She shakes her head and keeps walking. “No. I mean me and the girl Drago used to know.”
Drago
I sit on the floor of what used to be our room in the Gare Maritime, next to Elena, who is fast asleep on my mattress. She was exhausted after what she went through over the past twenty-four hours. Emilija and Afrim walk into the room. I have an annoying inkling that I know what they were discussing.
Afrim sits down on the floor against the wall and glances over at me like he’s nervous.
Emilija walks over to me. “We need to have a talk.”
“Talk about what?” I try to get out of it.
“You know what about.” Emilija gestures to the doorway. I stand up and walk out of the room, into the Gare Maritime’s main area, near to where the floor drops off to make the well for the train tracks. “It’s hard to believe that there will be a Daesh rally here tomorrow.”
Emilija ignores my diversion. “Well, there is going to be one and, whether you want to or not, we need to clear the air before we go into this fight. You’re not telling me everything about your relationships with Elena and me.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The one thing that defines them both. I know, Drago.”
“Know? Know about what?”
“Jelenka. The girl who died to save you, back in Kosovo.”
An edge creeps into my voice. “Afrim told you, didn’t he?”
“Don’t blame your brother for trying to help you. You said earlier that you felt you had a duty, a debt, to someone. It’s her, isn’t it?”
I finger the scarf around my neck. “Yeah. Though, what I said before was true. I do like you, but because it’s like you’re the version of her that would still be here if she had gotten to a better place.”
“That’s why you got mad at me when we were in jail. Because I had opportunities she never did. You were mad at me for not being her, and worried I’d leave you just to hurt you, like you’re afraid she did.”
“Yeah.” I wipe a tear from my eye as I think of her.
Emilija walks over and puts an arm around me. She takes her other hand to my chin and brings my head up, toward her. “Look at me, Drago. I’m not Jelenka. I’m Emilija and Elena is Elena. You won’t do anyone any favors—least of all you—by convincing yourself that you owe a debt to this girl from your past. Afrim watched her die, too. He heard what she said to you. He told me. There was never any debt. Despite all your self-guilt, she wanted you to be happy, to still be able to hope for a better future—just like Elena and I do. I don’t think Jelenka wanted her sacrifice to stop you from moving on. In fact, I think that’s why she made it.”
There’s a second of silence. Then she goes on.
“Like I said, I, Emilija Stanić, care about you. I’m not going to blame you or hold you to any sense of obligation for a trauma that you had to face in your past and I’m not going to let this keep us from remaining friends, if you’re okay with that, but I am not going to let myself be nothing but your offering to the past.” She hugs me.
I hug her back. “Of course I’m okay with it.” I hesitate for another few seconds; my voice shakes when I talk, like just for one more second I am speaking to the both of them. “Thank you.”
Emilija stands back from me. “I’m glad we cleared that up. Now we can focus on fighting one of the most ruthless terror organizations that history has ever known.”
“Somehow, that seems easier than having this conversation.” I smirk.
We laugh.
“Come on,” Emilija says. “You can get back to Elena. She needs to be ready to bring her A-game tomorrow.”
I nod and walk back to Elena. I sit down beside her. I notice her low, calm breathing and brush some of the bangs away from where they’ve fallen across her face. She resettles herself and tightens her hands around the blanket I put over her. As I watch her, I realize that I feel freer than I have since I was a twelve-year-old kid being pulled away from my dad’s body.
***
It is about midnight when they start to show up, one by one, so as not to attract attention: trucks that I know are full of weapons and explosives. They get backed up to the raised loading dock in the center hall of the Gare Maritime. A stage is set up.
I whisper back to the other three in our team, “All right. You know the plan, everyone over to the stairway, then onto the roof before they can sweep this place. Don’t forget the ropes.”
Emilija peeks over the ledge onto the train station’s floor. “It looks like my dad was a little overgenerous with his funding. Those vans are brand new. I’m going to be able to pull it off.”
Then Afrim pokes his head over. “Oh, crap. I see Avdi. He is helping to set up the stage with al-Qadir.”
I put a hand on my brother’s back and whisper, “Don’t worry. Al-Qadir knows we’re against him now. If he was going to do something to Avdi, he’d have done it by now. We’ll try and keep our identities hidden.” I try to reassure him, even though I know al-Qadir could change his mind about Avdi at any moment.
We climb up to the rooftop, via a vent in the elevator shaft. We take our positions on the metal part of the roof, where our bodies won’t cast shadows that people could notice down in the main hall, through the dirty glass panes that make up part of the roof next to the steel. Daytime comes. Slowly, more men arrive. I peek through the grimy glass. I can see them filling up the immense space.
Perched on the apex of the roof, Emilija opens her computer. She starts to tap on the keyboard. Another thirty minutes go by before she looks up. “It’s all set.”
“Good.” I keep looking down through the glass ceiling and frown. I can keep track of Avdi by his white Albanian cap. I tell Emilija that she can tell where he is by that, too. I don’t like him, but I don’t want him to get hurt, if nothing else than for Afrim’s sake.
Then we run into our first problem: it is almost ten and it doesn’t look like Sir Jonathan or anyone from UKIP has shown up yet.
I hear my brother next to me. Great minds must think alike, because he says, “How are we supposed to expose UKIP’s secret plans if Farage and/or Watson is a no-show?”
“I don’t know. But at least we’ve got to stop their attack,” I grumble.
The rumbling cheers from the men below grow louder. A black-masked figure walks onto the stage: al-Qadir, I’d bet money. He’s followed by four more. They are not masked.
Elena gasps. “Hristijan and his family? But they got away! Drago, you told me they got away.”
I want to kick myself. “I thought they did get away.” I glance back over at Afrim. “Forget about how we expose UKIP or Watson. Now we have Hristijan and his entire family to rescue.”
Elena
“But they got away! Drago, you told me they got away,” I say as I watch Hristijan’s family being led onto the temporary stage.
“I thought they did get away,” he says to me before he looks over at his brother. “Forget about how we expose UKIP or Watson. Now we have Hristijan and his entire family to rescue.”
I look to where Emilija is sitting on the roof with her laptop. I whisper over to her, “Wait for me to yell up, before you hit the button on your program.”
She looks back at me, worry in her eyes. “What are you up to?”
“The same thing as plan A, only we’re not going to wait for the Brits and the vans aren’t just going to be a means of destroying Daesh’s means of attack, they’re also going to be our distraction. We’re going down there now, before we activate them.”
Afrim’s eyebrows go up. “But Avdi is down there. What if he gets hit?”
Drago snaps over at him. “I keep telling you to stop defending him. He chose to be down there; I can only protect him so much.”
I put a hand on Afrim’s shoulder. “Emilija knows not to target him. I’ll do everything I can to see that your adopted dad is fine.”
“You’ll be a sitting duck if Emilija’s hack doesn’t work,” Drago objects.
/> I shake my head. “I know and I don’t care. Right now Hristijan and his family are the sitting ducks. I’ll figure something out. I’ve got to save them.”
Drago puts his hand on my arm. “I don’t like this. What if Farage or Watson aren’t here because they’re up to some other kind of shenanigans? If you’re going, then I’m coming, too. You don’t have to do this alone. I’ve got your back and I always will.”
“So do I.” Afrim nods.
“Thanks, guys.”
On stage the black-masked figure begins to speak. I look over at Drago and Afrim. We put on our own black masks. I count down with my fingers from three to zero. Jamming our feet down, the three of us shatter the glass ceiling. The audience shouts. The shards fall on them, just in front of the stage.
I descend as fast as I can on the rope, using my shoes and the thick leather gardening gloves that I bought from Brico to control my descent on the rope. Afrim and Drago drop right behind me. I land. I crouch and then I leap into a standing position, grabbing the masked man’s gun. I kick him in the chest. He goes down. Drago restrains him and rips off the man’s face mask. It’s someone I’ve never seen before. What might be anger and disappointment comes over Drago’s face. Afrim gets busy untying Hristijan and his family.
I turn back to the audience. The men rush for the trucks, where the weapons are. I pull the trigger on the assault rifle I appropriated from the speaker, spraying the gathering with bullets. I don’t see Afrim and Drago’s adopted dad anywhere. I guess that’s a good thing. There are some shouts. A few of the would-be attackers turn around to see who is shooting. A few more go down. I’m already running out of ammunition and the guy who was onstage doesn’t have more. The gun was probably just for show. Most of the fighters ignore me and keep dashing for the trucks.
I decide that now is time for our distraction. “Emilija, now!” I yell, hoping the acoustics will allow her to hear me all the way on the roof, like Drago seemed to think they would.
She does. It only takes a second for the trucks’ engines to turn themselves on. They start driving around the Gare Maritime’s cargo loading area, just as I run out of ammunition.
Yelling breaks out everywhere and the seven of us onstage are quickly forgotten. There are screams of anger and agony. A few of the extremists get run over. The Gare Maritime is soon a bloodbath. I’d feel more remorse, except I figure that what they were planning to do makes this okay; I just hope it doesn’t give them any ideas for the future. They start running and shooting at the vans, trying to disable them.
We duck and start running for the stairs that lead behind the stage. Hristijan, Erika, Lucija—who looks really beat up—Lara and Afrim make it down onto the ground. Drago and I run down the steps after them. One of the trucks hits the front of the stage. The two of us go flying. We land in a pile. We run to the abandoned rail- track and crouch in the well below the floor, running toward freedom with Afrim in the lead. We make it outside and start to run out to the street.
Except there’s a problem. The exit is blocked. Not Daesh, but a bunch of Belgian riot police. Their guns are raised.
The police choose now to finally show up? I look at them confidently. “Don’t worry, officers, I broke up the terror plot for you.”
The guns stay raised and a shred of doubt begins to creep up my spine.
The policemen part. They reveal Nigel Farage. Behind him is Sir Jonathan—in handcuffs. Farage’s eyes make contact with mine.
“Actually I put a stop to it,” Farage crows. “As for Sir Jonathan, he was of the unacceptable opinion that if the UK could get a sufficient number of opt-outs from Brussels, it should remain in the EU. On the other hand, Elena, your mission—to bring your violent and impoverished region of Europe into the Union—made me decide to do some checking on both of you. It turns out that Sir Jonathan really was plotting with the Islamic State to stage this attack so that the EU would pay more attention to security and the UK’s demands—a sort of perverse bid to get the UK to stay. It really is criminal, the extremes that some Bremainers are willing to go to these days.”
“Bull,” I snap at him. “You were colluding with Daesh, too. You were both working with them through Stanić, even though you had different goals. Daesh was playing both of you the whole time. You probably just did this to get me and Watson out of the picture.”
“Actually, Ms. Marković, that is not the case. You must really have an exaggerated image of your importance. It turns out that I do not have to go to such lengths to remove you as a factor.” He nods at one of the police officers. The man steps forward, next to Farage. My jaw drops open at what he says.
“Elena Marković, you are being detained pending deportation from the Kingdom of Belgium on the grounds that you are currently here on the basis of a false travel document.”
“What? You can’t do that. I have diplomatic immunity,” I snap at them.
Farage raises his eyebrows. “Not anymore. You see, I also discovered in my research that you really never had a right to that Croatian passport of yours, diplomatic or otherwise. It was obtained for you by your corrupt mentor; I am sorry to say that his own daughter seems to have followed in his footsteps.”
The officer turns to Hristijan: “Hristijan Fatmir Bektashi, you and your family are being detained pending deportation on suspicion of corruption and the abuse of your offices, especially yours and that of your eldest daughter, Lucija Kovačević Bektashi.”
The policeman turns to Farage, who is clearly enjoying himself. “Thank you, Mr. Farage, for coming forth to the police with this information.”
“It was my pleasure,” Farage crows again. “If this is the Europe that the Bremainers want us to remain a part of, then anyone who supports ‘Remain’ has got to be crazy. Europe is practically doing my job for me.”
I stand there in complete disbelief. One of the cops in riot gear, who got sent into the building, comes back.
“The place has been cleared, sir. Almost all of the suspects ran off. The scene was already one of complete disarray when we got in there. Many were already armed and took the weapons with them when they fled. It was like they knew we were coming.”
“Did one of the men you detained have a white felt cap on?” Afrim asks.
The officer shakes his head.
I look at Farage. I’d be furious, but I’m still having too much trouble believing that this is actually happening. “This is all nonsense. You’re secretly in league with Daesh and you’re just trying to cover that up by throwing Watson under the bus, even though you deserve to be there right along with him! At least Watson did all the wrong things for some of the right reasons.”
Farage just smiles.
The police start reading some kind of a list of rights to us. I’m too shocked to pay attention to it.
Sir Jonathan, subdued, is led back into a police car. Drago, Afrim, Hristijan’s family and I are piled into a police van. We are driven back toward a Brussels city police station. All of us sit there in stunned silence. It’s broken by Erika.
“Thanks for rescuing us, Cousin Elena,” she says, like she doesn’t realize where we are or what’s happening.
“Yeah,” Lucija snorts, “whatever that British yapper said, you stopped Daesh’s plot and if it wasn’t for you, we’d have been a bunch of headless chickens.”
“Yes,” Hristijan says. “For what it is worth, I am proud of you. We all are, Elena.”
Erika leans across the van and hugs me. The others join in. I start to cry. My mission to bring the rest of Yugoslavia into the EU has failed. Permanently, before it really got started. The only ones pushing Kosovo’s Stabilization and Association Agreement forward were Hristijan and me. Now it has almost no chance of going through. “You shouldn’t be proud of me, but you’re welcome,” I manage. I squeeze them tighter.
We sit back from one another. Drago lightly grabs onto my arm. “We are proud of you, too. I hope you know that, Elena.” He hugs me, and then Afrim and Emilija join in.
/> We stay like that until we stop in front of the police station. We’re separated and they take our phones away. I get seated behind a desk, like I was when I first arrived here. I am asked if there is anyone I would like to notify that I have been detained. I rummage through my black hoodie and run across the phone number Tone gave me while we were decorating the floats for Saint V’s Day. I tell them to call it; he doesn’t pick up. The police told me they left a message but he doesn’t do anything, because the next few days pass in a miserable blur of injustice and regret. I lie on my back in a jail cell. I’m brought before a judge, who confirms that my deportation order has been put through.
There’s the sorrowful farewell with Hristijan and his family: Erika bursting into tears as the police surround us at the departures level of Brussels Airport; heading to the Adria Airways flight with Afrim, Emilija and Drago; the quick connection in Ljubljana; landing at Skopje airport, where I stowed away six months ago, filled with big dreams that now are nothing but broken; bursting into tears again as I hug my parents; the crowded bus ride back to the falling-apart winery compound where I grew up, trying to imagine what lay beyond. Now I know and just like that, it’s over. This winery is the end of the line.
Eighteen:
Home Again
Elena
I sit in the drafty parlor with broken glass in the main window, shivering. I once thought that was normal. Mom is all bundled up and talking on an old Iskra phone. She sets the receiver down with her one good arm and looks over at Dad. “That was Hristijan. It’s not good. With all the investigations into his and Lucija’s misconduct in the diplomatic corps, there is no way he can get Elena another Croatian passport. Now she would need a visa to stay in the EU; she’s persona non grata in Belgium.”
It’s the final nail in my living coffin. I reach up to the medal of the two interlocking stars around my neck. I rip it off and throw it on the worn table. I try to keep my voice from cracking. “That’s it. I failed. I can’t be the Maršal of Yugoslavia anymore. It turns out I never could be.”
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