Dan Fesperman - Lie in the Dark

Neven called for an aide, then ordered two coffees as if in a cafe, showing off his easy authority as well as the possibilities at his beck and call.

“It is real coffee,” he said. “Not instant.”

When Vlado said nothing, Neven resumed. “So, you are here to discuss art and Mr. Vitas.”

Vlado decided to lay most of his cards on the table right away. “More to the point, I’d like to ask you about the transfer files, and how Zarko may have used them. Vitas apparently knew something about the operation, and it seems to have gotten him killed. He may have been participating; he may only have been investigating. I think you can help me decide which.”

“There is very little I can tell you about any of that except to say that I know we had the file cards and that for some reason they were considered very important. But they were either confiscated or destroyed in the raid, so what would they matter now anyway?”

Well, there was something, at least. The files had survived the museum “fire,” as Vlado suspected, and might still be around. Presumably either the Interior Ministry or the army had them. He wondered again about Vitas’s remark, “in safe hands in unsafe surroundings.”

“Confiscated by who?” Vlado asked.

“You will have to ask the Interior Ministry. You work for them, don’t you? I only know we left them behind when we walked out to surrender. Although by then the building had caught fire, so you never know.”

“And then, after spending a few weeks in jail you were pardoned. Into the army, in recognition of your, how did they put it? …”

“My invaluable service to my country,” Neven said, smiling for the first time, teeth crooked, a carnivorous smile stained deeply with nicotine. His breath was of onions and fried meat, vapors heavy with grease. Vlado pictured slabs of lamb frying over a cookstove down in the hole of some smoky bunker. His stomach growled as Neven leaned over to stub out a cigarette on the table.

“And that is how I would like to keep my relationship with my country right now,” Neven continued. “Steady and warm. And I’m not sure I can do that by talking to you about any of this. Maybe all I will do is make them decide that I should have stayed in prison after all.”

“Or maybe they’ll decide someone else should be in prison instead.”

“Who?”

“Whoever it is that makes it necessary for you to stay up here surrounded by men with Kalashnikovs, living like this. When you’re more comfortable near the Chetnik army than near your own government I’d say you have some enemies you need to take care of, but can’t. Maybe some of them are involved with all of this, with this art business. It must have been making more money than anything else Zarko was associated with.”

Neven, who had been affecting something of a bored attitude up to now, looked straight into Vlado’s face, his eyes burning with an intense, scornful arrogance. “Let me tell you how it works up here, Mr. Detective, and don’t tell me your name again because I don’t want to know it, much less remember it. Here I have my own men and the army leaves me alone. They hate the Interior Ministry even more than I do. The only people they hate worse are the military police. Any of these rivalries can get you killed, or, if you know how to use them, they can keep you alive, even make you rich.”

“The word on the streets, in fact, is that you did get killed.”

“Yes. In the Jewish cemetery. It was a helpful story. Even if some people knew it was untrue they decided that it let them off the hook. If people in the city thought I was dead then it was no longer necessary to try to bring me to justice, now or later. And I was in some of those damn fool attacks at the Jewish cemetery, too, early on. That’s what convinced me I had to get together my own men and get out of there, even if it meant coming some place like this. So I convinced some soldiers to join with me, in the customary way.”

“You bought them.”

“Of course.”

“And didn’t some officers in the regular army have their own ideas about that?”

“They had their ideas, but I had the D-marks, or at least I was willing to spend mine. Why should they waste money trying to outbid me when they could make their own profits on the arrangement?”

“You paid them, too, you mean.”

“At officers’ rates, of course. All for the privilege of my own comfortable billet here on Zuc. Remote enough to keep away the prying eyes of the generals, and an important enough part of the line to make myself necessary. One thing I have always been is a good fighter. They know that, and their lines are so thin in places that they’re glad to have me.”

The coffee arrived on a small copper tray. The aide poured the thick Turkish brew from an hourglass-shaped pot. Vlado sipped it, and was surprised to find it was even flavored with cardamom, all but impossible to find in the city these days.

“What’s to keep you from bolting to the other side. Plenty of others do it.” Indeed, it happened every week, sometimes in units of twenty or more men.

“Let’s just say there are even more people on that side for me to fear than over here. They still aren’t very happy about what happened two years ago. We made a lot of JNA officers look very bad by holding off their tanks with small arms. And there are always those who are enemies for other reasons.”

“Like General Markovic, for example.”

For the first time Neven seemed mildly impressed. He cocked his head slightly, as if to reassess the potential of the meeting. Then he said slowly, “Yes. General Markovic, for example.”

“Another admirer of fine art, I’m told.”

“Indeed he is.” He paused for a moment. “So, you say you may be able to help me. How?”

“Look, we know that art is being taken out of the country, even if the museum doesn’t seem to have a clue. If we can tie the operation to Vitas’s murder and root it out, I’d imagine we’d end up putting away some of the people who want to see you put away.”

“Like General Markovic? Not likely unless you have a very accurate piece of artillery and some good sources on the other side.”

“No. But we can certainly discredit him.” Vlado ventured out on a limb. “We have the full backing and support of the international community”

“The U.N., you mean?”

“And that puts our reach potentially across the river.” He saw by Neven’s reaction that the limb had just given way.

“The U.N.,” Neven snorted, smiling crookedly again. “Who do you think is making it possible for this art to leave the country?”

“That’s exactly what we’d like to know.”

“You want to know too much. And all I can possibly do by telling you is to make even more enemies, in more of the wrong places.”

“Look, I’m not asking for everything you know. Just take it question by question, and when you begin to feel the risk outweighing the benefits, then stop answering. But give yourself a chance.”

And then, Vlado’s first and only stroke of providence fell literally to the ground. A shell screamed toward their position from the Serb lines: a high, arching mortar lob from a few hundred yards away. They both sprawled to the ground and were sprayed by a shower of dirt, the earth shaking and grumbling beneath them. When Neven rose his beret was askew, and mud was caked in his stringy bangs. The timbers providing the foundations of his “office” were bent inward. The coffee tray was overturned. Neven no longer came across as any sort of master, even for this small stretch of the line, and his face momentarily betrayed that he knew it, too. They waited a moment through an answering burst of shellfire and a brief exchange between automatic weapons. Then Neven said, barely audible, “What sort of questions.”