by Scott Turow
“So that result goes hand in hand with what I told you in Barupra, that I was detecting topsoil down in the grave? Madame Professor Tchitchikov, our geologist, has confirmed that. So the boil-over, Boom, is that some other person was digging in that site fairly recently. And probably handling these bones.”
“Meaning what?”
“Let me get you to the end of this.”
He motioned and we traveled a few steps to the ballistics lab. Through a window at the back, I could see two guys in white hazmat suits getting ready to discharge shotguns at a car door. Goos, who’d gone to see a technician when we entered, now held an envelope out of which he spilled two objects, one an intact bullet about two inches long, the other a squashed-up fragment with a shining interior. The pretty glow, like polished jewelry, on an object that had been lethal to another human, reminded me of the odd beauty of a slide my mother’s oncologist showed me of her cancer cells.
“First thing I’d take note of,” said Goos, “is that there’s nothing about the presumed bullet wounds we were looking at in the path lab inconsistent with these projectiles. They are the remains of what is sometimes called Yugo M67 ammo, which is characteristically used in the Zastava, a full metal-jacketed, sharp-pointed round, 7.62 by 39 millimeters. This was one of Marshal Tito’s lasting contributions to humanity, creating a bullet for the Kalashnikov-style rifle that opens a bigger wound when it’s destabilized by the body.
“But here’s where our results start to go a little wobbly.” Goos went to a computer and pulled up a series of photographs of each of these pieces, magnified to about four times what the unaided eye could see. The photos showed the lands and grooves on the bullets, which were left by the raised surfaces in the gun barrel intended to impart spin. “First, they can tell from the rifling that these rounds were discharged by two different Zastavas. But it’s the intact bullet”—Goos held up the piece of lead—“that’s problematic. These boys and girls here can’t square any of the bullet wounds we saw on the remains in the path lab with a bullet of this caliber and power being left intact in a body. And it had to be in the body if we’ve recovered it from the grave. If this round struck bone, it would show some compression. And if it passed only through flesh, given where Ferko says the Chetniks were positioned, it had to have exited the bodies and thus wouldn’t be likely to be buried with the remains. Following?”
I was. But Goos and I both knew that every case had its anomalies, things that the experts found inscrutable and which were accounted for by a universal principle: Shit happened. The most famous example in the world of ballistics was the so-called ‘magic bullet’ theory of the JFK assassination, in which a single round seemed to have struck Governor Connally and then deflected to hit President Kennedy in a couple of places. I told Goos that, but he shook his head.
“There’s more, mate. Let’s go look at some fingerprints.”
Among the forensic sciences we’d been discussing, I knew prints the best. I was no expert, but I was conversant with the lingo of ridges and whorls and points of comparison. This lab was less dramatic-looking than some of the places we’d already been—just microscopes, and computers with giant monitors, hooded with black sheet metal to minimize glare. Nonetheless, Goos said, this was one of the most advanced fingerprint labs on the globe. By doing computer analysis of the hundreds of millions of digital prints that had been recorded around the world in the last twenty years, NFI had been able to attach statistical probabilities to ridge patterns, meaning they could say how often a given feature appeared in the human population, just as had long been done with DNA. Because of recent scientific disputes about whether fingerprints were actually unique to each person, the NFI technique seemed destined to become, with time, the new standard. But the old method, in which fumes of superglue were used to bring out print details, was good enough for present purposes.
“They found two good prints, one on each bullet. Troubling part is that it’s from the same digit.”
He waited for me to register the significance. Ballistics had already established that the recovered rounds had been fired by two different weapons. It seemed unlikely that the same person would have loaded both rifles. But that appeared to be the only innocent explanation.
“And here’s the print from the intact round.” After a minute of fiddling, Goos called up the image on the massive computer screen beside him. It was the standard negative image with fuming, but it was rendered in yellow against an indigo background. Goos zoomed the picture so that the place of the print on the bullet was clear. “Notice anything?”
I didn’t. It was a nice full print.
Goos used the back end of his laser pointer. “See here?”
I got it now. The print extended below the casing line. That meant the bullet had been handled after it was fired.
“Maybe kids playing around?”
“Don’t think that works, Boom. Fact is, this gravesite was tampered with. From the DNA contamination, we’re already saying somebody was handling those bones, and given the fingerprints on the bullets and the fact that the intact round doesn’t match the wounds we see in those remains, odds are that these bullets were planted—not just touched by some youngster mucking round. Somebody’s funning with us, Boom. Could be whoever done it took stuff out as well as dropped stuff in. But somebody’s been monkeying with our evidence, Boom. That’s the main point.”
This was not a welcome development.
“Were they trying to mislead us?” I asked.
“Can’t think of another reason to plant bullets, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t one.”
I took all this in silently.
“Next step,” said Goos, “involves Madame Professor Tchitchikov. I’m going to send her a piece of each of the skeletons so she can match the minerals that the bones have absorbed to the soil specimens from the graves. She needs to do the chemistry before she can finish up on-site in Bosnia.”
“What about looking at the Cave?”
“She’ll do that then, too.” Goos, stoical, with his usual watery eyes, stared at me a second. “Enough strange stuff here that you might want to plan to come along.”
I groaned. I hadn’t expected to go back to Bosnia so soon, especially not to get bad news.
17.
A Meeting—April 27–May 10
So we entered another period of waiting, not only for NATO to respond to our document request, but also for Complementarity to renew our credentials with the government of BiH so we could return, along with the French geologist. While our investigation hung fire, I was asked to assume a supervisory role on two other ‘situations’ that were in the last stages of investigation, both likely to lead to charges, one in Sudan, one in Congo. With a slow schedule, I took lunch as the occasion to get to know my colleagues, including a couple of the judges who were curious about me.
At night, several times a week, I spoke to Esma, who seemed to have become submerged in New York, twice putting off her anticipated return to the Continent. Her erotic texts continued to thrill and embarrass me, arriving unpredictably, as I was at my desk comparing witness statements or in meetings with the Complementarity folks about the latest communications with Brussels. At night, before I sleep, I hear the sounds you make, the unwilling little whinny of a groan as you finally succumb to pleasure.
After our first outing, Narawanda was willing to accept me as a running companion. Like me, she seemed to be going through a fallow time at work and we took off together at 5:30 or 6:00 most evenings. After the third or fourth time, I managed to keep up with her, although with considerable strain. I urged her not to let me hold her back, and she denied I was, but I tended to doubt it. She was a beautiful runner, with the bird-boned physique of the best long-distance athletes and a perfect gait in which her arm motion and neck angle were exquisitely synced with her stride for maximum efficiency. I, by contrast, was laboring with each step, but I enjoyed the challenge and was pleased that the vulnerable parts of a middle-aged body, especiall
y my knees and lower back, had no complaints, whatever screaming my muscles did when I rolled out the next morning.
It became our routine, when we were done, to stop for something to eat, since the runs inevitably left me famished. Nara was the type who discovered her appetite only when there was food in front of her, at which point she would often consume more than I did. Generally, we stopped at one of the little cafés near the house, where we could sit outside without offending anyone with sweat still rivering off of us. We usually had a beer each and a large bottle of water, most often at a place that quickly became my favorite, a Netherlandish oddity, a fast-food restaurant serving fresh fish. Behind the glass counters, the huge variety of European catch was a pastel display on ice—anchovies, smoked mackerel, shrimp, mussels, calamari, various fish fillets like dorado, skewers of raw fish, and many styles of herring. A sign outside boasting of NIEUWE HARING had first brought us through the door, since it was a local delicacy Nara insisted I try. The herring, boned and partially gutted, was served with chopped onion, then consumed without silverware, simply by grasping the tail. My father had been a huge fan of herring, although he had never explained it was a Dutch habit, but the taste now brought back my childhood, when the pungent flavors were a challenge. Now, I found I could put down four or five herring at a sitting.
As for my landlady, I enjoyed her company as I got to know her. Nara turned out to be one of those people who was quiet largely because she never had quite figured out the right thing to say. Her remarks were inevitably slightly odd, frequently far more candid than her timid nature would seem to allow.
Her parents were both Indonesian. Her father was an engineer who’d worked for Shell and had risen high enough in the company to get dispatched to the Netherlands, where Nara had been raised. She was an art student in the early stages of her education, but her mother’s side had been caught up in the Indonesian unrest of the mid-’60s, when more than half a million suspected communist sympathizers were murdered by Suharto and the military, with another million imprisoned, including all of her mother’s brothers. Her mother’s grieving accounts of that period had ultimately inspired Nara to switch her studies to law, and to do the master’s degree that led to her employment at the Yugoslav Tribunal. She admitted she’d had an ulterior motive, though, for her graduate studies at NYU.
“I stayed in school so my mother didn’t marry me off,” she said one evening when we were outside at a stainless steel table. Without her heavy black glasses, Nara had a lighter, prettier look. “She was willing to allow me to finish my studies, but I was so glad when I met Lewis, since Mum already had someone in Jakarta picked out for me.”
“And how did your parents react to Lew?”
“Oh, as you might expect in a traditional Javanese family. My mother wrung her hands and said this was what had come of trying to make her children safe by leaving Indonesia. And of course, she was right: I am much more attached to Amsterdam and The Hague than Jakarta, which is really just a place where my grandparents live—and where I would never feel right drinking a beer with dinner.” Nara reached for her glass with a sly ironic smile, lips sealed and cheeks round, that I was seeing more and more often.
On May 3, the Court received a formal response from NATO. They had asked the United States to provide most of the documents we had sought, and the Defense Department, citing the Service-Members’ Protection Act, had refused.
I met with Akemi and Badu several times to discuss our options.
Legally, the American response was unpersuasive. Generally, in conflict-of-laws situations, treaties trump statutes, meaning that the US’s obligations under the North Atlantic treaty were paramount to the Service-Members’ Act. But it wasn’t clear what kind of appetite the NATO leadership had for a confrontation with their American partners.
“Gowen has been talking about a compromise of some kind,” Badu told me, when I reported back after a couple days of legal research.
I wasn’t satisfied with that. Compromise meant that the Americans would turn over documents that weren’t damaging, and only enough of them to give Brussels a way to save face. The Court had no rights of its own within NATO, nor did the Bosnians, in whose name we were acting, because neither of us were NATO members. Our only way to litigate was to bring an action in the International Court of Justice, where countries sue each other, in behalf of the Bosnians. That was bound to take years, and the Americans could be expected to pressure BiH to back out.
After several discussions, the OTP leaders decided I should send a long letter to the NATO countries that were also members of the Court, explaining the fallacies of the American position and the importance of defending principles of international law. Badu agreed to present the document in person to each of those nations’ ambassadors to The Hague. The hope was to bring more diplomatic pressure on the US, although no one seemed especially optimistic that the American position would change.
The second weekend in May, while this was playing out, Nara went off to meet Lew in London, where he’d been dispatched by his NGO for a few days. I thought of traveling there with her, since Esma had hopes of finally returning from New York. She remained uncertain about her plans, then at about 8 p.m. on Friday, Esma called to say that she was on her way to JFK and would come straight to me on a flight that would get her into Schiphol at 6 a.m. Saturday. I promised to meet her.
Our hotel in Leiden proved to be fully booked, as were a couple others I tried. Since Esma would have to return to London late on Sunday, I decided we could risk a stay at my place, which I knew Esma would prefer. I was feeling no less uneasy about the proprieties, but after two weeks apart, I was not expecting to spend much time outside.
Esma, and a porter with a mountain of suitcases, burst through the doors of international arrivals not long after six. She approached me languorously and fell into my arms.
“I have missed you so,” she whispered.
The Dutch, who were either more secure or more fatalistic, still had luggage storage within Schiphol, and Esma was able to drop her bags there. She retained only a small piece of hand luggage.
“Thinking I won’t need much,” she said, with a completely wanton look. As always, I tried to assay my feelings about Esma, since the sight and scent and feel of her remained electrifying. Granted, she was eccentric. But there was still something special going on. Sex at its best is a team sport and Esma and I together were all-stars. Between us, there was a level of trust and engagement and union that exceeded easy understanding.
“What in the world is this litigation in New York?” I asked her when we were on the train to The Hague.
“It’s a divorce proceeding,” she said, “if you must know. The other side is absolutely bonkers. The husband is busily attempting to establish adultery and inhuman treatment rather than consent to a no-fault divorce. It’s a bitter, dreadful case.”
“And what about your client?”
“Very fond of her actually. Iranian family, exiled with the Shah. She married another Persian, thirty years her senior, but they have slowly driven each other quite mad. It’s like watching one of those nature shows on telly, with two animals whose fangs are in each other’s throats, neither willing to let go and be the first to die. I met her in London many years ago, and she insisted I become involved in the case. She will be awarded a huge sum eventually, everyone knows that, but her husband wants her to earn it with pain.”
When we reached the apartment, Esma went through the entire place, including Narawanda’s bedroom, despite my protests about the intrusion.
“Very little sign of her husband in there,” Esma said, descending the stairs. “Only photos of the happy couple are down here, more or less for show, I’d say.”
“That’s the Dutch. Never open about emotions.”
“I thought you said she’s Indonesian.”
“Yes, but raised here, and more Dutch than anything else by now. They seemed to be having quite a good time when he was last here.” I told her about the k
nocking.
“Well, good for them,” said Esma. “We must follow their example.” She took my hand and led me to my bedroom. From her little bag, Esma produced a U-shaped object, purple and about three inches long. It was latex, and heavier than I expected when I touched it. I raised a questioning eyebrow.
“Have I disappointed you yet?” Esma asked, with a hooded look.
I had never had complaints about my sex life with Ellen. It might have been a little lackluster, but for a couple in their fifties we seemed to be doing far better than many friends who made allusions to fornication as an activity of the past like recreational drugs and singles tennis. After we separated, it had not taken much cruising on the Internet to figure out there was a lot I had not experienced. Some of it had no appeal; in other cases, I was curious about what so many people found fulfilling. But my explorations had advanced by several orders of magnitude after meeting Esma.
We lived Saturday in reverse. After we had amused ourselves at length, Esma fell into a drowse. She mumbled a bit and then disappeared into sleep mid-sentence. I had gotten up at 4:30 a.m. in order to collect her and napped myself, but I was awake again by 11 a.m. and crept down with my laptop to the living room, where I worked for a couple of hours, until Esma peeked cutely around the entrance. I brewed her coffee, then we made love on the sofa, despite my concern about spotting the furniture.
Afterward, I ran out to my fish place for food and bought a couple bottles of white wine on the way back. As we lay upstairs again later that night, Esma asked about the investigation. I told her that we had gotten some lab reports back from our trip to Bosnia.
“Any issues?” she asked.
I waved that off with an ambiguous gesture that did not connote any real worry.