Bob Shacochis - The Woman Who Lost Her Soul

He was also very close to Kovacevic, your undersecretary. Chambers, I mean, said Vasich. Not the father but I think stepfather, godfather. It’s not so clear. And how is he? I hear he is not so well.

Yeah, said Burnette, sleepwalking, helping the squad load their footlockers and garment bags into a panel truck. So I’m told.

The threats were manifold, generic, longstanding, and, to an undeterminable extent, an in-house ploy, the forthcoming state funeral and its high density of VIPs generating a widespread crackdown on dissidents and undesirables — Muslims and occasional Serbs — throughout the Croatian capital, roundups and detentions, interrogations and deportations and a small discreet selection of disappearances, a choreography of internal security that Burnette and his team mostly observed from the sidelines at the headquarters of the intelligence service. This was the Balkans, not Scandinavia. No one forgets when you hurt their feelings, said Vasich, we are very sensitive, ha-ha. Here, the children are born already with enemies.

But we are accustomed to it, said Vasich, and with Chambers, who knows? He was very involved with things at the beginning of the war, he was very helpful with our leadership, he and Davor, you would always see them together, okay, so we Croatians love him, he is one of us, but the mujos, they dream to take his head off. But this is not a problem. The situation is normal, okay? and Burnette said, If that’s the case, I don’t understand why we’re here, and Vasich threw his meaty arm across the American’s shoulder and confided, I think maybe to babysit. I also think something serious. I think Kovacevic wants to send a message, to warn somebody not to fuck with him. Who? asked Burnette. The Hague? but Vasich shrugged and said, Perhaps. Or maybe someone in Washington, I don’t know. Okay, said Burnette. Next question: Who gets through the door? Three hundred, said Vasich. By invitation. The public was free to gather outside the cathedral and along the route. Okay, said Burnette. Anybody credentialed from ICTY? No, said Vasich, The Hague is not so interested in us. They are not serious people. They take little fish and leave the whale. The lawyers, they like this game. They come like bugs to crawl on our suffering. You have someone in mind? Yeah, said Burnette, let’s run his name, and they walked down the hall to another office to pull up the database for an aggregated master list. Type in Thomas Harrington, said Burnette to the technician, and they watched the screen switch to the roster for international media and then isolate ITN and there was Tom, with the film crew, identified as a consultant.

Hey, look, said Vasich. Your man. He is from the tribunal? Yeah, said Burnette, and Vasich said we can detain this guy or put him on a plane or pull down his pants, what would you like? and Burnette said, Nothing.

Exiting the building Scarecrow pulled Eville aside on the street and said, I smell it, bro. What’s the deal? You pulling more of that voodoo wool over my eyes? And Burnette said, I smell it too, Crow, but it’s not coming from me.

The Croats came for them at dawn the morning of the second day, grabbing the D-boys out of their safe house for a rehearsal, starting at the presidential palace, where Davor Starevica’s body lay in state. Check it out, Burn, said Scarecrow as they ascended the spruce-lined drive to the modernist palace known upon its completion in 1964 as Tito’s Villa, I was expecting a castle or something, some medieval vampire shit. Next, familiarizing themselves with the route the cortege would follow to the cathedral, the rooftop positions Spank and Tilly would share with Vasich’s marskmen; last, a brief step out at the Mirogoj cemetery, a graveyard memorable for its sheer beauty, its ivied arcades and pruned shrubbery and domed chapels and tiled promenades and statuary more like a museum attached to a royal garden, a groundsman pointing down a pebbled path ahead to a black canopy erected among a grove of headstones. Do you want to see? asked one of the Croats. Nope, this is good, said Burnette.

At each venue Vasich’s liaisons introduced them to an ever widening circle of counterparts composing the mechanism of the event, then they were back at the Ministry of the Interior, having their photographs taken for full-clearance IDs, linking them up with the ministry’s commo network, trying to memorize faces of bad guys pulled up on the counterterrorism section’s computer screens. After lunch, one of Vasich’s drivers ran Burnette and Scarecrow back out to the airport to collect the advance man from the State Department’s own protection detail, an aging former US marshal twenty years their senior, dressed like a Texan, unsubtle and agitated, miffed to be reporting to a pair of army hotshots who had usurped his authority. No offense meant, said the bland-faced gunslinger from State. What do you know that I don’t? What the eff are you doing here? No offense taken, said Burnette, just give me the skinny, sir, and we’ll bring you up to speed and show you around. First stop the US embassy, where tempers flared. I suppose you never heard of us, Scarecrow smart-assed the senior political officer, because we’re like fairies. We only exist in a higher realm. The other possibility is we were never here. Deputies placed calls to the States, inquiries were made, egos chastened by denials of access. The ambassador dictated a memo to his staff— Stay out of it.

For Burnette, the read-in had yet to include the actual size or identities of the American delegation. Vasich supplied a preliminary list — the ambassador, the DCM, the station chief, the defense attaché, a Seventh Group colonel working with the UN peacekeepers, a visiting congressman — but no one could verify who the last-minute out-of-towners might be, if any, save for the undersecretary, whose inattendance, Burnette had learned from Vasich, would precipitate a scandal of mysterious proportions. Burnette’s focus had been grapple-hooked to Chambers and he assumed that State’s own security handmaidens had the broader responsibility. The issue was clarified immediately, however, as he and Tex sat down together to begin to orchestrate the next day’s schedule and reality surfaced inside the scaffolding of logistics.

Transportation staging at embassy motor pool: 0600. Coordinate police escort: 0630. Airport arrival: 0725. Flight ETA (from Brussels): 0740. Roger that, said Burnette. Why two vehicles? How many people are in the box? Are we dividing VIPS and security? I’m not comfortable with that. Me plus one will be glued to the undersecretary. My other two guys are on the roof. Anything beyond that, it’s your call. Tell me what you have, he said, and he was told. Got it, said Burnette, I’ll take you over to meet Vasich and his people and then I’ll see you here in the morning. They gathered up their notes to leave. Hey, Burnette, said the man from State, I appreciate that you’re not trying to step on my toes. Come clean with me, partner. What are we walking into here? I figure you and your gladiators wouldn’t be on deck without some kind of shit storm on somebody’s radar.

You keep not believing me when I tell you I don’t know, Burnette said equably. But I have an opinion — you want to hear it? Trust this general, Vasich. In this city tomorrow dogs don’t bark without his permission. I think we’re looking at clear skies.

0500. The liaison knocked on their door, dusted with snowflakes, bringing a thermos of hot sweet coffee and a towel-covered basket of cheese pierogies, still warm from his mother’s oven. They rotated into the tiny bathroom, taking turns murdering its space with odious fumes after the previous night’s strange grub and the hard-drinking excesses spurred by Vasich and his capos, slivovitz, a brutal Slavic protocol of toasting, fraternity and liberty, of course, then a litany of battles in towns and villages that might as well have been on the moon, then vengeance and retribution and its teary oaths. They took turns showering and meticulously trimmed their facial hair to revised standards, swiped deodorant under their arms, and began to suit up in layers of comfort and discomfort, lightweight thermal underwear first and then an array of strap-ons — weapons, commo units, body armor — laughing with locker room insults, Scarecrow and Burnette donning their formal wear, Crow, you look like the undertaker himself; Hey, dudes, check out Burn, the dude can’t tie a tie, Tilly and Spank spared a similar ribbing, dressing in street clothes and parkas and watch caps, their rifles cased like electric guitars.