Testimony
Page 29
Through the megaphone, Colonel Ruehl spoke in Serbo-Croatian, reading from a paper in his hand. Goos whispered the translation:
“Laza Kajevic, surrender at once. You are under arrest pursuant to the warrant of the United Nations and the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague.” The words echoed off the small buildings of the square. A few residents, initially drawn by the commotion, scattered at the sight of the automatic rifles, retreating indoors. I could hear some of them screaming.
The monk with the cell phone lost his high round hat. He groped under the rassa and suddenly swung up his AK. It was no more than a quarter of the way to horizontal when two separate bursts of automatic fire struck him. The monk flew backward, almost as if hit by a grenade, spattering blood over Kajevic beside him. The other bodyguard raised both his hands and fell to his knees.
In the process of covering up from the gunfire, Kajevic had also dropped his clerical hat. Now he feigned incomprehension, as if he didn’t understand the language or perhaps had been mistaken for someone else. But there was no doubt it was he. The infamous hairdo had been shorn to a moderate length and had gone white, or been dyed that color. The untamed beard was real and covered his whole face, including furry patches on his cheeks. He wore heavy black glasses and he was a great deal fatter than in his sleek days of vitriol and menace. But it was Kajevic, with the same wild eyes, and he was clever enough to know he was wanted alive. He ran.
He scampered wide around the armored BDX and dodged between the soldiers on their bellies, who, as he’d expected, hesitated to shoot. Nor could anybody get a hand on him, despite two of the troops’ diving efforts. As Kajevic sprinted, he reached into the left pocket of his rassa and produced a Glock pistol, which he held beside his ear, dashing straight toward us in the SUV. Ruehl stood up and yelled to him to stop and Kajevic answered by shooting once at Colonel Ruehl, who screamed out. The driver sank instinctively beside the colonel to attend to him. I had the crazy thought that Kajevic was going to stop to shoot Goos and me, too, but he knew this was his one chance to escape and he was at top speed, clearly headed for the black car that was barreling down from the monastery.
As Kajevic galloped toward us, I ducked in the floor well behind the front seat. I felt Goos lean back against me. Scared stiff, I assumed he was seeking cover, but what he wanted was leverage. As Kajevic drew abreast, running for his life, Goos suddenly kicked open the back door on his side. It caught Kajevic full force. His face smashed against the window and he reeled backward and lost his footing.
The door recoiled but Goos caught it and sprang from the SUV.
I screamed “Goos!” but followed him out. He had thrown himself on top of Kajevic. With his right hand, Goos had Kajevic by the hair, beating his head against the road, while his left hand was on Kajevic’s wrist, holding down the Glock. Kajevic gripped it by the stock, apparently intending to use it as a bludgeon. Frightened by the weapon, I had no choice but to stomp Kajevic’s gun hand, and then grabbed the pistol by the barrel, forcing his wrist back until he released the sidearm. Just as it came free, half a dozen soldiers fell upon us, easing both Goos and me away. They wrestled Kajevic’s hands behind him, zip-tied him, and then picked up the former president by his arms and legs as if he were trussed livestock. Holding him aloft, they ran Kajevic in a bundle up to the truck. The soldiers counted to three in German and tossed Laza Kajevic into the rear like a duffel bag. Several more troops clambered up beside him.
Almost simultaneously, the cop who’d led us from Vo Selo arrived with his siren blaring. He skidded to a stop near the SUV. He was a brave man, clearly angry now, and he sprinted from his car. In the middle of the street, he braced to shooting position with both hands on his pistol, screaming instructions as he confronted a squad of soldiers in battle gear. The armored vehicle had already spun around to pursue Kajevic. It rolled about thirty yards, until it was between the officer and the SUV, at which point the artillery piece on top of the BDX suddenly spat fire, riddling the police car with high-caliber ammunition. The auto jumped around like a bug. Its tires flattened while its windshield disappeared in a downpour of glass. The cop face-planted in the ground again.
A couple of hundred yards behind him, the black sedan, which I’d lost track of, was suddenly facing the BDX’s gun. The car had screeched to a stop at the foot of the road up to the monastery, but once the police car was destroyed by gunfire, the sedan slammed into reverse and backed up the hill at top speed without ever turning around.
There was a second of quiet in which I rolled toward Goos, but from across the town square, another police car raced in, with its light bar and siren at work. The vehicle skidded up dust, coming to a halt between the 4x4 and the SUV. The fat cop and the wiry cop we’d first met eight days ago got out shouting, both with shotguns in hand. The fat one was red-faced, spitting as he screamed.
Once Kajevic had been taken, Goos and I had viewed the whirl of activity while sitting in the road beside the SUV, almost as if we were in stadium seats. Now I sprang up so the soldiers could see me, yelling out as I pointed, “Those are the ones who kidnapped us!” Goos immediately grabbed me by the belt and dragged me to the ground before either of the cops could make out my location, even though the wiry one had looked like he might have recognized my voice.
He wheeled toward the SUV with his shotgun raised, only to find the armored vehicle now rolling toward him, as the gun turret revolved in his direction. The fat one yelled something and the two cops scampered back into the police car, squealing the tires as the vehicle tore off through the square, its siren still bleating. One of the supposed backpackers ran behind it, snapping pictures of the license plate with his phone.
When I finally looked down, I was astonished that I still had Kajevic’s Glock in my left hand. I laid it on the pavement beside Goos, who was now flat on his back. He was red with pain and grunting with each breath. He clearly had rebroken his ribs.
“Aren’t you the fucking hero,” I said.
“Pure instinct,” he answered. “Good on you with the gun, Boom.”
“It was my extensive training watching crime shows on TV,” I said. “You already had him.” That was true. When I bent the weapon back, Kajevic seemed to have already let go of it. It came away like the stem from a grape.
In the meantime, a medic had appeared, one of the ersatz backpackers. He treated the colonel, who had sustained a wound a bit like the one I had faked, a through-and-through gunshot to the forearm. He did not appear to be bleeding heavily, although from the way he held his arm with his good hand, I took it that the bullet had fractured something.
I sat in the street beside Goos until the medic made his way over. He checked Goos’s vitals, then gave him an injection of some painkiller. After that, he had the presence of mind to remember the initial plan and pretended to examine, then bandage, my hand. I nearly objected, having completely forgotten why he was doing that. There was no point to that exercise anyway. Kajevic’s people would always remember Goos as the guy who’d flattened the president and ended his last chance to escape.
The medic then returned to Ruehl and hopped into the backseat of the SUV, where the driver placed the colonel while Lothar gave us a gallant smile.
Just then, I noticed a low-flying combat helicopter appearing to hop over the mountains as it passed the monastery. The aircraft had a sharp snout that made it resemble a dragonfly, and at the sides were a patch of tiger stripes and two white missile launchers. It hovered over the square, taking its time to put down so that the residents, who’d begun to creep out again from the buildings, could once more retreat.
After the helicopter landed, the armored vehicle advanced to cover the far side of the square, while several soldiers who’d been guarding the 4x4 and Kajevic fanned out, pointing their weapons to establish a perimeter. The truck rolled forward until it was just outside the overhead circle of the chopper blades. I heard the lieutenant shout out “Clear!” and eight soldiers jumped from
the rear, moving double time as they carried Laza Kajevic in the air between them. He was bound hand and foot, gagged and still squirming, with a bloody bandage in the middle of his face—Goos, it turned out, had broken his nose. His coarse brown rassa was gathered at his waist, revealing his blue jeans beneath. The soldiers tossed Kajevic through the open door of the chopper as unceremoniously as he’d gone into the truck. Four of them leapt in beside the prisoner.
Colonel Ruehl had remained in the SUV to command the final step of the operation, but the lieutenant took over then and settled in the front passenger’s seat of the chopper. With that, the helicopter was aloft again, soon disappearing behind the mountains.
One old woman came out in its wake and threw both of her shoes in that direction, but I didn’t know if her contempt was for Kajevic or us.
25.
Home to The Hague—June 10–13
Despite Goos’s remonstrance, he was placed on a stretcher and driven in the 4x4 down to the hospital. The real Bosnian Army was now on the scene, securing the small emergency area so that Ruehl and Goos could be treated. The two patients lay side by side on adjoining stainless steel tables, with blood on a standard being drained into Ruehl’s arm. As the Bosnians hustled in and out, including a growing number of civilian officials, there was an increasing hubbub of loud voices and a lot of tense rushing around. I was delighted when General Moen arrived and immediately took the situation in hand. She banished everyone but a few NATO troops and the medical staff from the ER. She explained that the lone radiologist had been detained for questioning, and thus there was a delay as they struggled to find a doctor to look at Ruehl’s and Goos’s X-rays. After more tape and Demerol, Goos was insisting on going home now.
A private ambulance was summoned, so Goos could lie flat on the trip to Tuzla airport. Andersen, now in uniform, drove me back to the Blue Lamp, where I packed up Goos’s room and my own. When I returned to the airfield, a NATO plane had landed. Goos was already aboard on a paramedic’s rolling stretcher, and in very good spirits, particularly when he didn’t try to move.
We were flown a couple of hours to the NATO air base at Geilenkirchen in Germany near the Dutch border. From there, General Moen had arranged for another ambulance to take us the remaining two hours to The Hague.
When we arrived outside the little condo Goos had bought years ago, he insisted, with considerable effort, on getting to his feet. I understood this was for the benefit of his wife and his older daughter, who’d rushed down from Brussels. The wife, a thickish figure with wavy blonde hair, and the daughter, a mess of tattoos, took over to help him make a halting entry to the building. He took a single step at a time, resting a second before the next effort. His wife never stopped talking a mile a minute in Flemish.
It was midnight when I slipped into my flat. I was stunned to find Nara, in her black running tights, still awake. She was curled in an easy chair in the living room as she read under a shell lamp that provided the only light in the apartment. On sight, she instinctively moved toward me and brought her small hand to my face, where the bruise along my chin and jawline had turned green and yellow.
“Oh my,” she said.
“Looks worse than it feels.”
I dropped my bag and fell onto the sofa. Now that I was back, I was suddenly so exhausted that it felt as if even my bones could give way.
“A business thing ended up getting physical,” I explained. “Goos was with me. He’s worse off. But he’s mending.”
For many reasons, starting with our continuing safety, Goos and I had agreed to keep our role in Kajevic’s capture a vaulted secret. I changed the subject to Nara.
“New York wasn’t good?”
“I was in town three days and saw Lewis for all of an hour. We had a furious argument in the hotel lobby and never spoke again while I was there.” Her tone in relaying this was characteristically odd—she was surprisingly light, as if the entire trip had been a passing annoyance. On the whole, she seemed upbeat, and in a second I understood why. “Laza Kajevic was arrested today,” she announced. “It must be huge news in Bosnia.”
“All I heard about,” I said.
“He has a private defense lawyer from Belgrade, Bojan Bozic, but I worked with Bozic on General Lojpur’s case, and he always promised me I would be senior trial counsel with him if Laza was captured. He will file the papers tomorrow asking for a joint appointment.” Her face was ripe with the cute childish light of unsuppressed pride. We both knew as lawyers that it was one of those cases you’d be going to dinner on for the rest of your life.
“Congratulations.” I lifted my palm for a genial high five. But I found myself peering at her afterward. There was a lot about this woman I did not understand, because we tended not to talk much about work, given our roles laboring on opposite sides. Yet with Nara, because of her frequently unfiltered responses, I knew I could speak my mind.
“And it won’t bother you to defend a monster like this? The camps and executions, the systematic rapes?” In a way, this was a completely galling question coming from me, given the big-league cruds who often had been my clients. Over the years, I had seemed to specialize in ego-drunk CEOs, men in all cases, who’d looted their companies with no more hesitation than they would have exhibited in picking up the loose change from their sock drawers, and who frequently exhibited a variety of loutish behavior toward women. I believed in the mantra that everyone deserved a defense, but I had resolved long ago that the defense didn’t necessarily have to be provided by me. Mob clients, for example, were always on my personal Do Not Call list. The unprovoked and conscienceless violence on which their business was erected was too much for me.
“I don’t mean to sound like some boor at a cocktail party,” I said, “asking how you can stand up for such awful people. But Laza Kajevic is probably a finalist for the title of single worst human being alive.”
She actually smiled for a second, before her black eyes drew down more seriously.
“Because I do not know,” she said.
“Know what?”
“What I would do in wartime—when the world is all topsy and nothing is right. It is easy to be the prosecutor, Boom, and say after the fact, This is what you should have done. That is important to restore order. But to my mind, it also involves a good deal of pretending. I am not sure the rules would be very clear to me if it were kill or be killed.”
I could have followed the lawyerly instinct and argued, especially about Kajevic, who’d created the very atmosphere she thought mitigated his crimes. But hers was a serious answer from a thoughtful person. And her reasons were higher-minded than mine had been for taking on many cases, which, generally speaking, were because crimes intrigued me a lot more than lease foreclosures, the money was great, and these engagements often allowed me to hang out with friends from the US Attorney’s Office, who frequently were representing the codefendants.
“So you’ve signed on?”
She lifted the immense three-ring binders she’d been studying.
“I was out running when I got the call from Bozic,” she said. “I went back to the office for the charging document and some background materials and haven’t been out of this chair in five hours.”
“And how will Lew take it,” I asked, “when you tell him you aren’t moving back to New York?”
Her face fell. “I do not look forward to that conversation. It has been a week since we last spoke. Every argument is expected to end with my apology, and I will not do that this time.”
I began Thursday at Nara’s dentist, who put a temporary cap on my tooth, before I migrated to the Court. Goos and I had agreed to write a single joint report to all of our bosses about the last week and a half. I started the first draft.
In the middle of the afternoon my phone rang.
“Congratulations, Boom.” It took me a second to place Merriwell’s voice. “I wanted to thank you personally. I only wish I’d been there to see it. The world is a far better place today.”
“The scuttlebutt says you and your colleague were both very brave,” Merry told me.
As we’d asked, Goos and I had been omitted from the official account of the arrest provided to media outlets. But there was obviously another confidential version circulating for those in the know.
“Goos brought him down,” I said. “Even though Kajevic had a pistol with which he’d shot Colonel Lothar. My act of heroism consisted in lying on the floor of an iron-plated vehicle—in full body armor.”
“I was told you took his pistol.”
“He was half-unconscious and his finger was nowhere near the trigger. And I was scared to death the whole time.” The fact was that the more I thought about the moment I’d grabbed the Glock, the less clear it was in my memory. I remained largely astonished that I’d ever been in that position.
“That proves you’re a reasonable man,” Merry said. “He’s a terrifying human being. Courage isn’t the absence of fear, Boom. It’s carrying on despite it. Hats off. The version I hear is that Kajevic was on his way to escaping when you guys cut him off.”
Afterward, the soldiers had poured compliments on us. They had been frightened that Kajevic would reach the black sedan waiting to speed him back to the monastery. It was true that if Kajevic had actually gotten in that car with the monk who was driving, the aftermath might have been messier. But much as I admired Goos’s quick thinking and his daring in taking on a man who’d already used his weapon, neither of us believed on reflection that there was much danger of Kajevic outrunning several men and women forty years younger than he was. As Goos said in the hours we’d spent on the plane, tirelessly recycling events that probably lasted less than a minute, the only person whose life Goos probably saved was Kajevic’s, since he would have had to have been shot if he turned to fire at the troops pursuing him.