by Fritz Galt
They spoke openly, their last opportunity before they would need to jot down questions to each other on paper.
He set down the cup and unloaded his last, haunting thoughts. “When we finally find Alec, I wonder what to expect.”
“They’ll have done things to him,” she said, hugging herself in her sweater. “Things that you can’t ever undo. So don’t even try.”
“He’s the last person I’d expect to turn against us.”
His cavalier sibling had been a fun-loving soul. Above all, Alec had enjoyed freedom. He was free to travel the world, change his personality to suit the land, love the women he loved, fight for democracy and human rights in whatever way he pleased, and set his own rules in life, without a shred of remorse or guilt.
“It will be a relief to see him alive,” Mick said.
“Remember who comes first,” she retorted sharply.
She had been a game companion for the past two days, and he observed her with newfound curiosity. “Why are you allowing me this last assignment? Is it because of him?”
She dumped a heaping teaspoon of sugar into her coffee and considered her response carefully. “You were going to go anyway.”
“What did State tell you?”
“Just to help dismiss the staff. Prepare for eventual severing of diplomatic ties.”
“Severing relations is only a threat. We’d never do that. It’s just a way to make the Yugos shape up and conform to international standards and law.”
“The Deputy Assistant Secretary of State sounded serious to me. ‘Infuriated’ would be more accurate.”
“No kidding.” He leaned his broad shoulders back against his chair. It wasn’t exactly the story that Lance Pickett was trying to promote. “I would cut them off, too, for what they did in Bosnia.”
After breakfast, while Natalie packed, he strolled down the sidewalk to find a morning paper. The narrow street was deserted, as if people were fearful of stepping outside.
He bought that morning’s International Herald Tribune at a corner newsstand and stood there looking it over. On the front page below the fold, a headline jumped out at him.
“Washington Expels Yugo Diplomat.”
The diplomatic wars had just begun.
Zoran steered his red Porsche through stop-and-go Belgrade traffic. He drove onto a sidewalk to pass a truck, reached for his mobile phone and dialed a number from memory.
“Dragana, do you want to help your people?”
“Of course I do,” the young woman responded skeptically.
“Then this is your chance. I’ve got a job for you.”
He shook a fist at the truck driver and began to describe Karta, Serbia’s most precious treasure.
“I know what Karta is. I may be from Macedonia, but I am a Serb.”
He proceeded to tell her how and where it was stored. Then he described what he wanted done. “How soon can you do it?”
“Is tonight soon enough?”
“Fine.” He was on a bridge high over the Sava River.
“But is your plan big enough to risk stealing Karta?” she asked somewhat timidly.
“Oh, yes.” He thought of the involvement of the military, the church and the press. “Trust me. It’s big.”
Shortly after noon, Mick and Natalie took a taxi to Vienna International Airport.
To Mick’s surprise, there was no line and no central security check. Instead, each gate had its own metal detector and baggage scanner. The arrangement left most of the airport unsecured.
He and Natalie sat and waited for the gate to open.
Soldiers with drawn assault rifles patrolled the terminal and watched everyone suspiciously.
Mick pulled his bags closer.
Not a word of Serbo-Croatian was spoken. All he heard was German.
Small waves of anxiety passed through him.
Natalie gripped his arm.
“Nervous, too?” he whispered.
The day he had left Yugoslavia, bitter and disillusioned, Mick had vowed never to return.
Vienna had seemed foreign enough after several years in New Mexico, but Belgrade would be on a whole ’nother scale.
The phone rang in Zoran’s sparkling new hotel suite, and he picked it up. “Da?”
He peered out the window at New Belgrade. A choking smog nearly blotted out the noonday sun, whose feeble rays glinted on the relatively modern structures.
“This is Bane,” came the gruff voice. “Do you still have contact with that American Alec Pierce, the mercenary who magically appeared in Bosnia?”
“Yeah, I do.”
“Well, word from Vienna has it that his brother, Mick Pierce, is flying to Belgrade today. Mick used to be an intelligence operative for the American Embassy.”
Zoran stiffened. “Seriously?”
“I don’t like the looks of this,” Bane said. “Not when we have Macedonia in our sights. We’re about to expel Bernie Fletcher, the CIA Station Chief at the American Embassy, but now we’ve got this other spook to worry about.”
“Just stop him from entering the country.”
“It’s not that easy when it comes to the Foreign Ministry.”
“Don’t worry.” Zoran already had a solution in mind. “I’ll have Alec take care of him.”
“Good. And you’re also working on Karta?”
“It’s going down tonight.”
Mick and Natalie boarded the twin-prop plane and sat watching a light drizzle fall on Vienna International Airport. The pilot announced a slight delay to remove an unclaimed bag from the cargo hold. Nobody objected.
Mick glanced around the small, narrow Business Class cabin of that non-stop flight to Belgrade. As far as he could tell, there were only Austrian businessmen onboard.
Soon the propellers revved up and they began to taxi. There was no line of planes ahead of them, and no turning back. They took off at once.
Mick stared down at the green countryside as if he would never see it again. When they reached cruising altitude, the view was obscured by a blanket of clouds. He settled back and tried to relax.
When lunch arrived, he knew he should eat. He poked around at the oyster and ham, but finally gave up. Natalie didn’t touch hers.
It was a short flight over Budapest and the southern half of Hungary.
Finally they dropped out of the low-lying clouds, and he could see rivers and flat farmland, then roads and clusters of houses.
Belgrade’s runway looked wet at first glance, but the puddles turned out to be spots where the tarmac had worn thin.
He glanced over at Natalie and pretended to shudder as if to shake off a bad dream. She responded with an ironic smile.
The plane rolled up to the terminal and finally eased to a halt. He took a deep breath. It was showtime.
He stood up, grabbed the carry-ons and led Natalie down the ramp.
The terminal felt instantly familiar to him, untouched by war and years of neglect. That it still looked avant-garde was a tribute to its architect, because the minimalist structure was thrust in darkness due to a blackout.
Hazy daylight glared off the visa window. Mick watched a uniformed official perform the routine of looking them over distrustfully. Nothing new there. Their five-year-old visas were still accepted.
Bernie Fletcher’s snide grin greeted them at baggage claim. Prematurely bald and sallow skinned, his was the first familiar face in days.
“It looks like old times around here,” Mick said.
“You’ll see some changes,” Bernie promised. “You made it under the wire. The UN just banned international flights here. Yugoslav Airlines has ceased international operations. Come tomorrow, this airport is history.”
“Like everything else here,” Mick remarked.
They found their suitcases, and Bernie pushed a heavily loaded baggage cart toward security and customs. Mick and Natalie flashed their diplomatic passports and the threesome skirted the long line.
An embassy driver loaded their
luggage into a long white van, and soon they zipped out of the airport—no currency exchanged, no taxis, no hassles.
Mick shivered in the air-conditioned van. They crossed the flat green countryside on a four-lane highway. Many trucks had stopped alongside the road. City lights already glimmered through the gloom. Then he remembered: it turned dark early on the eastern edge of the time zone.
Bernie turned around in his seat and ran down a busy social schedule.
With Bernie and Natalie discussing upcoming events, Mick’s attention drifted to the sight of New Belgrade, the youngest section of the city. The concrete apartment blocks were crumbling as he remembered, but he was shocked by the rate of decay. Soon they crossed the wide Sava River. A horde of people stood under the overpass. Overloaded buses careened by without stopping.
In the last glimmer of daylight, the van pulled up to the parking garage of a sad and familiar place, the American Embassy.
The same locally hired security guard was still working there. Never mind that Mick didn’t know his name or politics. Put aside the man’s ghostly appearance and small, inscrutable eyes. The time-honored routine of having his vehicle’s underbelly checked for bombs put Mick at ease.
Examining the van wasn’t the only security formality. The driver had to flash a pass at the guard. That got the van through the first metal gate. There was a second gate, and the first gate swung shut behind them. Then they drove into the dark underground garage.
Zoran stared in frustration at the Old Belgrade phone number he had been dialing for several hours.
City lights had already appeared dimly through the smog. He tried one last time.
“Molim?”
“Dragana, where have you been?” He switched the phone to his other ear.
She turned his question back at him. “Where are you?”
His expression didn’t change. He was used to her brusqueness, and he was willing to endure it. “I’m in New Belgrade now. Grand Hyatt. Come and visit me.”
“I’ve seen hotels before.”
“Now you can see what a Jacuzzi looks like in a penthouse.”
She didn’t respond, but he counted it as a small victory that she didn’t hang up.
“I’d rather not talk over the phone, so I’ll be quick. Are you listening?”
He looked in the distance over the mighty Sava River at the old town where Dragana must be. Damn, she was hard to track down, even for him. But then, that was just the kind of person he needed.
“Do you still have that American friend?” He tried to visualize her living circumstances.
“Alec? I see him occasionally.”
“How often is ‘occasionally?’”
“Like you said, he’s a friend,” she threw his words back in his face.
Zoran cringed. “Well, he could be of use to us.”
“That’s exactly why I’m his friend.”
He could accept that. “Word has it that his brother is arriving in Belgrade today. Listen carefully. Alec’s brother is with the CIA.”
That brought a pause, a rarity in any conversation with Dragana Alexandrov. Then, “Don’t worry, Alec will take care of him.”
Mick stepped out of the van and inhaled the cocktail of ammonia, car fumes and coal dust. It was a witch’s brew that brought him instantly home. It was the smell of embassy life in Belgrade.
A polished circular staircase led them up to the American Club.
Bernie walked straight into the bar, home to just about every foreigner in town. Mick smiled. All the familiar faces were there.
Young political officer Rich McKenzie greeted them with baby pictures of Jeff, just born in DC.
Dr. John Moore peered over their shoulders at the pictures. “They wouldn’t let me deliver him here.”
Prematurely stooped and looking devious as ever, Harry Kahler offered a dining tip. “Great new pizza place opened up just around the corner.”
Hefty young administrative officer Bud Winkler gave Natalie a booming “Hi Grace,” an inside joke that Mick wasn’t privy to.
There were some of the usual suspects from other embassies, mainly NATO, but some not. The Finnish guy still hung around, and the Indian just seemed happy to be there.
All were assembled at the Club that Sunday evening to send off a political secretary to the Fiji Islands. It gave everyone a dreamy look.
Mick and Natalie settled into soft vinyl chairs and had a long chat with Ed Carrigan. Ed had come to Yugoslavia as the deputy chief of mission, but once the ambassador was withdrawn, he had been elevated to the role of Chargé d’Affaires. His wife was Stateside waiting for his tour to end.
“You may be home sooner than she expected,” Mick said, “since State just expelled the Yugoslav Chargé from Washington.”
“Yeah, we’re waiting for the other shoe to drop,” Ed said. “I haven’t been deported yet.”
“How many officers are left?” Natalie asked.
“You’re looking at ’em.”
They chatted about the past week as if there had never been a two-year hiatus. The room was abuzz with talk of a huge traffic jam in the city. It seemed a group of Serbs had been massacred in Macedonia.
Chapter 5
The window was propped open with a suitcase and let in the sounds and smells of early evening life in Belgrade. Hot air wafted across Alec Pierce’s hairless chest. The breeze carried with it the creak of an axle, the backfire of a bus, the distant toot of a tugboat on the Danube.
Cigarette smoke drifted from a Styrofoam cup. A half-eaten sandwich lay on a newspaper. A phony handlebar mustache lay flattened between the pages of a Balkan history.
A young woman straddled him on the bed. She locked her sleek legs around his torso with the firmness of a ballet dancer.
She whispered a throaty command. “Take me for a ride.”
Her Slavic expletives, clipped word endings and bedroom vocabulary drew Alec further into her mystique.
“Take me all the way.”
He picked out the gist of her heavily accented muttering and lent a gringo response. It might not have been standard pillow talk, but her body squirmed with delight.
Water gushed up pipes running inside the walls of his rented flat.
Dragana broke into laughter. Her large eyes drew into an oriental shape and regained their youth.
The two bodies twisted in bed. His angular frame glistened with perspiration, and her muscular limbs became tangled in the sheets. They laughed deliriously, and Alec tried to ignore the thump and scrape of their bed against the wall.
After a quiet interval, she propped up on an elbow. “Sasha, I have news for you.”
“Tell me.” He looked over at her.
“Your brother is back in town.”
He returned his gaze to the ceiling. His mind ran through a catalogue of people like a drawer of index cards each with another face he remembered from Langley. He recalled specialists for all sorts of purposes: bugging, stealing, seducing, photographing, bombing and impersonating. But there was only one reason for Mick to come back. To prevent him from performing his unauthorized mission.
“You know what you have to do,” she said firmly.
He nodded. It would have been nice to see his brother, but not after the way Mick had abandoned him in Srebrenica. Not after Alec had spent two years on the run in Bosnia, ingratiated himself with the militias, killed peacekeepers and worked his way up the mafia hierarchy, all with a singular purpose: to infiltrate the Presidential Palace and bring justice to the Butcher of the Balkans.
He would eliminate anyone who tried to stop him, except his brother.
She pulled the sheet off. “I’m late.”
He groaned.
She looked at him with fondness and a wisdom uncommon in one so young. “I have rehearsals in half an hour.”
“It’s only five o’clock.”
There was no time to shower.
She straightened her bushy black hair and wriggled into a pair of blue jeans. She
reached for a leather bag and started to unlatch the door.
“A kiss?” he said, still naked in bed.
She leaned over him. He captured her by her red silk scarf. Inside their improvised tent, he found her moist lips and sucked tenderly on them. Her hand slid under the sheet.
“I’ll keep it warm,” he offered.
“I know you will. Now stay put and stay out of sight. Good-bye.”
“I don’t use that word.”
She smiled sweetly, tossed the scarf over her shoulders and whirled out of the apartment.
When the door slammed shut, he felt the smile evaporate from his lips. Where could he go now that his brother was in town? For the first time in his bloody ascent through the Balkans, someone had brought him to a screeching halt.
He looked beyond the yellowed window shade that flapped in the breeze. Mick was destined to turn his apartment into a prison.
Bernie took Mick and Natalie on a walk downtown to the Hotel Moskva. Mick was surprised that street life was so lively. Doors stood wide open at both private and government-owned stores. Bootlegged goods were prominently displayed. Youths and couples strolled under pink arc lights enjoying the evening.
The Hotel Moskva had seen better days, but it had always enjoyed a dilapidated, socialist charm. As Mick’s boss, Bernie slipped the coat-check girl a tip and led them to a second-floor restaurant.
For the next hour, they were surrounded by empty tables while they ate. The food, as always, was great. Natalie nibbled on an omelet and Mick and Bernie devoured beef stew.
Slowly the restaurant filled with foreigners who had just checked in and local fat cats just beginning their evening’s entertainment. He recalled the unusual hours of a Yugoslav workday: at work at 7:00, home at 3:30, several hours spent napping, and then hours of strolling, visiting and drinking.
Cigarette smoke eventually forced them to ask for the bill. It came to $20 for the three of them.