by Joseph Badal
“Miriana!” The woman called. The girl paused. The woman got up and went over to her. “Do you know how many Gypsies have died because of your friend Karadjic?”
Miriana stared defiantly at the woman. “What are you talking about?”
The woman walked to the bench, sat down, and patted it with her hand.
Miriana returned to the bench and sat.
The woman slipped three photographs from her large purse and laid them upside-down on the Gypsy’s lap.
Miriana turned them over. When she looked at the first one she gasped, jerked a hand to her mouth, and kept it there while she scanned the other two. Each photo showed piles of bodies – men, women, and children. A giant mass grave yawned behind them. Most of the dead women wore traditional Gypsy clothing. Several yards away from the piles of bodies in one photograph, eight women were tied to stakes stuck in the ground. Their hair had been shorn and their breasts mutilated. General Antonin Karadjic stood proudly posing in each picture.
“Serb troops rounded up all the Gypsies within fifty kilometers of Mitrovica,” the woman said. “They tossed babies, alive, into the pit. They raped the girls and women and made the men and boys watch. After the soldiers finished with the women and girls, they shot them. Then they shot the men and boys. According to a boy who escaped and hid in the woods nearby, the women who were stripped, tied to the posts and mutilated had resisted their rapists.”
“Why would the Serbs do this to Gypsies? We have helped them by giving them information. We are their allies. The Kosovars hate us for this.”
“You sleep with dogs, you come away with fleas.”
“How did you get these photographs?”
“Your friend Karadjic had one of his own soldiers take these pictures. He keeps them so he can relive his greatest moments. How I got my hands on them is none of your business.”
Miriana bent over and put her head in her hands.
“Are you crying?’ the woman asked.
Miriana dropped her hands, raised her head, and turned toward the woman. “What do you want to know?”
CHAPTER TEN
The six men sat on the worn sofa and three chairs in the cramped space of the living room. The fireplace provided less than satisfactory warmth. Several of the men held their full tea glasses in their two hands to help cut the chill in their fingers.
“This damn war is ruining business,” a wire-thin, middle-aged man announced to the group of men who’d assembled at Stefan Radko’s house. “There’s nothing to steal. Kosovars leave all their possessions behind when they flee their homes, but before we have a chance to grab anything, the Serb Army sweeps through. They steal or burn everything. Worse, American bombs scare Serb civilians into staying inside their homes, so even pickpocketing is poor.”
Stefan forced himself to suppress his disgust for this group of men. A bunch of whiners, he thought. Seventy years old and I have more nerve than all of them put together. But he needed them to do his dirty work.
“Okay, have we heard from everyone?” Stefan said, sarcasm heavy in his voice. He looked around the room to make sure he had each person’s attention. “We will shut down our operations for awhile. We cannot take the chance the Serbs will catch – and execute – our people on the street.”
“But Stefan,” one of the men protested, “how do we feed our families?”
“Try honest work!” Stefan snapped. “Or spend some of the money you’ve been hoarding.”
The man’s face went red, but he said nothing.
Stefan stood.
The other men began to leave. He walked them to the front door, giving each one a reassuring pat on the back. After they left, he sat in a chair and rested his head in his hands.
“What’s wrong, O Babo?”
Stefan looked up when his daughter came into the room. “I worried about you, my beautiful, little papusza. How did it go?”
“I am not your little doll anymore, Papa, I am a grown woman,” Miriana said, blushing. She pulled an envelope from inside her blouse and dropped it on the table.
Stefan slit the seal on the envelope and peered inside. “One thousand dollars?”
“As promised.”
“Good job, Miriana. Now tell me what this woman wanted.”
“She wants to know about my work as a drabarni, about my fortune-telling sessions with General Karadjic.”
Stefan nodded encouragingly at his daughter.
Miriana’s voice suddenly broke. “O Babo, she showed me photographs of Gypsies massacred by Karadjic’s soldiers. There were dead bodies everywhere, and Karadjic just stood there by the bodies. O Babo, Karadjic has murdered our people. His men raped our women, killed our children.”
“You listen to me, Miriana,” Stefan said. “Your people, as you put it, are not the sheep Karadjic slaughtered. Your people include your brother Attila, your mother Vanja, and me. No one else counts.”
“But, O Babo–”
“No buts, Miriana. You start worrying about Gypsies who don’t have the sense to run away from the Serb Army and you will wind up dead. You worry only about yourself and your family. Now, tell me about this woman in the park. Who was she?”
“She wasn’t Rom. She looked Serbian, but at the same time there was . . . something about her that made me think she was a western gadji. She had a Belgrade accent, but she was too confident, too aggressive to be from Serbia. I thought about it all the way back from Belgrade. If I had to guess, I would say Amerikanka.”
“Amerikanka? Hmm.”
“What are you thinking, O Babo?”
“What did this woman promise you if you helped her?”
“Ten thousand dollars!”
Stefan thought for a minute.
“If she is European – British or German – we cannot expect to get any more money than what she offered,” he said. “But if she is with the Americans, and the information they want from you is important enough to them, we may be able to squeeze them for a whole lot more. When do you see her next?”
“The day after tomorrow – Thursday. Same time, in the park.”
“Good, Miriana. By the way, you got a call. The General wants to see you on Sunday.”
“O Babo, when can I stop meeting him? He scares me. There’s evil in him. The mulo is on him.”
“Don’t start that superstitious junk. The spirit of the dead is no more on Karadjic than it is on you or me. As long as Karadjic needs you, we’re safe.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The Serb Army force left Surdulica and crossed the Morava River into Kosovo. It was a relatively small unit – really more of a raiding party: Forty-three men packed into two armored personnel carriers, two Jeeps, and a two-and-a-half ton truck. The soldiers were tense, but excited. Whenever General Karadjic joined a patrol, they could anticipate mayhem and looting.
The patrol moved northwest and arrived at the staging area at dusk. The men got out of the vehicles and lounged around, smoking cigarettes and talking in excited, but muted voices. They waited an hour until the sun dropped below the horizon, and then reboarded the trucks and moved at speed to the twenty-house village of Prizla. When the trucks skidded to a stop in the center of the village, the soldiers jumped to the ground and fanned out, forming a perimeter around the village.
Thirteen-year-old Nuradin Osmani, late as usual returning from the high pasture with his two dozen sheep, heard the sounds of vehicles racing into Prizla. Several hundred meters away from his village, he hid, terrified, behind a rock outcropping and looked down on the cluster of one-story homes. He strained to see what was happening, but it was too dark. Only dim candlelight showed through the house windows in the distance.
Suddenly, the glare of floodlights filled the night. Nuradin saw men dressed in Serb Army uniforms kick in the doors of houses. They shouted at the people and forced them onto the dirt road that ran through the village. Some people cried and begged for mercy. But most seemed dumb-struck with terror.
Nuradin watched a giant soldier
drag his little brother, Sultan, by his collar, out into the center of the road. Then other soldiers pushed his father, mother, and sister, Salima, into the circle of villagers huddling under guard.
An officer walked over to a Jeep and saluted. A man with gold braid on the shoulders of his uniform blouse got out of the Jeep, walked with the officer to the frightened captives, and marched on short legs around the group. He strutted arrogantly, his large belly protruding over his belt. Then he suddenly stopped and pointed. One of the soldiers pulled Salima over to him. The fat man grabbed Salima’s wrist and dragged her into one of the houses.
Salima’s screams carried up to Nuradin’s hiding place. He covered his ears, but he could not silence his sister’s screams. He wanted to run away, but he seemed paralyzed. Then he heard a gunshot. Nuradin peeked around the rock and saw the fat man come out of the house alone, stand in the road, and shout, “Uradite to!”
Do it? Nuradin wondered. Do what?
He felt cold. He began to shake. Tears poured down his cheeks. He saw his father in the crowd of villagers. Baba, you must do something, Nuradin silently pleaded.
The soldiers were quickly separating the men and boys of Prizla from the women and girls. They lined up the men and boys and forced them to kneel. A soldier stood behind each of them and, on the command of the fat man, fired a bullet into the back of each male’s head.
Nuradin felt a wetness pour from him, but he still couldn’t seem to move. His piss steamed in the cold night air and made him shiver even more.
The soldiers shot all the old women, too, before taking the remaining girls and women, including Nuradin’s mother, into the houses. Nuradin listened to the screams for over an hour. Then more gunshots.
In the eerie silence that followed, there were flashes of strobe lights. Someone was taking photographs of the massacre.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The satellite messaged information, including a dozen photographs, back to the National Reconnaissance Office. Copies were immediately wired to the White House, State Department, Pentagon, National Security Agency, and CIA. The information ultimately landed on CIA Analyst Rosalie Stein’s desk. Rosalie scanned the dozen satellite photos on her desk, and then, shaking with rage, called Bob Danforth’s office. Danforth’s assistant transferred her call to one of the conference rooms at Langley.
Discussion in the conference room stopped when the telephone rang. Bob picked up the receiver, listened for a moment, and then said, “Bring them right up.” He replaced the receiver, rubbed his hands over his face and sat back in his chair.
“What’s up, Bob?” Frank asked.
“Another slaughter in Kosovo. It looks bad. We’ve received photographs from the NRO. That was Stein down in Analysis. She’s bringing them up here.”
“How many dead?” Tanya Serkovic asked.
“Don’t know,” Bob said. “We’ll find out soon enough.”
Rosalie Stein burst into the room, red-faced and out of breath. She dropped a stack of photographs on the table in front of Bob.
After studying each picture, Bob passed it around the table. “This thing’s escalating,” he said. “The Serbs aren’t satisfied with just driving the ethnic Albanians out of Kosovo. Now they’re slaughtering them, too. It’s ultimate ethnic cleansing.”
Bob felt anger building inside. Stay cool, he told himself. Stay cool.
After the meeting broke up, Bob took an elevator down to the Crypto vault.
“What can I do for you, Mr. Danforth?” the Crypto Clerk asked.
“I want this message sent on a Flash Traffic basis.”
“Yes, sir,” the Clerk said, taking the paper from Bob’s hand. After inputting the message text into his computer, the Clerk punched in encryption instructions and tapped the transmit key. Bob’s message sped across space at the speed of light in a burst of code toward the radio-fax receiver of Agent Olga Madanovic, code name: Bessie.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Olga found the message on the machine she kept hidden under a floorboard in her apartment:
The Butcher Is To Be Extracted. stop. Code Name: Operation Oracle. stop. Advise Earliest If Gypsy Is On Board. stop. Instructions To Follow. End Of Message
The Gypsy girl looked nervous, Olga thought, when, later that day, she approached Miriana sitting on the park bench. The girl kept glancing around the park as though she was afraid someone had followed her.
“Good evening, Miriana,” Olga said. She took a seat next to the girl. “It’s good to see you again.”
“What more do you want of me?” the girl asked.
“You know, Miriana. I’m going to give you ten thousand American dollars for telling General Karadjic’s fortune.”
Olga waited for the girl’s response. None came.
“Do like I tell you and you’ll have the cash in twenty-four hours.”
Olga paused. When the girl finally nodded, Olga continued.
“First, do you have another appointment set with Karadjic?”
“Why?”
“That’s none of your business,” Olga snapped, then quickly softened her tone. “It’s for your own safety. The less you know, the better.”
“I don’t think I want to play this game by your rules,” Miriana said, sudden confidence in her voice. “I want a million dollars put in a numbered account in Switzerland.”
“What?” Olga exclaimed. “You’ve got to be kidding.”
Miriana gave her a slip of paper. “This is the name of the bank. I also want safe passage out of Serbia for my parents, my brother, and me.”
Olga sat stunned. “What makes you think you’re worth that much money, that much trouble?”
“Why else would you want to know when Karadjic’s going to meet me? It must be very important.”
“A million dollars is out of the question. It’s ten thousand or nothing.”
Miriana stood. “Fine, then it’s nothing.” She walked away.
“Wait!” Olga said. She rose and hurried after Miriana, not caring about the curious stares from people on nearby benches. Gripping Miriana’s arm, she whispered, “Maybe I can get you a little more than ten thousand.”
“All or nothing,” Miriana insisted. “And you better get it quick. I’m meeting with Karadjic three days from now. On Sunday.”
Miriana felt the sweat trickle from under her arms and down her sides. What is O Babo thinking? she thought. Why would he risk losing ten thousand dollars? They will never agree to one million.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“A million bucks!” Jack Cole yelled.
“Hell, Jack, it’s a whole lot less than the cost of one Cruise missile,” Bob said. “If this operation works, we’ll save twice that for every minute we can shorten the war. And think of the lives we can save.”
“Jee-zus, Bob! This is absurd.”
Bob didn’t respond, waiting for Jack’s anger to burn off.
Finally, Jack said, “Okay, Bob, I’ll sign off on it. But I want you there on the ground, to make sure everything goes as planned. As an observer only.”
“Right!” Bob said, wondering whether he’d be able to remain an observer during the operation.
Bob could always tell when Tanya was worried: She had two vertical creases in her forehead, just above her nose, which looked deeper than usual. “All right, out with it, Serkovic. What’s on your mind?”
“No insult intended, Boss, but you’re fifty-three years old,” she said. “What the hell is Jack Cole thinking, sending you into the field?”
“Don’t think I can handle it?” Bob asked, barely suppressing a smile.
Tanya shrugged.
“I won’t be in on the actual snatch. The Marines will handle that. I’m just going to observe.”
“Until something goes wrong.” Tanya said.
“What could possibly go wrong?” Bob said, with a wry smile – knowing all too well the Peter Principle was alive and well anytime an agent went into the field. If something can go wrong, it will. He waved Tan
ya out of his office. Then he sat back in his chair, hands behind his neck, and stared at the ceiling. The hardest part would be telling Liz.
Late that afternoon, Bob found Stan Bartell at a corner workbench in the Special Operations Section. Everyone called Bartell “Q” after the character in Ian Fleming’s James Bond series.
“Hey, Bob, long time no see,” he said. “I hear you’re going out.”
“That’s right, Q. Got my paperwork done?”
“You bet! Look here.”
Documents were spread out on the workbench. Each featured Bob’s photo.
“You’re going into Serbia with press credentials,” Bartell said. “This one says you’re a freelance writer for a Canadian newspaper. Next, here’s your Canadian passport. And your visa to enter Serbia.”
Bob examined the papers and nodded his approval. He put them in a leather briefcase Bartell provided. Stacks of cash were already in the case. “Where do I pick up a weapon?”
“There’ll be a Sig Sauer 9mm, along with two spare clips, under the mattress in your hotel room in Belgrade.”
Bartell slid a receipt for the cash – fifty thousand dollars in U.S. currency – and handed over a pen. Bob signed the receipt and pushed it back to Bartell.
“Thanks, Q,” Bob said. “I’ll see you when I return . . . assuming your documents pass the test.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
At sunset on Sunday, Olga again sat next to the Gypsy girl on their usual park bench. She briefly wondered if the girl really understood the risk, but quickly forced the thought from her head. That wasn’t her business. The mission was all that counted.
“Here’s the deal,” Olga said. “No negotiations, no changes. Take it or leave it. You understand?”
The Gypsy girl nodded.
“The money will be placed in your Swiss account after you do as you’re told,” she said.