The Heart of Hell (31 page)

BOBAN WAS IN
command of a group of about forty militiamen, joined by della Torre, Strumbić, and Plavi, who was now wearing a dress with a green geometric pattern over a checked shirt and blue jeans, the outfit completed with a blonde wig. “Camouflage for the cornfields,” he explained.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered to della Torre as they marched off through the ruins of Vukovar to the beat of thumping shells and rocket-propelled grenades. “I didn’t mean to. It was an accident . . .”

Della Torre couldn’t assuage the boy’s guilt.

The ragged troupe varied in age; some were teenagers not much older than Plavi, while others were approaching middle age. Everyone was dirty; their clothes, odd assortments of military and civilian, were torn. Most, though, had managed to keep their rifles. Della Torre patted the Beretta in his pocket.

One big young fellow with pale eyebrows and lashes reminded della Torre of the oxen that were rapidly disappearing from Istrian farms, baggy white creatures, placid and calm as if always ready for the yoke or the slaughterhouse.

They reached the battered end of the town, which was marked by a cluster of farm buildings. Farther across the fields stood a concrete grain silo. Unmilked cows bellowed in their swollen agony from relatively undamaged sheds.

“Have to get someone in to deal with them after dark,” Boban said. “The yard’s in the line of sight of a sniper. He’s been a pain in the ass for three days now, but we can’t get to him. You can’t see him. He’s over in those trees about a kilometre away.”

Della Torre was focused on what looked like a pair of fallen mannequins in the field just beyond the barns. Corpses. One was being nuzzled by a pig. A pair of chickens pecked warily at the other, scattering whenever the pig raised its head and grunted.

“What a death. What a way to finish life, being eaten by your livestock,” Strumbić said.

“Have you got a cigarette?” della Torre asked. “I’m all out.”

“Here, keep the pack.” Strumbić passed della Torre a mostly empty packet of Lords. “I’ve got another one, though I tell you, it’s been work to find them. Cost me twenty Deutschmarks.”

“Not too bad for a packet of cigarettes, all things considered,” della Torre said. They’d become a de facto currency and were in painfully short supply.

“A packet? Try each cigarette,” Strumbić said, though he wasn’t complaining, just stating a fact.

“Fuck. I’ve never tasted a twenty-Deutschmark cigarette before.”

“You’ll find that knowing how much they cost makes even shitty Lords taste like Havana cigars.”

Boban turned to the men. “This is the most dangerous area. We go in two groups, in pairs, up the road to that cornfield over there. Once we’re in, it’s reasonably safe. Corn won’t stop a bullet, but the snipers can’t see you. It’ll be different when they start using heavy machine guns. They’ll figure it out one day, but for now we’re all right.”

Della Torre nodded. He and Plavi were in the second group. They stooped, running low and hard. Blood pumped in della Torre’s ears, and his heaving breath deafened him to any other sounds. The high corn was a blessed sanctuary, and he slowed down, winded.

A soldier posted just inside the cornfield wouldn’t let him stop. “Never know when they’re going to start dropping shells. If the sniper had half a brain he’d have called in the artillery, but all he does is sit there and take potshots.”

They met up with the others at the end of a wide path, deep in the crop.

“Only just sighted us when I was coming through,” Boban said between gasped breaths. He’d been the last of the squad. “I swear I heard the bullet whistle past my ear.”

They went deeper into the cornfield, single file along the rows. They waited in a crouch at the edge of a narrow wood and then moved through it quickly and silently.

“Serbs have been using the wood as a screen,” Boban said.

After walking a while, they forded a long, zigzagging drainage ditch. Della Torre slipped on muddy grass and half-fell. His right leg was sodden to the crotch.

They heard bullets whistle through the corn nearby, like deadly insects, and overhead the screech of shells destined for the town and the thudding of the guns.

It was in the depths of another field that Plavi fell. When della Torre reached down to help him up, he saw the clot of blood, as thick and bright as strawberry jam, on the boy’s face.

“Boban,” he called, his voice high with fear. “We’ve got a casualty.”

Boban rushed back while the whole troop stopped.

“Spread out. Stay down and low, and shut up,” Boban ordered.

He and della Torre checked Plavi’s vital signs. The boy was still breathing, but the side of his head was a bloody mess. Boban tore open his kit bag and pulled out a big block of gauze and a bandage, working fast to put on the compress.

“Shit,” he said. He raised his head and looked around. “We have to keep going. He’ll get better care in Vinkovci than in Vukovar. If he makes it that far.”

Boban called in a terse report on his radio. They improvised a stretcher with rifles and a pair of jackets. The boy was slight and easy for four men to carry, even in the makeshift litter.

“Poor kid,” della Torre kept saying. And then, to Strumbić: “He was so traumatized by shooting Dragomanov’s nephew.”

“Probably,” Strumbić said.

“He was clearly still in shock this morning,” della Torre said. “It was a horrific accident for a fourteen-year-old.”

“He might have been in shock, but it was no accident. The safety was on and there was no bullet in the chamber when I gave him the gun. I did it on purpose so he wouldn’t accidentally shoot us when we came back into the room. He was understandably jumpy.”

Della Torre fell back half a stride, taking in the revelation. “So he did it on purpose?”

“Unless he accidentally switched off the safety, accidentally chambered the bullet, accidentally aimed from around three feet away, and then accidentally pulled the trigger. There was a scorch mark at the entry wound. At first I thought it might have been from the kerosene lamp burn, but it didn’t quite fit. And Dragomanov’s nephew certainly didn’t threaten him. He was out cold from a combination of shock and codeine.”

“But why?”

“Why? Have you had a good look at this fucking place? It’s a mystery why people don’t rip chunks of flesh off each other with their teeth,” Strumbić said. “How do you keep even a margin of civilization in these circumstances? The kid probably wondered what it was like to kill a man, and here was a golden opportunity.”

“Jesus.”

“Jesus is dead, Gringo. Don’t you remember your Communist catechism?”

The jog through the cornfield was hard work. The ground was rough, tripping them up. Every five minutes the stretcher bearers rotated, though Boban took more than his share of the duty.

As they marched, two other men were hit. One was wounded slightly, while the other, the big, blond, bovine one whom della Torre had noticed earlier, was killed instantly. They carried his body too.

The sun rose and began to dip again, and della Torre started to wonder how much longer his shoulders would be able to bear his regular stints carrying the wounded and the dead.

Boban’s men were uncomplaining. And of them all, Boban worked the hardest.

And then, when della Torre had grown convinced that the journey had no end, they reached a road guarded by a Croat defence force platoon. A couple of hundred metres beyond was a hamlet with a local command post. Medics loaded Plavi and the other injured man into an ambulance that was waiting for them. The dead man was zipped into a heavy black body bag, with his light haversack placed at his feet. A neat row of about twenty bodies was lined up on the verge, waiting for transport. The militia who had escaped earlier in the day had been slaughtered when a stray Yugoslav shell hit them less than a kilometre from the hamlet. A few were civilians.

Behind them, in Vukovar, the noise of the bombardment continued, but here they were safe among dozens of defence force soldiers and auxiliaries. Della Torre was just taking a long swallow of slivovitz when he heard a familiar voice.

“Nice to have you back in one piece, Gringo.”

Anzulović smiled softly, smoking one of his usual Lords. But rather than offer one to della Torre, instead he produced an unopened packet of della Torre’s own brand: Lucky Strikes. “I figured you would have had a hard time finding these in the past few days. We heard that you got to Vukovar and that Boban was getting you out.”

“I shouldn’t be surprised. Thanks,” della Torre said as he took the packet.

Anzulović stared at the smoke rising over Vukovar, only fifteen kilometres away. “You wonder how anyone can survive that . . .” He turned back to della Torre. “We lost you after Dubrovnik. We didn’t hear you’d been through Herzeg Novi until after you left.” Anzulović took a drag of his cigarette. “I was told that the Montenegrin died yesterday.”

Della Torre winced.

“The Americans finally got news that he was in hospital. They had people there . . . From what I understand, he was already on the way out. His organs had packed up. Septic shock.”

Della Torre moved away from the collection of houses towards the cornfield, where there were fewer people about. He turned abruptly to Anzulović. “How long have you been helping the Americans?”

“I don’t know myself. I get orders, and I mostly do as I’m told.”

“So said all the concentration camp guards.”

“Gringo, I like you. I always have. You won’t thank me, but I figured if I was the guy doing the Americans’ bidding, you’d at least have someone looking out for you.” Anzulović turned around to face the hamlet. Della Torre followed his line of sight. Grimston and two other men stood apart from the clusters of Croatian militiamen. Casual, aloof. Observers. They stared at him without acknowledging him, though della Torre wondered whether there was a look of smug satisfaction on Grimston’s face. “So, rather than let them shoot you or kidnap you where they could stick you in a military jail and leave you to rot forever, I pointed out that with your cooperation they’d be able to get Strumbić and the Montenegrin. And then maybe we’d discuss some terms to get you off the hook.”

“I appreciate it.”

“Speaking of Julius, where is he?”

Della Torre looked around. It struck him that he hadn’t seen Strumbić since they’d emerged from the cornfield. He could see Anzulović growing uneasy at his puzzlement.

“Boban said Strumbić was coming out too,” Anzulović said.

“He was with us,” della Torre said, still trying to spot the man.

Somehow Grimston seemed to have sensed what was going on, because his look of self-satisfaction evaporated. He spoke to his men and they moved with alacrity. Then he picked up his radio.

“He can’t run anywhere,” Anzulović said. “He’ll be picked up soon enough. The military police have checkpoints just beyond here. They know to stop him.”

“And when they find him, what happens to us?” della Torre asked.

“We all go back to Zagreb, and both of you will have a chat with our friends. I’m afraid the minister has already signed an agreement for Strumbić’s extradition. In your case, we’re refusing.”

“So, one morning on my way to work, a car hits me and runs, and that’s the end of this particular problem for the Americans,” della Torre said.

“We’ll give you all the protection possible. You can go to your father’s house, and we’ll post a surveillance team to make sure you’re left alone.”

“Like they left Libero alone.”

“He was an old man,” Anzulović said. “I’m sorry, Gringo. I’ll do what I can. But we’ll all go the way of Vukovar if the Americans don’t help. And we need to show them we’re on their side.”

Della Torre nodded. A wave of self-pity rolled over him.

They turned and began to make their way back towards Grimston. To his right, della Torre saw Boban and two of his men heading back towards the cornfield, their shoulders bent under the weight of emergency supplies for the hospital. Boban had hardly had a break and was now making the treacherous journey again. Della Torre admired the man for his stoicism, for his single-minded focus on doing what he knew was right.

“I’ll join up with you in a second,” della Torre said to Anzulović. “I’m just going to say goodbye to Captain Boban. It’s the least I can do. Especially since Irena is in his hands.”

Anzulović made a little grunt of approval.

As della Torre hurried towards Boban, he passed the row of body bags, black, zipped up, neatly assembled along the flattened grass by the side of the pitted road. Two militiamen stood sentry. Della Torre nodded at them in sympathy and they smiled back at him, looking happier than they ought to under the circumstances. For a moment the incongruity of their expressions troubled him, and then he decided they’d just shared a joke. Gallows humour.

When he got to the end of the row of black-shrouded corpses, he saw a large white handbag. The sort a grandmother might own.

He stopped and opened it. It was empty. And then he understood what the two soldiers were smiling about. They’d hit the jackpot. And Strumbić had escaped. Strumbić would always be safe. He had the Deutschmarks and he had the diamonds. He had Dragomanov’s papers, the file on Pilgrim that incriminated the Americans in Olof Palme’s assassination, and he would know how to use them. There were no limits to his resourcefulness and ingenuity.