by Fritz Galt
“So we must act more creatively,” Gerard said. “We have nothing new on Bosnia or Croatia, but the evidence and testimonies you must have accumulated there should be overwhelming enough to incriminate him.”
“Don’t be so sure,” the older lawyer said. “Nobody’s talking, and we can’t extradite the perpetrators. We have enough testimonies of atrocities from the field to make Stalin’s hair stand on end. But as far as implicating this bozo, we’re stuck.”
“So that calls for a more active role, correct? I’m not saying that we entrap him or catch him in a sting operation, but I am saying that we can catch him in the act.”
“Catch him doing what?” the younger lawyer asked, skeptical. “Cross-border arming of Bosnians? Ordering military action in the Krajina?”
“No. I want you to take your minds off Bosnia and Croatia for a moment. Turn your attention south to Macedonia. An American operative has uncovered a Yugoslav government conspiracy to create a pretext for the invasion of Macedonia. Right now, the Yugoslav president is in Greece with his other conspirators.”
“He’s in Greece?” the younger lawyer said. “With Greeks?”
The older lawyer looked dubious. “Can you document what he’s doing there?”
“By the end of the day, I hope to have documented evidence of his meeting, if not details of his conversation. Will that be enough for you to convict him?”
The two lawyers rubbed their jaws in thought.
“One problem,” the older lawyer said, “is that we can convict him only if Serbia actually invades Macedonia. Premeditation in itself is not a crime.”
“Mon dieu, we can’t wait for a full-blown invasion before we act. Listen, I want to keep you in the loop on the progress of our operation. The whole point is to get you hard evidence.”
“That sounds reasonable enough.”
“Good. I’ll call you as soon as we have it.”
He ushered the men out of the room and pushed the elevator button for them. If envoys relied on protecting the rights of criminals, the entire diplomatic service would be rendered impotent. The whole art of diplomacy was to anticipate and block before things came to blows.
Just then, Jack Hamlin stepped out of the elevator. He nodded at the two lawyers who stepped into the lift.
But Jack was brimming with news, perhaps with evidence to neutralize President Nikic, so Gerard held the elevator open for the lawyers to hear what the British spy had to report.
“Get this,” Jack said. “More tanks and military aircraft have joined the JNA troops marching south. A Reuters reporter drove against traffic and reported a new column ten kilometers long. And fighter jets have just left Belgrade this afternoon.”
“There’s your war, monsieurs,” Gerard said to the lawyers, then released the elevator door and let them depart.
Chapter 34
A steady flow of chilly air from the Mercedes’ air-conditioner blew under Natalie’s torn blouse. The Yugoslav general must have seen her shivering, because he offered her his wool overcoat.
“Thanks,” she said in Serbian.
His hand touched hers as he placed the garment over her shoulders. He lingered on her hand until she returned his smile.
“I admire your beautiful voice,” he said. “Your accent is so pure.”
“I’ve spent many years abroad,” she said. “I was trained in London and Paris. Perhaps that’s why I value my Serbian roots so much.”
The general frowned. “I have two sons in London.”
The obvious implication was that they were avoiding the draft, and he made no attempt to counter that impression.
He looked out the window. “Here’s the border. We’ll see how easily my officers negotiate our passage.”
Nearly a hundred cars waited in multiple lines on the Bulgarian side of the border. Gates were down and booths stood empty. Drivers stood by their cars mopping sweat from their faces and speculating with each other.
Far ahead, the leftmost lane was labeled “CD,” for Corps Diplomatique. There was no line there. The lead car, with Mick as a passenger, pulled into the grassy median to avoid the bottleneck and get to the CD lane. That amounted to jumping the line, and drew hostile stares.
A Bulgarian guard in the CD booth approached the first JNA car, undoubtedly to ask for passports. Natalie swallowed hard. Mick had none and neither did she.
The guard stepped back from Mick’s car and chatted with the driver. At last, he pulled his hat back and scratched his head. As far as Natalie could see, no passports were handed over.
Another frown hardened the general’s round face.
The guard finally left the car and slowly returned to his booth. A moment later, the gate lifted.
Natalie gripped her seat as both cars roared past the booth, under the gate, and across the fifty-meter stretch to Yugoslavia.
There they stopped once again.
The Yugoslav border guard ignored the first car and walked directly up to Natalie’s Mercedes. Her driver opened his window.
“Special message for General Pancev,” the officer said, and handed a slip of paper through the window.
Natalie could see that it was just a phone number.
“Do you have a telephone?” the general inquired.
The guard nodded and signaled for the gate to open.
As soon as both cars drove through, the general ordered the driver to pull over and stop. He prepared to step out of the car, so Natalie handed him back the overcoat. But he refused to take it.
“Stay warm,” he said, and closed the door on her.
Well, she wasn’t about to stay inside, either. She climbed out, pulled the coat tight around her, and strolled to the lead car. Meanwhile, the general headed back to the guard booth to make his call.
The colonels jumped out of Mick’s car and trotted past her to accompany their superior.
Mick stood leaning against the car, drumming his fingers on the roof. He smiled reassuringly at her, but she had nothing to smile about. Nor did she want the driver to overhear what she had to say to him.
She signaled Mick to come with her, and they walked a short distance from the car.
“What the hell do you think we’re doing?” she demanded to know. “How do you think we can pull this off? My Serbian’s as rusty as that guard shack.”
“And mine’s nowhere near as good as yours,” he admitted.
“In the meantime, the general’s trying to make a pass at me. And while he’s on the phone, he could be checking out our names with the MUP.”
“We can’t keep this up much longer.” He glanced at the cars. “Let’s talk to my driver.” He guided her to the lead car.
The driver was an overweight, balding military man. He sat in a rumpled military uniform with the car door open, his feet spread wide on the ground.
“Excuse me,” Mick said in English.
The man looked up into the sunlight.
Mick’s fist whacked against his jaw, producing a slight cracking noise in the man’s neck.
The driver slumped to the ground.
“Grab his coat,” he said, rubbing the pain out of his knuckles. Then he knelt and removed the man’s holster.
Natalie heaved the man over and pulled the gray coat off his inert body.
She was already wearing the general’s overcoat, so she handed the driver’s coat to Mick and hopped into the back seat. “Step on it, Sergeant.”
Mick pushed the man away so that he could swing his door shut. Then he jumped into the car and gunned the Mercedes to life.
Over the sound of their tires peeling onto the two-lane, Natalie heard a gun discharge behind them, then a whack against the rear window.
She ducked.
“You okay, Mick?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
He continued to speed away.
She looked back. The other driver was aiming a pistol at them, and there was a slight nick in the glass.
“This car must be bulletproof,” she said,
and fell back in her seat.
“Chalk up one more border incident,” Mick said. “We’re really racking ’em up.”
“Just keep your eyes on the road, young man. And drive.”
A searing noonday sun penetrated the foliage and dappled the windows of Gerard’s study.
He saw the whole picture now that Jack Hamlin had come to town and informed him of Mick’s objective to neutralize the Yugoslav President.
Serbian generals were ready for all-out war. Just one year earlier, before Slovenia, Croatia and Macedonia had broken off from Yugoslavia, the Yugoslav National Army was at its peak.
JNA ground forces had numbered 150,000 soldiers, with over a million trained reservists. They had thirty brigades of tanks, mechanized infantry and mountain rangers, each with artillery, air defense and anti-tank regiments.
The air force had numbered 400 war planes, 200 helicopters, and over 30,000 personnel. They were organized into twelve squadrons of ground attack fighters, complete with Soviet- and American-made missiles, four squadrons of reconnaissance fighters, and nine squadrons of MiG-21 interceptors for air defense.
And that didn’t even include the world-class Yugoslav Navy, whose 10,000 sailors operated missile, torpedo and patrol boat brigades, flotillas of mine-sweepers, and a full submarine division along the Adriatic coast. The navy even had bases along the Danube and Sava Rivers.
A Yugoslav National Army had been the glue that held the six-republic nation together for nearly fifty years. Now, along with multiple private militias and the bulk of its army, air force and navy still intact, the Yugoslav military was ready to preemptively strike whoever threatened the nation.
Gerard’s phone rang and he glanced significantly at Jack before picking it up.
“Oui?”
“Zoran’s red Porsche just pulled out of the Kneza Mihajlova barracks,” the voice said in French. “It appears that he and a military officer are heading out of town.”
“Follow them. I’ll take over at the entrance to the supermarket at Topcidersko.”
“I’ll watch for you.”
He hung up, placed a tailored jacket over one arm and grabbed his car keys. “Let’s go.”
Within minutes, he barged into a stream of cars heading out of town. He smiled as Jack grabbed for an armrest, and cars hit the brakes all around them.
His silver Peugeot cut down the middle of the valley leading into the Topcidersko Hills on the outskirts of Belgrade. Just past a narrow stone bridge, he pulled up next to cars that were parked on a sidewalk in front of a large Centroprom supermarket.
The store was known for its delicatessen with imported cheese. With dizzying inflation, people raided the store as soon as their paycheck arrived. By sunrise the next day, they were lucky if their weekly income could purchase more than half a liter of buttermilk. By next week, they could expect another raise.
“There’s our man.” Gerard pulled away from the curb several cars behind Zoran’s speeding red Porsche.
Zoran didn’t slow down for shoppers, who had to jump out of his way. He seemed to expect people to make room for him simply because he drove an expensive machine.
Gerard followed in the human wake. Every time the Porsche overtook a car, Jack braced as Gerard overtook the car as well.
“Won’t Zoran suspect you’re following him?” Jack asked.
“I don’t think so. In this country, outracing fellow drivers is a national pastime.”
The country road led uphill toward a perimeter transit road.
“There’s Mt. Avala,” Gerard pointed to the nearly equilateral triangle above the shoulders of smaller hills. “Radio Television Belgrade beams its signals from there.”
Jack grunted. “Why would he head there?”
“I have no idea. But we’re also approaching an airfield.”
He looked more closely at the two profiles in the sports car. As his agent had indicated, one was clearly a military officer.
Gerard reviewed what had transpired in the past hour. French agents had waited for the young racketeer to pass out of the Grand Hyatt’s lobby. When he finally emerged, he was accompanied by a young woman in an outrageously revealing miniskirt and fishnet stockings. They had hopped into the Porsche, which was parked permanently in a VIP zone.
The Porsche had dropped off the young lady along Francuska Ulica, a shopping district where people still dressed up and glanced condescendingly at shop windows.
“She’s putting on sunglasses,” the agent had reported over his car phone. “She’s opening the car door. She’s jumping into the crowd. My God, what legs.”
“Follow the Porsche, not her,” Gerard had ordered.
The Porsche had led the agents to the gates of Kneza Mihajlova barracks and emerged a minute later with a new passenger.
Now, a hundred meters behind the Porsche, Gerard saw Zoran veer away from the airfield. He took a new road leading to the Danube.
“Forget the airfield. He’s heading for the river.”
“Maybe they’ll take a ferry,” Jack said.
“I doubt it. It’s lunchtime. There are some rather poor riverboats in the stinking backwater of the river by Groska. But my guess is they’re heading for Vino Gradi.”
He was right. The Porsche headed up a steep hill to the Vino Gradi restaurant.
“Care to stop for a meal?” he asked his passenger.
“As long as the wine is good.”
“Oh, the wine!” Gerard jumped out of the car and led the Englishman up to the open-air seating.
From the terrace, they had a pastoral view of a wooded island in the river. Just below them, healthy-looking Smederevo grapes hung from vines that covered the countryside.
Gerard knew the maitre d’ from several previous encounters. The tall, handsome, nameless man in a formal suit and handkerchief in his breast pocket greeted him with an awkward French phrase.
“May we sit under that tree?” Gerard pointed to one of the few available tables near Zoran, who sat with his back to them.
“Of course,” the maitre d’ said. He led them across the flagstone patio and drew up a metal chair for Gerard. There he remained teetering over them.
“Thank you,” Gerard said. The man smiled and left.
With his back to Zoran, Jack removed his suit coat and reached into a pocket. There was a faint click as he engaged a button. Then he set his jacket on the back of his chair, just half a meter from Zoran.
Gerard studied Zoran’s lunch companion. The man had a stiff back and snub nose. Gerard saw the stars on the uniform, but couldn’t identify who the general was.
It didn’t matter. By the end of lunch, Jack would have their entire conversation on tape.
Alec was amused by Scott’s open-bow motorboat.
The fiberglass craft was fully equipped with some of the latest electronic gadgetry direct from the advertisement pages of Popular Boating magazine.
Scott was quite the geek. He could triangulate using radio navigational signals from the coastline. He could determine his position based on navigation signals from orbiting satellites. And it amused Alec even more when Scott reached under his steering wheel, swiveled out a green monitor and turned on a radar device that communicated with a receiver off the port bow.
Scott showed him how he could punch in a destination and the boat would take over the helm, manipulate the throttle and calculate the estimated time of arrival.
“But does it brew coffee?”
“There are machines that–”
“Never mind.”
Alec turned to Terry, who was studying laminated nautical charts of the area. Like three fingers, the Halkidiki Peninsulas jutted south into the Aegean Sea. Mt. Athos was on the eastern-most of those peninsulas, the most geographically, historically and politically isolated of the three.
The only point of contact between the outside world and the independent state within the Greek State was a boat landing, clearly marked on the map. Also marked were foot trails that led up from
the landing. Someone had helpfully labeled and annotated all twenty-three Christian Orthodox monasteries.
“There’s Sveti Anton,” Terry said. “This map shows it as the only Serbian Orthodox monastery.” A cross indicated its location, a mere thirty feet from the shore. However, a topographic line marked the elevation as three hundred feet.
“How do you climb up there?” Alec wondered aloud.
Scott traced a circuitous route up the heights from the boat landing. “You have to pass Greek and Serbian security forces, I’m sure.”
“I doubt they’d let us through,” Alec said. “Will they even let us step ashore?”
“Not without passes.”
Scott turned on the motor and opened up the throttle.
“Passes?”
Scott plowed straight through small upwellings and troughs. The bow rose and the hull flopped against the waves of the bay. Soon, they reached the farthest spit of land.
“What’s the plan, Scott?”
Scott steered into the wind and toward a rocky shoreline. Mt. Athos was the highest point on a lofty ridge that rose straight out of the sea.
Terry shot Alec a worried look. “They don’t allow women, you know.”
“Okay, Scott, what are we doing?” Alec persisted.
Finally, Scott’s face crinkled into a smile. He reached into his pocket and pulled out three tickets.
“Passes,” he said. “Usually given out a year in advance.”
“How did you get them?”
Scott kept the boat aimed firmly at the mountain. “Read the invitation.”
Alec looked at the tickets. “Visit to Mt. Athos at the invitation of Father Jovic.” He frowned. “Who is Father Jovic?”
Scott began passing out coarse brown monk’s robes to the group. “Mick thought that you might remember him. Father Jovic is still in intensive care from a bullet wound he received to the chest at Ravanica Monastery.”
Alec paused, monk’s robe in hand. The priest that Dragana had shot had given him a pass to Mt. Athos.
Terry rushed to Alec’s side and helped ease him onto a seat cushion.
“Are you feeling well?”