The Curious Case of the Missing Head

by Gabriel Farago

  The governor nodded.

  The medical officer was about to turn on the lethal drip, when the door opened and a young woman holding a mobile phone burst into the chamber. The governor turned and gave her a withering look. ‘Not now, for heaven’s sake!’ he hissed.

  Looking embarrassed, the young woman hurried over to the governor. ‘It’s the president ... for you, sir,’ she stammered and handed the phone to the governor, her hand shaking.

  The medical officer, and the spectators on the other side of the window, stared at the governor, stunned. After what seemed like an eternity, the governor handed the phone back to the young woman and turned to face the window.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he began, speaking softly. ‘I just spoke with the President of the United States. The execution has been stayed indefinitely.’

  Kosovo, near the Albanian border: 25 October 1999

  The vicious, bloody war may have been finally over, but the suffering and atrocities continued underground. When the rule of law disintegrates and is replaced by the arbitrary rule of violence and the gun, old feuds and grudges come out of the shadows and rub shoulders with more sinister urges that are allowed to run riot, leaving the vulnerable and weak exposed and at the mercy of the ruthless.

  Two dark-green, mud-covered, military-style vehicles turned off the road and followed a rutted dirt track into the forest. ‘How much further?’ asked the man sitting next to the driver of the first vehicle.

  ‘A few kilometres; it’s quite remote,’ replied the man sitting behind him.

  ‘Good. A couple with two girls, you say?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Just what we want. Mirko will be pleased!’

  ‘Mirko?’

  ‘The man who owns the place where we do all the ... you know.’

  ‘He likes young girls?’

  ‘Oh yes, he does!’

  After the armed conflict had ended, many Kosovo Albanians hadn’t laid down their arms, but had melted into the forests and continued their dirty work – aimed mainly at ethnic Serbs. Old grudges rarely die. They just go to ground and simmer – often for years – until, suddenly liberated, they erupt more violently than ever, spreading their poison and terror.

  Bogodan Petrovic looked affectionately at his twins, Nadia and Teodora, sitting opposite him at the kitchen table. At fourteen, they were almost impossible to tell apart and it took a mother’s love and intuition to do so. His wife, Anya, busied herself at the stove, preparing dinner. Bogodan, a strong man in his late thirties, had lived on the land all his life, eking out a modest living on the small family farm, just like his father before him. A simple life of hard, honest work. The dreadful war had taken its toll, but Bogodan had somehow managed to stay out of the conflict and protect his family and his property, and most important of all, keep them all alive. This had a lot to do with the remote location of the farm near the Albanian border, and the fact that he kept to himself and got on with his neighbours. Or so he thought. But no-one can hide from the world around them forever.

  For years, one of his neighbours – a wealthy landowner with influence in the village – had tried to buy Bogodan’s farm, claiming an agreement had been reached a long time ago between their grandfathers. Bogodan had laughed this off as nonsense, as there was no evidence to support this, and he refused to sell. This had created serious bad blood between them, which had turned increasingly acrimonious and bitter over the years.

  ‘There it is,’ said the man in the back seat and pointed to a small house at the end of the track.

  ‘You stay here and leave the rest to us,’ replied the man in the front.

  The man in the back tapped him on the shoulder and handed him a large bundle of bank notes. ‘As agreed,’ he said. ‘What will you do with the family?’

  ‘Not your concern,’ replied the man and slipped the notes into his pocket. ‘But I can tell you, Mirko will have fun with the girls, that’s for sure,’ he added, laughing. ‘Enjoy your new farm. We’ll drop you off on our way back.’ Then he pulled a black balaclava over his head and reached for his gun.

  Anya had just put a pot of soup on the table and was about to fill the bowls, when she heard a vehicle pull up in the yard outside. This was most unusual because they rarely had visitors, and almost never after dark. ‘Who could that be?’ she said looking at Bogodan, a flash of uncertainty and fear in her eyes.

  Bogodan stood up and walked to the front door to have a look. That’s when he heard a second vehicle approach, its bright headlights shining through the window. Then someone started banging on the door. As soon as Bogodan opened the door, four men – their faces hidden behind balaclavas – burst into the room, guns drawn and shouting.

  Sitting awkwardly on the floor in the back of a small van with their hands tied behind their backs and duct tape covering their mouths, Bogodan, Anya and the two girls lurched from side to side every time the van took a turn. Terrified, bruised and finding it difficult to breathe, they could only communicate with their eyes. The terrified look in Anya’s eyes said it all.

  The two vehicles crossed the border, drove through the sleeping Albanian town of Burrel and then turned off the road. ‘Here we are,’ said the man in the front seat and pointed to a dilapidated farmhouse with stables at the back. Several cars were parked in front of the house, and two armed men sat on a wooden bench by the front door, smoking. They stood up as the vehicles approached.

  As soon as his car stopped, the man in the front seat got out, walked to the back of the van stopped behind him and opened the door. ‘Get out; you two first,’ he barked, pointing to the girls. Then he turned towards the two armed men watching him.

  ‘Where’s Mirko?’ he asked, obviously used to being in command.

  ‘In the stables, getting drunk as usual,’ replied one of the men, a former KLA fighter called Janko.

  ‘Tell him I’ve a present for him.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘These two here. Take them to him. Tell him it’s rent for two weeks. But first, take off the tape and handcuffs. We want them to look pretty.’

  ‘Will do. Girls this time? Lucky bastard,’ said Janko, laughing. He had taken women to Mirko before but never girls this young.

  ‘Is everything ready?’

  ‘Yes. They are all waiting inside.’

  ‘Good. The other two here are a present for the doctor; take them inside. I need a drink!’

  Janko pushed the stable door open with his shoulder and looked inside.

  Mirko, a man in his fifties, was lying on a bale of hay clutching a half-empty bottle of vodka to his chest. His eyes were closed and he appeared to be asleep.

  ‘You,’ said Janko, pointing to Teodora standing next to him, ‘go inside, take off your clothes and wait for me; understood?’ Teodora nodded – her eyes wide with terror – and stumbled inside, shaking. ‘While your sister and I are having a little fun right here,’ continued Janko, smacking his lips. He turned around, pulled Nadia roughly towards him, undid his belt and then put his sweaty hand up her skirt.

  Dr Dritan Shehu, a former KLA commander, was carefully laying out his instruments on a makeshift operating table set up in another of the stables behind the house. The conditions were primitive, but adequate as long as certain procedures were followed meticulously. And Dr Shehu was a meticulous man, bordering on pedantic when it came to his work.

  The only child of a prominent doctor from Pec, Shehu had been exposed to things medical from an early age, and it soon became apparent to his doting parents that young Dritan would follow in his father’s footsteps. Inquisitive and exceptionally bright, he had devoured books on medical subjects in his father’s extensive library even before he had left primary school, and he had often sat in on consultations and small procedures performed in his father’s surgery. By the time he was eighteen he spoke fluent English and German, and his parents sent him to England to study medicine.

  An incredibly gifted student, he soon came to the attention of professors, who t
ook a special interest in him and encouraged his fascination with surgery. After his graduation, he returned to Pec to begin an internship. That was just before the brutal Kosovo war broke out in 1998, and then everything changed.

  As Kosovar Albanians, the Shehu family became embroiled in the bitter conflict between the KLA – the Kosovo Liberation Army – and Yugoslav forces targeting KLA sympathisers and political opponents. Shehu’s father – thought to be a sympathiser because he often treated wounded KLA fighters – was detained for questioning by Serb paramilitary forces, who broke into his house one night looking for KLA fighters. He was executed in the kitchen in front of his wife and son. The next day, Shehu joined the KLA.

  ‘So, what have we got here?’ asked Shehu, looking at Bogodan and his wife – both handcuffed – standing in a circle of light next to the operating table. ‘Take off his shirt.’

  The armed man standing behind Bogodan undid the handcuffs and ordered Bogodan to take off his shirt. Shehu nodded appreciatively. A strong healthy male, late thirties, obviously used to hard work; excellent, he thought and turned to Anya. ‘His wife?’ he asked.

  The armed man nodded.

  ‘Good. We’ll begin with him. Take them outside. You know what to do; back of the head as I showed you. Then bring him in here and put him on the table.’

  Ignoring Bogodan’s and Anya’s shrill questions and protests as they were being dragged outside, Shehu put on a pair of plastic gloves and checked his scalpels.

  In the stable next to the makeshift surgery, Mirko had woken up after Janko had kicked him in the shins. He stared at the two naked girls standing in front of him, shaking.

  ‘Present from the commander,’ said Janko, pushing the girls towards Mirko, who was rubbing his eyes in disbelief. That’s when two shots shattered the stillness of the night.

  ‘Ah,’ said Janko, ‘I’m needed outside. I’m sure you can think of something to do with these two cuties for a while,’ he added, pinching Teodora on her bottom.

  Aroused, Mirko sat up, took another swig of vodka, burped and then pulled Nadia roughly towards him.

  ‘Careful,’ said Shehu, as two men lifted the green plastic sheet with Bogodan’s body onto the operating table. The entry wound at the back of the head was neat, but the face had almost entirely been blown away and was still bleeding.

  ‘Perfect,’ continued Shehu. He reached for his scalpel and made the first long incision, opening the chest as he had done many times before. He knew he would reach the heart within a few minutes, extract it and then place it into the state-of-the art storage container with inflatable cushions and eutectoid cooling. The container would provide the precisely controlled environmental temperature needed to ensure safe transport of the harvested organ to its destination in the Middle East. But first, it would be driven to a nearby airport and flown to Istanbul. The small plane was standing by, but as always time was of the essence.

  The sophisticated organ-harvesting operation consisted of many complex stages but it had been perfected by Shehu, who was known as ‘Dr Death’. Healthy organs fetched huge amounts of money on the black market, and ready cash was in short supply after the war. Run with military precision, what had begun as an experiment had soon turned into a thriving business.

  Teodora watched her struggling sister being savagely raped by Mirko, who was clearly enjoying himself. Unable to watch any longer, she let her eyes wander until they came to rest on something leaning against the wooden wall in a corner. A pitchfork. Teodora had always been the more strong-willed and impulsive of the twins. She was also the more adventurous and courageous, prepared to reach out and have a go, however dangerous or foolhardy it may at first appear.

  When Mirko turned Nadia around and began to do something unthinkable to her, Teodora made a spontaneous decision. Slowly, she began to move towards the pitchfork in the corner without taking her eyes off Mirko. He seemed to be having some difficulty controlling Nadia, who was crying hysterically and struggling violently in a desperate attempt to resist. When Nadia lashed out and scratched Mirko’s face, drawing blood, and Mirko responded by hitting her hard with a fist clenched in anger, Teodora knew it was time.

  She made a dash for the pitchfork, picked it up and holding it firmly with both hands, she ran towards Mirko, who had his back turned towards her. Fear and loathing gave her strength. She lifted the fork and plunged it deep into Mirko’s back, piercing his heart. She pulled out the fork and stabbed him again until Mirko let go of Nadia and, pressing his hands against his chest, he fell forward and died, blood gushing from the deep wounds and turning the straw crimson.

  ‘Get dressed quickly!’ hissed Teodora, picking up her own clothes. ‘We have to get out of here now!’

  As they ran towards the door, Teodora stopped. She could hear animated voices coming from the stable next door. For some reason she couldn’t explain, she walked over to a large crack in one of the rough wooden planks forming part of the wall separating the two stables, pressed her cheek against the plank, and looked into the brightly lit chamber. What she saw made her gasp and tremble with revulsion and fear.

  At first, she didn’t recognise the mutilated corpse on a blood-covered green plastic sheet lying on the ground a couple of metres from the wall. But when she saw the trousers and the shoes, recognition dawned and a wave of nausea overcame her, making her retch. But worse was to come. Lying on a table next to her father’s body was a woman. Her face was unrecognisable, and her chest had been opened wide. A man was cutting something inside the chest cavity with what looked like a pair of large scissors. The face of the man was illuminated by a strong light from above, accentuating his features. His image was etched into Teodora’s memory, never to be erased.

  ‘M-mother!’ stammered Teodora, as tears began to stream down her wan cheeks, her lips trembling.

  ‘What is it?’ asked Nadia, standing next to her. She was about to take a look through another crack in the wall when Teodora grabbed her from behind.

  ‘No!’ she cried, pulling her sister away. ‘You mustn’t! Let’s get out of here!’

  Teodora opened the stable door and looked outside. The yard looked deserted. Everyone appeared to be inside. ‘Come, quickly!’ she said, taking Nadia by the hand, and began to walk slowly along the wall of the stable, trying to stay in the shadows. They had almost reached the corner when they heard voices. Teodora froze and pressed herself against the wall. Nadia did the same. Two men came out of the adjoining stable. Each one was carrying what looked like a large, shiny box. They hurried over to one of the cars, opened the boot and carefully placed the boxes inside. Then they got into the car, reversed and drove away.

  ‘Over there,’ said Teodora, pointing to the dark forest behind some rusty farm machinery. ‘Now! Let’s run!’

  The girls ran across the deserted yard and reached the forest without being seen, and then disappeared into the night.

  1

  International Space Station: 14 March 2018

  Orbiting earth at an altitude of four hundred and five kilometres and at a speed of 27,600 km/h, the International Space Station had just passed over the Pacific and was approaching Australia. Launched into orbit in 1998 and inhabited without interruption since that date, it was the largest man-made object in low earth orbit visible with the naked eye from our planet. A marvel of cutting-edge technology, it was a symbol of human ingenuity and international cooperation. During the next twenty-four hours, it would complete 15.54 orbits and send valuable data back to the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. As a microgravity and space environment research laboratory, it had no equal. In a way, it was an outpost of humankind, preparing to leave earth and explore space.

  In a state of near-weightlessness, Professor Zachariah Stolzfus rested on his back in the cupola, a unique seven-window observatory, and stared down at the blue planet as it slowly drifted past the eighty-centimetre round window, the largest on the space station. This was his favourite place on the station; the place where he di
d his best thinking. The planet looked so peaceful, so serene, so timeless from above, yet this marvellous view could not calm the emotional turmoil boiling within him. Stolzfus had just received news that Steven Hawking, his hero and idol, had passed away in Cambridge.

  In a way, Stolzfus owed everything to Hawking. It was Hawking’s groundbreaking work back in the 1980s that had ignited the spark of curiosity about the universe and its origin in the young man working on the family farm with his father and brothers in Pennsylvania. Growing up in a strict Amish home without electricity or any kind of modern appliance or convenience – not even a motor car; transport was by horse and buggy – had been stifling, and it was by sheer accident that he had come across Hawking’s book A Brief History of Time in 1988. It was an event that changed his life.

  An accident during a barn raising – he slipped and fell from a roof – had left Stolzfus with a permanent injury to his spine. He spent several months in a Philadelphia hospital under the care of an eminent orthopaedic surgeon. The surgeon and his young patient struck up a friendship and it was during his lengthy, painful rehabilitation that Stolzfus’s extraordinary, inquisitive mind attracted attention. As the surgeon got to know his young patient better, he realised he was dealing with an exceptionally gifted human being with an insatiable hunger for knowledge.

  He lent the boy books on history, mathematics and philosophy, and they spent hours discussing Nietzsche, Aristotle and Hume. However, it soon became apparent that young Zachariah’s real interest was the cosmos and how it worked, but most of all, how it began. He devoured books about Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler and Newton, and it was then that Zachariah came across Hawking’s A Brief History of Time, which changed everything.

  A crooked little smile creased the corners of Stolzfus’s mouth as he remembered the first time he read about the Big Bang and black holes, general relativity and quantum mechanics, all subjects that would fascinate him later and dominate his life. After that, there was no going back. He realised then exactly what he wanted to do, and why. And he was still doing it as he tried to come to terms with the fact that Hawking, his inspiration, was no more.