by Fritz Galt
She saw a rare fire in his eyes. It reminded her of the early days, when they had sat over a glass of port wine and discussed the great issues of the day, then eased into bed for a night of lovemaking.
He was on a roll. “After the oil barge, we can swing around through Bulgaria.”
“Mick, don’t you realize that Alec is totally against you?”
“Listen. Nobody can read him like I can. He’s my brother.”
“Yeah. But he’s also armed and dangerous. We don’t know how far he’ll go.”
“We do know some things. He did come down on the side of the Serbs.”
“What, he talked with you? Was that before or after he beat you up?”
“Before. I don’t know what he expects to get out of invading Macedonia.”
“So he’s siding with the Serbs after what happened to him in Srebrenica. It doesn’t make sense.”
“All I know is, he was after the Karta and didn’t get it. Maybe he’ll head to Macedonia to retrieve it.”
“Nope. Uh-uh,” she said. “You’re not going to Macedonia. You’re not going after that map again.”
“I don’t think I need the Karta any longer. I need to stop him.”
“Let him get the Karta. Let him do whatever he needs to do. We don’t need to get killed over this, Mick. Just let him go.”
He contemplated the distant shoreline. His eyes had lapsed again into their glossy dullness. “Natalie, I let him go once before, and look what he turned into. I made a monster out of him.”
In the whistle of the wind as it passed through the gap in the wall behind them, she thought she heard movement.
“Oh, no. Not the police.” She leaned over to block him from view. “Mick, circle outside the wall. I’ll stay here and stall them.”
“But there’s no path.”
She reached around her husband’s crippled shoulder and drew his face close to hers. “Find a way,” she whispered, and placed her lips on his.
Footsteps approached, growing too loud to ignore. Mick released her and edged around the cliff.
A policeman advanced with his pistol drawn. It was a local cop in a fresh blue uniform and highly polished boots.
“Dobro jutro,” Natalie said. Good morning. “Can I help you?”
The cop stopped and hung a thumb on his holster. Another blue uniform mounted the rise behind him.
“Hello Zlatica,” the cop said in Serbian, referring to her golden hair. “Are you alone?”
“Only me.” Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Mick flatten against the outer wall. He was right. There was no trail, and he had only the slightest of toeholds.
“I heard voices,” the cop said, reaching the gap. “Stand up.”
She slowly got to her feet, her back to the drop-off. He would have to stand where she was standing to see Mick.
The cop’s shiny boots skittered over a patch of gravel. She went stiff.
Inches from her, he stopped and sniffed the air. “Whose voices did I hear?”
“I don’t know. You might have heard me praying.”
“You’re an American diplomat,” he stated.
“I am.”
“Americans left the country yesterday. What are you doing here?”
“I’m just saying good-bye.”
The second cop joined his partner. “What are you doing to her?” he said with a wry smile.
“Nothing, now that you’re here.”
“Well, watch out for the cliff.” He motioned Natalie away from it. “I don’t want to fish you out of the river.”
She stared down. Her heels were over the edge. “Yikes.” She jumped forward and landed against the policeman’s starched uniform.
“Steady,” he said.
She felt his hands around her waist.
“Remember our orders,” the second policeman said.
“You know what they’ll do to her.”
She needed someone on her side in the police department. So she turned to the man who held her and stared into his baby-blue eyes.
With one hand, she gently nudged his pistol aside. With the other, she squeezed his cheeks and planted a wet kiss full on his lips.
“You won’t harm me,” she said, her voice trembling.
The second policeman snorted.
The cop broke into a grin. “Take a picture.”
His partner whipped out a compact camera and squinted into the viewfinder.
She forced a smile, like a vixen about to attack her man. The cop puffed out his chest and smiled proudly.
Click.
Natalie was immortalized in Ram police history.
She gave the cop a second smooch, then sent him back to his partner with a firm shove.
He lifted his cap and wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. His other hand slowly readjusted his holster.
The two drew away from the gap in the wall and shared a laugh.
She took a deep breath and sat down in the grass. Out of view, she motioned for Mick to come back onto the ledge.
He eased toward her stone by stone. He probed for handholds as well as footholds as he pressed his chest tight against the rocks. At last he reached safe ground, but remained out of view of the policemen.
She let out her breath.
“Can you hear me?” she whispered.
He nodded.
“Did you see what happened?”
He nodded again.
“Don’t take it personally. They knew who I was, and I had to get rid of them. I hope you didn’t mind.”
He winced in pain.
Dragana held the telephone away from her ear. The voice on the other end crackled with static and seemed to echo down a long tube.
“It’s me, Zoran.”
“Hi, Zoran. You just woke me up from an afternoon nap.”
“How are your grandparents?”
“Fine.” She sat up to clear her head. She was lying on a couch in her grandparents’ house in Skopje, the capital and only major city in Macedonia.
“I miss you,” Zoran said.
She shivered and forced out a lie. “You, too.”
“Has Alec shown up?”
“I haven’t seen him. I haven’t looked for him, either.”
“He called me and said I could contact him at the American Center in Skopje.”
“That’s why we have him. He has the contacts.”
“Right. Listen, I have another job for you. I want you to meet my man, who’s on the public square in old town.”
“I was heading downtown anyway.”
“That’s a good girl,” he said, and hung up.
She rubbed her eyes. Was the phone call only a dream?
With the same feeling of unreality, she slipped out into the twilight and walked down a dusky side street. From there, she reached a broad park with flower beds, a circular fountain, lighted billboards boasting the Cyrillic names of state-run companies, and a bridge that arched over the Vardar River.
Halfway across the bridge, she cast a critical eye at the lighted domes of the Roman baths. To others they were Roman baths, but to her eye they resembled a man’s naked backside.
She headed up a crowded cobblestone lane that marked the beginning of Skopje’s bazaar. It reminded her of Istanbul, which she had recently visited on a tour. But there were no postcards, T-shirts, trinkets or other such tourist paraphernalia at this bazaar.
She often came here for the smells and tastes of her youth. It brought back memories of the summers she had spent with her grandparents. She stopped by a pastry shop to look at the mounds of whipped sugar that she used to buy. Another shop still sold pistachios by the pound.
The smell of grilled pork, beef and lamb wafted through the evening air. She nodded at men who sat outside playing dominos on overturned crates by the light of their shops. She remembered some of them personally, and they welcomed her back.
Tiny houses leaned precariously against each other. They lined the streets that rose and fell with the terra
in. Decades ago, most of town had toppled to the ground under a devastating earthquake, but her people had survived, picked themselves up and rebuilding their lives.
The quilt store featured red and gold satin blankets. She admired a display of sequined shoes and sandals. Silver filigree pins and gold rings, necklaces and brooches sparkled under the intense glare of a single light. Shop owners worked at their benches and only looked up when a customer showed serious interest. In that case, they would warm up a pot of tea and prepare to discuss prices.
A magnificent old tree still graced the center of the bazaar. No cars or trucks choked the public place. Instead, pedestrians streamed up and down the streets. Higher up, Albanian shops stood with even shakier construction, but with equally enticing goods.
She stopped at the café that was under the tree and sat on a plastic seat.
In the evening, the cafés were filled with men. The only women in sight were schoolgirls out with their friends. A waiter gave her a quizzical look, but automatically slid a Turkish coffee her way.
“How’s your food?” she asked.
He shrugged and looked around at the various food stalls.
“I’d like a civapcici,” she said.
He thought about it, then crossed to a neighboring stall. A moment later he returned with a steaming meat kabob.
She bit into the first sizzling morsel. It was wonderful.
She was surrounded by the dizzying music of Balkan divas and accordions. It came from all the shops, where radios were tuned to the same station as if by design. The songs wound their way into the men’s conversations, and often they hummed along.
She closed her eyes and could almost forget the threat posed by Serbia. How could two cultures, so virtually identical, be at war?
When she opened her eyes, a tall, gaunt man had slipped into the seat opposite her.
“Zoran sent me,” he said by way of introduction.
She took a long sip of coffee before reacting. “What does he want?”
“He’s trying to find Karta. Macedonian nationalists have brought it here. He wants you to find it and get it to Mt. Athos before President Nikic meets with the Greek Prime Minister.”
She let the bitter flavor of her drink warm her stomach. So the Yugoslav president was heading to Mt. Athos, the most sacred mountain in Greece.
“Do you know where Karta is?” the tall guy asked.
“I’ve heard stories,” she said at last.
“Such as?”
“That it will show up at Sveti Pantelejmon tomorrow morning.” The monastery was far enough away to avoid attention.
“Why there?”
“I heard priests over at the cathedral talking.” She tossed her head in the general direction of the local Macedonian Orthodox Cathedral. “They wanted to see Karta for themselves.”
“You must snatch it before the priests get a hold of it, and bring it to Greece.”
“Why Greece?”
“Nikic feels that Macedonian nationalism has taken a dangerous turn. Zoran feels that when Nikic sees Karta, he will explode in anger.”
“I thought Karta showed an expanded Serbia.”
“No. Forgers stole it and expanded Macedonia instead.”
“Huh,” she said demonstrating thoughtfulness, although she was intimately aware of the details. “I have some access. I’ll make sure Karta disappears and goes to Greece.”
“You have better connections with the Macedonians than I have,” the man said.
“Serbs must watch their backs at all times.”
The man nodded uneasily and looked around the square.
“Now leave me to my coffee.”
He shot her a puzzled look, as if he couldn’t understand how she could be so poised.
Then he turned and disappeared into the dark.
Chapter 26
Mick was more determined than ever to get information out of the skipper of the oil barge at the Iron Gates Dam. Mick was that close to exposing the Germans who were breaking international financial sanctions against President Nikic. And then, he and Natalie would drive on to Macedonia and undermine the rationale for war that Zoran, Bane and Mick’s brother had contrived.
He jumped into the Jeep and drove a reluctant Natalie through the narrow gorge carved by the Danube. It took several hours in the deep shadows and gathering dusk to reach the power center, that glowed in the nighttime sky. Ahead lay a heavily secured Iron Gates Dam.
The only place nearby to spend the night was a hotel back in the town of Kladovo. The hotel was named, appropriately, Hotel Kladovo.
Nine floors high and utilitarian, the hotel looked like a tenement. They checked into a room with a single bed, short wooden stools, roaches under the pillows and a bathroom with no light bulb.
They spent less than ten minutes in the room before heading out for dinner.
A television was playing in the lobby, and Mick and Natalie barely paused to watch. It had one channel that blared the official evening news, news that people in Belgrade no longer trusted, but in Kladovo was hot stuff.
The parking lot told the story of the hotel’s other clientele, namely two UN plated Volkswagen Golfs and a diplomatic plate from Belgrade with the number 12 that designated the Russian Federation.
Mick took Natalie in hand and they began to walk into town.
The street seemed under a wartime blackout. People, dressed in dark punk clothes, brushed past even though the sidewalk appeared wide enough for everybody. Only the occasional car zoomed down the street. It was the end of the earth, even for Serbia. Few outsiders knew about the region, far fewer ventured to travel there and nobody understood the language, a variation of Romania’s Wallachian tongue.
A Cyrillic banner hung over a semi‑lit block of restaurants. It read, “Welcome to Kladovo Summer Youth Festival.” The festival had ended a month before.
Natalie hurried past the dimly lit bars.
Mick was surprised. “You said you haven’t eaten all day.”
“I seem to have lost my appetite.”
They were on a residential street again, circling back to the hotel. Young people stood in darkened doorways of the single-story structures. The street was hushed except for the occasional bark of a dog.
They also couldn’t help but overhear a long, continuous argument. A young man had cornered a younger man and held him by the collar. Mick picked out some of the words. “Stay away from her. What if you had a sister?”
They circled the governmental office, and that put them on a narrow side street. Mick thought that might get them back to the hotel. “There’s a restaurant at our place. Let’s give that a try.”
“And eat cockroach soup? Are you out of your mind?”
“I’ll test it for you.”
“I wonder how they grill river rat.”
“The food can’t be all that bad. These people have survived for generations.”
“Just because there’s a town doesn’t mean you have to live in it.” She hurried down the alleyway. “It feels like Romania already.”
They stopped at the edge of the river and watched lights on the other side. Steel chains clanked. A dog barked persistently across the still, reflective water. There seemed to be no voices and no cars in Romania.
Mick turned back to the hotel. He had parked on the sidewalk by the lobby. On the way back in, he noticed something wrong. The passenger window had been shattered.
“Vandals.”
Natalie stopped in her tracks and grabbed his arm. “Might be more than that.”
Two men lurked by the hotel entrance.
Then a faint female whisper came from behind. “Gerard Vaillant sends his greetings.” She had a heavy Irish accent. “Come this way.”
Mick turned around. “Who are you?”
The woman was tall despite flat shoes and a scarf pressing her hair down. She put a finger to her lips.
Natalie started to follow along the dark sidewalk.
“I don’t want to leave the car
,” Mick said.
“The car’s the least of your troubles, lad,” she said.
At the end of the sidewalk, they crossed the street and entered a yard. It was a private home with a yellow lamp glowing behind faded lace. She slipped inside, but Mick and Natalie lingered on the welcome mat.
The scent of pipe tobacco hung in the air.
The door opened and the woman tugged them inside. She slammed the door and rammed the bolt home.
A man with ash-brown hair and the beginning of a beer belly sat reading a newspaper.
“Do draw the curtains,” she ordered.
He clenched the pipe between his teeth and jumped up to pull the drapes shut. He turned and wiped the dust off his hands. “The name’s Jack Hamlin,” he said with an upper class British accent. “And you must be Mick and Natalie Pierce.”
Mick shook his hand. It was good to see a friendly face.
“Nasty bruise you have there.”
Jack placed a kiss on Natalie’s hand. He seemed a tad overfriendly, perhaps. “This is my wife, Coleen.”
The woman unbuttoned her trench coat. Underneath, she wore a safari suit. She pulled her scarf off and unleashed a cascade of naturally red hair. They shook hands all around, and Coleen encouraged them to sit down while she put a kettle on.
“The bastards wrecked my car,” Mick said. “I need to retrieve it.”
“All in good time.”
“They might steal it.”
“No. It was just a welcome gesture from someone who doesn’t want you here.”
“Who told you we were here?”
“Gerard Vaillant from the French Embassy thought you might head this way. And the Hotel Kladovo is the only show in town.”
“Why are you here?” Natalie inquired.
“We use this house to monitor the dam site and river traffic,” Jack said. “It has proven useful during the sanctions.”
“Well, thanks for steering us clear of trouble,” Mick said. “Why do you suppose they’d wreck our car? Are they just sore about the sanctions?”
“I think it might be more than that. You might consider it a threat. From my chat with Gerard, it sounds as if you’re coming close to implicating a bank in Belgrade.”
“And their German suppliers.”
Jack nodded slyly. “Looks to me as if the bastards struck a nerve with you when they killed your doctor.”