Philip Kerr - The Lady from Zagreb

The monk showed us into a plain room with a few comfortable but threadbare armchairs, bowed again, and asked us to wait while he went to fetch the abbot. He did not return. Geiger sat down and lit a cigarette. I stared out the grimy window at Sergeant Oehl, who appeared to have gone to sleep in the backseat of the Mercedes. After a while I sat down beside Geiger and lit one as well. If in doubt, smoke; that’s the soldier’s way.

Finally the abbot came to us. He was a largish man in his sixties — possibly older — with long gray hair, frosted eyebrows that were as big as fur stoles, a bloodhound’s face, and a boxing glove of a black beard. Keen blue eyes regarded us with justifiable suspicion. The SS may have been supporters of the Croatian fascist state — which itself supported the Roman Catholic Church — and yet no one who’d given his life to serving Christ could seriously have believed that serving Adolf Hitler was a better alternative.

He raised his hand in benediction, crossed the air above our heads, and said, “God bless all here.”

I stood up politely. Geiger stayed smoking in his armchair.

“Thank you for seeing us, Father Abbot. My name is Captain Gunther. And this is Captain Geiger.”

“What can our humble order do for you gentlemen?” he asked in impeccable German. His voice was measured and quiet and lacking all human emotion, as if he were speaking patiently to children.

“I’m looking for a priest who I believe is one of your order,” I said. “A monk called Father Ladislaus. Also known as Antun Djurkovic. I have an important letter for him that I have been ordered by my superiors in Berlin to deliver into his hands, personally. We have today driven all the way from Zagreb just to be here now.”

“Zagreb?” He pronounced the name of the city as if it had been Paris or London. “It’s many years since I was in Zagreb.”

“It’s much the same as ever,” said Geiger.

“Really? I heard there was a mosque now in Zagreb. With minarets. And a muezzin who calls the faithful to prayer.”

“True,” said Geiger.

The Father Abbot shook his head.

“Could I trouble you for a cigarette?” he asked Geiger.

“Certainly,” said Geiger.

The abbot puffed a cigarette into life happily and sat down.

“Those pistols you are carrying, gentlemen,” he said, clearly enjoying his cigarette very much. “I assume they are loaded.”

“There wouldn’t be much point in carrying them if they weren’t,” said Geiger.

The Father Abbot was silent for a minute or two and then said, “Cigarettes and bullets. Both of them so small and yet so efficient. If only we spent more time using one more than the other, life would be so much less complicated, don’t you think?”

“It might be less dangerous,” said Geiger.

“But. To answer your question. It’s true that for a while there was a man here called Father Ladislaus. And I believe his given name is Djurkovic. Happily he is no longer a member of our order and he has not lived in this monastery for several years. Even by the standards of this unhappy country, his views were extreme, to say the least. Most of us in this order practice our Catholic faith with prayer books and a cross. I’m afraid that Djurkovic believed it was necessary to practice it with bullets and bayonets, which is why I asked him to leave this monastery and also why any mail that was received for him here I ordered destroyed. Consequently he is dead, to us. Certainly his life as a priest is over.

“To the best of my knowledge he joined the Ustaše after he left us and his present whereabouts are unknown to me, as is his current occupation. I suggest that your best course would be to inquire after him at their headquarters in Banja Luka. To find the Ustaše building in the center of town you need only look for the Serbian Orthodox Cathedral of the Holy Trinity, which is currently being demolished by a punishment battalion of Jews, Serbs, and Roma using their bare hands.”

“Demolished?”

“You did not mishear me, Captain. Race and religion is a vexed issue in this part of the world, to put it mildly. Following some damage that was inflicted on the cathedral by a German fighter aircraft, the Ustaše government decided to finish the job and ordered it to be destroyed, completely. And if that was not bad enough, the bishop of Banja Luka, Platon Jovanovic, was taken away and murdered in cold blood. Yes, that is what I said. In this country, a Christian priest was martyred for the way he chose to worship God.”

“On the journey here from Zagreb I saw some Ustaše forces shelling a Serbian Orthodox church,” I said. “Why?”

The Father Abbot spread his hands as if this question was beyond his understanding.

“At Petricevac we try to keep ourselves to ourselves and take no interest in politics. But a certain fanatical element in the former Yugoslavia regards the Serbian Orthodox Church and its pro-Russian adherents with unremitting hostility. Doubtless they are partly motivated by the fact that this monastery was itself destroyed by Ottoman Serbs during the middle of the last century. I am myself Croatian but I am not one of those who believe in an eye for eye. As Saint Francis himself reminds us, there are many ways to the Lord, and we pray for all those who are so cruelly oppressed and for their deliverance from bondage. If you have men who will exclude any of God’s creatures from the shelter of compassion and pity, you will also have men who will deal likewise with their fellow men.”

“Amen to that,” I said.

“I’m glad you say so, Captain Gunther. You and your two friends will stay to supper, of course.”

“We’d be delighted,” I said.

“And if you have driven all the way from Zagreb it may be that you are also seeking a place to sleep. You are welcome to stay the night in our humble quarters. This is the true monk’s duty. For the Bible reminds us to ‘be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.’ Hebrews chapter thirteen, verse two.”

“I promise you, we’re a very long way from being angels,” I told him.

“Only God knows the truth of a man, my son,” said the Father Abbot.

We stayed for supper at Petricevac but we did not spend the night there. In spite of the Father Abbot’s civilized words, there was something about the place — and him — I didn’t like. The man was as forbidding as the north face of the Eiger. He had the world-weary air of a Grand Inquisitor and, in spite of what he had said, I would not have been surprised to have found him in charge of a rack or a set of thumbscrews. Then again, I just don’t like priests very much. Most of them are fanatics for a different, less worldly deity than Adolf Hitler but they are fanatics nonetheless.

As soon as we had finished eating we climbed back into the Mercedes and set off for Banja Luka and, as the Father Abbot had promised, we quickly found the Ustaše headquarters building we were looking for. It was a large, cream-colored, square building with Ottoman features — all Corinthian pillars and arched windows — that resembled a theater or an opera house. An Ustaše flag hung limply above a main door that was busy with men wearing black uniforms and even blacker mustaches. On the other side of the main road older men wearing flat caps and carpet slippers were playing chess in a little park that was what you might have found on a summer’s evening in almost any provincial European town. But it’s not every provincial town that has a punishment battalion of its own citizens tasked with the destruction of a cathedral. At this particular hell on earth an iron cloud of barbed-wire fence had been erected around what remained of the cathedral’s walls to ensure that the poor people detailed to their slave labor did not escape. Work had not yet ceased for the day, however, and from behind piles of loose rubble the emaciated faces of walking caryatids, drooping under their yellow brick burdens, stared hopelessly back at me as I stepped out of the car. Horrified fascination held me rooted to the spot, and I don’t know why but I snatched off my cap as if part of me recognized something about this heap of stones that was still a church. Or perhaps it was the sight of so much human suffering that made me do it — respect for people who were obviously not long for this world. But I did not stay very long to look at what was being done to one church in the name of another in this miserable, godforsaken place; an Ustaše guard advancing on me with a rifle in his hands persuaded me to turn away and go about my business. But man’s inhumanity to man had long been a matter of small surprise to me and I might as easily have turned away because I had become callous. I have to confess all I cared about now was finding Father Ladislaus, giving him his daughter’s letter, and then getting away from the Independent State of Croatia as quickly as possible.