The Wolf of Sarajevo (6 page)

SARAJEVO

OCTOBER 12

F
or a brief moment when she walked through the door, Eric was twenty-one years old again and in love. She had not changed. Not really. Her hair was still chestnut and still shoulder length. She was fit and strong, with broad shoulders and a trim waist. There were a few lines around her eyes and at the corner of her mouth. She had to be well into her forties by now, Eric knew, but she sure did not look it.

A complex cocktail of emotions produced an almost physical pain in his chest right above his heart. It was a mixture of regret, desire, and nostalgia. He had loved this woman fiercely and passionately as only a young man can. That was a long time ago.

There was more than one kind of ghost.

“Hello, Sarah.”

“Hello, Eric.”

“It's been a long time.”

“Yes.”

They were in Eric's office in the CAA, the controlled access area that housed the ambassador's suite, the political and economic sections, and the defense attaché's office, those parts of the embassy that handled classified information. That Sarah was there on her own meant that she was still with the government and that she still had her clearances. He should not have been all that surprised to see her. It was bound to happen at some point.

Eric got up from his desk and embraced Sarah Gold for the first time in twenty years. The skin on her cheek was cool where his lips brushed it. She took his hand and squeezed it firmly.

“I'm so glad to find you here, Eric.”

“It's nice to see you,” Eric replied, and he was surprised to realize it was true. Time had blunted the sharp edge of hurt as it always did. Eventually.

Unconsciously, almost instinctively, he looked at her left hand. There was no ring. That did not really mean anything, however. Many of the women in her organization did not wear their rings. The perception of availability could at times be exploited.

“I need to talk to you,” Sarah said, and there was a note of urgency in her voice.

“Sure. Sit down.”

“Not here. Can we go someplace?”

Eric glanced at the clock on the wall. It was almost seven.

“Dinner?”

“I'd like that.” She smiled and his heart skipped a beat or two before settling into a slightly faster rhythm.
Don't be an idiot,
he chided himself.
She left you, remember?

Unbidden, an image of her chestnut hair fanned out across a white pillowcase sprang from his memory. His old apartment, the one across the road from the Holiday Inn where he and the other journalists used to drink away the dark nights of the siege. But that was before Sarah. Once they met, it had been just the two of them huddled together in the dark as the shells fell on the city, drinking red wine rather than the Scotch that Sarajevo's close-knit community of war correspondents guzzled like expensive water.

He took a step back from her and tried to pull himself away from the past. The past was a trap. He had known that since he was ten years old. It was full of lies and promises unkept. And death.

“How about the old place?” he asked.

“Is it still there?”

“It is.”

“Still good?”

“Just as good.”

“That would be fabulous.”

Eric locked up his office, logging off the various computer systems and pulling the blinds shut against prying eyes. The Bosnians didn't have much of an intelligence service, but the Russians and Chinese were both active in Sarajevo. There were still a few people working in the suite so he did not need to set the alarms.

“I'm done for the night,” he told his staff, as he and Sarah headed for the door.

One of his officers looked up briefly from his monitor and nodded in acknowledgment. “Have fun, boss. Be good.”

Outside, it was already dark and growing cool. Eric offered Sarah his arm and she took it. They fit together neatly, just like they always had.

It was a fifteen-minute walk at a leisurely pace from the embassy to Kod Jasne, a small, unassuming restaurant on the outer edge of Baščaršija, the old part of Sarajevo on the north bank of the Miljacka River. It was the most vibrant part of the city, with good restaurants and numerous bars and cafés that featured hookah water pipes and the fruit-flavored tobacco called
shisha
. Fifty years of communism and four years of war had tried and failed to erase Sarajevo's Ottoman-era charm. And Baščaršija was ground zero for the city's vibe of bohemian cool.

Kod Jasne was one of the few restaurants that continued to operate more or less without a break through the siege. Jasna, the matronly proprietress, had had a relative in the UN who was able to smuggle in enough meat and flour and coffee and sugar to keep her in business. Eric and Sarah had been regulars, along with a small group of international journalists, diplomats, and spies. Other spies, Eric corrected himself, looking over at Sarah's profile. He had not known what she did for a living when they first started seeing each other. He suspected, of course, that she was not really a press officer. She wasn't the type. But they had been lovers for more than six weeks before she had told him that she was with the CIA.

On the walk to Kod Jasne, they caught each other up on the intervening twenty years. Eric told her about joining the Foreign Service, working on the soul-crushing visa line in the Mexican border town of Ciudad Juárez, almost quitting, sticking it out, and making it through the diplomatic equivalent of dues paying with his sanity mostly intact before embarking on a career that included tours in Ankara and Phnom Penh as well as two stints in Sarajevo, a year in Kabul, and two years at the U.S. Mission to the United Nations in New York.

“So you finally made it to Cambodia,” Sarah said. She knew about his family and his mother's suicide. “Did you find what you were looking for there?”

“No,” Eric admitted. “I'm not sure it exists.”

After six months of searching, Eric had found a cousin in Cambodia, seemingly the only relative on his mother's side who had not been lost to the killing fields. They had shared a meal and a few drinks and Eric had listened to stories of his mother when she was young and innocent. There was nothing in those stories that he could connect to the beautiful but deeply sad and damaged person who could not process what had happened to her and her family. Eric remembered finding her body in the garage and feeling not horror or anger but relief. He had been happy for his mother and relieved that as her son he had not been an anchor tying her to a life that she could no longer live. It was a complex emotion for a ten-year-old, one he was still wrestling with.

For her part, Sarah told him that after Bosnia she had moved over to the Middle East department with postings in Jordan and Israel as well as Egypt and Iraq. About two years ago, she had moved back to Washington to take charge of the Balkan Action Team at Langley. She did not mention anything about a husband or kids
. She would have, wouldn't she?
Eric asked himself. If she had them. But maybe she suspected that he still had feelings for her and wanted to use them to manipulate him. It was the kind of thing the CIA taught the new recruits at their famous Farm in Virginia. It was not really fair to think that way, however. Sarah would tell him soon enough why she had sought him out after so many years.

Sarah was easy to talk to. She had always been easy to talk to. Talking had never been their problem. Srebrenica had been their
problem, or at least Eric's inability to shake off the moral outrage and the depression that followed. Eight thousand murder victims, and all Eric could do was think about his own pain, his own loss. It was, he now understood, the narcissism of youth.

They passed a building on which an anonymous graffiti artist with more passion than imagination had spray-painted
SMRT SRBIMA
in angry red block letters.
Death to Serbs.

Sarah stopped to look at it and shook her head.

“Just like old times.”

“Yeah. Things are getting tense. You can see this kind of stuff all over town.”

Two women walked by them in the opposite direction dressed in loose dark-colored tunics with their heads covered in the
hijab
. Observant Muslims.

“That's new,” Sarah commented. “I remember there were more miniskirts and high heels than
hijab
s back in the day.”

“Yes,” Eric agreed. “Bosnia is changing. It's more conservative and the communities are still drifting farther away from one another. It's a matter of identity. Being Bosnian doesn't mean as much as being Bosniak for most people, and that means Islam is fundamental to your sense of self. So you get more Bosniaks fasting during Ramadan or adopting traditional dress codes. The Serbs, for their part, have embraced their Saints' Day celebrations and mark the new year on January 13. The Croats are actually going to mass on Sunday and taking communion. The major ethnic groups are all circling the wagons.”

“Who are they afraid of?”

“Each other.”

“What a mess.”

“You said it. Bosnia is deeply unloved. Everyone sees something in it that they hate. The Serbs reject the state—Bosnia and Herzegovina. Their country is Republika Srpska. The Bosniaks hate Dayton and the two-entity structure that split this country in half and makes it essentially ungovernable. And the Croats hate the Federation that makes them a minority in their own patch of Bosnia. They want a third entity that the other two groups will never agree to.”

“Is there a way out?”

“There's Sondergaard.”

Sarah scoffed. “Another do-gooding Nordic? Hasn't Bosnia seen enough of them?”

“No. This one seems different to me.”

“How so?”

“She's tough. She's not going to shy away from the hardball politics of this place.”

“Tough enough?”

“We'll see.”

“And you're working for her now from what I understand.”

“Word gets around.”

“That's what words do.”

The look she gave him was ambiguous, hard for Eric to interpret. But whatever she was hinting at, it seemed important.

Eric stopped abruptly, catching Sarah by surprise.

“Is this it?” she asked.

“It is.” The building in front of them had wooden walls covered in green paint that was sun faded and peeling. He pointed to a hand-lettered sign over the door that advertised Kod Jasne.

“Everything looks so different,” Sarah commented.

“The city has changed a lot since the old days. It's changed in the
three years I've been here. Even old buildings like this one are surrounded by so much new construction that it can be hard to get your bearings.”

“I'll say. I hardly recognize the place.”

She pointed to something on the ground.

“But I recognize that,” she said. “Are there many of them left?”

It was a Sarajevo rose. City residents had poured red enamel into the scars left in the sidewalks and streets by shells or mortar rounds that had taken at least one life. The pattern was distinctive and unforgettable, and the roses were a symbol of both Bosnian defiance and crippling sorrow.

“Fewer and fewer all the time. When they dig up the streets or sidewalks for various construction projects, they don't bother to replace the roses. There are only a handful left.”

“I remember that one,” Sarah said.

Eric nodded.

“Me too.”

It had been a rainy day in April when a mortar round had landed right on that spot, sending a shell fragment into the brain of a young woman who had been waiting in line for a table at the restaurant. Eric and Sarah had been inside, and were among the first to go to her assistance. There had been nothing they could do, however, except hold her hand as the life drained from her body. They had stopped going to Kod Jasne for a while after that. Ghosts.

Jasna was still there, and she greeted Eric and Sarah like they were old friends.

“So good to see the two of you together again,” she said, as she led them to the table in the back corner that had once been “theirs.”

Jasna's decorating style sprawled right on the border of kitsch,
occasionally veering over the line as it did with the collection of porcelain cats scattered throughout the room. The chairs were low, more like stools, and the tables were made of large copper trays balanced on wooden stands. The floors were covered with several layers of Turkish kilim. The kitchen was open and connected directly to the dining room. This was now fashionable in trendy restaurants in the West, but Kod Jasne had always been like that. It had once been Jasna's house.

There were no menus. Jasna fed her guests whatever she had made that day. Today it was
ćevapčići
, sausage-shaped kebabs that were one of the reliable staples in the Balkans. Jasna made hers from a mix of beef and lamb. They arrived hot off the grill with a round flatbread called
somun
and a mix of sides and salads, all chosen by Jasna. Nothing goes better with
ćevapčići
than beer, and the local stuff, Sarajevsko Pivo, was pretty good. Eric and Sarah each had a pint.

Balkan food was not sophisticated. It was largely based on village cooking traditions. There was not a lot of variety to it, but the ingredients were all fresh and locally sourced, and the recipes had stood the test of centuries. Sarah slathered a piece of bread with
kajmak
, a spread made from sheep's milk that was halfway between butter and cheese, and a roasted-pepper-and-eggplant dip called
ajvar
.

“God, I missed this stuff,” she said. “You can't get this kind of thing anywhere else in the world.”

Dessert was baklava made with walnuts rather than pistachios and drenched with honey. Demitasses of bitter Turkish coffee kept the sweetness of the baklava from being cloying. In Bosnian
culture, coffee meant that it was time to move from social talk to business. Washington culture was not really all that different in that respect.