by Scott Turow
“And what did you do next?”
“What could I do? I was terrified and I had my son. I hid with him under a tarp in case the soldiers came back. Half an hour perhaps I waited. It was suddenly so still. Every now and then there was the sound of wind. Under the tarp, I could feel the dust still settling out of the sky.”
“Now after that half an hour, what did you do?”
“I told my son to remain under the plastic. Then I ran down into the valley.”
“Did you go to the Cave?”
“Of course. But it was gone. The hill above it had tumbled down. The Cave was almost completely filled in and rocks now blocked the road.”
“And what did you do then?”
“What could I do?” He shook his head miserably. He was weeping now, in spite of himself. He wiped his nose and eyes against his sleeve. “I called my woman’s name and my children’s names. I called for my brother and his children. I called and called and scrambled over the rocks, climbing and calling and pulling at the rocks. God himself only knows how long. But there was no point. I knew there was no point. I could claw at the rock the rest of my life and get no closer. I knew the truth.”
“And what truth was that, sir?”
“They were dead. My woman. My children. All the People. They were dead. Buried alive. All four hundred of them.”
Although virtually everyone in the courtroom—the judges, the rows of prosecutors, the court personnel, the spectators behind the glass, and the few reporters with them—although almost all of us knew what the answer to that question was going to be, there was nonetheless a terrible drama to hearing the facts spoken aloud. Silence enshrouded the room as if a warning finger had been raised, and all of us, every person, seemed to sink into ourselves, into the crater of fear and loneliness where the face of evil inevitably casts us.
So here you are, I thought suddenly, as the moment lingered. Now you are here.
I.
The Hague
1.
Reset—8 January 2015
At the age of fifty, I had decided to start my life again. That was far from a conscious plan, but in the next four years, I left my home, my marriage, my job, and finally my country.
These choices were greeted with alarm or ridicule by virtually everyone close to me. My sister thought I was still recovering from the deaths in quick succession of our parents. My law partners believed I had never adjusted to life outside the spotlight. My ex dismissed it all as an extended form of middle-aged madness. And my sons were alternately flabbergasted and enraged that their stolid father had become as flighty as a teenager just when they seemed to have found their own footing as adults. I ignored them all, because my life had crashed against the rock of a large truth. For all of my success, in looking back I couldn’t identify a moment when, at core, I had felt fully at home with myself.
My exile to Holland and the International Criminal Court was not a guaranteed solution, but it was the proverbial door that opened as another one closed. What had actually appeared in my doorway was my law school friend, Roger Clewey.
“Boom!” he screamed and, on his way to seize my hand, picked a path among the open cardboard boxes that blocked most of the floor in my corner office. For three days now, I had been sitting with a trash can between my legs, largely stalled in my efforts to move out. Effective January 1, 2015, I had resigned as a partner at DeWitt Royster, where I had worked for the last fourteen years, heading the firm’s white-collar criminal defense practice. Someone with a more ruthless nature could have packed up in a matter of hours, but I found myself lingering over virtually everything I touched—law books, desktop tchotchkes, photos of my sons at various ages, and dozens of plaques and pen sets and hunks of crystal I’d been awarded during my four-year stint, a decade and a half back, as United States Attorney, the chief federal prosecutor here in Kindle County. Walloped by emotion and the force of time, I’d return from my memories to find myself staring down forty floors at the snowy patchwork of the Tri-Cities and the thread of gray that was the River Kindle, frozen over in yet another lousy winter in our new climate of greenhouse extremes.
“They say you’ve cashed out here,” Roger said.
“Retired before they threw me out is more the truth of it.”
“Not their version. Your sons okay?”
“From what they tell me. Pete’s engaged now.”
“You expected that,” Roger said, correctly. “What’s with your personal life?” he asked. “Still enjoying the post-divorce fuckfest?”
“I think I’m past it,” I answered, a more convenient reply than telling him I had never quite gotten started.
Roger and I had met at Easton Law School more than thirty years ago. From there, Rog had entered the Foreign Service, acting as the legal officer attached to several embassies. For a while I thought I knew what he was doing. Then his assignments in various hotspots, like the Balkans, Afghanistan, and Iraq, left him with duties he could never discuss. Over time, I’d taken it for granted that he was a spook, although I was never sure which agency he worked for. Recently, his story was that he was back at the State Department, although if you’d been using a diplomatic cover, I’m not sure you could ever renounce it. He had the habit of turning up in Kindle County with little warning and an uncanny ability to know when I was in town, which I eventually realized might have been more than good luck.
“And what happens now?” he asked.
“God knows. I think I’m going to give myself a year of summer, follow the sun around the world. Swim and hike, work out every day, look up old buds, dine al fresco at sunset, then spend the evening reading everything I’ve always meant to.”
“Alone?”
“To start. Maybe I’ll meet someone along the way. I’m sure the boys will take a couple of trips, if the destination is neat enough. And I pay.”
“Want to know what I think?”
“You’re going to tell me anyway.”
“You’ll be bored and lonely in a month, a sour gloomy Dutchman wondering what the fuck he did.”
I shrugged. I was pretty sure it was going to be better than that.
“Besides,” said Roger, “there’s a terrific opportunity for you. Any chance you’ve spoken to Olivier in the last couple of hours?”
Olivier Cayat was another law school classmate. He had been far closer with Roger back then, but about ten years ago he had come down to Kindle County from Montreal to join me in the defense of a Canadian executive who’d shown striking imagination in the ways he’d pilfered his corporation’s treasury. We’d lost the trial but become far better friends. More recently, Olivier had gone off on a midlife frolic of his own to the Netherlands, where he’d consistently reported himself to be quite happy.
Roger said, “Olivier claims you’ve been ignoring his messages for a week.”
At year-end, I’d created automated replies on the firm’s voice and e-mail systems explaining that I’d resigned effective January 1 and would no longer be checking in regularly, which, at least for the first week, meant I had not checked at all. I thought it was better to go cold turkey. Nonetheless, with Roger watching, I turned to the computer behind me and poked at the keyboard until I’d located the first of what proved to be four e-mails from Olivier starting New Year’s Day.
“Mon ami,” it read, “please call. I have something to discuss that might excite you.”
I revolved again toward Roger.
“And remind me, Rog. Where the hell is Olivier working in Holland?”
“The International Criminal Court in The Hague. It’s a permanent war crimes tribunal. He’s one of the top prosecutors there, but Hélène wants him home.” Roger allowed himself a meaningful pause and then added, “Olivier thinks you’re the right guy to replace him.”
After a pause of my own, I asked, “So your big idea for me is to go back to being a prosecutor?” I had been chosen as United States Attorney in Kindle County by pure fortuity in 1997, largely so our senior senator, w
ho made the recommendation to the White House, didn’t have to pick between two other candidates, both political heavyweights who hated each other’s guts. By then I’d been a prosecutor in the office for close to twelve years, including two as first assistant, the top deputy. Yet at thirty-seven, I was a decade too young for the responsibility and had to quell my terror of messing up every morning for months. With time, I came to feel I had the greatest job possible for a trial lawyer—electric, challenging, and consequential. Nevertheless, I told Roger I had no interest in moving backward. That Greek philosopher had it right when he said you couldn’t step in the same stream twice.
“No, no,” he said. “This would be different. They prosecute mass atrocities. Genocide. Ethnic cleansing. Mutilation, rape, and torture as instruments of war. That kind of stuff.”
“Rog, I don’t know a damn thing about cases like that.”
“Oh, bullshit. It’s all witnesses and documents and forensics, just on a larger scale. The crimes are horrible. But evidence is evidence.”
He’d moved a box and plunked himself down in an armchair, going at me as comfortably as he had for thirty years. These days his trousers were pushed below his belly, and his hair was a curly white horseshoe with a couple of those embarrassing untrimmed wires sticking straight out of his glossy scalp. He had taken on that middle-aged WASP thing of looking like he’d worn the same suit every day for the last twenty years, as if it were plebeian to care much about his appearance. His shoes, sturdy and expensive when purchased, had not been polished since then. And I doubted he owned more than two or three ties. It was just a uniform he donned each morning. He played for a team whose stars were nondescript.
“And Rog, why is it you’re in my office carrying Olivier’s water? Do you have a professional interest in this of your own?”
“Some,” he said. “There’s a case over there that the government of the United States would hate to see end up in the wrong hands.”
“What kind of case?”
“Do you know where Bosnia is?” he asked.
“East of anyplace I’ve been.”
“In 2004, there was a refugee camp outside of Tuzla. All Romas.”
“Gypsies?”
“If we’re not being PC.”
“Okay. Some Gypsies,” I said.
“Four hundred. All murdered.”
“At once?”
“So they say.”
“By?”
Roger drew back. “Well, that’s where things get opaque.”
“Okay. And 2004—is the Bosnian War over by now?”
“Oh yeah. For years. The Dayton Accords ended the war in 1995. Nine years later, the Serbs and the Croats and the Bosniaks, meaning the Muslims, have pretty much stopped killing each other. And NATO is there enforcing the agreement, which amounts to rounding up tons of weapons and chasing down the war criminals wanted for trial in The Hague. The NATO force includes about eighteen hundred US troops in a ring of camps near Tuzla.”
“I.e., close to the Gypsies.”
“Very close. Couple miles.”
“And why would a bunch of American kids, who are there to keep the peace, want to kill four hundred Gypsies?”
“They didn’t. Stake my life on it.”
“Who did?”
“You know, to take down four hundred people at once, that’s some serious firepower. So it’s not a long list of other suspects. Serb paramilitaries are most likely. Maybe rogue cops. Maybe organized crime. A lot of that back then. And some leftover jihadis, too, who’d shown up in Bosnia originally to defend the Bosnian Muslims from the Serbs.”
“Well, it doesn’t sound like the American military has much to worry about.”
“Not so fast. Now we enter the realm of diplomacy and politics.”
I groaned reflexively. Politics and prosecution never mixed well.
“The ICC,” said Roger, “was established by a treaty negotiated by most of the UN member states, including the US. Clinton signed it in 2000, but the Bushies hated the whole idea, especially Dick Cheney, who supposedly was afraid he’d get prosecuted for authorizing waterboarding. So Bush announced in 2002 that he’s unsigning the ICC treaty.”
“Can you do that? Unsign?”
“Do you think that mattered? Instead, the Republicans, who controlled Congress, passed something called the American Service-Members’ Protection Act, which basically says if you try to put our troops on trial, we’ll invade your fucking country and take them home.”
“Literally?”
“I don’t think they used the word ‘fucking.’ Otherwise, that’s a reasonably accurate legislative summary. In Western Europe, they call it ‘The Hague Invasion Act.’”
“So you’re saying that if the ICC charges American troops, we’re going to war with the Netherlands?”
“Let’s just say it risks creating very serious rifts with our closest allies. The mere thought gives angina to whole floors in the Departments of State and Defense.”
“Is that why the case is still hanging around after eleven years? Because people like you have been trying to obstruct it?”
“First, for the record,” said Roger, with a coquettish grin, “I object to the word ‘obstruct.’ We have simply expressed our point of view to various authorities. And a lot of the delay had nothing to do with us. Even the Roma organizations didn’t start investigating for several years, because the only survivor was hiding under his bed, trying to shovel the poop out of his trousers. And frankly, if you ask me, I haven’t been able to obstruct the damn thing well enough. Several weeks ago, the prosecutor’s office at the ICC applied to the Court to open a formal investigation, largely because the flipping Roma activists keep screaming, How can four hundred people get massacred and nobody even looks into it?”
“Sorry, Rog, but that sounds like a pretty good question.”
Roger tipped a shoulder. He didn’t really disagree. On the other hand, he had a job to do.
“And what do we mean by ‘Roma activists’?” I asked.
“How much do you know about the Roma?” he asked.
I let my eyes rise to the fluorescent panels in my office ceiling and concluded that an honest answer was, “Next to nothing.”
“Well, it’s not the kind of contest anybody wants to win, but even taking account of the genocides of the Armenians and the Kurds and of course the Jews, there may not have been another group of white people on earth who have had the shit kicked out of them more consistently for the last millennium than the Roma.” Roger hunkered forward and lowered his voice. “Basically, they’ve been the niggers of Europe.” He meant that was how they’d been treated. “They were slaves in Romania for four hundred years. Did you know that?”
“The Gypsies?”
“It never stops with them. Hitler tried to wipe them out. Ninety thousand fled Kosovo. And Sarkozy just booted a couple thousand out of France a few years back. Everybody from Athens to Oslo hates their guts.”
“They’re thieves, right?”
“You mean every single one of them?”
“No, just enough to get them hated.”
“Enough for that. Pickpockets, scam artists, credit card fraudsters, child gangs, car thieves, phony beggars. The Gypsy caravan rolls through town and a lot of crap disappears. That’s the old story. On the other hand, they can barely get jobs or go to school, so I don’t know what else is gonna happen.”
“Okay,” I said, “so now I feel sorry for the Gypsies, but I still don’t see a starring role in this drama for me.”
“I’m getting there,” he answered. “The ICC is ambivalent about the USA. They hate us for not joining. But they need us in the long run. An operation like theirs is never going to be on solid ground without the support of the most powerful nation on earth. So they’d rather not piss us off irreparably. Which means there’s been a lot of back-channel stuff.”
“And ‘back channel’ means Olivier and you?”
“It means we’ve been the messenger boys be
tween our bosses. But after weeks of discussion, everyone seems to believe that the best option would be if the ICC investigation was led by a senior American prosecutor.”
“Sort of a special prosecutor?”
“Sort of. But no formal title like that. It has to be the right person. Not a patsy. Somebody they respect and we respect. For us, that means a quality guy whose reputation is bulletproof when some yahoo in Congress wants to foment a world crisis just because there’s an inquiry occurring at the ICC.”
“And that’s me?” I said, with genuine incredulity. “The man with built-in body armor?”
“You still have a lot of fans on both sides of the aisle in DC, Boom.”
That was an exaggeration for the sake of flattery. I’d gotten along well with the Attorney General during her prior stint as deputy AG and also had a college friend who was now a Republican senator from Kentucky.
“Rog, have I read about this case?”
“Not really. The major papers haven’t tumbled to it. Couple items in the blogosphere. The Roma advocates, they’ve tried to gin something up, but the massacre is old news, and so far you can’t name a bad guy, so it doesn’t make good copy. All fine with us.”
“And how long will this investigation last?”
He tossed up a hand to show he couldn’t say, but acknowledged that such matters often moved slowly.
“But because of that,” he said, “cases over there are like buses. People get on and off. Whenever you’re fed up, you can leave.”
I laid a finger across my lips to think.
“Wait,” Roger said. “I haven’t even sold the Dutch part. I thought you’d love the whole Roots thing. You’ve never spent any real time in the Netherlands, right?”
“No,” I said, “my folks never wanted to go back.” I had yet to tell Roger the larger, more complicated story of my heritage. Now, however, was not the moment.
Instead, I sat back in my big leather desk chair, doing my best to be lawyerly, calculating all the angles and scrutinizing Roger. The competitive side of our relationship meant he’d never fully reveal what he was up to. But as a friend of decades, he knew I’d find the job intriguing. Even after I’d announced my retirement here, I’d sensed I was not done with the law. I didn’t think practice mixed well with capitalism, but I still liked what lawyers did and was immediately attracted to the idea of plying a trade I knew overseas.