your apartment and notifying the airports. They know as well as we do that with each passing day you’ll get further and further away. The best chance you have is now.”
Luka felt a knot in his stomach. Tomislav had worked a desk job for UDBA, the Yugoslavian secret police, prior to the war, and then he worked for OBS, the Croatian Secret Service, before starting his own law practice. He knew how things worked. And since the Croatian military’s initial internal investigation into the murders in the village, Tomislav had been Luka’s advisor, and he hadn’t led him astray.
But as it stood, all The Hague wanted was for him to appear and go through a trial. He was charged with murder, but he wasn’t guilty. The internal investigation had cleared Luka of any wrongdoing, citing a complete lack of evidence that he murdered the fourteen individuals in the home. He could turn himself in and explain to the prosecutors at The Hague that there was another assassin, a White Tiger.
Could he? The Hague was a separate animal. They had their own investigators, lawyers, and judges, all with the same mission of righting all the wrongs of the war.
He stopped in front of a store window displaying local paintings of the islands off the coast. He pulled another drag on the cigarette and blew smoke on the glass.
“What if I stay?”
Tomislav’s face puckered. “Stay where?”
“Here.”
Tomislav forced an incredulous laugh and then shook his head.
“I didn’t kill them, Tomo, I didn’t.”
Tomislav put his hand on Luka’s shoulder and looked him in the eye. “I know you didn’t, Luka. It was war, and there are casualties.”
“If I’d gone to the village sooner, they’d still be…”
“Stop thinking like that. You have to think about yourself now.”
“I could’ve saved them,” he said, then swallowed hard. “Has anyone heard anything about her… Natalia?”
He’d learned the girl’s name two months after she’d slipped away from him. It made things worse. Luka had spent the past six years searching for her. He’d tracked down cousins once, twice, and thrice removed, searched through church archives and hospital records, but turned up nothing. Twice a month he drove to Nisko, the village where she had run away. He walked the fields surrounding the now-abandoned home, hoping to find a clue that could lead him to her.
But she had vanished.
“There’s nothing you can do now,” Tomislav said. “Are you going to keep searching for her, going back to the same place, asking the same questions? Luka, my heart bleeds for her. But she’s gone. Maybe she’s okay. Maybe she’s not. But it’s been three years.”
“I just don’t understand why?” He wiped his glassy eyes with his palm.
“No one does.” Tomislav stuck out his lower lip and shook his head. “It’s war. But someone wanted them dead for a reason—something that had nothing to do with you or me.”
“But if I’d—”
“God’s will is greater than ours.”
Luka paused for a moment at that, his vision becoming blurry with tears.
Tomislav continued, “Luka, you have to forgive yourself. You were doing the right thing, freeing your country. There’s nothing nobler than that.”
“But Tomo, maybe if I turn myself in, then—”
Tomislav grabbed Luka’s shoulder. “Have you been looking at the papers? Do you think The Hague is interested in innocence? The only innocent people, as far as they are concerned, are the dead ones. It’s about getting even. Revenge. And they don’t care who it is. An indictment is as good as a conviction. Twenty years minimum, Luka.”
“But maybe if we find out what happened. We could find Čapan, and if our testimonies are consistent, then—”
“Are you listening to me? It’s a goddamned witch hunt. Čapan’s already gone underground; who knows where he is? And you’re on their list. Not very high, luckily, so you can escape and live out the rest of your years somewhere in peace, knowing that you’ve given your countrymen freedom. And if you think that being punished by them will somehow make you feel better, then you’re stupider than you look.”
Luka threw his cigarette on the ground and put it out under his foot.
“Are we done with this?”
Boom! Boom! Boom! Luka startled, then scanned 180 degrees. He looked up at the sky. Fireworks rained down; the crowd cheered.
Luka and Tomislav picked up the pace, walking around the back of old town and up Sustipanski Put towards the marina. The
crowd was thin here; a few people sat outside a café where a folding sign advertised spit-roasted lamb as the special of the day. Luka scanned each person, but none of them glanced his way. The café was quiet. Safe. He looked at Tomislav.
“If you could do me a favor, my father…”
“How is your father?”
“Holding up,” Luka said. “He mostly sits outside, reading the newspaper, waiting for someone to visit. Memory is getting worse. The doctor said he has to stop smoking or he’ll have another one.”
“We should all quit, really,” Tomislav said, and cleared his throat. “Maybe your brother could—”
“What brother?” Luka turned his head towards the islands in the distance.
“Well, if it’s like that, then…”
“It’s like that.”
Tomislav took a last drag on his cigarette and flicked it onto the road. “He was a brave man, Nikola was. But it’s been eight years. Sometimes we need to know why people make the decisions that they do. Maybe then we can understand.”
Nikola had left a handwritten note in Luka’s mailbox on a rainy day four months to the day after war broke out, the same day that the Yugoslavs fired up bulldozers to reduce the city of Vukovar to rubble. The note offered no explanation as to why Luka’s big brother had traded sides, leaving Luka to suspect it was all because of Nikola’s blind love for a woman.
I wish I could explain my actions. I know you’ll be confused and disappointed. He had crossed out the word “ashamed.” I don’t expect forgiveness. Luka had read the letter only once before striking a match and burning it.
“I know who he was,” Luka said. “But that’s not who he is. Not who he chose to be. A brave man doesn’t choose to fight his own countrymen. His own brother.” He bit down on his lower lip before looking at Tomislav with sharp, stern eyes. “Can we stop this now?”
“I’ll visit your father every Sunday.”
They entered the marina, where hundreds of sailboats bobbed up and down in rows along stone wharfs. They stopped at number sixty-two, where a small yacht with its lights on was tied up, humming. A shirtless man with sun-bleached hair stood on the deck, polishing the wheel. He nodded.
