The Company We Keep (21 page)

I go back, change quickly, and head out again in the old Toyota. Normally, at this time of day I drive out of town on the Mostar road, into the Croat areas. Today, though, I head directly into Sarajevo down the main highway. I turn right on to Ante Babica, take the street that runs parallel to the main road I’ve just come off of, and then turn left back to the main highway. I drive in larger and larger squares until I’m in the center of Sarajevo.

When I turn around and head back to Butmir, I put on the gas, weaving through traffic, passing on the right. When I get to the straightaway on the main highway, I’m doing over sixty. A driver I cut off shakes his fist at me out the window. I pull away from a pack of cars and check my rearview window. No one’s behind me.

Sarajevo:
DAYNA

I
f I hadn’t been standing in the window, I wouldn’t have seen the guy standing by the river, taking pictures of our apartment building. Instinctively I take a step back and to the side, into the dimness of the apartment.

It can’t be a coincidence, I think. There’s no reason anyone would take a picture of our apartment. I peek around the curtain for a second look. He’s still there, his camera pointed directly up at our building. I turn around to look at the parabolic mic. It’s back away from the window, and behind a cloth hanging from the ceiling. Even if he were level with our window, he couldn’t see it.

I try to imagine what the man sees through his lens other than the façade of a shabby apartment building. And why. He’s the only person along the river. There are no tourists, and the locals don’t go around taking pictures of their own city. Even a tourist wouldn’t take a picture of our building. There’s nothing distinctive about it.

I watch for the few seconds it takes him to click off another half dozen photos or so. Maybe the man we rented the apartment from turned us into the police. Okay, he didn’t ask a single question about us—it was enough for him that we were Americans, the people who could relieve his city from the Serbs’ siege. But maybe he had second thoughts and got scared and went to the authorities.
Still, wouldn’t the police have just knocked on the door to see what was going on inside?

I find Charlie in the kitchen. “We have to go,” I whisper. He’s washing dishes and doesn’t hear me. I move to his side. “We have to go,” I whisper again, this time right in his ear. “What?” he says. I make a circular motion at the ceiling and then point at my ear—a spy’s hand signal that the place might be bugged. (I have to assume that if, in fact, someone’s watching us, the chances are good that the inside of the apartment’s been compromised too, bugged.)

Charlie looks at me as if I’ve lost my mind. I point to the door. Outside on the landing, I whisper that someone’s taking pictures of our building from across the river. “I’m sure of it.” Convinced, he goes back in to quickly put away the parabolic mic in its concealment device. We both know that if the Bosnians catch us with it, we’ll be arrested.

On the street Charlie and I lock arms, a couple out for a walk. Neither of us turns around to look at where I last saw the photographer. At the corner intersection we cross the river on the Cobanija bridge. On the middle of the span, I turn to him so we’ll look like we’re deep in conversation.

Charlie is facing me so I can look over his shoulder, in the direction of our apartment. He’s gone. I tell Charlie I don’t see him, and Charlie turns to look for himself. There’s no one on the opposite bank at all.

We walk back across the bridge and circle behind our building so we don’t come back in the way we left. As we round the corner to the sidewalk on the riverbank, I stop dead. He’s standing right in front of our building, taking photos in the direction of the Hizballah safe house. It’s as if he’s marking what we would see from our apartment. Charlie sees him too, and I can feel him stiffen with panic. His expression tells me he knows we’re into something we don’t understand. It’s all so blatant I wonder if
someone is warning us that they know what we’re up to. But that makes no sense, either.

The guy calmly puts his camera in his shoulder bag and starts back toward old town. Charlie points two fingers at his eyes to let me know we need to follow this guy. We wait until he’s a block away and then follow from a distance along the river, linking arms again and sauntering along behind. As I walk I imprint in my mind the man’s striped shirt, rust-colored hair, and thick-soled shoes, and his shape.

He gives no sign of noticing us, and we follow him all the way to the cobbled streets of the old city. His pace is deliberate, and he holds on tightly to the strap of his camera bag. Then suddenly he stops dead in his tracks, turns around, and heads directly toward us. “Oh shit,” I hear Charlie say under his breath. But both of us stick to script and keep walking, arm in arm, directly past the guy without making eye contact. Charlie steers me into the closest building—a post office. Inside, he walks to the window, trying to see what direction the man’s taken. That doesn’t work, so he sends me out alone to see if I can catch up while he makes sure the apartment is safe.

I leave the post office and start back toward where we crossed paths with our photographer. I’m almost running at first, but then I slow down. It’s the first thing they taught us: Never, ever run. And here I am panicking as though I’ve never worked a street. In this case, though, it doesn’t seem to matter. We’ve lost him. When I get back to the apartment, all I can do is look at Charlie and shrug my shoulders—I don’t have a clue what happened to the guy.

Oddly, when headquarters hears the story, they aren’t particularly concerned. It makes us wonder if it was someone from headquarters or another agency taking the photos—and no one is going to cop to it.

At first Bob makes a joke out of it, but then quickly turns
serious, telling us it’s best that we go ahead and rotate people in and out, as well as remove the parabolic mic as a precaution. Brad and Lara will move into the apartment, replacing Charlie and me. They will limit themselves to taking pictures of people coming out of the Hizballah safe house with a telephoto lens. They’ll also try to determine whether the apartment is still being watched. If it is, the parabolic mic isn’t coming back. Everyone agrees it’s a risk leaving Brad and Lara here, but it’s one that headquarters and Bob are willing to take until we know more.

To put my time to good use, Bob wants me to go to Frankfurt to pick up a new armored SUV that’s been waiting there for us. It comes with British military plates, which, with all the European troops arriving in Sarajevo, will give us an added measure of anonymity. Bob will leave the city briefly too, since he needs to return his rental car in Geneva. I’ll catch a ride with him as far as Geneva, and from there a train to Frankfurt.

In training they used to drill into our heads the wisdom of backing off the moment you think you’re about to be “burned”—caught red-handed.
Listen to your paranoia, live to fight another day
. But this guy taking pictures of the apartment isn’t a figment of my imagination. Someone knows we’re here and is playing with us. It spooks me that I don’t know who.

Sarajevo to Frankfurt:
DAYNA

A
few miles after we cross the border into Croatia, Bob pulls over to the side of the road and noses the car into a clump of trees where it’s not so conspicuous. He asks me if I mind if he makes a call.

I watch as he pulls out our Inmarsat satellite phone, opens the hood, and attaches the phone to the car battery. He finds a number in a black notebook and dials.

“
Kif halik?
” I hear him say, Arabic for “How are you?” He talks for the next five minutes in rapid Arabic, none of which I understand.

A step van slows down as it passes to take a look at us, but then speeds up. I turn to see if any cars are coming, but none is.

When Bob finishes, he unhooks the Inmarsat, puts it back it in the rear seat, and gets back in the car.

“Mind if I stop in Nice to see a friend?”

“OK with me,” I answer.

“It’s for dinner. But I’m not sure you would want to come.”

I don’t ask who the friend is. I just assume that it has something to do with work. Probably he’s an informant. And truthfully I don’t mind. He can stop anywhere he likes. I’m just happy to have a break from Sarajevo.

We’re just north of Split, driving along the Adriatic. It’s becoming warm when we both notice how the water in the inlets is
crystal clear, right to the white, sandy bottom. Without warning, Bob abruptly crosses the lane and drives down a path to the water. “How about a quick swim?” he asks.

He rummages in the back of the car, looking for a bathing suit. This is really nuts, I think, but the water is inviting. Bob goes behind some trees to change. I slip into a bathing suit in the car.

I float on my back while Bob swims out from shore. There’s no one in sight, and Sarajevo is instantly airbrushed from my mind. I want to stay here all day, but then Bob is standing on the shore, holding a towel for me. “Let’s see if we can make Nice by tomorrow afternoon.”

I put my clothes back on over my bathing suit. We stop for a quick beer and a sandwich at the next village, and then get back on the road.

Bob tells stories, and when he’s tired of talking, we listen to music on the radio.

I’m barely awake by the time we start up the Julian Alps, the mountains that separate Slovenia from northern Italy. At the Italian border, Bob fumbles with two passports before he picks one to show to the guard. Walking around with documents in two different names is completely transgressive, but right now I’m too tired to care.

By the time we get to Trieste, I’m pinching myself to stay awake. Bob is lost, but I just stare straight ahead, praying there’s a hotel open this late. Miraculously, he finds one. He checks us in and comes down to the car to hand me my key.

We’re off early the next morning and gobbling up the miles until, halfway across Italy, the car starts coughing. Bob stops at a service station. The mechanic looks at the engine, but only scratches his head. By the time we finally drive up to Avis rental at Nice Airport, it’s belching smoke. I’m afraid it’s going to explode and jump out, backing away from it, as Bob runs inside to find the manager. I can’t imagine what Avis is going to say.

A week or so ago, when we thought that our cars were starting to get noticed, Bob called Avis from the satellite phone at the Butmir house to see if he could return it in Zagreb, Croatia, and get something different. The Avis lady was under the impression he was still in Switzerland, where he rented the car, and reminded Bob in no uncertain terms that he could not take the car out of Europe. I’m wondering how much trouble he will get into if they figure out he’s had the car in a war zone.

He’s back in five minutes, dangling a set of keys. “They gave us a bigger car, gratis.”

“What did you tell them?”

“I told them their damn rent-a-wreck ruined our vacation. They’re embarrassed.”

He loads up the new Renault luxury sedan. I don’t know if he thinks I disapprove or what, but he says, “Well, I did have the car for six weeks at full rate.”

A mile before we come to the village of St-Paul-de-Vence, Bob turns off on a narrow road and then up a long driveway lined with pines. We round two tennis courts and pull up in front of the Mas d’Artigny, a dazzling hotel with lots of glass, polished white marble floors, antique Provençal furniture, and a swimming pool that runs into the hotel itself. All of the rooms have unblocked views of the Mediterranean.

A haute-bourgeois couple on a divan shoot us a disapproving look as we stand at the front desk. I’m instantly conscious of my jeans, dirty boots, and T-shirt. The bellman ambushes me, grabbing my duffel bag. Normally I’d hold on to it, but this isn’t a place where you schlep your own anything.