by Scott Turow
“For twenty years in the service,” said Attila, “it made my ass ache worse than hemorrhoids that I couldn’t get into combat. If the jokers in the five-sided puzzle palace”—she meant the Pentagon—“ever stopped acting like having a puss was like missing an arm, I’da let Merry send me to OCS, cause I always figured I’d make a great fuckin battlefield commander. But you know, I wonder. Fact is, once the shootin starts, it’s all fubar. Your brain just gets scrambled. Big props to Goos.”
The longer the period since we’d returned from Bosnia, and the more mired I again became in what I thought of as ordinary life, the odder the kidnapping and the capture of Kajevic seemed, and the less connected to my natural reality. There were still instants, especially sitting alone at my desk in the office, when my heart felt like it was veering into impromptu A-fib, and I realized I was remembering the barrel of the AK at my temple. But overall, as the events receded, it was like having been on a passenger flight when there’s a terrible landing—a tire blows and the plane skids off the runway and the film of your life goes by in triple speed. For a while afterward, it’s hard even to look at an airliner in the sky. You recognize how much trust you’re putting in everyone, the mechanics, the pilots, even Bernoulli, who discovered the principle that keeps aircraft aloft. You keep thinking about how close you came. And then, slowly, you accept the obvious: It didn’t happen. You’re here. You’ve gone on. And you head back to the airport for your next flight.
Eventually, I asked Attila about the lawyer, and then bulldozers and steam shovels.
“What for?” Attila asked.
I explained we were going to exhume the Cave.
“What kind of bullshit is that?” said Attila. “I thought you were just pretending about that so the NATO guys had a cover. Where you going with this case without Ferko?”
I didn’t respond directly. Attila still had no clue what the NATO records showed, but she seemed to sense there was something important she didn’t know. She asked several pointed questions about other evidence we’d gathered and I demurred, telling her that the Court’s rules of investigative confidentiality constrained me, just as she’d been silenced by the need to respect the military classification of information. She sounded unsatisfied by that reply.
As for earth-moving equipment, when the troops left Bosnia, Attila had bought up everything CoroDyn had brought there to build camps and repair roads. Like many of her other business moves, it had worked out brilliantly. She’d paid only a bit more than it would have cost CoroDyn to transport the machinery elsewhere, and by her own words, she’d “made a big fat fucking fortune” leasing the equipment for the constant civilian reconstruction projects. She promised us a “friends and family price” in the quote she’d e-mail by nightfall.
Since we’d returned from Bosnia, I’d finally had the chance to carefully examine the records Attila had brought us of the truck deployments eleven years ago on the night the Chetniks appeared at Barupra. It was just as she’d claimed—there were no large contingents of vehicles checked out of either the operational or logistical pool, beyond those listed for garbage runs and other routine hauling around the base. But the documents were incomplete.
“There’s nothing from the fuel depot, Attila. Nothing from the mechanics, nothing from parts supply.”
“Really?” she asked. “Fuck, I didn’t even look that close. I’ll call Virginia and kick those cementheads in the ass. Every day, Boom, America gets to be more like Italy.” She promised to have the records when we arrived in Bosnia to exhume the Cave.
I thought about Attila after I put down the phone. She was the life of the party, so to speak, wherever she went, and the logistical genius who figured out how to meet everyone’s needs. But she must have been a teeming mess of justifiable resentments when she was by herself. Like a lot of well-to-do people, she’d undoubtedly learned that money, nice as it was, didn’t heal the fundamental injuries of life, of which she’d endured many. Despite people like Merriwell and Attila’s father, who’d tried to convince her to join the officer corps, she’d refused because, she said, there really was no place there for someone who was, in her powerfully apt and prejudiced term, ‘queer.’ She reveled in queerness and hated it all the same, since it had denied her, in instances like this, her proper destiny. Attila never asked anybody to feel sorry for her. But I did in the moment, experiencing some of the unrooted feelings that must have swamped her so often, especially when she was alone.
When I returned to the apartment after work, Nara was dressed for our run. Her mother, she said, had gotten a fine report from the doctor in Amsterdam.
“But I need to talk to you about something quite important,” she said. She looked grave.
I prepared myself, realizing her mother had persuaded her I should move. I had already started looking at ads and stopping at real estate agents’ windows to see what was posted, but I’d hoped to stay put until after we had exhumed the Cave, when I’d have a clearer idea of my future in The Hague. Nonetheless, I resolved to accept her decision with grace.
Instead, she said, “Laza wants to talk to you.”
I was a second. “Kajevic?”
“I must tell you the truth. Bozic has warned him several times not to do it. And I have repeated that and challenged Laza to explain why this serves his interests at all. And I will keep trying to change his mind. But so far he insists. He is rather strong-willed.”
“I imagine.”
“Even so, Bojan wants full immunity from the ICC and an ironclad confidentiality agreement, so that nothing Laza says can be used against him in any court. Bozic will be here tomorrow for a hearing and wants to discuss this with you.”
Those terms—exactly what I would have demanded as defense lawyer—did not figure to be challenging, especially since Bozic had all the negotiating power. I would need permission from Badu and Akemi, but they were likely to agree.
I wanted to tell Goos about this development before anyone else. He was spending the week at home, still convalescing, but I headed to his condo on Tuesday morning. His wife remained here. Fien was naturally warm and lively and kissed me on both cheeks when I arrived, which I took as a sign that Goos had spoken well of me. But we could not say much to one another since her English was every bit as poor as my Flemish. The apartment was darker than I expected and crowded, full of family photos and figurines and too much heavy walnut furniture. It was often a shock to see the dwelling space of the people you worked with, since it was frequently a venue for attitudes they would never display on the job. My guess was that Goos was comfortable here because it resembled the way Fien had decorated their house just outside Brussels and that she’d initially set her hand to this place, too. But all that implied a level of dependence between them that he seldom acknowledged with a beer in his hand.
Goos was still flat on his back, but his color was excellent. He insisted on taking a chair for our conversation, although he accepted my help getting there.
“You might be better off lying down for this,” I said. “We have a chance to interview Laza Kajevic.” I outlined the few details I had.
“I’ll be stuffed,” he said. “Stuffed. What’s in this for Kajevic, Boom?”
I’d only started trying to figure that out.
“The truth, Goos, is that he’ll be in prison until he dies. He can do whatever the hell he likes.” That, of course, included lying his ass off when we spoke to him, for whatever malicious fun he’d get from it. We’d have to be wary.
Nonetheless, Goos smiled at me with a breadth I’d seldom seen outside the barroom.
“We are having some times with this case, mate, aren’t we?”
Late Tuesday, I journeyed across town to meet personally with Bojan Bozic, who was in The Hague from Belgrade for a short hearing in Kajevic’s case. We’d all agreed that Nara would make introductions and thereafter step out of the negotiations over the ground rules for the interview.
The Yugoslav Tribunal had a far plainer home than the
ICC, at a site near the World Forum, where the UN flag waved outside the court. The interior resembled an old high school, and the quarters for the defense lawyers, about which Nara occasionally grumbled, were uninviting—a couple of large linoleum-floored rooms with a few desks and bulletin boards and three or four aged computers, the kind of space where you might expect to find the teachers’ aides eating lunch.
It turned out, when I arrived, that Nara and Bozic had been held late in court, completing the examination of a witness who would be finishing his prison term shortly and might thereafter be unavailable. The man’s testimony related to a point of jurisdiction on Kajevic’s case, although only a few counts among the hundreds lodged against him. Another of the staff defense counsel showed my ICC credentials to the security person at the courtroom door, and I was permitted to take a seat in the spectators’ section, behind a glass wall, while I waited for the hearing to conclude.
Although the Yugoslav Tribunal was very much the mother of the ICC, the ICTY had been established as a temporary court, and even twenty years later the courtrooms were far smaller and less grand than ours. The floor plan with the lawyers’ desks and the judicial and registrars’ benches was identical, with the same outcropping of black computer monitors at every seat, but the space, in what appeared to be a converted classroom, was far more confined. Here the judges’ sleeves were trimmed in crimson, but Nara, who was cross-examining the witness, was in the same black robe and white lace bib we wore across town. Bozic and Kajevic, in a suit, sat at the defense table with their backs to me, while three prosecutors were making notes at another arced desk a few feet away.
I hadn’t thought much about the fact that Narawanda had risen to the role of co-counsel in a huge case and must have been reasonably good in court. The woman I knew, odd and a little bit timid, did not seem to have the makings of a stereotypical trial lawyer, but in some ways neither did I, often accused of bringing a somewhat taciturn outward manner to court. The truth is that every effective trial attorney develops a style of her own, just like good painters and singers and pitchers, one that often involves capitalizing on idiosyncrasies. Nara’s manner was to confront the witness in her own blankly earnest way, a sort of law-time Columbo routine in which her pose was to keep putting questions, not because the witness was lying, but due rather to her being foreign and dense. It was revealing to me to see her like this, because the laser light of a cleverness she otherwise kept to herself peeked out so clearly here in the courtroom.
The issue, so far as I could discern, was that Kajevic had not been in the former Yugoslavia on the dates he was alleged to have committed the crimes charged in these four counts. In the US this was called an alibi and became an issue of fact at trial, but at the ICTY it was the subject of a preliminary motion contesting the court’s power to try Kajevic on these specific charges. Apparently Nara and Bozic had come forward with hotel receipts and other records showing Kajevic was actually in Paris at the time of the alleged offense, but the prosecution had chosen to present the witness rather than drop the counts. It was instantly apparent that the prosecutors were so incensed about Kajevic’s evildoing and his years on the run that they were unwilling to concede anything to him or his lawyers. I knew that frame of mind and had learned the hard way that it was toxic. Good defense counsel would only add to the prosecutors’ frustrations at trial, goading them into angry blunders.
The man at the witness desk was a former colonel in the Bosnian Serb Army who had apparently lessened his punishment by blaming Kajevic for everything. He had the rumpled look that many of the former soldiers seemed to try to affect, sitting at the witness table in an ill-fitting suit of a strange shade of powder blue, unshaved, his tie askew. His demeanor—uncomfortably reminiscent of Ferko’s—was of a simple man too feckless to do other than follow orders.
“You say you went to Banja Luka to see my client?” Nara took a moment in which she blinked at the colonel several times with no other expression.
“That is true.”
“Did you ever leave the former Yugoslavia in 1992 or 1993?”
“I was an officer and we were in combat.”
“You are saying no?”
“No.”
“You were never in Paris in those years?”
“It was war. We were not taking Parisian vacations.”
“And do you recall, Colonel, where you started when you traveled to see my client?”
“Not really, no.”
“Were you driven there?”
“Yes, of course.”
“And how many hours did it take?”
“I don’t really know.”
“Two? Ten?”
“Two perhaps, three.”
“And on that date, Colonel, do you remember where the regiment you commanded was stationed?”
“Not offhand.”
“You say you were in combat. Do you recall the last encounter your troops had been in?”
“We fought the Bosniaks. It must have been near Sarajevo.”
“And so you went from Sarajevo to Banja Luka in wartime in two to three hours? That would be impossible now, would it not?”
“I didn’t say it took only two to three hours.”
“I’m sorry, I thought you said that.”
“You said that.”
“I apologize. But from Sarajevo to Banja Luka, during the time of fighting, that would be a journey that could take most of a day, wouldn’t it?”
“Yes, it could.”
“So in order to speak to President Kajevic, you would have been gone from your troops for two days at least?”
“But perhaps I was not in Sarajevo.”
“I see. And I forget. Do you recall where you had been when you started out?”
“Not really. It was more than twenty years ago. How am I supposed to recall anything?”
All of this took place, as in our court, with the elaborate process of translation making it feel as if everybody was trying to run with their shoes glued in place. But despite that, with just a few questions, Nara had pulverized the colonel. The only thing he really knew was that by blaming Kajevic he could get out of prison.
They were done shortly. Nara introduced me to Bozic outside their robing room and I congratulated both of them. The Court had taken the matter under advisement, but it was clear they were going to prevail on their motion. Nara giggled like a girl when I gave her the praise she deserved for her questioning.
“Yes, yes,” said Bozic, “a brilliant cross-examination.” He was tubby and no more than five foot three. Despite that and being over seventy, he was quite handsome, with high color and a full head of white hair and an appealing energetic manner. He had become the go-to lawyer for all the high-ranking Serbs who’d been arrested, and he’d won acquittals for three of them. Born in Milwaukee, his American English was entirely without accent. “Four counts gone,” he said. “Only 332 remaining.”
Because the hearing had taken longer than expected, Bozic was now late for his plane and asked me to walk with him to the door. Nara, as promised, left us to our discussions.
“Listen,” said Bozic, “my client believes he is a superhero. He has no appreciation of risk. At the end of all of this, he expects to put on his cape and fly out of prison. An insanity defense is called for, but it goes without saying, he would fire me on the spot.”
I nodded. I’d been there. We talked about the terms for Kajevic’s testimony.
As a matter of character, Laza Kajevic seemed to me extremely unlikely to admit authorizing the massacre of four hundred Roma at Barupra. Nonetheless, even that remote possibility had provoked some searching conversations at the ICC in the last several hours: Was it worth it, in a case where we had no reliable witness, to make promises of immunity to the arch criminal so that we could get evidence that would lead us to others who were also responsible? It was a question every prosecutor faced from time to time, and it was usually a very tough call. Yet since Kajevic’s conviction in this building, and h
is lifelong imprisonment, were a certainty, I was in favor.
In the event, it proved to have been a purely theoretical debate. Bozic was the kind of lawyer other lawyers loved, too busy and confident to bother with bullshit. While he was under no obligation to answer, he laughed out loud and wound his head in disbelief when I asked if Kajevic would take responsibility for Barupra. Given that, the rest of our negotiation took only minutes. The ICC by statute promised all witnesses, not just Kajevic, immunity from use anywhere of their statements against them. Bozic’s remaining concerns could be addressed by agreeing that the interview would be deemed an investigative matter covered by the Court’s rules of absolute confidentiality, meaning our meeting with Kajevic would remain forever secret. Having gotten everything he could want, Bozic was happy with the arrangement.
“Write it down, send it to me,” he said. He was returning to The Hague next week to confer with General Lojpur, whose case was now pending decision. If we could complete the paperwork, the Kajevic interview would take place then.
27.
Emira—June 17–19
On Wednesday, when I reached my office, the overnight envelope I’d sent to Esma at her chambers in London was lying on my desk with a notice that the addressee was unknown. I picked it up, checked the spelling and the street name, then wondered if there was any chance that Esma hadn’t answered my other messages because those communications also hadn’t reached her.
I went online to the sleek website for Esma’s chambers at Bank Street and found no listing for her. I was stumped for a second, then concluded she must have changed her business arrangements, like successful American lawyers, who these days sometimes declare themselves free agents, akin to athletes who offer their services to the highest bidder. If she’d moved chambers, her cell phone and e-mail might have gotten screwed up in the process, accounting for her silence.