Peter Robinson - The Tribunal

As he exited the freeway again and approached what he thought was the right street, Kevin decided to once again be cautious. He circled a few blocks, and then stopped to look at his map. He did not see anyone following him.

Maria said her parents had moved to Oakland from the East Coast after her imprisonment. Kevin could see they were living in a multi-ethnic, poor neighborhood of single-family homes. If the whites, blacks, and Hispanics ever started fighting each other in the United States like the Muslims, Serbs, and Croats had in Bosnia, this neighborhood would be ground zero.

Kevin passed the house. It was a white, wooden single-story house with a small lawn in front. There was an old Chevrolet Impala parked in the driveway. The house needed a paint job, but the lawn was immaculate and was landscaped with nicely kept bushes. Around the yard was a chain-link fence. In this neighborhood, by necessity, all the houses were well fortified with security bars on many windows and doors.

After circling the block and not seeing anyone following him, Kevin parked. He opened the chain-link gate and walked up a few steps to the front door. The screen door was closed, but the inside door was open.

“Hello,” he called, “is anybody home?”

There was no answer. Kevin called again. There was still no answer. A feeling of dread crept over Kevin. People did not leave their front doors open in this neighborhood. Had someone been here before him? He rang the bell. No one came to the door. Kevin thought about calling 911 on his cell phone, but decided to walk around to the back of the house. He slowly backed down the steps and followed the driveway alongside of the house. When he reached the back yard, he saw a woman tending to some plants.

She had apparently not heard his calls or the front doorbell.

“Excuse me,” Kevin said from the edge of the yard.

The woman looked up. She was a stout woman with a wide, pleasant face. She looked to be in her seventies, and her brown hair was neatly in place. When she saw Kevin, she put down her pruning shears and walked over to him.

Kevin did not wait for her to speak. “I’m sorry to bother you. I’m Kevin Anderson, a lawyer from Santa Rosa. I’ve just come from visiting your daughter, Maria, and she asked me to come here and give you this.” He pulled out the napkin and displayed it for the woman to see.

The woman looked surprised at the mention of her daughter. She took the napkin. “I need my glasses. Come on in.” She led Kevin into the house through the back door.

Kevin found himself in a small kitchen with a wooden table placed against the back window overlooking the yard. “Sit down. Can I offer you a cup of coffee?”

“Oh, no thanks.”

“How about some tea, or milk? I’ve got some soda, or even some wine.”

“I’ll take a soda, thank you.”

Kevin looked around the kitchen. He saw the refrigerator, filled with photos held up by magnets. He had come to believe that you could tell a lot about a family by looking at what was posted on the refrigerator. From his seat at the table, Kevin saw pictures of a large Italian family, and several pictures of Maria in happier and younger days. He saw none of Maria’s husband.

“I’m sorry, I don’t know your name,” Kevin said as Maria’s mother came back to the table carrying a pair of eyeglasses and a glass of cola.

“Alice. Alice Mancini.”

“It’s nice to meet you. And thank you for welcoming me into your home.”

“We don’t get many visitors. All our family except Maria is back East.”

Alice put on her glasses and read the napkin. On one side, she read Bud’s note to Maria, and on the other, Maria’s note to her. “This scares me. Maria has never asked me to get her papers before. I wish I could discuss this with my husband.”

“Where is your husband?”

“He died two months ago.”

“I’m sorry. I – didn’t know.”

Alice studied the napkin. “I will honor my daughter’s wishes.”

“Thank you so much.”

Kevin waited at the kitchen table while Alice headed toward the front of the house. When she returned, she carried two shopping bags, which she put on the table.

Kevin reached inside one bag and pulled out a large mailing envelope. Inside the envelope was a four-inch stack of papers. Kevin started looking through them.

Inside the second bag, Kevin found the mother lode. There were about thirty reports from William Evans. Kevin flipped through the reports quickly. They were dated from 1992 through 1995, and contained information from Draga about upcoming military actions in which the Black Dragons would be participating. There were also reports from Draga of meetings he had with President Milosevic and others in the Yugoslavian government.

Reading this material gave Kevin goose bumps. He was holding dynamite in his hands. The information in these reports might not only clear Draga of war crimes, but could prove that President Milosevic was the one giving the orders to the Bosnian Serbs in the war in Bosnia. The U.S. government might also be badly damaged by these reports. They showed that it knew of the attacks on cities and towns in Bosnia before they happened, and had done nothing to prevent the thousands of deaths that followed.

Kevin could not contain his excitement. “This is the best Christmas present I’ve ever gotten. I’m going to take these and copy them right away. I’ll have them back to you in an hour.”

Kevin strode quickly from the house, the shopping bags tucked under his arms. He got in his car and drove to downtown Oakland, where he knew of a 24-hour copy center. It was rush hour, and Kevin found himself crawling along city streets. He looked in the rearview mirror. There were no signs that he was being followed. If someone had been following, Kevin suspected they would not have let these documents get into his hands in the first place.

At the copy center, Kevin made two sets of copies. He mailed one copy to himself in Holland just in case the other copy was somehow taken from him before he got there, or when he came through Customs. Kevin shook his head at the irony of his situation. Just a few months ago, as a federal prosecutor, he could show his credentials and be waved through Customs. Now, he was smuggling papers to avoid Customs agents.

When he left the copy center, Kevin saw a sports store featuring Oakland Raiders souvenirs. He decided to get a present for the #1 Raiders fan in The Hague. After this brief detour, Kevin returned the originals to Alice Mancini.

When Kevin arrived back in Santa Rosa, Diane and Ellen were not at the hotel. Kevin had hardly seen Ellen since they had arrived in California. She had so many sleepovers with her friends that she had not spent a single night at their hotel. Kevin sat down and studied the reports. He found one report that excited him. In 1992, Draga had furnished William Evans with a list of the Black Dragons. Unfortunately, the list had not been attached to any of the reports.

As he read over the reports, Kevin realized that he needed to find Evans. The man might be his star witness in The Hague. Kevin turned on his laptop computer and got on the Internet. After some searching, he found the Hilton Hotel Corporation website. He wondered whether he could locate an employee through the website. Hilton had thousands of employees. After searching the website, he came up with nothing.

A few minutes later, Diane and Ellen came into the room. “Hi, Daddy,” Ellen said. When she saw the laptop, she asked, “Can I check my e-mail? My friends from Holland are probably wondering what I’m up to.”

“Sure, I was finished anyway.”

He watched as Ellen effortlessly accessed her e-mail, then squealed with delight as she read her messages from her friends. “Jennifer thinks she’s getting a scooter for Christmas. And, Katie is going to Disney World.”