Testimony

by Scott Turow

  When I was US Attorney, we engineered a number of big busts, dozens of federal agents in SWAT gear taking down drug kingpins and gang leaders. But we learned the hard way to be cautious with the Kindle County Unified Police Force. There was never any telling which cops were jumped in to the gangs or on a dealer’s pad. So our first call to the Force for backup wasn’t made until the battering ram was about to hit the door. Special Forces had to be even more circumspect than we were. Whatever they were obliged to tell the Bosnian Army or the local police would have been passed on far too late to allow Kajevic to set up the elaborate trap that had greeted the American soldiers.

  “He had to have known earlier than that, General.”

  “I take the point, Boom,” said Merriwell. “But if that’s true, we never established how that happened.”

  “So what you’re saying, Merry, is that you know of no reason that Army elements were furious with the Roma?”

  “On what basis do you think they were?”

  “On the basis of a dozen photos you just showed me of those people being rounded up and driven to their deaths.”

  Merriwell pouched up his thin mouth and his face went dark with irritation. It was the closest to angry I’d seen him, although I couldn’t tell if he was put out with my persistence, or with himself for not incorporating the implications of the evidence he’d turned over. He also might have been peeved by other thoughts he couldn’t share. After a second, he offered another determined toss of his head.

  “Boom, I’ve done what I can to allow you to investigate this matter without interference. As you’ve told me before, that’s your job. So I haven’t asked anyone who served under me to explain these materials. But I will never stop believing in the men and women I commanded.”

  I could see that we’d need the testimony of one of his soldiers before Merriwell accepted that there was an American role in the massacre. Until then, as he’d just acknowledged, he’d assume there were innocent explanations. We had reached the airport anyway.

  I was flying from a different terminal than Merry, and the car dropped me first. The general rose from the limo to wish me well, fixing the center button on his suit coat while he stood on the pavement. Overall, I was impressed by how much stronger he seemed, more fit, and even, if it was possible, straighter. Despite his clear unhappiness as we were going over the NATO records, he otherwise seemed buoyed by a self-confidence that had been absent when I had first visited with him, although I wasn’t sure I liked him as much without that sad contemplative air.

  I told him again how good he seemed.

  “Oh yes,” he said. “Life is far better, even if a bit more complicated, but I have you to thank for the improvements, I believe. Your advice hit home.”

  “Just timing. I didn’t say anything new.”

  “And you?” he asked. “Roger seems to think you fell under the spell of the compelling Ms. Czarni.”

  There was no point denying it.

  “Well, Merry, I’ve learned how deeply a man can long to do something completely stupid.” I decided there was no polite way to tell him how often he’d crossed my mind in the process. “It’s over now.”

  He studied me, squinting in the spring sun.

  “I suppose, Boom, if it’s something you will still remember in your waning days, then it might not have been stupid at all.” Merriwell looked at his watch. “To be continued,” he said, and slid back into the car.

  Merry’s last remark stayed with me as I entered the terminal. His personal observations had far more power for me than our back-and-forth about business. After clearing security, I called Esma’s New York cell and she picked up on the third ring. I told her that I would be going between airports and could hopscotch through Manhattan and meet for coffee around 1:30.

  “I’m in court but I could beg for an early recess,” she said. “It’s golf season, so this judge is always happy for an afternoon off.” She said she was staying at the Carlyle.

  “Is there a coffee shop near there?”

  “Oh, Boom. Don’t be pedantic. You’re not going to leave me weeping in a Starbucks, are you?”

  She told me to ask for ‘the Jahanbani apartment’ when I arrived.

  No part of America ever seemed as impressively rich to me as the Upper East Side, because the fury of so much of Manhattan is subdued there, almost as if there were border guards posted somewhere in the Sixties, checking tax returns before anyone was admitted. The doorman at the Carlyle directed me to a separate entrance, where the receptionist called up to announce me.

  Esma opened the door and fell on me. I turned my face away, but she still held me for quite some time. She was in her courtroom apparel, deliberately subdued, a loose royal-blue jumper without much of a waist. Her makeup was minimal and her bosk of hair had been tamed in a bun, giving her a schoolmarmish appearance. But the modest look was becoming.

  Predictably, I found Esma residing in glamour in a two-bedroom apartment furnished with Francophile elegance. There were antiques in the style of Boulle with gilded decorations on rich woods, a gray velvet sofa with rolled arms, and windows a story and a half high with orange drapes. The artwork was nineteenth-century etchings and watercolors.

  “Nice digs,” I remarked.

  “Ah yes,” said Esma. “What lawyer doesn’t love rich clients? Madame Jahanbani is allowing me to stay here during the trial.”

  She offered wine, and I settled for a glass of water from the tap as Esma sat a safe distance from me on the other side of the velvet sofa. She asked where I had been and I explained only that I’d been back in Kindle County to visit.

  “Staying again with your ex-wife?” Her eyes were sharp.

  “And her husband.”

  “Ah, Bill. What you don’t see.”

  Esma arranged herself a bit and folded her hands primly in her lap and rolled her lips into her mouth, preparing for launch.

  “Where do I begin?” she said then. “I made a mistake, a terrible mistake. I assumed you would be pleased. That was a ridiculous misjudgment on my part, I admit that freely. I promise you, swear to you with my entire heart, that nothing like it will ever occur again. But to end our relationship over this is an even bigger mistake, Bill. I truly feel that way. We have an exceptional connection.”

  “Esma, I feel ill-used. I couldn’t have been clearer. You were acting for the Roma cause. Not for my sake.”

  “Not at all.” Her entire upper body quivered in disagreement. “Not at all.”

  “Esma, this is exactly what I was afraid of from the start. That the roles would become confused.”

  She sat calculating.

  “So what is your theory, Bill? That I was using you to get information which I would then deploy to further the Roma cause, as you put it?”

  “That’s a little coarser than I would have it.”

  “But still a grain of truth?”

  “A grain.”

  “And what does that make me, Bill, if I was sleeping with you for that reason?”

  “Mati Hari?”

  “‘A whore,’ is what I’d say, Bill. Free-spirited I have no doubt been. But my body has never been available for a price. It’s insulting that you would think that were possible.”

  “Don’t try to turn the tables on me, Esma, and make yourself the injured party. You betrayed my trust.”

  “Yes of course.” She nodded eagerly, virtually bouncing up and down on the sofa. “I understand why you feel that way. And I have explained. But we are in touch, Bill, in a vital way, you and I. A deep way. You don’t have to call it love, although on my side, I believe that may be the word. But please don’t turn from this because I made a foolish error.”

  As she’d expected, in Esma’s presence I felt her full force, not just the deep sensual appeal but that fierce intelligence that was so deeply engaging to me. In her company, I’d always felt like life was being lived at a faster speed.

  “Esma, when I read that newspaper, I realized what I’d known all along�
��that I was an idiot. Even if I accept your word that there will be no further ‘mistakes,’ as you put it, that the words ‘Barupra’ and ‘Ferko’ will never be uttered between us again, the appearances remain. They compromise me at the Court. I have dodged a bullet somehow, but I’m not going to chance it again. We must end this.”

  She stopped and looked at her hands and again drew her lips into her mouth for a second, then glanced up trying to be brave.

  “You are resolved.”

  “I am.”

  She edged closer and reached for my hand.

  “Then come to bed with me, please, one last time.”

  I took a second. “To what end?”

  “To make one more remarkable memory. Or are you saying you wouldn’t enjoy it?”

  “You know better.”

  “Then come.” Still holding my hand, she stood. “Haven’t you ever heard of a farewell fuck, Bill? Come fuck me farewell. Come on. And do a good job of it, please.”

  With the terms so clearly established, there seemed no reason to say no. It was the price she was asking—and yes I’d heard of such things. The bedrooms were up a spiral staircase. The one she was occupying contained a platform bed, and to my amazement, a mirror on the ceiling. Even when I was on top, it left me feeling that we were being watched, and as ever with Esma, I found a way to enjoy that.

  If she thought I would feel sharper regrets, recognizing what I was losing, she was right about that, too. Even if this was not our greatest moment together, it was close enough, and the memories of the others were so much at hand that at the height of things I even thought briefly, You’re insane, this is realer than anything else, this is. But it became one of many great truths that dissolved within moments of reaching climax.

  Afterward, Esma napped. I rose and dressed. In the living room I drank down the rest of my water. Across the way, in the rosewood breakfront, in the intensity of the halogens over the glass shelves, dozens of netsuke, the little Japanese ivories Esma collected, reposed. I admired the intricacy of the detail on several. Then I found a pad in my briefcase and scribbled a note.

  Sorry to run off, but rush hour can be such a mess, and probably better this way anyhow. Will miss you. Truly. Bill.

  I couldn’t mark the precise start of my relationship with Esma. The intensity had been unrivaled, but the duration was not. Since my divorce, whenever I’d known a woman about two months, Bermuda Triangle forces seemed to exert themselves.

  In the elevator down, I thought again about what a remarkable person she was. Then my heart stalled as my mind stumbled over certain details. The mirrored ceiling seemed a bit much for a respectable lady still in the midst of a divorce, and I was also suddenly struck by the collection of little ivories. Who, no matter how eccentric, transports thousands of dollars of antiquities to a temporary residence? Let alone for only a month or two?

  This, the place I’d left, was Esma’s home. It had to be. But by the time the doors opened into the hushed lobby, I had turned all of that over again. My suspicions made no sense—why bother claiming I was in somebody else’s house? I realized instead that my brief unwillingness to take her word was symptomatic of how deeply ingrained my distrust for her had become. It was just as likely that the client, Madame Jahanbani, had stimulated Esma’s interest in building a collection of netsuke of her own.

  I stood a second longer studying the patterns in the marble floor and absorbing my overriding response to all of this. Esma would always be a person of enigmas. What was striking to me now was the conviction in my core that I no longer cared about figuring her out.

  20.

  Buried Again—June 2

  I flew to Vienna and made an early morning connection to Tuzla, landing at the site of the former Camp Comanche. I was expecting Attila, but she’d sent one of her drivers instead, who had me back in Barupra around 10:30 a.m. Spring had arrived since our last visit. Up here on the rock it was gusty, but the sun was bright and there were shirtsleeve temperatures, the low 70s, which I was already starting to think of as 20 Celsius. Goos was up top to greet me, but he pointed below to the old mine where the French geologist was already at work.

  From her name, I had expected Madame Professor Sofia Tchitchikov to be shaped like a refrigerator and sporting a tweed jacket over an estimable bosom. But the woman who was scrambling over the former site of the Cave was an athletic fortysomething with brass curls, dressed in baby-blue zippered coveralls. She waved as she saw me hiking down the mine road beside Goos.

  “Halloo,” she yodeled and hopped over the hillside of loose rocks as nimbly as a kid. As soon as I had shaken her hand, she took several pebbles out of a front pocket to show me her initial discovery, the black edging on each of the brown stones.

  “Gunpowder?” I asked.

  Her English was far better than my French, but with Goos there to translate, she stuck to her native tongue.

  “Maybe,” Goos said. “Certainly burn marks. She’s found dozens of such stones with a little excavation, most of them at a radius of three hundred meters.”

  “Suggesting an explosion?”

  She nodded. Goos said that the ballistics folks at NFI would tell us for sure, and could probably also determine whether there was an explosive agent adhering to the stones. If so, they might even be able to identify the device that had detonated. None of us had any idea whether the gunpowder in US hand grenades was distinguishable from Yugoslav.

  “What Sofia can say is that the explosion is not recent,” said Goos. “Most of these fragments were several millimeters below the current surface material. This is a windy place up here. So nothing stays on top for much time.”

  “Any way to tell how long ago the blast occurred?”

  The professor and Goos had a long back-and-forth in French. Rocks lasted a lot longer than humans, and geologic time was therefore measured in eons, not years. She could say only that the burn marks on the debris were less than a century old, although the lack of wear suggested a much shorter period.

  Madame Tchitchikov moved to the side then to show me the fall line of the hill. Goos translated, although he seemed to understand little more than I of the real meaning of what he was repeating.

  “Lignite—the soft coal—is what she calls ‘a tertiary rock,’ which because of its softness normally lies at five to ten degrees to an incline. The Cave was formed for just that reason, because the coal sank below the Cretaceous rock that surrounded it. But the incline here, composed mostly of exploded lignite, is angled at thirty degrees, meaning that what we are seeing is not a natural formation.”

  As Goos spoke, Madame Tchitchikov did an accompanying pantomime, rushing her hands through the air to illustrate the explosion and the various angles of repose, which, in her demonstration, involved laying her head on her hands like a sleeping child. Her enthusiasm was charming.

  The professor had brought two graduate students with her. Before she was ready to visit the gravesite, she wanted them to assist her with photographs and various measurements, employing portable surveyors’ instruments, both a transit and a compass. While they were busying themselves, Goos and I walked back to the top.

  In the rear seat of Goos’s rental car, I showed him the papers Merry had turned over. The photographs, especially those from the air, naturally drew Goos’s attention. On the flight here, I’d gone over the index card–type records from the base infirmary and had found that two soldiers had sought medical attention the next day, one for a human bite, the second for a “poss maxillary fracture due to rifle butt.” Their names and service numbers had been blacked out, but not their unit: Both were assigned to the 205th Intelligence Brigade, Charlie Company, Second Platoon, the unit in which each member had been on leave on April 28, 2004.

  “What did the general say to all this?”

  “He was basically in denial. You’ve seen it before, Goos. He’d call himself an agnostic, so he didn’t look like an idiot, but if the moment came, he’d want last rites. He believes in his troops.�
�

  Goos considered that, a hand scratching away at his bearded chin.

  “Could be he knows more than he’s told you,” Goos said.

  “I’m sure he does. On many topics. But he seemed flabbergasted by the pictures.”

  “Must say,” said Goos, “I’m very surprised he handed these materials over. I’d have thought once they got a look, they’d’ve just told us to bugger off.”

  “I assume, Goos, they agreed to produce the records before they knew what they showed. Don’t forget a lot of this was in Brussels.”

  After another half hour, the professor and her students were ready to move up to the grave. Since Goos had exhumed the remains last month, the local police had stood guard over the site, and there was a single officer on watch today. Goos had driven steel stakes into the ground to hold down heavy plastic sheeting across the opening, and the police had surrounded that with yellow tape. The first thing the professor asked was to remove all of it.

  Once that was done, she got down on her belly and hung her head over the edge of the trench. After putting on a plastic glove, she scooped up some of the soil and let it run through her fingers. Then she probed the wall of the opening with a pencil point.

  Still lying there, Professor Tchitchikov gave her head a decisive shake and said to Goos, “Ce n’est pas authentique.”

  I spoke enough French to understand that. “What the hell?” I said to Goos, but he held up a hand to listen to her. He nodded for quite some time before again giving me his attention.

  “So here is what our Sofia says. Normally, exhuming a grave more than a decade old, you expect stratifications in the soil. But what I found here and sent to her for analysis was a mixture of subsoil and surface soil that made her think the grave had been dug—or dug up—more recently.”

  “You got that right, Goos.”