Dan Fesperman - Lie in the Dark

“Your help would be welcome, but it sounds like two of us might scare him away.”

“So I’ll lay low. I’ll go early, work from the edges, just like our old boss always taught us back when we had a real boss. He’d be proud of me for a change.”

The reference to Imamovic, their old chief, was somehow calming, as if the old man himself had just whispered a sage word of advice from beyond the grave.

“If I leave now,” Damir continued, “I’ll be able to make it about ten minutes ahead of schedule. I can get the lay of the land before you arrive, and if things look shaky I’ll warn you away with a double whistle when I hear you approaching. Consider anything else, silence or otherwise, as an all-clear. As dark as it is tonight, it should be pretty easy to move around without being spotted.”

“Just don’t spook him. If he’s as nervous as you say he is he’ll run at the first sign of being double-teamed. Do you have your gun?”

“Always. You’re the one who doesn’t think you need to be armed in this city.”

“Well, mine’s here in a drawer somewhere.” Vlado again checked his watch. “We have about thirty-five minutes. You’d better get moving if you’re going to make it.” Damir lived on the west side of the city. It would be a haul. Vlado needed only to walk a few blocks. He’d have some time to kill.

“I’ll have to hustle,” Damir agreed. “But I’m younger than you. I’ll make it. See you there, then.”

“And Damir?”

“Yes?”

“Thanks. I’ll owe you one.”

“One? More like five or six.”

He hung up in mid-laugh.

Vlado set down the receiver. Things were moving too fast. He looked again at his watch. He still hadn’t eaten and was famished, though now he had time for some of the meat and a cigarette. Maybe that would tamp down the excitement. Otherwise, everything else-the long walk to and from Zuc, the sleepless night in the trench, and all the day’s revelations-might overwhelm him just when he needed a clear head.

He unwrapped the meat from its loose sheath of butcher paper. The smell made him salivate. He’d have to cut off a nice slice for Damir after this evening. Well, let’s not go overboard, he thought. Damir seemed pretty well stocked on his own lately.

He reached into his desk for his Swiss Army knife, a coveted souvenir from his prewar trip to Berlin, then remembered he’d loaned it to Damir the week before.

Perhaps this guy from the U.N., if he was indeed U.N., had the goods on Chevard, or even the whole operation. It might even have been the Brit he’d talked to the other day on the phone. Perhaps word of the investigation was spreading to some of the right people as well. Who knew, he told himself, this might pan out yet. But stay careful. And get some food in your stomach.

He tugged at the top drawer of Damir’s desk. Locked. No problem. Vlado and his old partner Vasic had long ago discovered a ridiculous flaw of Titoist office furniture, one that not everyone knew, even now. In most offices, one key fit all, desk after desk, drawer after drawer, supervisors’ equipment excluded, of course. They hadn’t decided if the mistake had been a typical Communist snafu or a devious way to allow Party zealots and snitches to snoop on their coworkers. Whatever the case, Vasic and he had put it to use for many a practical joke until Imamovic found out. He’d requisitioned a whole new set of locks and keys, but, the system being what it was, they’d never arrived.

So, Vlado took his own key and slipped it into Damir’s lock. It opened easily.

My God, what a mess. Damir was even a bigger pack rat than he’d suspected. There were coffee-stained napkins, crumpled memos, torn scraps of paper with phone numbers-probably Damir’s version of a little black book-cassette tapes of heavy metal music by bands Vlado had never heard of, paperclips, and various other odds and ends. Vlado rifled through the pile, pushing small mounds of crumpled paper aside, wincing in pain as he pricked his thumb on a pushpin.

Then, success. He spied the red handle of the army knife, lying at the bottom toward the back. But as he reached for it something else caught his eye, like the flash of a familiar face in a moving crowd. It was a small blue tunic with tiny gold buttons, handpainted. A tiny Austrian hussar, circa 1805, with his sword, still unpainted, raised boldly to the sky.

Vlado picked up the soldier, holding him aloft in the weak fluorescent light. A victim of Napoleon, now briefly taken captive by Damir. Vlado shut and relocked the drawer, then stuffed the soldier deep in his pocket as he absorbed the implications of his discovery. He tried to come up with an innocent explanation, but there was none. Nor was there time to ask for one, now. He reached into his own desk and pulled his service revolver from a similarly chaotic mess of papers and tapes. Finding its chambers fully loaded, he clicked off the safety and stuffed the gun atop the soldier. The tiny man would now be his backup, he mused darkly.

He grabbed his satchel, slinging the strap across his shoulder. Then he strolled across the office and out the door, leaving the meat unwrapped and uneaten on his desktop, and feeling very lonely indeed.

On the way to the rendezvous point Vlado tried to calculate the depth of Damir’s betrayal. Perhaps he was only a glorified errand boy who’d conducted the search of Vlado’s apartment and done nothing else-it would have worked perfectly, any neighbor who’d seen him would have recognized him as a friend and never have suspected anything unseemly. Maybe he’d filed regular reports on Vlado’s comings and goings, his contacts, while little knowing the true role of Kasic. That would explain a few things, he supposed.

And perhaps there really was a frantic U.N. man, who really was trying to reach Vlado with vital information.

Then again, maybe Damir had engineered the whole thing, hoping to bring Vlado to a dark and vulnerable spot after curfew, where anyone killed would be written off as yet another victim of a sniper.

Even if the more benign role was the case, Vlado asked himself if he would have done the same. No, he would never inform on a colleague, not without warning the colleague of the arrangement. But Damir had concluded it was okay. Betrayed by his own father, the embittered Damir had decided he could play that game as well. In Vlado’s eyes he was guilty. The only question was one of degree.

If Vlado had the time to consider the matter further, and on a full stomach, he knew he might skip the meeting altogether. But his momentum had reached the point where he felt he had no choice but to plunge along.

The walk was only a few blocks, but Vlado used his extra time for a roundabout approach. Going directly might have put him in place first. He might even have beaten Damir to the spot, a decided advantage. But a Damir who couldn’t be trusted might have been telephoning from anywhere a few minutes ago, including the Interior Ministry right down the street. And if Vlado was walking into a setup, everyone would be in place by now anyway, perhaps even expecting him ahead of schedule.

The cloud cover was heavier than ever, blotting the moonlight from the sky, and the curfew had emptied the streets. Sniper fire and artillery had been light that day, as if everyone in the hills were saving their energy and ammunition for tonight’s Orthodox New Year. Heavy firing was expected, and the prospect had seemed to clear the bars and cafes early, with everyone heading home to their most secure rooms. Vlado doubted whether even the prostitutes had stuck to their posts as late as usual. If one wanted to plot a meeting with as little chance of witnesses as possible, this was the night to do it.