Dan Fesperman - Lie in the Dark

“Nothing, I’m afraid. As I said, he was quite careful about those things. And if someone as careful as he can be killed so easily, then I would think you might want to watch yourself, Mr. Petric.”

“The thought has occurred to me. And if you should get any more visitors interested in this subject, Mr. Glavas, please let me know.”

“And how am I to do that? How, for that matter, am I to get this list to you once I’m done. The phones here work about once a month. And something tells me you don’t want me sending messages out through the police or the U.N.”

“I’ll come pick it up. Same time in two days. Though don’t be alarmed if I’m late, even if by a day or two.”

“Either way. I won’t be going anywhere.”

Vlado stood, stepping toward the door.

“In the meantime, I suppose I should pay a visit to your friend, Mr. Murovic. Do you know where to find him?”

“In his new office at the National Bank of Bosnia, down next to the main vault, like Tutankhamen in his tomb. Our Boy King of art, and every bit as naive and easily led. But if you’re truly interested in looking for those ‘empty spaces’ right away, Mr. Petric, I think I may have a starting place for you.”

Vlado paused with his hand on the doorknob.

“Yes,” he said quietly. “I’d appreciate that.”

“Try starting with Murovic’s head,” Glavas said. “It’s the emptiest space in all of Sarajevo.”

And with that he tumbled into another great outburst of wheezing laughter, which continued as he waved Vlado out the door.

As Vlado started down the steps, the wheezes hardened into a sharp cough, and it was still crashing onward as Vlado emerged from the exit downstairs, where the sound was finally drowned out by the urgent shouts of children and the rattle of gunfire.

The drive back from Dobrinja was blessedly uneventful, and by the time Vlado dropped off the car the sun was shining, pouring onto the sugary hillsides where snow fell earliest and deepest. From down in the city the distant clusters of rooftops and balsams resembled miniature Christmas villages, posed for a photograph. One needed a pair of binoculars to see where the scene needed retouching-the holes in the roofs, the burn marks and broken windows. And it would have taken a particularly powerful model, as well as some patience, to pick out the gun barrels here and there, poking from camouflaged burrows.

The Bank of Bosnia, formerly YugoBanka, had been forced into wartime hibernation by a lack of cash and the government’s need for its deep sturdy vaults. They’d been built into the hillside forty years earlier, and it would take a nuclear blast to pry them loose, much less break them apart. So, that’s where the government stored its most valuable treasures, everything from the rarest museum pieces to records for property and finance. And it was here, according to Milan Glavas, that Vlado would find Enver Murovic, the young new director of the National Museum.

Vlado walked through the entrance into an armed camp. Five men slung heavily with machine guns immediately rose to greet him, like a legion of bored shop clerks eager to sell him a suit. The place smelled of a year’s worth of sweat and cigarettes, and a thick layer of dust coated the empty counters and teller cages.

“Enver Murovic,” Vlado asked uncertainly, and when no one answered he added, “I’m Inspector Petric … representing the Interior Ministry police.”

Still no one answered, but one of the men disappeared out a rear door, while three of the others slowly settled back to their roosts. The fifth strode past Vlado without a further look out the front door, taking up a post outside, where he probably should have been all along.

Murovic’s voice preceded him into the room, a fluttery burst of aggrieved authority, uttered with absolute disdain. Vlado picked it up in midsentence.

“… simply can’t have these sorts of interruptions in the future without either better identification or a confirmed appointment.”

He emerged from around the corner into the gloom, a tall man, reed thin, dressed all in black except for his glasses, thick frames in bright magenta. His hair was cut neatly, close to the scalp. That, plus his brisk, officious manner, made him strike Vlado as a refined version of Garovic. His style and image were those of an aesthete, yet somehow he still betrayed the careful, grasping soul of a career bureaucrat on the make. Vlado could very easily imagine this fellow shoving old baggage like Glavas out the door. Or down a long flight of stairs.

Abruptly turning Vlado’s way, Murovic gave him a slow once-over, his gaze sweeping from top to bottom, then back to the face, a look of appraisal that said, No, this won’t do, but we’ll be as courteous as protocol requires.”

“Yes. I’m Mr. Murovic,” he said with a note of impatience.

“Inspector Petric,” Vlado said. “I’m conducting an investigation on behalf of the Interior Ministry.”

“Identification?”

Vlado showed him his battered police warrant card, explaining, “I’ve been temporarily detailed to the Ministry’s special police unit. You can telephone Acting Chief Kasic if you’ve any doubts.”

“No doubts,” he said airily, with the tone of one who’d only been testing, playing a game.

“This way, then. To my office,” he said. He strolled away, glancing over his shoulder to add, “Before we get down to business perhaps you’d like a short tour. It’s quite an impressive little domain, really, and not one that just anybody is privy to. You might as well take advantage of the access while you’re here.”

The invitation, plus the appearance of Murovic’s office-neat, dusted, wastebasket empty, every thin pile of papers stacked just so-made Vlado smile at the initial show of hurry and impatience. This seemed to be a man with little to do but sit and fidget, waiting to impress whatever visitors might drop by, as long as they weren’t “just anybody”

They descended a dank stairway, Murovic flicking on lights, then pushing a few buttons on a small key pad to disarm the alarm system. He unlocked the door onto a cellar of caged rooms leading to the main vault.

He unlocked the first caged entrance and waltzed into a chamber crammed with filing cabinets and stacks of huge cloth-bound books. “Old deeds and property records going back past Tito’s day,” Murovic explained. “Someday they’ll sort it all out, but it will be a hell of a mess. I hadn’t even known these kinds of things survived the last war, much less the last half century.”

He unlocked a second caged door into a larger chamber. Here, leaning against each other, were frames of all sizes, arranged with a cloth between each.

Murovic sighed.

“These are some of the most valuable items from the museum,” he said. “Not with the temperature and humidity controls we’d like, of course, and I’d prefer they weren’t leaning up against each other like this. But space is limited as you can see. I’m afraid it’s the best we can do for now.”

The next room was the main vault, its giant lock shining like the captain’s wheel of a ship. Murovic rapped lightly on the door, producing only a muted click against the thick metal.

“And in here,” he said, “are our most valuable pieces of all. Small treasures that are centuries old. Royal jewelry, the rarest of paintings, an illuminated Jewish Haggadah from the fifteenth century. That alone is worth a few million, and everybody and his brother in the international art community would love to get his hands on it, to protect it until the end of the war, they say But not a chance. If we let it go now that’s the last we’ll see of it.

“No one but me and three others are allowed down here most of the time, so consider this your lucky day. You see, there’s also a small roll-away bed. And that is where our president sleeps when things get especially bad.”